Web Hosting Companies

With thousands of web hosting companies in the market it can be difficult if not impossible to know which web site hosting companies truly provide an excellent hosting solution at an excellent price. When you have an established domain name with a good web hosting company, you can get reports on your traffic and which of your pages your customers are visiting most often, as well as many other statistics.

Your web host will charge you a fee for monthly service that ranges from $10 or $20 to the more expensive $50.00 per month. Plan to pay between $300 and $500 per year to your web host.

Always avoid free or very inexpensive web hosting services, because you may experience bouts of server downtimes and you are likely to have significant limitations in storage, number of email addresses, FTP upload etc.

Be sure your web host can accommodate e-commerce and storefronts, wireless capability, bogs, forums, chats, online interactive helps and anything else you want to add onto your site.

Estimate what your growth needs are and ensure that this web host can serve you as you grow. The last thing you want to do is change host mid way unless you absolutely have to do so.

Check your bandwidth capability to be sure that, if your website traffic grows rapidly, your customers will not have to wait to download or view information. Three things to look for in a web hosting company are:

1. Excellent Customer Support: Your hosting provider should be there for you 24/7 and give you instant access to the technicians you need to solve your problem. Ask them how long it takes for them to typically respond to your problem. A good test is to call them in the mid night to check if you get to a live, level 3 support.

2. A Sound Infrastructure: Check whether they offer a multi-homed network powered by multiple bandwidth providers to ensure redundancy. Some offer a 100% guarantee on its network availability or network uptime.

3. Financial Stability: If you're running very critical operations, you can't afford to be with a hosting company that may not be in business in a few months.

Here are some good domain hosting services:

GVO Hosting
Global Domain International
Host Gator

How to Register Your Own Domain Name

If you have an affiliate site, you may want to seriously consider registering your very own domain name. A domain name is a name like “top-safe-list-biz.com” or “Free-People-Search4u.ws”, which you can use to market and promote your affiliate website. You do not have to be a company or organisation to register a domain name. Any individual can register a domain name.

Step By Step Instructions

Think of a few good domain names that you’d like to use. It won’t do to think of only one — it might already be taken (it probably is!).

If you already have a web host, obtain from your web host the names of their primary and secondary nameservers. Don’t worry if you don’t understand what these things mean. Just save the information somewhere. The information can usually be obtained from their FAQs or other documentation on their site, usually under a category like “domain name” or “DNS” or “domain name transfer” and the like. If you can’t find it, email them. You’ll need the information to point your domain name to your website after you buy your domain. Don’t worry if you don’t have a web host yet. Just read on.

If you do not have a web host, you can always allow the registrar to you to park your domain name at a temporary website specially set up for you. This way you can quickly secure your domain name before it’s too late and still take your time to set up the other aspects of your site. As far as I can tell, many registrars automatically park your domain by default whether you ask them to or not, so if this is your situation, you probably don’t have to do anything special to get it done. Some of those registrars also provide you with a free email address at your own domain name while it is parked at their site, like sales@example.com (where “example.com” is your domain).

List of Domain Name Registrars

There are numerous domain name registrars. Here is a list of just a few of them:

HostGator

GVO Hosting

Global Domain International