Choosing hosting provider

Member

Message

seopharmacy

Joined: Feb 27, 2006

# Posts: 9

Posted: 09/18/2006 06:16 am

Which hosting do you use? What is most important for you about hosting?

In your eyes, is it a serious advantage for an affiliate program, if it offers free hosting to all of the partners?

Please, advise.

Best regards, Seopharmacy

(Copy Shortcut)

SportsGuy

Moderator

Joined: Aug 30, 2002

# Posts: 3550

Website

Posted: 09/18/2006 08:50 am

Welcome to the forums SEOPharm! smile

OK, so I'm going to assume a couple of things here:

1 - you want to run this as a business - the goal being to make money
2 - You actually have some money to start with - not a lot, but some.

Based on those two points, here ya go:

1 - you want to be able to control things youself, which rules out free hosting from an affiliate. Sure it can be handy, but if they have things set up incorrectly, it'll hurt you and there's bupkiss you can do about it. If they're down, you're down. In short, if THEY have a problem, YOU cannot generate revenue. if you're live, and they're down, the cookie still gets set with a suer who may come back later to complete the sale - you still make the money.

2 - you will need some basic skills and understanding on how to transfer files from your computer to a server, how to edit html documents and how to set up your websites - basically. All the info you'll ever need on these topics is freely available online - please trust me when I say you DO NOT need to pay to learn any of this stuff - plenty of resources exist to answer any question you'll have on any topic related to setting up and running a successfull website.

3 - it'll cost money - so I'd say a realistic place to start would be to budget between $20 - $30 per month for hosting costs. You may well find cheaper. Your main concen will be getting a database with your hosting option to ensure you can run a store easily - if you're looking to sell products direct from the site. If the goal is simply to showcase them and send folks to an affiliate site, then the database end of things becomes less important from a store perspective, though still useful if you ever want to set up a blog. Just get something with a database - you'll eventually use it.

4 - Choose carefully when given the option between being hosted on a Windows-based server, or a Linux-based server. I say go with the Linux one - easier to make small changes that make a difference for your websites in the long run.

Here's an example:

I personal rent a Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) from GoDaddy. Their customer service is the pits, but the server is stable and online 24/7 - that's what matters most to me - the site is live when visitors arrive.

My costs are about $40 USD each month, and I can (and do) run a number of individual websites from my one rented server. IMO, this is the most cost effective way to run multiple websites.

If your goal is to run only one website - at least to start, you can find hosting packages under $10 a month - again, watch for a database to be included for you and you'd prefer a Linux-based server. I started this way, but because those packages all only ran on Windows servers, I jumped up to my own VDS running Linux - much happier now.

Hope this helps a bit. There's no one answer to this question, as opinions & experiences will vary.

Avoid taking the free hosting option through the affiliate program - in the long-run, the site won't really be yours, and if you want to expand, move or start another one, you're at the mercy of the affiliate you're selling for.

(Copy Shortcut)

g1smd

Moderator

Joined: Jul 28, 2002

# Posts: 10096

Website

Posted: 09/18/2006 03:24 pm

For many reasons, most of which I have already mentioned in prior postings, I would recommend an Apache (Linux) server over IIS (Windows) any day.

(Copy Shortcut)

seopharmacy

Joined: Feb 27, 2006

# Posts: 9

Posted: 10/09/2006 07:37 am

Thanks for your reply SportsGuy!

(Copy Shortcut)

You are not permitted to post messages in this forum or topic, because of one or more of the following reasons:

You have not yet logged in, or registered properly as a member
You are a member, but no longer have posting rights.
This is a private forum, for which you do not have permissions.

If you are a recent member, it's possible that you simply have not yet confirmed your account. Please check your email for a message entitled 'JimWorld Forums: Confirm Your Account' and follow the instructions contained within.

If you cannot find this message, click here to Re-Send it.

If you are still experiencing problem, please read the Login Assistance Article for some advice on what may be causing your login not to work properly.

Switch to Advanced Editor and ... Create a New Topic or Reply to this Thread

SEF