Archive for January 2012
Is having your own website an investment or an expense? The following article will help you gain clarity on this issue.
First of all, let us consider the costs of having a website. A domain name with sufficient amount of space (that also includes a database support for interactive websites) costs under $30 per annum. This is roughly $2.5 / month. Read more information on quick loans online site.
First of all, let us consider the costs of having a website. A domain name with sufficient amount of space (that also includes a database support for interactive websites) costs under $30 per annum. This is roughly $2.5 / month.
Then comes the designing and maintenance costs. Depending on your requirement, web design can cost as little as $50-$100. There is no upper limit; it can go into several thousands depending on what exactly you want and who is doing it. Ideally, you should ask your friends and associates to refer web designers who have done a good job for them and also charged reasonably. Prepare your requirements in advance before taking quotes. Be very clear on what exactly you want for your website. This will save you a lot of pain. Be sure to cross check the quotes with sites like Elance. Discuss the maintenance charges also, if you need to update your site often.
There is another option where you can save on web design costs if you don’t need a very fancy / customized design. Most hosting providers will offer you site builder options at a nominal cost. In fact, you can even use a blog platform like WordPress or a CMS platform like Joomla and Drupal. Most hosting providers will offer fantastic support, which enables you to install these open source softwares with a few mouse clicks. I would advice you to first go with one of these options, preferably the WordPress / CMS option before you spend on web design.
Once you’ve worked out these costs, you now need to consider the returns. Business is all about ROI (Return On Investment) and you should seriously track all leads and / or orders you receive through your website. First of all, you need to accept the fact that you won’t start getting orders the moment your website is live. “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work here. You need to work towards promoting your website.
There are several online and offline ways to do this. For offline promotion, you should include your website URL in every piece of communication as you can, like visiting cards, yellow page ads, invoices, quotations, etc.
For online promotion, you should first make it a point to include your URL in email signatures and forum post signatures. Next, you should consider spending a little on PPC (Pay Per Click) ads. The most important online promotion is free traffic from search engines. If you want to win the SEO game, there are only three things that you really need to concentrate on:
1. Unique content: Don’t ever copy content from other websites, create your own. If required, hire a decent copywriter, but first start on your own.
2. Updated content: Search engines love websites which have new content added regularly, so make it a point to add something new to your website at least once a week. If there are no new products or services that you add, consider adding some latest news in your industry. Or you can simply add useful tips that cater to your industry.
3. Backlinks: The more websites that link to yours, the more weight search engines give to your ranking. So try to get more websites linking to you, preferably from related content sites. You can also write articles that are beneficial to your targeted audience and submit them at article directories. Remember to add your website link in the author’s bio (you are seeing this in action right now; check out the bio following this article).
These are the three pillars that SEO stands on. If you do nothing else except follow these, you will get much more targeted traffic than your competitors. You don’t even need an SEO consultant.
If you can generate enough business from your website, it makes sense in continuing it. It then becomes an investment with good returns. You should give it a try for at least 2 years, to track proper ROI. Once you’re fairly successful, you can think of other ways to improve your website. If you’re making more than you’re spending, its time to take your website to the next level. Start by hiring / outsourcing people to write content for you. Use lead generation tactics by giving away free reports in exchange for people to sign up to your mailing list.
While your website is certainly an investment worth making, you can also claim the costs as business expenses! Consult your accountant for details.
Yahoo! Web hosting offers the very best hosting solutions for small business websites. With Yahoo! Web hosting services, customers are offered hosting packages that perfectly befit their requirements and budget and can be customized to their needs. These hosting packages come outfitted with a wide variety of tools and features ranging from basic design templates, site-building tools to advanced PHP scripting. Customers also get access to MySQL database services.
In order to cater for diverse and website specific requirements, Yahoo! Offers the following web hosting packages:
1. Business Starter Yahoo! Web Hosting Services
This category of web hosting service offers 50 MG of disk space, 20 GB of data transfer and 10 personal email accounts. This option is ideal for beginners who are looking for a basic hosting package. The package also offers web-designing tools that are highly user-friendly and fun to use.
2. Business Standard Yahoo! Web Hosting Services
This category of web hosting services provides 100 MG of storage capacity, 25 GB of data transfer as well as 25 Business Edition email accounts. The customers also get access to 24/7 toll free customer support. In terms of superior business hosting; this category of hosting offers cost-effective hosting solutions.
3. Business Professional Yahoo! Web Hosting Services
As the category suggests, the Business Professional Yahoo! Web hosting services offers high-end, all-inclusive hosting solutions. This plan comes equipped with 350 MG of storage capacity and 35 GB of data transfer in addition to 35 Business Edition email accounts. Given the features, tools and services offered, this plan is quite reasonably priced. Customers also get access to 24/7/365 customer support, customized to the user’s requirements. In addition to other high-end and highly utilizable features and tools, customers also get access to advanced scripting tools, database as well as SSL support.
Customers need not worry about downtime any more with Yahoo’s web hosting solutions. Yahoo offers maximum uptime and this feature remains its prime forte. The very best servers and hardware in the hosting industry is offered by Yahoo web hosting services. Since Yahoo web hosting is supported by their search engine, downtime is not an issue with their services. Since their servers are linked through superfluous connections, downtime is a very rare occurrence.
Furthermore, its data center is within a highly secure facility and receives constant monitoring 24/7; thereby enhancing the reliability of the company.
This measure also aids in preventing hacking and/or other illegal occurrences.
The best part is that the company values its association with its customers and offers 24/7 technical support.
It is however a good idea to weigh and ascertain your hosting budget and website hosting requirements; before you go on to selecting their hosting package. Not every package would suit your website requirements. If in doubt, discuss with other users on discussion forums and blogs so that you can make a well-informed and wise decision. Analyze various factors like bandwidth, disk space, SSL support and other vital aspects of web hosting and your specific requirements before you zero down on a hosting package.
There are many different types of internet server hosting services that would help you in maintaining and improving your website. However, there are only two basic classifications of servers. They are the free web and the commercial or paid hosting. The free hosting services offered by many companies have advantages and disadvantages of their own. The client need not make any investments whatsoever. But the utilities and services are very limited when compared with paid services and this means that the chances of improving your website are very low.
When you talk about paid hosting services, there are many which are highly useful for the build-up and the popularity of an internet website. However, the most popular, or in other words, the most preferred forms of paid services of them all are only a few. The names of such popular services are the shared web-hosting, reseller web-hosting, dedicated servers and managed servers. In shared web-hosting, the client will hire a server from a provider on a rental basis (Monthly rentals). This is slightly better than the free server hosting as it has many features like better bandwidth, larger space etc. However, it is not as good as many of the other paid services because it has lot of disadvantages like insecurity, inability to handle big traffic. But the option of a shared server hosting service is very good if you are opening a relatively new website and if it does not have large space and sensitive information. Moreover, shared web hosting does not require much of an investment.
A reseller web server is nothing but you buy and distribute a server. For example, you buy an account in any server provider (Say for $25 per month). You then divide this server into many smaller units and sell them separately to other people who are in need of servers. This is actually a business oriented approach where you can earn lot more than you spend on a monthly basis. This is recommended for all those who want to earn some healthy money through online if they feel that they are not good enough to handle and maintain a website of their own.
Dedicated web server is the server bought to run and maintain your website. This is in fact the best form of hired server service because all the powers of controlling the server are vested in your hands. Dedicated servers are best suited for clients who own a big website or for organizations that deal with lot of online customers.
There are many other server hosting services which require special mention. They are the Virtual Dedicated Server, managed Hosting service, Cloud, Colocation Web, Grid, Clustered, Homer server, FFmpeg hosting service etc. There are also other forms of web server hosting services provided by different providers which includes File Hosting, Blog, Shopping Cart Software, E-mail, Video, One-click and Image Hosting Services respectively.