How To Be A Web Content Provider!

How To Be A Web Content Provider!

by: Stuart Elwell

Would you be happy with reaching literally millions of people by being a web content provider. Whatever you’re selling, it would be nice if you could do this on a regular basis, FOR FREE, through a large number of other peopleกs ezines and websites, wouldn’t it?

Well this is what you can be doing when you start writing content and articles for the countless online newsletters, ezines and webpages that are looking for your input. One thing common to all Internet publishers is that they are all looking for good articles to publish.

If you can be a content provider of interesting and informative articles for them you stand a good chance of getting included in their website/next publication. However you probably won’t get included if it is simply a sales letter disguised as an article. But if you can provide good quality and informative web content you can often be their savior.

Then, they will give you what you need in exchange. They will give you exposure for your business…

How Web Content Providers Benefit:

The publisher will actually expect you to include a small advert at the end of the content you provide. This will get published along with the article itself, and is seen as a fair exchange for the content you have provided. Itกs how you benefit from the deal!

This small ad is usually referred to as a ‘resource boxก, but you can put almost anything you like in here so long as it is only a few lines long. You are free to advertise whatever you are promoting. You could point people back to your website, affiliate program, or tell them how to subscribe to your own newsletter etc.

If you’re like most web content providers you probably don’t consider yourself a writer. It doesn’t matter, it is your knowledge thatกs important. What do you know about your industry? If a friend who understands very little about your specialist subject was to ask you about something related to that industry, what would you say. Write it down. You don’t have to write like an English professor. If fact this would put a lot of people off from reading all your article. To be a good web content provider you should write as you speak, be down to earth and userfriendly.

The Internet often seems so impersonal. Your readers are seeking someone who is real, so why not write as a real person in a conversational manner.

Have a think and try to choose a hot online topic. Look at the articles from other magazines and newsgroups in your industry. A good web content provider should write about current subjects that you’re pretty sure will interest people.

The title is important and should grab people’s attention otherwise they may never read the rest of the article. If they don’t read the article, they won’t see your resource box. Therefore have a good think about the title and live with it for a few days until you feel you cannot improve it.

For the actual web content, around 500 words is a good rule of thumb. Try not to be too long winded. Most users will do a quick scroll to see how long the article is before reading. If itกs too long or too short you may lose them. People don’t like to read for too long online so stick to the point.

At the end of the article add your resource box info. You will receive the best results if you can include a short message related to the article you have just written.

If you have impressed readers with your expertise, thereกs a good chance they will want to learn more about you and what else you can offer them.

Just like with the headline, youกll need to leave your article for a short while, and กsleep on itก. Come back to it the next day and edit it. Improve parts that you then feel could be made a little better. Itกs amazing what a short rest will do for the creative process.

Once you’re happy and cannot improve the article any more, now itกs time to submit to ezine publishers. Below I have provided a list of places that ezine publisher look to find the articles of web content providers. If you can get your article published at these websites, getting into many ezines should be the logical outcome.

http://www.websource.net/

http://groups.yahoo.com/

http://amazines.com/

http://bpubs.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/

http://goarticles.com/

http://promotenewz.com/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://www.certificate.net/

http://www.articlecity.com/

http://ideamarketers.com/

Remember, this process could get you huge targeted exposure, so itกs well worth the effort and it costs you nothing but your time.

Best wishes for your future.

Stuart Elwell

(c) Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

Publishing Guidelines: This article may be copied for use on websites or ezines providing it is not altered in any way (which includes the small กArticle byก paragraph at the end) and all links are live and clickable. If adding to a website I have made it easier for you, simply copy from this html version: http://www.websmartmarketing.com/articles/cetm.html

About The Author

Stuart Elwell, Webmaster for WebSmartMarketing.com; http://www.websmartmarketing.com/home.html which provides sound advice and strategies for making money from the Internet.

This article was posted on August 07, 2004

by Stuart Elwell

What makes a good Web Hosting Provider!

What makes a good Web Hosting Provider!

by: Jonathan White

When building your website and getting it hosted online, you want your site to be up and running on the World Wide Web 24/7 without any hitches so that it is making you money all the time and all you have to worry about then is getting visitors to your site, doing seo, getting repeat visitors, maximizing your sites revenue, etc. You don’t want to have to worry about your web hosting and it’s stability.

So, when choosing a web hosting provider to host your website with, you want to try and get the best web hosting provider so that your site is always up and running smoothly on the World Wide Web.

So what makes a good Web Hosting Provider?

There are many things that make up a good webhosting provider. Some of these include good support, good uptime, good backup system in place, good hardware, offers loads of web hosting features including email features, scripting features and more.

So where can some good Web Hosting Providers be found?

There are many places across the web where you can find some of these good webhosting providers. A good place to start is probably using a webhosting directory as you can easily compare these webhosting providers against what other providers are offering that’s listed within any individual webhosting directory. For example, with http://www.1hostseeking.com you can easily find and compare a large amount of some of the top and most reliable webhosting providers online. You can easily compare each web host against each other so that you can easily see what they offer for the amount of money that they charge.

When choosing a web host it is also best to choose one that offers free setup and also a money back guarantee. This is because if you find that they don’t quite offer what you need for your website, then you can easily get your money back and choose another web hosting provider.

Even if you found some web hosting providers from a web hosting directory like http://www.1hostseeking.com that offer the features that you need for your website, but you still would like further information about the quality of their service, then you could also go to a web hosting related forum and ask others about what they think about these web hosting providers that you have chosen.

After you have done all this, you should then have a good idea or a better idea of which web hosting provider you are most likely to choose to host your website.

About The Author

Jonathan White has been involved in Web Hosting and other Webmaster activities on the Web for over two years now and is the Webmaster of http://www.1hostseeking.com a categorized Web hosting directory listing a large amount of Web hosting providers.

This article was posted on December 17, 2004

by Jonathan White

In Search of Webhosting: First Understand the Indu

In Search of Webhosting: First Understand the Industry

by: Dax Christopher

In search of a webhosting company for personal or small business purposes? We advise you to take a look at this article to understand the hosting industry and study its dynamics to know what to look for before you make your choice.

First, a brief introduction to the webhosting chain: the end consumer is served by about 3 upstream providers: the webhosting provider that they have direct contact with, the webhostกs upstream company who maintains the servers and sells space to webhosts, and above that, the datacenter that provides the connection and houses the servers. Some webhosts are also the server admins and liase with the datacenters directly.

The webhosting industry has been claimed to be near saturation point as there are hundreds of webhosting providers clamouring to provide cheaper and better services to businesses and individuals. This upsurge of supply is largely due to resources becoming readily available (and at cheaper costs) with plunging diskspace and datatransfer prices. The barriers to entry in the webhosting space is low as large resellers of server space provide cheap hosting and reselling plans that create opportunites for new webhosts to join in the market. With increasing number of suppliers with ever cheaper reselling plans, more webhosting businesses are sprouting up to provide webhosting solutions to business and individual websites due to lower fixed costs and investment. In addition, this increase in supply is not caused by factors in any particular country. The internet is global and as such, datacenters in US, or in fact, any part of the world, can provide the server and webspace for a local webhosting company. It is taking place in internet space and consumers and providers can easily find each other and exchange services in the global space.

Increasing the supply is naturally a good thing for the customer who is on the demand side. This inbalance has caused new webhosting providers to offer extremely low prices for their webhosting plans or packages in order to compete in the tough market. Customers get to choose from a myriad of hosting providers who are constantly lowering their prices. However, this might not be a good thing. By offering low prices, companies are earning small margins that may not cover their support costs. Support is vital in the webhosting business as most customers want to be able to get help with their webhosting accounts. If the profits do not justify the costs, web hosting companies will easily close down and take their clientsก sites with them.

So what are the factors to look at when choosing a host for your website?

Support is the single most important factor for any individual or small business looking for a webhost for their websites. Any internet web hosting provider that does not respond to emails for at most 24 hours is probably having problems providing fast and reliable support services. These services are essential to customer satisfaction and especially for customers who are new to webhosting will need guidance with publishing their websites on the webhosting account provided. The webhosting business is about relationships between webhost and webhosting customers. You should want to know that you can get help when you need, and want to be informed when your website is going to be offline for maintainance.

Stability comes in second as a factor when choosing a webhost. Stability refers to how much uptime you can expect from the webhosting provider. This actually depends on the providersก servers and network. If they do not have reliable and stable providers, it would affect their servers and cause problems for your website. An uptime of about 99.5% is considered reliable in the industry as there are external factors which may be beyond control of the provider. External agencies like Alerta.com provide server monitoring services that webhosting companies might use to proof their reliability.

Cost is a factor depending on the purpose of the website and budget. Personal /Individual websites might have smaller budget and choose to go with a cheaper webhosting provider, possibily in exchange for support and stability. Business sites might have larger budgets and should definitely place stability and support above all else. The cheaper webhosting deals that offer enormous diskspace and huge amounts of datatransfer at a dollar rates has continuously proven to be a oneoff hit that attracts customers in numbers, but fail in providing quality support. Large numbers of client sites also cause sustained high server loads that might cause the server to crash and thus affecting stability.

Location of the server is generally not an important issue depending on your ISP/countryกs connection to the datacenter where the server is located. Pings to the server can normally tell you the network latency to expect when people from your area access your site. Lower ping rates means that your site will load faster.

Lastly, take time to identify and contact a webhost to ask about their service. This would give you an idea of the kind of support that you might receive and help you in deciding if you want to go with the webhosting provider.

About The Author

Dax Christopher is the owner of BuildtoLearn Networks which specializes providing free webhosting and other webbuilding resources to assist budding webmasters launch their websites. Visit http://buildtolearn.com to obtain free webhosting or http://buildtutorials.com to learn more about webdevelopment.

This article was posted on April 19, 2004

by Dax Christopher

Introduction to Dedicated Servers

Introduction to Dedicated Servers

by: Emmanuel Eichler

A dedicated server is a single computer on a webhosting network that is leased or rented, and dedicated to just one customer. A service provider monitors the computer’s hardware, network connectivity, and routing equipment, while the customer generally controls and maintains the server software. Dedicated servers are most often used by those who’ve outgrown typical hosting accounts and now require massive amounts of data space and bandwidth, those with mission critical web sites, web hosting companies, or those who have special needs. Dedicated servers are housed in data centers, where service providers can monitor them closeup and have handson access to them.

The primary advantage of using a dedicated server over a typical shared hosting account is the sheer amount of resources and control available to you, the customer. In many cases, the client is at liberty to install whatever software they desire, giving them greater flexibility and administrative options. Dedicated server clients do not share resources, as those with shared hosting plans do; but rather, are at liberty to use all the resources available to them.

Managed Servers vs. Unmanaged Servers

There are two types of dedicated servers available today: Managed Dedicated Servers and Unmanaged Dedicated Servers.

An Unmanaged Dedicated Server leaves nearly all the management duties of running a server in the purchaser’s control. The customer in this case, updates software on their own, applies necessary patches, performs kernel compiles and operating system restores, installs software, and monitors security. With this type of dedicated server, the consumer is solely responsible for daytoday operations and maintenance. The service provider, in turn, monitors the network, repairs hardware problems, and troubleshoots connectivity issues. Additionally, some service providers offer partial management of services, such as network monitoring, software upgrades and other services, but leave the general upkeep of the server in the hands of the client. An unmanaged dedicated server is best for someone with server management experience.

A Managed Dedicated Server is generally more proactively monitored and maintained on the part of the service provider. When renting or leasing a managed server, the service provider or host carries out the responsibility of software updates and patches, putting security measures in place, performing hardware replacements, and also monitoring the network and its connection for trouble. In other words, when utilizing a managed dedicated server, the host provider will perform both hardware and software operations. A managed dedication server solution works well for the customer with limited server management experience or limited time in being able to perform the duties necessary to keep a server running and online.

Technical Aspects In Choosing A Server

When choosing a dedicated server, there are several things to consider: Operating System, Hardware options, Space and bandwidth.

The Operating System of a server is similar to that on your own personal computer; once installed, the operating system enables one to perform tasks more simply. There are a bevy of server operating systems available today including Linuxbased and Windowsbased software. The operating system you choose should be directly relational to what operations your server will be performing, which types of software you’ll need to install and also, what you’re more comfortable with.

Hardware Options are also something to consider when choosing a dedicated server. You’ll need to pick a processor that’s up to the task, the amount of memory you wish installed, firewall options, and the size of the hard drive.

A certain amount of bandwidth is generally included when renting or leasing a dedicated server. Once you ascertained how much bandwidth you will require, you can adjust that limit with your service provider. The space you’ll be given is generally directly relational to the size of your hard drive. Some hosts also give clients the choice of uplink port speed (usually 10Mbps/100Mbps).

About The Author

Emmanuel Eichler

HostLead.com Webmaster

Business Web Hosting Directory

This article was posted on January 13, 2004

by Emmanuel Eichler

Things You Should Consider When Selecting a VoIP P

Things You Should Consider When Selecting a VoIP Provider

by: Chris Landry

Monthly costs: A VoIP provider can save you upto 75% on your telephone/long distance expenses. There are many VoIP providers out there so it will benefit you from shopping around. Unlimited calling packages can range from $19.95/month to as high as $54.95/month. Usually the lower priced providers have more customers and are able to offer the service at a lower price due to a lower overhead per subscriber.

VoIP Product Features: Not all VoIP providers are created equal. VoIP offers a great value to the consumers because of the drastically reduced long distance costs as well as inexpensive local phone service with lots of enhanced features. Some providers offer more features than others. Features like Call Waiting, 3 Way Calling, etc. are usually included in the VoIP monthly cost where as the traditional phone companies will charge up to and above $5/month per feature. When shopping for a VoIP provider, be sure to compare VoIP providers by features as well as by monthly price.

Keeping Your Number: Some providers allow you to transfer (port) your current phone number to the VoIP service and some providers do not. It is not recommended to switch your home number to the VoIP service immediately. It is recommended that you try out the service and see if you are satisfied before you request that your current number be switched. Keep in mind that if you have DSL service, you must retain a phone number with the service provider of the DSL because the DSL service is provided over that telephone line. If you want to get rid of your current phone company all together, then we suggest you use a Cable Internet Service Provider.

911 Service: Most of the VoIP carriers offer E911 service, but not all. Be sure to check if the VoIP provider offers E911 because it is not a given. If the VoIP provider does not offer E911, then we suggest that you either have a cell phone or traditional land line to use in case of an emergency. (Note: It is also important to point out that if you take your VoIP phone when traveling, E911 has no way of knowing where you are when you call 911 if you are away from the registered address.)

International Calling: If you make a lot of international calls, you will want to do a lot of research on International Rates as they vary by provider. There are a few carriers that offer unlimited calling to certain countries.

Money Back Guarantee: Since VoIP is a relatively new product, most all VoIP providers will offer a free money back guarantee. Be sure to check with each provider as we have seen the money back guarantees range from a 14 day to a 30 day money back guarantee. (Note: Be sure to keep the original packaging that your equipment came in just in case you need to send it back)

About The Author

Chris Landry is the founder of VoIP Choices ( http://www.voipchoices.com ). Chris is the foremost expert in residential and small business voip providers. VoIPChoices.com compares prequalified VoIP providers by price and features. Chris can be contacted via email at [email protected] or by calling (949) 480 9700.

This article was posted on October 17, 2004

by Chris Landry

Throw Away The Fax Machine – A Guide To Online Fax

Throw Away The Fax Machine – A Guide To Online Fax

by: Kimble Young

Have you ever felt like throwing the fax machine out the window? Well you may not know it but you can, not literally please.

There have been services available for some time which allow you to take your fax needs online and save yourself the hassle of wrestling with the fax machine.

Any provider should be able to supply you with a basic faxtoemail service. You are usually assigned your own fax number and any faxes sent to this number are then attached as an image file to an email. That is then delivered to your email account. You will need to keep your fax machine for sending faxes but you can set it to not answer the phone and keep it on your main business line.

Most but not all fax services also provide a facility to send faxes by email, web or straight from the desktop. This feature can be utilised to send invoices or forms to customers without first needing print and then fax the document. Faxtoemail allows you to compose an email to [email protected] and attach each document you want to be faxed. You are then notified by email when your fax is complete.

Traditionally enabling your business to fax has meant ordering a separate phone line and number and purchasing a fax machine or fax software for each user. Which is an expensive proposition for a communications channel that is still essential but often rarely used these days. With online fax services these costs are all rolled in to a single monthly fee which is paid to your fax provider. Often this fee is just a fraction of the cost of phone line rental alone. Add the savings in paper and ink and using an online fax service starts to make a lot of sense.

If your customers fax through a lot of forms that you need to process and archive you’ll know how tedious it can be to flick through a whole binder just to find a specific fax. With an online fax service your fax correspondence can be filed along with all your electronic correspondence.

Points to consider when choosing a provider:

Do you receive your own dedicated number? Some virtual office providers for example will place you on a shared number and your faxes may be seen by anyone.

File formats: Make sure the provider can email you in a format that suits you. Most will send in a common format like PDF but others may use obscure formats that require special software to read.

Do they have a method of sending faxes that suits you? Some will offer you a choice of methods; ranging from basic emailtofax through to desktop clients which will allow you to ขprintข directly to a fax.

Is there an area code that will be local for your customers? Even if you are a regional business you may want to consider a metropolitan fax number if your customers are located there. Remember, you now have the choice.

There are some things to be aware of when switching over to online fax:

The first is that a fax machine makes a copy of a piece of paper and that online faxing makes a copy of an electronic document. You’ll no longer be able to rapidly scribble out a note and fax it anymore. However, you can just as rapidly send a quick memo by emailtofax or through a fax printer. Filling out a form that has been faxed to you is no longer simple but it can be done by opening the fax in an image editing program and typing with the text tool.

The second caveat is that you may be used to signing almost every fax you send, this is no longer possible as there is no paper stage. The author recommends that if you have access to a scanner you can scan your signature and save it as a black and white image ready to be inserted at the footer of every document you type up.

All in all if your staff don’t use the fax machine much, or use it for a lot of repetitive work, then faxing online can save you a lot of money in ink, paper, communications costs and most importantly productivity. If you can’t give up the routine of walking up to the fax machine with a piece of paper then you might still consider online faxing; but only to receive your faxes. Remember to turn off the auto answer feature of your fax machine.

About The Author

Kimble Young is the product development manager for Fax Online an Australian online fax services provider. He has many years experience in the communications and Internet industries.

http://www.faxonline.com.au

This article was posted on April 23

by Kimble Young

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Boot Camp

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Boot Camp

by: Andy Quick

Service Level Agreements, or กSLAกsก are tricky but useful mechanisms for managing the risk of an ongoing relationship with IT service providers. Unfortunately, most SLAกs that show up in service contracts as worthless, cosmetic paper additions. SLAกs can be extremely powerful tools to help you and your service provider get the most out of a relationship.

What is an SLA?

A service level agreement (SLA), in its most basic form, is a contractual commitment to meet specific goals. If, for example, you sign up for a hosting contract with a provider, you may desire an SLA that measures the uptime of your website. If you outsource your help desk, you may want an SLA that measures the time it takes to answer the phone. Usually, an SLA includes a penalty and/or reward framework. For example, many web hosting companies offer a refund based on the number of hours your website is unavailable. On the flipside, an SLA may include an extra bonus to your help desk provider if all calls are answered within 30 seconds. The following are typical examples of SLAกs:

กAll help desk call will be answered within 90 secondsก

ก95% of all bills will be printed and delivered on timeก

‘the website will be available 99.99%ก

กProject X will be delivered within 2 weeks of the planned scheduleก

What isn’t an SLA?

An SLA is not a way to cut your costs. Rather, SLAกs are mechanisms for managing risks, sharing pain, and benefiting from success. Many SLAกs are setup as กoutsก to contracts that allow customers to penalize technology providers for nonperformance. Although penalties do reduce costs and they do send a strong signal to service providers to improve their service, neither you nor the service provider กwinก if an SLA is missed. Think of an SLA as a shared goal.

SLA Philosophy

The best SLAs are setup to allow both you and your service provider to share in the success and failure of an agreement. If you intend to turn over the operation of your billing system to a service provider, getting the bills out on time is critical. Whether you do it yourself or partner with someone, if you fail to produce invoices, you delay incoming revenue. In this example, your SLA should inspire your vendor to deliver on performance levels that have an actual impact to your business. Letกs say your current billing accuracy is 90%. If you increase this accuracy to 95%, you have directly improved your companyกs bottom line. If you intend to outsource this function, your SLA should include a shared billing accuracy reward to the service provider if they help you improve revenues.

Make It Count

Some web hosting plans offer an uptime measure that, if not met, will result in a refund to you. Unfortunately, this ‘refundก may be calculated as a credit based on the time that your site was down and your monthly hosting fee. For example, if you pay $100 per month for hosting services, and your site is down for 1 hour, your credit may only be 14 cents! $100/720 (number of hours in a month) = $0.14. If, on average, you sell $50 worth of goods through your website each hour, 14 cents isn’t much of a blow to your hosting company. I recognize that my example is slightly exaggerated. Many hosting companies offer a more material penalty and most web sites do not generate $50 in sales per hour. But you can see how this penalty and SLA is misaligned with the business model. If you know you make $50 per hour in sales through your website, your hosting company should incur a much greater penalty for not keeping your website up and running! Whether you negotiate an SLA with a hosting company or a large IT company, create an SLA that is specific to your business and truly establishes risk sharing (i.e. we กwinก or กlooseก together).

Devil In The Details

A good SLA has four critical components: description, target, measurement, and penalty/reward. If you have an SLA that is missing one of these components, you run the risk of losing the benefit of having the SLA to begin with. In the web hosting example above, the SLA sounds good, but the actual measurement and penalty weigh heavily in the favor of the hosting company (they have little to loose!) Make sure your SLAกs are well defined and agreed upon before you ink the deal. Hereกs an example of a good SLA:

Description: Billing All bills will be rendered, printed, and mailed on a timely basis to ensure unbilled revenue is minimized.

Target: 90%

Measurement: Ratio of number of planned bills / number of bills actually produced. The calculation is based on the number of records in the billing input file compared against the billing output log file which lists the bills actually rendered.

Reward/Penalty: If billing accuracy is below 90%, penalty is calculated as 1% of the unbilled revenue for that billing run. If billing accuracy is above 90%, a bonus is calculated as 1% of the additional revenue billed.

In this SLA example, your service provider stands to loose or gain substantially based on their performance. Similarly, your company stands to loose or gain substantially based on the performance of the service provider. Depending upon your daily billings, 1% could be significant. Note the specificity of the SLA measurement and calculation in my example. If you are not very specific with the calculation methods, actual performance against service levels are open for debate.

Negotiate Up Front

Many businesses strike deals with IT companies and leave SLAกs as an open item. Many IT service providers will want to establish a กbase lineก period where SLAกs are measured and then negotiated. In many cases, this request is reasonable, especially if an IT company has little to no understanding of your environment and your current performance record. However, if you wait to negotiate service levels until after you ink a deal, you loose tremendous leverage with your provider unless you really think you can walk away from the deal. Ideally, choose a provider that is willing to negotiate a service level up front. In my experience, these SLA negotiations are much more difficult on the backend.

Raise the Bar

A service level agreement should be changed periodically. Letกs look back at my billing SLA example. Letกs assume that after 1 year of service, your provider is billing at an accuracy, on average, of 95%, and in turn, you are rewarding them consistently for beating the original service level. Itกs time to raise the bar! If your provider can increase your accuracy from 90% to 95%, maybe they can increase your accuracy from 95% to 99%. Raise the SLA bar (target) to 95%, and only reward them if they beat this new level of quality. By providing the right incentives to improve upon service levels, both you and your service provider can benefit.

The Shorter, The Better

I have seen service contracts with dozens and dozens of SLAกs. If you establish multiple SLAกs, you and your service provider will have broad visibility into performance levels. However, establishing many SLAกs can water down the overarching performance of a service provider. Put simply, a service provider can กmakeupก poor performance on one SLA by beating the performance target of another SLA. To keep things simple, pick the few critical success factors of your business and establish applicable service levels that your provider can truly focus on.

Service Level Agreements should be established as a กdashboardก for you and your service provider to share in the success and failure of your arrangement. SLAกs are less effective if they are established as contract กoutsก or as penalty frameworks, because they fail to drive a partnering relationship. Negotiate SLAกs which, if met or beaten, truly benefit your company and your service provider. Always define SLAกs to the lowest level of detail possible before you finalize the arrangement since negotiations become even more difficult after the deal is executed. And never commit to an SLA that could hurt you but not your provider.

About The Author

Andy Quick is cofounder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at [email protected] in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.

This article was posted on May 15, 2002

by Andy Quick

Web Hosting: To Switch or to Stay?

Web Hosting: To Switch or to Stay?

by: Joelene Wickens Orlando

That’s a question that can only be answered by you. Depending on your current status and relationship you have with your provider, along with your evolving business objectives and needs, can determine what course of action to pursue. What are your issues and concerns? Ask yourself some basic questions and see where you stand after you’ve answered them. Are you no longer satisfied with your current provider? Did they deliver on the level of services that you signed up for? Has technical support and customer service been to your satisfaction? Or has your business grown considerably, and the hosting company cannot provide you with the level of capability and technical support you require?

Technically speaking, if you’re looking for solutions out of frustration, or even a new web hosting provider, you’re either very unsatisfied with the service, or you find that they cannot provide you the service you are looking for to handle your business. Switching isn’t always a bad thing to do, especially if your business isn’t doing well with that one particular provider. It’s time to move on and get your online presence back on track. Unfortunately, for every good thing, there is a negative side. The flip side of finding a new provider is that you’re back at square one. Before you decide, whether to stay or switch, do some research and find some indicators to help you make a sound decision.

The last thing you want to do is be surprised, even though you may have seen the writing on the wall with your web host provider, but didn’t jump on the intuition that something was brewing. If your web host goes under, or doesn’t address your technical problems, you could lose sales, and what’s worse; you may not be accessible to users on the Internet. A good theory with anything is to have Plan B, to handle those setbacks that could otherwise be devastating to your business. To stay in the loop, and on top of your business, here are some things to be on the look out for in regards to your web host provider.

Support is nowhere to be found. This is one big indicator that the provider is having some difficulties within the business. You’re not getting prompt attention when you call or email with concerns or issues. If they fail to respond to your emails or calls, you have a reason to be concerned. The company may have laid off staff, or is disorganized in processing customer service requests, which could indicate financial difficulties. If you have tried numerous attempts in phoning, or emailing to reach a human person to respond, it’s time to find a new host provider before that hosting company goes under. Keep in mind, the better the support center and technical support; the more stable the web host provider. Free is not always good. Web hosting companies that offer free services or services of a minimal charge where they cannot make a profit are ones that are generally in trouble. Stay clear of those, and if you started out with one of these ‘freebies’, it would be a good idea to find a good reputable paying service. If you haven’t run into any problems, consider yourself very lucky. But do decide if you feel comfortable with the prospective performance of such a company in the long term, and ask yourself how the company can turn a profit with no rates or low rates. Always remember, ‘you get what you pay for.’ Reputation of the Web Host. With the nature of the thousands of web hosting providers online, they are relatively very low profile and you don’t really read or hear anything particular about them. But if you find coverage regarding a web host company, make sure it’s good stuff; otherwise you know what action to take if it’s negative. Stay on top of your web host provider newsletters and articles about changes in management, a buyout, a merger, or layoffs. Be aware of such changes, though certainly not always, result in decreased communication or support for the client. If it smells fishy, go with that gut feeling, and find a new host. You can start at http://www.webhostingrebates.com, where they gather all the reputable and most trusted hosting companies in the industry.

Visit the Web Site of the Web Host regularly. Participate in various discussion groups or forums to see what other businesses are saying about the web host provider. See a lot of negativity? You should have a backup plan ready to go if you are viewing mainly complaints and problems with poor customer support and the quality of service. That’s a sure sign that the provider isn’t doing well. Check out their website to see if their prices are grossly inflated compared to what you purchased the service for. Granted, businesses need to have price increases every now and then, but if they seen overly inflated, that’s a sure sign that something is seriously wrong. Make sure that the web host provider is still providing services and packages. If you find that it isn’t being offered or the site itself has changed with less to offer, which tells you that the company may be phasing out of operation. You want to be hosting with someone else before they shut down.

Limited service or capabilities. You may be having a great relationship with your current provider, but your business needs have grown and your web host cannot accommodate your upgrade capabilities and technical support for your growing company. You have no other option, than to leave this host on a good note, and find one that will offer you the approximate service and surpass the previous host provider.

Every website needs a home and any web host provider will gladly (beg) house your site. If you’ve made the decision to go with a new provider, it’s time to go on a new search. The best advice is to select a provider with many years of experience is a smart decision… Listen to your colleagues and go where they have had the best luck and let them show you what their web host provider is doing for them. Hopefully, with the experience you have learned with your previous web host provider, you will make the right long term choice.

About The Author

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This article was posted on November 11, 2003

by Joelene Wickens Orlando

How to Track Online Marketing ROI Using CostperA

How to Track Online Marketing ROI Using CostperAction

by: Rick Crosby

Forget clicks, page views, and impressions; the only way to effectively track your online marketing ROI is through CostperAction (CPA) analysis.

As the online advertising market is poised to grow nearly $10 billion over the next six years, it’s essential that we remember the importance of measuring the effectiveness of that spending. There’s no point undertaking any marketing or advertising campaign unless you can measure its results. And results are best measured in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Unfortunately, in the world of marketing and advertising, many businesses seem to be losing touch with their general objectives. The tools may have changed, but the principles remain the same – Your advertising campaigns are only successful if they meet the objectives you set out to achieve. So if you’re after increased sales, you need to measure the cost of each sale generated to determine your return on investment.

Fortunately for advertisers, tracking ROI for online advertising is much easier than it is for traditional forms of advertising, such as TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, and Billboard. When you market online, every advertising campaign can be tracked and measured all the way down to the penny. This is why more and more advertising dollars are being spent online every day.

Why Not CostPerClick or CostPerImpression?

When it comes to tracking campaign effectiveness, many businesses rely on CostperClick (CPC) and CostperImpression (CPM) statistics. But what many people forget is that for most businesses, clicks and impressions don’t earn you money. So by tracking clicks and impressions, you’re not really tracking return on investment. The same is true of page stats.

If you’re like most businesses, impressions, clicks, and page views are simply a means to an end. (In fact, without corresponding sales conversions, they’re nothing more than unjustifiable expenses.) If you only earn revenue from sales, you need statistics linking costs and sales. In other words, you need to measure costperaction (CPA).

CostPerAction (CPA)

In a CPA campaign, you run an online ad on third party sites and they charge a commission when a lead is generated or converted. It’s performancebased pricing. This means the publisher wears most of the advertising risk, as their commissions are dependent on good conversion rates.

Perhaps the most widespread use of CPA is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you determine what actions you will reward and how much you’re willing to pay per action. For example, you might engage an affiliate site to promote your business. If they generate sales for your business, you can pay them a commission. Your costperaction would then be the cost per sale or lead generated.

Tips on Conversion

The following conversion tips will help you plan your CPA campaign and avoid some common pitfalls.

1) How are sales and leads recorded?

For many businesses, the obvious result which constitutes a conversion is a sale. If your sale is recorded or registered online (e.g. ecommerce), it can be considered a measurable action. This means you can choose a sale as the desired action in your CPA campaign.

Depending on the aim of your campaign, you may want to measure other outcomes in addition to, or instead of, sales. For instance, you might measure leads in the form of membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any other activity beyond simple page browsing. So when your customer clicks register, or subscribe, or download, etc., the conversion is automatically registered and the details are fed back you’re your CPA campaign.

In either case, at any time, you can log in and view your campaign results in real time.

2) Set up a landing page to capture lead contact details

If you’re paying for leads, you obviously need to know when a lead is actually generated. Generally a lead becomes a lead only when the customer supplies you with their details (name, contact numbers, email, etc.). This means you need to set up a landing page on your site capture these details. Your capture page can be collect contact information or it can be as simple as a signup for a monthly newsletter.

3) Get your CPA provider to set up your landing page

If you don’t have the time, inclination, or resources to set up the necessary forms and database on your own site, the CPA provider can do it on their hosted server. They collect the leads and calculate the statistics. For many businesses, this is the ideal option because it saves them time and money, and there are no tracking discrepancies.

4) Find a CPA provider you can trust

If your CPA provider will be collecting leads and calculating statistics, you need to know you can trust them. There are plenty of trustworthy providers out there; you just need to find them. A trustworthy provider will find out what your exact needs are and spend time researching your niche market online. By performing this marketing analysis, your provider will be able to tell you exactly how much business they can bring you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. If they can’t provide you with this important information, then this is a good indication that you are not speaking with a professional internet marketer.

Just as importantly, with a trustworthy provider you’ll be able to personally speak with the internet marketer who will be working on your project. This person will be an expert in the field of internet marketing, not just a sales rep.

5) Avoiding excess fees

WARNING: Some CPA providers charge a setup fee ($2,500 to $10,000) and/or a network fee (20% to 30%) for each sale or lead that is generated. Before committing to a provider demanding high fees, make sure you are getting more for your money. Most of the time high fees simply mean the sales rep is getting a higher commission!

6) Measuring your conversion rate

The Formula for measuring CPA is by dividing the total cost per advertising campaign by the total number of actions (conversions) that were received from each ad campaign. For example, if your online ad campaign costs $1,000 and generates 50 sales or leads, your cost per action (CPA) is $20.00 each.

7) Improving your conversion rate

A high conversion rate depends on several factors:

Visitor Interest Level – The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time.

Offer Attractiveness – The attractiveness of the offer includes the value proposition and how well it is presented. TIP: Small, impulse items typically have a higher conversion rate than large shopping items.

Ease of Process – The ease with which the visitor can complete the desired action is dependent on site usability. Important considerations here include intuitive navigation, contact info capture page, ขBuy Nowข or ขApply Nowข buttons and fast loading pages.

In summary…

Because CPA allows you to identify exactly how much it will cost to acquire a customer, there’s no guesswork involved. You have the ability to precisely calculate your ROI. And because online tools and ad serving technologies allow you to monitor effectiveness in real time, you can even tweak campaigns while they’re still running. If you can master effective online advertising, you’ll not only save thousands in implementation costs, you’ll also reap the rewards of a far higher return on investment.

About The Author

Rick Crosby is CEO of a fullservice internet marketing and online advertising agency, MarketingWebTraffic.com. Visit http://www.marketingwebtraffic.com for further details or contact Rick directly at 7274905739 or email mailto:[email protected].

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This article was posted on September 23, 2004

by Rick Crosby