Many people and small business owners have hesitated going online with a website because they don’t think they can afford to do it. They have taken a look at the large amount of money big companies are spending on their websites and hosting. But the reality is, most companies can use a cheap web hosting provider and stay well within a budget.

One place to look to in regards to cheap web hosting is free hosting services. You can not get any cheaper than that. After the dot com boom free web hosting didn’t disappear they just became a bit harder to find. There are only a few big names left in the free hosting circle such as GeoCities and Tripod.

Free hosting is good if you are just starting out and money is an issue. The problem is it has a lot of limitations. Most come with ads all over your site and you do not share in the revenue they may produce. If your site was to become popular and have a lot of visitors they could suspend your site because of to much usage or force you to sign up for a paid account. This may be the ultimate cheap web hosting but may not be what is best for you.

If you need cheap web hosting but are not sure if you want to the commitment of a yearly plan, but you don’t want the limitations that a free hosting company will impose on you, you have a few options available for your consideration.

Cheap web hosting is available on a pay as you go plan. This is not real popular as of yet but is becoming more available all the time. You do not pay a monthly fee. What you do is, put money on your account then each time someone accesses your site a small amount is taken off the books. This way you are only paying for what you are using.

Another cheap web hosting plan is finding a web host that does not make you commit to a long term agreement. Many cheap web host providers will offer a monthly plan that is reasonable and affordable. You have all the benefits, but do not have the long term commitment should you change your mind.

You can find cheap web hosting with great customer service for as little as five dollars or less a month. You will have all the disk space and bandwidth needed to make your online presence a success. To find these do your homework. Research and also find others who have used or are using a particular company you are interested in.

A word of caution in regards to some cheap web hosting companies. Do not let them over sell you. You do not need a huge amount of disk space or bandwidths so don’t pay for a excessive amount. Try and find a cheap web host that will allow you to add to your disk space or bandwidth as you go.

Cheap Web Hosting – Free Hosting Services is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

Here’s why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings…

What may look great to one visitor may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (Not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The “Internet Catalog” Approach — You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, “…well, I don’t want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they’re looking for…” — This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here’s why: There’s an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time…

“When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren’t sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything.”

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines — You’ll see this taught in nearly every “internet marketing” course, manual or eBook out there… “You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!” — In fact, this false teaching is accepted as ‘gospel truth’ so often that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost…

What they don’t understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it “keyword rich”) or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines — and this could kill your sales, literally overnight.

Here’s why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your sales page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you’re going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffic — but what good is all the traffic in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren’t compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a “balance” of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services…

Wrong Again! — The truth is that you should never optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny “entry pages” for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (We can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffic from the Search Engines – without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a “Graphics-Based” Website — Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service… But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually distract your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or “web copy”) is The #-1 most important factor in a website that makes money. If your visitors are paying more attention to your “professional graphics” than your sales message… you’ve just lost another sale.

Here’s why: You’ve got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or leave. If you’ve got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That’s a “customer-killer” in and of itself – however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with Zero Marketing Experience — Most web designers have no idea how to make money on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It’s not their fault – they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they’re just website designers…

However, having your website designed by someone with Zero internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine… it won’t go anywhere, and it’ll just waste your time and money!

For help on website design please visit www.onlinewebconsultants.com

5 Common Mistakes of Website Design is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

These ten tips will help you to pick just the right domain name for you and/or your business.

1. The extension you select makes a statement to user about where you are and who you are aiming to attract. For example, .co.uk tells people you are operating out of the United Kingdom, and .ca tells them you are operating out of Canada. If that is important to you, then register accordingly. If you would rather give them impression of being a global company, or based in the US, then pick a .com name.

2. Use a reputable registration service. Unfortunately, some domain registration services are little more than a scam. They are only middlemen. You tell them the domain name you want, and they register it, for a fee higher than you would pay! In the worst case, they actually register the domain name using their information, so it becomes very difficult for you to do anything with your domain name.
Do some background research into the company before you register a domain with them.

3. Use keywords in your domain name. These will sometimes help search engines in ranking your website. For example, if you sell gourmet dog treats online and from your own store, but your business name is “Laura’s Homemade Snacks,” you might consider two domain names: one for your business name, and one for keywords. In this case you might select “gourmetdogtreats.com” as your domain name to represent to the search engines and searchers what you are about.

4. Short names are easier to spell correctly. What’s easier to remember and type in: gourmetdogtreats.com, or laurashomemadeandgourmetdogsnacks.com?

5. Avoid trademarks from other companies. Companies have been known to sue website owners for copyright and trademark infringement, so be very careful if you try to play off an existing business. Make sure that you register a domain name in good faith, and think about the possibilities and connections that might exist between you and another business.

6. Avoid hyphens. Sometimes you must use hyphens because the straightforward name is gone. In that case, a better idea is to come up with a completely different name. The problem with hyphens is that users may end up visiting the wrong site. If you try to register gourmetdogtreats.com but it is already taken, you might choose to register gourmet-dog-treats.com instead. But you run the risk of someone trying to find you typing in the first address. This means you lose business. Better to try and register a name like homemadedogtreats.com instead.

7. Consider buying several different extensions so no one else can infringe on your success by registering a similar name. For example, if you register homemadedogtreats.com, you might also take .net and .org (with the same name), since these are the most popular extensions after .com. That way, no one can register homemadedogtreats.net and try to piggyback of your success.

8. Look for companies that offer telephone support. If you have trouble with your domain name, you need to be able to contact the company and talk to someone. If there is no phone contact, that may be a sign that you are not dealing with a reputable company.

9. Look for accreditations (i.e., ICANN). Reputable companies will seek out accreditations because they know it boosts their business image to be part of a group that enforces good business ethics and practices. Failure to have an accreditation does not necessarily mean the company is bad, but it could mean that. If the company you are looking at does not have an accreditation, make sure you check for other things like phone support, payment procedures, etc.

10. After you find a company you like, do a search on Google for “domain registration.” Does your company of choice appear in the first couple of pages of results, or just via Adwords? If the latter, they may not have been around for a long time and may not be reputable. A legitimate company with a solid track record will be ranked in Google’s search engine, especially within the first couple of pages. Beware of registration companies that you can only find in Adwords.

These ten tips will help you as you seek to register your domain name.

10 Tips For Accurate Domain Registration is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

In fact, you may be losing money. You maybe hiring writers to help you out, or there are some expenses incurred, even if you have a big list, but only a very small percentage actually buys from you, your still losing profit. You’ll realize that after a few months when you see your statistics and sales figures.

So what could have gone wrong? Why have others succeeded where you have failed? The most common mistake is that you dived straight right in. You chose a topic where you think could be quite popular and would earn you money. This just not the case. Just because you wrote people from the list doesn’t mean they are going to buy instantly.

Here I will offer more advice, for those who have started an opt-in list and have failed, you can rejuvenate your failed venture. For those who are starting, here are three quick and easy ways to build a profitable opt-in list.

1) Get your customers to trust you and your products first. Just launching your opt-in list would not make you an expert and a believable seller. Put many articles first before you start an opt-in list. Write about the topic you know and have started and used for your site. Try to put forums first to gain knowledge about your customers about their wants and needs and target those wants and needs.

Join forums from other sites as well. Provide expert advices and recommendations. When you feel that people trust you already, you will be able to start your own opt-in list. You can build a base as well with other forum users. You can ask them to join your list. Friends are always good customers. Put up a link to your site so that they may be able to see what you’re business is all about.

The certain truth is, the money will only come in when the consumers and subscribers believe and trust in you. They want a product or service that could be a good exchange for their money. People are not going to buy something out of your recommendation if they don’t know you.

2) Find a product or service that people want and need. Although it may not be your forte, if you provide a service and product that you have researched and learned about well, you can carry it on forward. Invest your time, effort and money that you could sell as well as the buyers or subscribers of your opt-in list can use.

While it is true that it is best to sell something that you have interest in, there are not many people who have the same interest as you if you decide to sell something that is not entirely popular or profitable. Do your research well and you would see the profits come in. Also provide your subscribers with promotional material that they could actually use and spread around.

3) Make friends with other opt-in list users. This is basically beneficial especially if it is someone who has already launched a successful opt-in list. These are people that have the experience in this venture and experience is still the best teacher. While there are many articles available for you in the internet to use, there is nothing like getting a first hand account from someone you trust.

Experienced opt-in list users will be able to tell you what to do and what not to do because they have gone through it. While different situations occur for different people, the general concept can still be very helpful. There are many things to avoid and these people will be able to tell you which ones.

Building a profitable opt-in list don’t just happen overnight. There are many preparations and effort to do. Opt-in lists are built from scratch, as your list grows, you should also maintain the quality of your list. Keep it organized and manageable. Get or hire help if need be, just make sure that your subscribers are happy and satisfied and they will be willing to buy from you.

3 Ways To Build A Profitable Opt In List Quickly and Easily is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

A domain name provides your website an Internet address. Under the Domain Name System DNS, domain names are framed of the four elements – a server prefix, a domain name, a domain suffix or extension, and a country code (optional). For instance, www.jasssony.com is an example of a domain name where ‘www’ is the server prefix, ‘jasssony’ is the domain name and ‘com’ is the domain suffix.

‘Dot-com’ is an example of a top level domain extension. There are generic top level domains, gTLDs, and country code top level domains, ccTLDs. Register a domain name of your own. Many ‘Internet Service Providers’, ISPs and Web Hosts also offer free or bargain-rate domain services that essentially make a domain name an extension of theirs. For example, if the ISP is a fictional like ‘youneedweserve’, then the resulting domain name could be www.youneedweserve/jass/index.html. While registering your own domain name, make sure that the extension name should look like a professional one. With an extension domain name, you always have to change the ISP or web host.

Many people do not realize it, but it is a fact that the names on the Internet really matter. Choose a domain name that identifies the business and it should also be easy to remember; so many people type the names or partial names into search engines for finding the site that they are seeking for. Most of the best or obvious domain names are already registered by the people. You should also consider the facts when you are choosing a domain name for the online business and how to register a domain name.

Registering a generic top level domain name or a country code top level domain, the things mostly depend on the market for the product or service. For example, if you are selling your product or services to USA, you can use the country code top level domain, dot-us domain. If you are marketing the products or services globally, you can choose to register the online business as a dot-com or a dot-biz.

A Guide To Domain Name Registration is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

People endorse other products for a many reasons. Sometimes to sell affiliate products for commissions, promote a joint ventured product or other times, for an advertising space they sold. Solo ad is a single advertisement in an email published by the owner of an ezine/newsletter to his lists of subscribers.

Why does it work more effectively than the others? You can fully personalize your solo ad and it’ll be sent out in only one single email, which lets the readers focus only on the solo ad. This highly increases the response of the advertisement and gives you a high edge compared to other ads which are hardly noticed.

Here we’re going to mention what kind of solo ads sell and what factors are important. The process of publishing a solo ad:

1. Choose a newsletter or e-zine to send out your solo ad
2. Write a solo ad
3. Create an effective or catchy title
4. Put up the website where your visitors will go

1. Choosing the right newsletter or e-zine
This is an extremely important step. Whether or not your readers will be interested in your solo ad depends on what group they are. You must choose a huge targeted list of subscribers to send out your solo ad, usually one with more than 5,000 people.

If you want to find targeted e-zines/newsletters where you can advertise your solo ad, simply make a search on Google with your niche market’s keywords and go to the popular or high ranking websites. From there, find the links that say “advertising” or “advertise with us”, and the rest is pretty self-explanatory.

How can you put a limit on learning more? The next section may contain that one little bit of wisdom that changes everything.

2. Writing a solo ad
Most people are tired of seeing advertisements over and over again, they can sense it right away on the first look followed by a click on the delete button. So how do you make a difference with your solo ads?

Write a story, that’s all! Humans are drawn into stories since they were born, we’ll read any stories which are interesting. Write about how you have started before you have this experience, and what happens after. It has been said that the best solo ad never sells a thing, it only pre-sells and warm up the readers.

3. Coming up with the perfect title
Ever been to a book store? If you are not attracted to the headline of a story book on its cover, will you even bother buying it next? Hardly, and that is why you need to keep your readers hooked.

4. Design the website where your visitors will go
It is common that people always send readers of their solo ads right to the main sales page, a big mistake, instead. You should always let these “personally invited” visitors feel that they are special, for having the front-edge against the other normal visitors.

Greet them cheerfully, and roughly tell them your success with the product you mentioned in the solo ad, and always take advantage of asking them to opt into your subscriber list! This is very crucial, every penny or effort you spent for the solo ad is to benefit as much as you can from it, but not the extent of people getting tired, of course.

Again, tell the stories, interesting stories. You will realize that people will want to buy from you so much just because they feel closer to you. Do this right, and you can have an overnight success with your solo ads.

If you’ve picked some pointers about solo ads that you can put into action, then by all means, take action and DO IT! That’s all for now, All the Best.

4 Amazing Steps To Unleashing The Massive Profits Within Solo Ads Fast And Easily. is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

Search Engine Placement Domains
The purpose of these domains is to rank high in the search engines, because the actual domain name contains the keywords being searched for. Search Engine domains are very rarely brandable, and are mostly used exclusively as side Internet properties to redirect traffic to the main site. A company who sells red widgets would benefit from acquiring red-widgets.com and redwidgets.com , because it is natural that people will remember such address, but most importantly, that domain name has a high probability of ranking at, or very near to, the top of a search for ‘red widgets’. A very popular tool used to find what is being searched for on the net is: Overture Keywords (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/)

Brand Domains
When coming from the offline business into the online, the obvious choice for brand domains is the offline brand name as .com and/or .country extension. Country extensions are used in countries were there is more popularity in their country extension than on the .com. In the case that no previous brand existed before moving online, one most be very creative into the approach of a brandable name. At this point, there are millions of domain names registered and many times, one finds that the desired domain is taken. There is a consensus among most Internet domain experts that the shorter the domain, the better. A domain that is about 5 letters long is highly desirable for a brand. However, the domain must sound right as well. Xyqpt.com would be undesirable, because it cannot be easily said or remembered to the general public.

General Term Domains
In the height of the Internet Bubble, general term domains were the most popular choice. Many companies failed, even though they had the generic word for their market. Companies like TheKnot.com refused to purchase Weddings.com, because they were conscious that they needed to focus on brand. Although this strategy worked for TheKnot.com, generic words have a value of their own that cannot be ignored. Like Search Engine Placement Domains, which attract a large number of visitors through search engine referrals, so do generic word domains. For this reason, generic word names are still very much desired and their value continue to rise. What should be learned about the Dot Com Bubble is that generic domains are not everything in a dot com business, rather they are a valuable (yet, not essential) component in an array of variables that make an Internet business a success. The current value of these domains, and other domains in general can be seen at an online publication that covers recent domain name transactions at: Domain Journal Sales (http://www.dnjournal.com/domainsales.htm)

A Simple Guide To Choosing A Domain Name is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

There are many type of hosting solution available these days. All of these hosting plans have different features and are available at different prices. The price of hosting plans differs depending on the features, bandwidth, space and level of security. You can host your website either on shared servers or dedicated servers or virtual dedicated. You should the web hosting server depending upon the needs of your company and not merely on the price or features of the server.

Many users start with shared hosting when the traffic is very low. Choosing shared hosting has its own advantages as it is cheaper, moreover the service provider facilitate you with maintenance and support. However when your business starts getting popular and receives huge traffic, than it is the right time to shift to dedicated web hosting.

Dedicated web hosting is a kind of web hosting which is dedicated to only one customer. The users get their own web server and full control over it. They do not share bandwidth and space with other online business websites. Hence it is getting very popular as the owner has complete freedom to manage the server and configure the settings as per their needs.

Dedicated server hosting in India is available which gives you complete control over your hosted server. These top notch dedicated hosting in India are delivered from compliant systems with excellent data centers. Both the Windows server and Linux environment is best suited for a reliable dedicated web hosting. These services are available at affordable rates too. Cheap dedicated server in India is great option. Database hosting in India is available which meets the exact requirements of any particular business. Database hosting in India is provided for database like Oracle, MySQL, and Microsoft SQL etc.

Small and mid scale business can opt for dedicated servers when-

Your  websites gets popular and has huge traffic You seek full control of system resources like disk space, memory, processor power etc You need more security and complete freedom You want to configure the server to meet your own requirements

There are dedicated server providers in India who offers packages at low cost. So to get the best offer from best service provider take time to choose the provider.

Dedicated Web Hosting Solutions for Small Business is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

There are countless stories of hackers who have overtaken other’s search engine rankings and redirected intended website visitors, with victims who have not even noticed.

These stories consist of a domain URL listed in search engine results on Google, MSN and Yahoo. In the search engine results, most people that click on a person’s domain URLs are sent to their website. However, some people that click their domain URLs are sent to a totally unrelated website that has nothing to do with the intended target, even though the original domain name URL is displayed in the browser. These consumers than see a completely different site that has literally nothing to do with the one sponsored by the victim or their company.

How do these hackers steal Visitors?

Hackers exploit a flaw in the software some domain name servers use by sending incorrect information to these particular domain name servers, hackers compromise the domain name server to redirect the traffic for the URLs to another site.

If domain name servers do not use a method to validate that the information has come from valid or authoritative source, it will send visitors to the wrong pages. This means that people who enter your domain name URL in the web browser will be sent to the hacker’s pages instead of your pages.

How can you protect your website?

It is extremely important that you use a reliable host that does not use an open DNS server. To check this, go to www.dnsreport.com and enter the domain name URL of your website. You should see PASS in the Open DNS servers line. If your domain name fails the test, you should contact your web host. If you don’t want to expose your website to hackers, it is critical that you use a secure DNS server. If your web host cannot fix the issue, you should change to another web host.

Stolen Domain Names: How to Know if you are a Victim is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide

Nowadays, it’s really important to keep your website up-to-date, as everyday countless hackers are targeting websites to steal important information from websites and servers. This is a very serious concern, and now I am sharing few guidelines to secure your websites and web servers from being hacked.

Old scripts

Please remember that old installations are an open invitation for hackers. So, if you have installed Joomla or WordPress that you tried out a couple of months ago; please remove it. You should make sure that any script you install on your servers is of the latest version. It takes 5 seconds to hack an old version of Joomla, upload a shell script and have total control over your account.

Passwords

Never use easy to guess passwords or the same password more than once; if someone finds a password of yours they will try it everywhere else until they reach success. If someone finds your webmail password you’re pretty much guaranteed they’ll try it elsewhere – maybe in cPanel, maybe on your online banking!

Cloak Your Folders

You should keep a blank index.html in all of the folders inside your public_html; this will make sure the contents can’t be easily viewed on the internet. CPanel has this function, check out ‘Index Manager’. It’s always a good idea to keep your files and folders secret.

Password Protect Your Admin Folder

You should password protect the admin folder of any scripts you are using, this provides an extra layer of security and is highly recommended. You can do this in cPanel by clicking the Directory Protection link.

So You Got Hacked?

If you got clicked that something has happened, maybe some spam was sent from your account, or you found you were hosting a phishing site, the first step you need to take is changing your passwords. All of them – cPanel, email, site admin passwords, everything.

Next up, go through your web space and remove all old script installations, remember if you installed plugins in your scripts (modules for Joomla/WordPress etc) they can be hacked too! Make sure they’re up-to-date too.

You can check the Error Logs in cPanel for suspicious requests. Generally, a hacker leaves suspicious files around, so look for such files within your public_html folder. Once the files are found, take the details of those files, such as date and time that the file was uploaded, the file name, folder it was in, and inform your web host so they can check through. Then delete the files.

Being hacked can happen to anyone at all, your security will always depend on its weakest point. If you don’t keep things up-to-date and secure, your site will be hacked and be used for criminal activity in one way or another – however, now is the perfect time to stop this from happening.

Guidelines to Secure Your Website and Server from Hackers is a post from: Web Hosting & Website Development Guide