Keeping the domain name short:

Make sure you keep your domain name short and significant. Try to keep it under 10-13 characters, and make it very easy for a user to remember and associate with your website. The more creative and different you are, the easier it will be for people to remember it. Make sure it is unique, so that it is not confused with another website.

Domain name already taken?

If you find that your domain name is taken, you can always try to switch the “.com” to “.net” or “.co”. This usually works while you want to get the desired name. If you are still unable to get the required name, use your imagination and get creative. For example: www.the(website name).com or www.my(website name).com, etc.

You can even give it an acronym if needed. If your domain name has already been taken, there are several ways of finding out when the registration will expire. You can always contact the person through the contact i.d provided and ask them if they would be willing to sell. If you find the ideal domain name in “.com”, and “.in”, do not hesitate to purchase both. You do not want anyone else using your website’s name in the future.

Domain Name Registration:

Before you start to register, do a search on the web for “Domain Name Registration”. You can see several deals online, this will help you narrow down your choices. After that just click on the link and proceed.

Your Registrar:

Find a company who can act as your registrar.

You can find several on the web, after that all you need to do is check for availability. With a little bit of research you can easily find out more about which companies will help you Register Domain Names. You no longer need to shell out a huge amount of money for domain registration; there are so many companies in the market offering these services, and you can easily end up with a good bargain. Make sure that you purchase as soon as you find an availability. If you wait too long for the perfect deal, your domain name will slip right through your fingers.

Online retail shopping has become big business!

But the great thing about online retail websites is you don’t have to have millions of dollars to create an online shopping website. You don’t even need any products!

Setting up your own retail website similar to Amazon is now easy and very affordable, and the great thing about it is you can earn up to 70% of the value of the purchase. You only need to make a handful of sales a day to make more than your average office job would pay, and the best thing about online store is it keeps making money while you sleep, you don’t have to spend every hour of the day slaving over a hot computer, and the money is in your account before you arrange the dispatch of the product.

This sort of online retail sales is called ‘Dropshopping‘

The way dropshipping works is you first sign up with a Dropshipper who stocks the products you want to sell, and they will provide you with a wholesale price for the products. You then upload these products to your website and you can then charge whatever you want for the products.

When someone visits your website and purchases the product, usually through Ebay, you then pass the order to the dropshipper once the payment has cleared, and then you pay the dropshipper before he dispatches it directly to your customer.

There is no handling of the product yourself, and the dropshipper usually sends out the product with your business name on the package.

Sounds simple right? Well it is!

HERE ARE THE THREE STEPS TO SETTING UP YOUR OWN DROPSHIPPING WEBSITE:

1 First, find your dropshipper.
This can often be hard to find the products you want, but Professional Dropshippers such as SaleHoo offer over 8000 categorized suppliers, so finding a dropshipper that has your products is easy and they offer high quality genuine brand name products.

SaleHoo charge a small annual fee to join, but for the return you get back from your website, and the hours you would waste otherwise looking for quality dropshippers yourself, it is well worth the price.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SALEHOO

2. Set up your website hosting and domain name
To set up your website you will first need a domain name and web hosting. Godaddy are one of the most affordable sites for purchasing domain names, and offers tools to help you find a great domain name to suit you online business. Then sign up for your website hosting.

Hostgator is one of the quickest and easiest hosting providers to get up and running with, offering great online support, and a simple 1-click setup of Wordress, so no tricky uploading and configuration is required. You are literally up and running in a matter of minutes!

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOSTGATOR WEB HOSTING

3. Creating your online store.
If you want to create a professional looking online store you should invest in Shopperpress.

Shopperpress is a WordPress-based shopping cart theme which offers all the bells and Whistles of the big professional shopping cart systems, but for a fraction of the price. Shopperpress comes with a great range of pre-designed themes to suit most common retail niches, or you can edit it to create your own design.

As it is based on WordPress, Shopperpress ranks extremely well on the search engines, so getting on the top of the search engines is easy, driving more traffic to your website than most other shopping cart applications.

CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS ON SHOPPERPRESS

Once your website is in place, simple go to your Salehoo account, search the products you want to promote and add them into your website and you are in business!

Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design and WebSEOCoach.com

Now I had great respect for this internet marketer, until he began to share details of how you create your own blog to make money online.

The advise he was giving out to the audience of interested budding internet marketing wannabes made me cringe!

The chap started out well by educating the audience on the importance of SEO and how a top ranking can make the difference to your volume of sales. I agree totally.
But then he went on to show how to create your own blog using WordPress.

Now I am a huge fan of WordPress myself so I was keen to hear more, but then he got started, showing how in 15 minutes or so you can have your own blog up and running.
I was intrigued as I thought I was pretty fast at setting up a blog, but that’s mighty quick if h can show the audience in 15 mins!

Then the words that came out of his mouth had me horrified… he recommended to simply go to the WordPress website and simply set up a subdomain using the keyword that suits your blog and create it on their website!
The audience was all whispering how easy it all seemed. Sure, because it was! And yes, he set it up in about 15 minutes.

But what he failed to mention was the negative long term impact creating a blog this way can cause.

When it comes to setting up a successful blog to make money, you need to do it CORRECTLY.

Your Own Hosted Blog VS a WordPress-Hosted Blog

While creating a blog on the WordPress website can have you up and running in a few minutes and the proud owner of a sparkling new blog with your name on it, you are still branded under the WordPress website.
This means from a search engines point of view, it is the WordPress website which will get the ranking, not your subdirectory page you have created.
If we look at the big picture, you haven’t created a blog at all, you have merely created created a directory on the WordPress website, which now has your name on that directory.
Search engines rank websites highly on keywords, so as the WordPress website is the main site and your blog is just a sub-directory of that site the keywords will be relating to the main website and not your blog.
Now, as WordPress is full of many different sites and not just an entire website relating to your similar keywords, this reduces the keyword density of the keywords you’d like to be found for on the search engines, and therefore you’ll probably fail if you want your WordPress-hosted blog found.

Have you seriously ever done a Google search and found a WordPress-hosted blog in the number 1 spot??!! Most likely not, and that is the reason why.

For approximately $10 a year you can by a domain name from Godaddy, and for another $100 or so, a hosting package from Hostgator, and create your own blog.

You can download the WordPress software from WordPress.org and set it up on your own website without too much trouble.
It takes a little longer that the internet guru’s way, but in the long term you are almost guaranteed you will get found on the search engines, most likely on page 1.

The other aspects of setting up a site hosted by WordPress or Blogger is that you DON’T OWN THE RIGHTS TO YOUR OWN CONTENT!
You see, Google own Blogger, so anything you upload to their free service is technically by law their ownership. If they one day decide to turn off Blogger your website is gone FOREVER.
Same if you host on WordPress. As it is a free service they really have no obligation to you to look after you like a paying client, and all that hard work you had done could be all gone in minutes, along with your online fortune you were working on building.

The other positive to owning your own blog is the domain totally related to your brand. You are not riding on the WordPress or Blogger domain.
You’re online business looks much more professional, you have your own professional email accounts, and people remember your domain much easier.
You can also have your own professional branding added, and with a few free WordPress plugins you can even turn your own hosted WordPress site into a mobile website, or customize it for maximum results on the search engines and for social media integration. Not as easy to do when you are piggybacking off another site.

I actually noticed the internet marketing maestro holding the seminar didn’t actually have a .wordpress.com website himself for his own business…I wonder why!?
Simple. He wanted to look professional, and owns his own site on his own domain, on his own hosted service.

So if you are thinking of setting up your own website blog for business and profit, don’t take the shortcut, or listen to dodgy internet marketers trying to make a quick sale.
Do it properly and create your own online empire the right way!

Author: Chris Bourke of www.Webseocoach.com

The online accommodation booking market is growing at a staggering 400% each year, with more people now starting to choose online bookings for accommodation than walking into a travel agent.

The beauty of online accommodation is that you have the option to easily compare the best rates at your own leisure, which is great if you already know the location you want to holiday at.
the other advantage of online accommodation websites is that you can read reviews of other people that have visited the same hotels or resorts and get some feedback. This feedback is a general overview but gives you a good idea that your travel agent might not be able to.
Often travel agents are paid incentives to try and get you into a particular hotel, so the advantage of choosing yourself online is great.

If you are looking at an online venture to make money while you literally sleep, hotel accommodation marketing online is great as the returns are high, so if you set your website up correctly you really don’t have to work to hard to market the website. You literally make money while you sleep.

Here is my story on how I turned a day’s work into $100,000 worth of sales in a single month with a simple, small, accommodation website.

A few years back as I was already designing and building accommodation websites for other people, I thought I’d try my hand at creating my own online accommodation website, more as a hobby website than anything else.
I chose the Whitsunday Islands as my niche as I am a regular visitor to the Whitsundays and Airlie Beach, so know the local area.
Yes, it’s a small niche, which was probably a mistake on my behalf as the internet is global. Since creating my Whitsundays website I now have 4 International hotel accommodation websites as well. So, before diving in, think big!

Step 1:Find your niche, and your niche market.

Find your accommodation niche. It might be schoolies accommodation, romantic holidays, luxury holidays (pays better, but sales are usually less than budget accommodation), or choose a particular location or country you would like to focus on.

The website design should also suit the location and your target audience. Don’t use dark black colours if you are promoting a luxury beachside resort. Take into consideration the age of the market you want to target. If they are younger you can make the website design a little more fun and funky, if they are older think about making the text larger, and with simple navigation.

Step 2:
Choose the right domain name

You will have greater success on the search engines if your domain name is specifically related to what you are selling. For instance, I chose www.WhitsundayApartments.com.au as I was selling Whitsunday Apartments, resorts and hotel accommodation. (I also registered WhitsundayHotels.com.au to cover more search terms).
By having your main website with a good domain and some simple but good search engine optimisation, you are almost guaranteed to be on the first page of Google, if not the #1 spot for at least this search term. If you can achieve this there is really no need to spend money on paid advertising to get a good sale rate.

Step 3:
Set up a website
Purchase a hosting account and create a website. I usually choose Hostgator.com web hosting for international accommodation websites because Hostgator are based in the United States, which means international visitors will have a faster viewing rate than if I host locally here in Australia. If the website audience was purely targeting Australians I would choose a local web provider in Australia, like Webcrowd.

Hostgator allows you to purchase one account and split it into multiple accounts, so if you want to build multiple websites there is no extra costs for hosting. You simply purchase additional domain names, split your initial hosting account and hook up the domain name to the newly split account, so it acts like a totally independent hosted website. Nice and cheap!

Step 4:
Building your website.

Believe it or not, this is actually the easy part of the process!
You don’t have to actually know anything about hotel accommodation bookings, or spend thousands on creating an expensive accommodation marketing system, you can start with one single webpage.
The hotel accommodation booking system itself is actually provided by an affiliated company, so you simply build a simple webpage and link to their system for free, and you generate income for each sale that is created through your website.

Obviously, you want to look professional, so for the return you will be getting it is worth hiring the services of a web designer for a day to create and set your website up for you. Make sure they also offer search engine optimisation services as part of the deal.

To get started, you will need to find an accommodation affiliate partner, such as HotelsCombined.com or HotelClub.com There are plenty to choose from, as well as Airlines, Car Hire, Tours and more holiday related products.
Many of the best online hotel brands will offer an affiliate program. You can find them by either scrolling to the footer of their website and look for Affiliate Program, or simply type in ‘Hotel Affiliate Programs’ into Google.
You usually need to have a basic website setup before they will approve you, so build a simple page first, and you can change it once you are approved.
Affiliate programs are usually free to join and on average pay around 6% to 10% per sale on the booking price. So on average if someone books say a week of accommodation for $2100 you would make $189 in commission from a single sale.
Thats not bad from one single booking! If you can get 10 bookings a day you will be doing nicely.

Most affiliate programs will provide you with an affiliate coded piece of script which you simple customise and then past into your webpage, which created the booking form on your page, allowing people to search through the hotel affiliate’s accommodation database. When they find and book, you make money! It really is that simple!

Step 5:
Optimising your website for the search engines
the major misconception with many web developers is they believe you need to flood a page with search engine specific keywords in order to achieve a good ranking. This is totally untrue. I can show you a number of examples I have created myself that have only 3 lines of text on the entire single page website and they achieve a #1 Google listing.
Choose the keywords that relate you your domain name, the target location and add them in a short paragraph or two at the most, and try and leave out as many non-specific words as possible, without the sentence sounding like it is written for the search engines to your visitors.

Run your website through a good SEO software package such as Web CEO before uploading and submitting your website to ensure it has a good keyword ranking. Web CEO will also let you submit your website for free to all the major search engines, usually with great results within days.

And that is the step finished! Sit back and wait for the search engines to do their thing and the booking to flood in.
There is nothing better than waking up and finding you have earned your days’ pay before you were even awake!

$100,000 sales in a month for one day’s work isn’t bad, and the money keeps coming in each month for doing almost nothing.

Step 6: Marketing your website
If you want to really give your new website the extra push, you can use paid marketing such as Google Adwords to attract visitors, or include a Subscribe/VIP club newsletter form allowing people to sign up and be added to your mailing list for future marketing. This helps generate potential sales to people that have already visited your website.
Check out Aweber email marketing system which is perfect for this type of online marketing and promotions.

Of course, you can always book your own holidays through your own website, saving you on the full price of accommodation! You’ll never pay full price for your holiday again!

Happy online earnings!

About the Author:
Chris Bourke from Devision.com.au and WebSEOCoach.com
Chris is a web designer and online marketer, specialising in holiday accommodation website development for clients throughout Australia.

Domain Registrant

Each country has rules governing ownership and transfer of domain names. These rules are clear, unequivocal and rigorously enforced. In all instances, the “registrant” is defined as the legal owner.

Frequently, domains are registered by the website designer on the client’s behalf. Sometimes they may have been initially registered by the office junior, the wife, girlfriend, business partner, the accountant… Time passes. Things change. Maybe now, the registrant is the ex-wife, ex-girlfriend, ex-business partner…

If your name is not listed as the registrant, you do not own the website! Best you get this sorted BEFORE the excrement hits the fan, and some one is holding knife to the throat of your valuable corporate website, demanding a 6-figure ransom!

Website Software

If you are using a licensed copy of a proprietary website software application, you certainly don’t own the software. However, if it is on your own domain, under your control, then you’ve got some security of tenure at least, should any differences of opinion arise with your website designers.

If you are using non-proprietary, Open Source software, on your own domain, hosted on an independent server, you’re in far better shape in the sense of having control over your assets.

If you’re using proprietary software owned by your website design company, hosted on their servers… you have a massive risk exposure in the event of a difference of opinion over when (or if) you should pay your accounts. If they are also listed as the registrant of the domain, you have placed yourself in an unenviable, vulnerable and potentially devastating position. Silly you… Oh dear, how sad, never mind!

Hosting

Hosting is a vexed question, and its damned hard to establish if the hosting company is a real hosting company, or an affiliate reseller of another company’s hosting services. Sometimes, there are multiple tiers… That said, do you know who to call if something bad happens to your website? The worst aspect of website designer’s hosting service is, its usually in a reseller sub-account, and you cannot have access to the nitty-gritty parts of the site. Things like FTP access, root-level file editing, messing with email accounts, installing other software, or direct access to stats data are usually off-limits. At best, that’s a pain in the bottom… at worst, it prevents you from having a full site backup in the event services are terminated for any reason!

And unrelated bad stuff happens! Last month, my hosting company’s US-based Data Centre operators got locked out of their premises, presumably over a rent or maintenance dispute with the building’s owner. Is your website designer smart enough, and well enough connected in the data centre world, to seamlessly relocate ALL client sites to safe environment within a couple of hours?

Website Designers

Al l website designers are not created equal. Most are honest, reliable and decent business people. However, some website designers are control freaks who like to keep cash-cow clients screwed down and locked into systems they cannot easily escape from, and ruthlessly milk them of every possible dollar. All the while, they deliver a minimum of service, and maximum of awkwardness, and make it as difficult as possible for a client to escape their clutches.

Impartial Advice

A decade of dealing with the aftermath of the cowboys, control freaks, the bloody-minded and the plain ignorant has taught me (and some of my clients) some valuable lessons.

1 – Ensure you are the domain registrant, and have access to your domain registration account.

7 – An oldie but a still-relevant goody – don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

This is rudimentary business risk management. Taking responsibility for your businesses activities is in integral part of management. When things go wrong, as they sometimes do, make sure you have a contingency plan.

About The Author

The SEO Guy, aka Ben Kemp, is a veteran search engine optimization consultant with more than a decade of SEO experience and website design accumulated in 23 years of work in the IT industry. His articles provide advice on SEO, website design & makeover issues.
http://www.website-designers.net.nz

1. Purpose

Your first question should be; what is the purpose of the website? Are you trying to establish your credibility in a certain niche? In that case you should undertake some keyword research to find out what search terms people use as a domain name using these terms would rank well. A domain containing keywords is quite likely to rank well in the search engines for those keywords.

Are you trying to promote a product? You should definitely consider creating domain name based on the product name. You should only do this if you own the rights to that product name.

2. Hyphens

If your chosen domain name has already been taken then you might want to consider using hyphens. The general rule of thumb is to not use more than two hyphens in a domain name and to avoid them altogether if you are going to use any form of offline promotion.

You can also try adding a prefix or a suffix to the keyword you wanted to use, such as blog or store.

3. Potential

You should also consider whether you are planning on creating a small niche site or whether you wish to build an authority site in your niche. Your choice of domain name should also be determined by how much growth you are expecting for your site over time.

For example plussizedbridesmaidsdresses.com might work well for a small niche site, but if you are planning to build a larger authority site then a domain like perfectwedding.com might have more leeway.

4. Top Level Domains

Unsure of the difference between a .com and a .net and a .co.uk? These top level domains (TLDs) allow users to distinguish between different types of websites. A .com is a commercial site and as the most popular and well recognised should be your first pick. Alternatively you might want to try a .info or a .net.

5. Price

It’s possible to get virtually any domain name that you could possibly want as long as you are willing to pay for it. An unused domain name will generally cost between $7 and $12 depending on which company you are using to register it. If you really want a domain that someone else has already registered then you could contact them and ask if they’d be willing to sell it.

About The Author

Download it here: http://www.sevensomewhere.com/free-report

As a result, we’ve assembled a team of web experts to help you and your business keep on top of the most important trends on the web.

Constructing a mobile website, creating social media campaigns and selling online are just some of the challenges businesses will face during 2010.

Here are top online trends for the next 12 months.

Mobile Web

Every web-savvy business knows smartphone use is on the rise. But few are actively developing for mobiles by creating websites specifically used for handheld devices.

As more and more mobile users flock to gadgets with larger touchscreens and internet browsers, such as the iPhone or Google Nexus One, the mobile space will become bigger and SMEs need to get on board. If your website isn’t accessible through a smartphone or app, users will give up and go somewhere else – losing you traffic and potential sales.

Ovum analyst Nathan Burley says the number of people taking up smartphones instead of traditional handsets will require businesses to develop mobile websites.

“In our view there are two big trends that will occur in 2010. That is mobile broadband and the adoption of smartphones, and the impact of those two things on the industry. This is changing the way people access the internet, and that is in mobile.”

“The big change is that these smartphones are allowing people to use tools in the same way a laptop did in the past, which is opening more users to the internet on the go.”

Chris Thomas, chief executive of SEO firm Reseo, says 2010 will be “the year of the mobile”.

“I think mobile search is definitely here. Google is throwing a lot of money at mobile, and it’s going to be really interesting to see how businesses leverage that.”

Search Engine Optimization

Using search engine algorithms in order to get your site on “page one” has been a tactic used by online businesses for years. But SEO experts say the process of getting a website known will become even harder in 2010 with the rise of personalised and real-time search.

Social network Twitter sparked a trend when it designed the first popular real-time search engine. When users search for a term, the site would update that search with new “tweets” as they were being made.

Google has recently introduced a real-time search function of its own, complete with indexed tweets, while Microsoft Bing has made a deal to show tweets in search results. But Thomas says while 2010 will see a rise in real-time search traffic, businesses shouldn’t be too keen to pursue a dedicated real-time search strategy.

“I think people are still trying to figure out what to do with it. Perhaps if there’s a trending topic, such as Copenhagen or climate change, that’s where we could see real-time do some work because there’s an opportuníty for someone selling solar panels to come in, using a message like “stop climate change” via solar panels or something. There is some real potential there.”

“This is where it could go, but it’s such an active industry, with optimisation and SEO changing. But I always say to our clients, stick to your knitting and don’t do anything silly.”

Jim Stewart, chief executive of Stewart Media, says real-time search will continue to grow, but businesses need to be aware of the more subtle changes Google is making to its search algorithms.

“All of the normal SEO things still apply, even though Google is going forward with things like personalised search. That will surely play a part, but you still have to get on the front page at all before you get into someone’s personal search results.”

Stewart warns Google will be updating its speed-check feature, through which the engine checks how fast it takes for a user to connect to a website. If a business has any downtime, it could affect search rankings.

But Stewart also says Google could potentially lose its place as the top search engine, as users could migrate to other offerings or be wary of the company’s search power.

“I don’t believe the search engine is providing as relevant results as it did this time last year. I’m sure they know it, but it doesn’t seem to be working as well. I’d also love to think that people will begin to start using Bing more and more, but it has to become a better search engine before that happens.”

“The other thing is privacy. A lot of people already are pretty wary of Google and privacy issues, even to the point where Eric Schmidt said if you’re doing something on the web you don’t want people to know, then maybe you shouldn’t be doing it.”

Social Media

Facebook and Twitter were the standout social networks from 2009, and their popularity will surge in 2010 with both introducing new features, including paid accounts for business.

But businesses need to pay attention to the trends on these sites. Creating a social media strategy is no longer optional, it is vital to the health of a company and its ability to tap into an online user-base.

Some experts say if you aren’t engaging online, you’re missing out on a huge opportuníty to gain new customers and fans who will effectively market for you if given enough reason.

Thomas says 2010 will be the year in which businesses must jump on social media or risk being left behind by the competition.

“If you don’t have a Facebook fan page you should get in, and if you’re in a community-minded space, where you can offer things like competitions and such, then you’re set.”

James Griffin, founder and chief executive of online reputation management company SR7, says this year will see the rise of analysts who will begin to convince businesses to study, track and move operations into social media.

“Analysts will be versed in understanding and using social media, the quantitative and qualitative reports will empower businesses to implement researched social media strategies and gather market intelligence.”

Online Retail

More and more Australian businesses are selling online, but compared to the US we have a lot of catching up to do. Online spending has grown from 1% to 3% of overall spending over the last 10 years, compared to the American equivalent of 7%.

By Patrick Stafford (c) 2010

Don’t panic since the field of affiliate marketing really requires you to do only 3 things to be successful.

Here’s a look at the 3 areas of preparation you’ll need to complete to start earning an income as an affiliate marketer.

Choose a Domain Name & Hosting

It is recommended although not necessary to have your own website or blog from which you can maintain an online presence. You will want to select a domain name that is relative to what it is you intend to market. This not only increases the professional image you want online for your business but it also prevent the visitor from being confused. If your domain name indicates something other than what it is you’re promoting you can easily lose visitors who may think it is not the site they’re looking for.

Make sure the hosting company you select is reputable and can easily be contacted 24/7. If your site goes down for whatever reason you are losing money the longer it remains offline so you want to be able to have the problem fixed quickly.

We recommend registering with either Webcrowd, Globat Web Hosting or Hostgator. All provide great value hosting.

Build Your Site

As an affiliate it is not required that your site is elaborate in fact it is recommended that you keep it simple. You don’t want so much ‘glitz and glitter’ that your intended message is lost.

Make it clear to the visitor what it is you’re promoting, maybe elaborate on a few benefits but for the most part leave the hard selling to the main affiliate site.

Generate Traffic

Here is where you need to focus most of your effort. Select 2 or 3 traffic generation techniques you’re comfortable with then push as many visitors to your site as possible.

This is the single biggest advantage of affiliate marketing. You don’t have to do much selling therefore you can concentrate on learning how to drive traffic to your site.

Launching your online affiliate marketing business really only requires that you simply first establish your online presence with a website. After that you are ready to begin marketing on the internet by driving traffic to your site. Many assume that starting an online business is more complicated then that but as you’ve seen it is really fairly simple. This is one of the biggest reasons the field of affiliate marketing is so popular.

By setting up a simple website you are in the position to start making money online from home provided you invest a little time generating traffic to your site. This entire process is extremely straight forward and actually requires nothing more other than a little effort from you.

By following the 3 steps we reviewed above you will be ready to start marketing as an affiliate in absolutely no time at all.

Author: TJ Philpott is an author and Internet entrepreneur based out of North Carolina.

These services should include:

• Reliable service
• Affordable website hosting with no hidden charges
• Free setup
• Unlimited email accounts
• Webmail (so you can check you emails from any where.
• Reliable Online Technical Support (preferably with a real person you can also telephone!)
• Regular Backup services for your hosting

Web SEO Coach has reviewed hundreds of website hosting services to provide you with a list of the top recommended hosting companies:

WWEB CROWD WEBSITE HOSTING AUSTRALIA
Webcrowd are an Australian owned hosting company offering great value website hosting solutions plus ‘local’ telephone support. No call centres…you speak to a real web hosting support in Australia.
While offering all the usual services, such as free domain name registration/free renewal, unlimited email accounts, plenty of web space, the biggest advantage of choosing WebCrowd hosting services is that you can sign up online and then call them and they will happily help you set up your email accounts, re-delegate your domain names or anything else that may seem a little too technical…at no extra charge!

At around $7.95 AUD a month for the standard hosting package, including unlimited email accounts, etc this is pretty good value and extraordinary service.
Webcrowd also host international websites, so just because they are in Australia doesn’t mean it is only available to Australians.

Check Webcrowd out for yourself at http://www.webcrowd.com.au

GLOBAT WEBSITE HOSTING
Globat is one of the larger hosting services in the USA, with over 100,000 websites hosted with them.
The hosting service Globat provides is very cost effective, with the standard hosting plan currently under $5 USD per monht, which suits every budget for affordable website hosting.

The services include, free domain registration, unlimited email accounts, 30 Day money back guarantee, free Site Builder Tool with Templates and 24 hour customer and technical support 7 days a week.

While the services are good, I have personally found the technical support service is not a pleasant experience on most occasions I have required them.
I have also had a number of websites hacked while hosted with Globat, more than once. Try and request a refund for this experience and you might be lucky, although I wasn’t. In fact, I was automatically rebilled months later for accounts I had closed after this expererience!

Globat are a very good service if you have a very simple website and hopefully don’t require any technical support. Basically at this price, you get what you pay for.

HOSTGATOR WEBSITE HOSTING
Hostgator Website Hosting is one of my top recommended website hosting companies on the planet! Now there’s a big call!
Hostgator offer hosting for unlimited websites on their standard hosting package for just $7.95 USD per month. A great deal if you have more than one website and want to avoid all the additional hosting costs. Simply sign up for one account and you can spit the account for unlimited websites! Includes separate email accounts and website statistic for each site as well!
And a great thing About Hostgator, unlike many hosting companies, they have a very strong non-hack policy in place, so your websites are very secure!

Check them out online at Hostgator.com

WEB HOSTS AUSTRALIA
WWeb Hosts Australia have been providing website hosting services for almost 10 years, providing Australia with professional website hosting and other internet related services.
Web Hosts Australia is good value for small size websites, although not as affordable as other web hosts if you require hosting for a larger website.

Check them out online at WebHostsAustralia.com.au

ULTRA WEBSITE HOSTING

At just $2.95 per month, what’s there not to like about Ultra Website Hosting! They not only offer unbeatable website hosting costs, but also include a free domain name, host unlimited websites, and there are no necessary annual contracts. Simply pay month by month if you prefer.
Great value all round!

Visit Utra Website Hosting online at http://www.UltraWebsiteHosting.com

DREAM HOST

If you’re planning a big website, or multiple websites, than think big…Dream Host!
Dream Host offer affordable website hosting packages, with unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidht and many more features for just $8.95 per month!
Optimized for WordPress, and also provides 24 hour 7 day technical support.
Great value!
Check them out at Dreamhost.com

HOST ROCKET

As the name suggests, you get full power website hosting solutions and more bang for your buck with Host Rocket website hosting.
HostRocket offers the ultimate web hosting package with professional customer support, quality reseller packages, loaded with features, all for a month price of just $5.99 per month!
Click here to learn about HostRockets great deals. You’ll be fired up and ready to go!

HOSTMONSTER
One of the world’s most trusted website hosting companies, HostMonster offers reliable website hosting, with great technical support and very secure hosting solutions.
HostMonster includes free set-up, no hidden frees and a free domain name with each account, plus unlimited email accounts, SSH and SSl, CGI, PHP and more. Everything you could want from a professional hosting company.
Monthly fee: $6.95

Click here to find out full Host Monster hosting details

So how do you know which one is a good one for your needs?

While many of these hosting companies will look the same on the surface, and will most likely offer you incentives, such as free extras to lure you in, it pays to really check them out and compare the real difference in services they offer.

I’d like to share a little personal experience I had about 18 months ago, which will hopefully open your eyes to the benefits of fining the right hosting partner…
For a number of years I hosted all my websites with one of the big hosting companies, (which will remain unnamed), until they were hit with a server attack, leading to many of my clients websites being hacked. I attempted to contact the hosting company a number of times, which was based in the USA, and I am in Australia, so it was often very hard to even get through to a technical staff member, and sometimes I was on hold for 20 minutes!
I also tried their online support system , but the service wasn’t much better. They could not offer me any resolution, other than for me to fix the hacked sites, and change my password. Sounds easy, except I had 150 client sites to change, which would take up most of my day, and then 3 days later the hosting was hacked again.
The company would not move my site to a more secure server, they would not refund me, they even hung up the phone on me a number of times as there was apparently nothing they could do.

I decided it was time to start moving all the websites to another provider, while in the meantime the original host company began billing me renewals on the hosting, a month earlier than they were due, and without any prior consent. They just automatically billed without my authority!

I contacted the manager who promised the matter would be fixed, and I would be reimbursed, though I never was.

So after this painful and expensive lesson I decided to make sure the next website provider I chose was much better. I ended up moving all the websites to Hostgator, who have been great ever since.

To help you choose, I made a 10 point checklist to help find the best provider:

Review the hosting company
Do a search on Google for hosting reviews for that company and see what others have to say about them

Read their policy and customer guarantee in regards to the venerability of the servers to any attacks, and find out what plan they have in place if this should ever occur.

Review their technical support service before purchasing hosting.
Call the tech support and see how good their service really is, the case you ever require it one day. Find out if they offer local tech support and customer call back, in the even you need to leave a message.

Make sure you can understand your tech support staff, and vice versa.
There is nothing worse than being put through to a call centre in India and neither party can understand the problem or solution!

Make sure the hosting plan provides all the basic services, including plenty of hosting space, unlimited email accounts, webmail, etc

Ensure the hosting package comes with MySQL and PHP capabilities,
as you will require these if your website uses a database (eg, running blogs, shopping carts, etc)

Does your hosting provider automatically bill you and do they give you plenty of notice when your hosting is due for renewal.

Make sure they do regular back ups of your website.
This is important in case anything goes wrong with their hosting, otherwise your entire website could be lost!

Are you paying a fair price.
Most good hosting packages are around the $9 USD monthly fee, and also offer free domain name registration/renewal as part of the standard package.

Find out where the hosting is based.
For instance, if your target audience is located in another country, then try and get hosting in that country as this will usually provide you a better connection/download speed for your viewers.

Follow the above advice and hopefully you will have a carefree hosting experience!

Author: Chris Bourke of Devision Design & Web SEO Coach