Choosing a Web Hosting Company - What Not To DoBY: Luis Castillo
Choosing a web hosting company is typically a bargain basement search for most people. They get on the internet and they Google for "cheap web hosting". Afterall, why spend a lot of money just to host your site? Right? No, Wrong! Let me tell you why. The best way to explain this is by using a correlation. If you were to go and buy your first brand new vehicle. You wouldn't go online and type in "cheap car" or cheapest car". You have specific needs that you have to meet. For example, you may have a large family, drive a great distance to work each day or perhaps you don't have a lot of money left over for insurance and maintenance so you want you a car with a reputation for reliability like a Honda or Toyota. In either case you didn't think "cheap" first. You searched for a car that would best meet your "driving needs". Once you found that vehicle then you would probably search for the dealer that would give you the best deal, or "cheapest" deal. When searching for a web hosting company the same process should be followed. Why is that you ask? As important as that vehicle was in my earlier example your website "success" is just as important. If you took the time to design and create a website then I assume you want it to be a success. Each webmaster has his/her own reasons for designing their site and they each have their won definition for "success". In either case, the success of the website is based to a large degree on who you allow to host your site. Most people never think of that. They look at things like storage space, uptime, bandwidth, and a hundred other parameters. But they never consider the measure of Success they will reach or not reach. And isn't that the bottom line for any online business? After all, it takes a whole lot more than those nuts and bolts to succeed. Now if you were told that your level od success could increase 10-fold simply by selecting the right hosting company would you still be interested in the "cheapest"? Do you really care whether the uptime is 99.9999% or 99.9999999%? Measuring and comparing "Success" gets down to the real issue. Using this baseline to separate all your hosting possibilities will allow the cream to rise to the top. You would want a web hosting system that "is the all-in-one site-building, site-hosting, and site-marketing system of software tools that delivers success". The majority of web hosting services don't even refer to success. That's because 99+% of their small business sites fail. They even have a term for the abysmal failure rate of small businesses online... its called the "churn rate". What if you could set up your site with a hosting company that could get your website in the top 6%. Imagine the exposure, the massive amount of traffic you would eventually be getting. Translate this targeted traffic into "subccriptions", "sales", "link exchanges""higher page ranking" and repeat visitors. Have I got you thinking now? This is the same process I went through when I selected my web host. My first web host had all the nuts and bolts and it was relatively cheap. But in the long run I did not save anything because it cost me in lost sales. It took me a very long time and then a lot of money to build up my traffic which finally converted into sales. I could have achieved that same degree of success much sooner and for a lot less money had I chosen a better web host. One that provided all the tools from the start and GUARANTEED my success. One that could provide proof that they truly could deliver that success to me as they had for many others.
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