I have been mulling around my Twitter niche strategy in my head for a while. Today I want to tell you about easy ways to do status updates on Twitter.

I am always trying to keep up with the latest whiz bang kind of stuff as far as social media goes but sometimes there is an easier way and a more simple way and having a Twitter niche strategy really helps for each of your niches.

I have a lot of sites and niches that I manage as a lot of marketers do and a few months ago I made a twitter account for each of my major sites.

This in itself is a great idea since trying to keep up with all of the players in each market can be tough using twitter makes it easy by having lots of people in one place and just by following you can see the updates from everyone. The trouble is Twitter can be a time suck if you do not have a Twitter niche strategy for posting. You will end up reading a lot of useless info.

Here is my Twitter Niche strategy step by step

1. Have a website in the niche. You decide on your niches, I decide on mine. As long as there are people there is a reason for a Twitter niche strategy and integration. Read the rest of this entry »

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Unlimited bandwidth hosting has developed out of fierce competition between web hosting companies and it is great news for consumers. If you have unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth, then you never need to worry about your website growing too big or too popular for a cheap monthly hosting package – at least in theory.

But is unlimited bandwidth hosting really unlimited? The answer, of course, is no. Hosting companies have huge banks of servers and massive quantities of fiber optic cables to provided internet access for the sites that are stored on their servers, but all of these things have physical limits.

How Internet Hosting Works

The internet is not restricted to one location but websites must have a physical location. They are not floating around in space. That is what web hosting means: providing storage space for websites and the cables etc that are needed to connect them with the rest of the internet. Read the rest of this entry »

Google web hosting through sites.google.com is advertised as being free, but what do you actually get? We look at what you can expect from free Google web hosting and whether it is the right solution for your needs.

Free Google web hosting is great if you want to put up a small website such as a personal site or a starter website for a church, club, community group or small business. They have plenty of templates that you can choose from, making it easy to start your own website if you are new to all of this.

Google Web Hosting Templates

The Google Web Hosting templates are imaginative and well designed. They include different features: for example the Project Wiki template allows members of a team to access and update the site easily, so that all members of your team or group can contribute. You can also include a calendar for your big events which has many uses for a project or sports team website.

Another Google web hosting template is the Classroom site template which allows a teacher to post information for students and parents. For example you can post information about upcoming field trips, all the details of assignments that are due, and a lot of other information which you would otherwise have to hand out to kids or parents. There is also a contact form so that parents and students can easily email you.

Google Web Hosting for Business

Other Google Web Hosting templates include the company intranet (internal website for a business) which has a more business-like design, as you would expect. Again there is a calendar for upcoming events and a section for news. There is also a family site template with a more informal design and plenty of space for posting photos.

Google Web Hosting Storage is secure and you can choose to make your site public (so that it is viewable by anybody in the world with an internet connection) or private, so that you can choose who to give access to.

Like most free web hosting services, there are limits on what you can do with a free Google web hosting account. This is not something that you would use for ecommerce sites with a shopping cart, or where you could store huge video downloads, etc. It is mainly designed for small personal or group sites.

Google Web Hosting – Premier Edition

If you need to upgrade, there is a Premier Edition of Google web hosting that gives you access to 10GB of storage, which will be enough for most sites. You can also have email storage and free voice calls through your Google Apps Premier Edition account.

If you are likely to want to develop many sites or offer a commercial service there are advantages to owning your own domain. You can do that through Google Apps which allows you to point your Google site design at your own domain.

If you choose to use the free service, to some extent you are at the mercy of Google. If they have objections to your site, they could close it down. Of course, this is not likely to be a problem if you have a site that is legal and ethical. However it is something to consider before you commit to using any free hosting service such as Google web hosting.

Dedicated Windows hosting is not always easy to find. When you do find a dedicated Windows host, you often discover that there are negative points or fewer options that you would have if you selected Linux.

For example, you will usually find that dedicated Windows hosting deals are more expensive than their Linux counterparts. Even where a web host offers both options, there will usually be a higher price for the Windows server.

Why Is Windows Hosting More Expensive?

The main reason for this is that Linux is free, open source software while Windows is strictly licensed by Microsoft. In the same way, many of the services that run on Linux servers such as PHP based applications are either free or cheaper than their asp.net alternatives for Windows.

However, most PHP applications will run on Windows servers. On the other hand, if you want to build sites and applications based around Windows software such as ASP, .net programs, or an Access database, you will probably be better off with dedicated Windows hosting. Read the rest of this entry »

There are two things that I really rail about and those are Realtor slogans and the fast food marketing on TV. We will never understand the former but the latter, the fattening of America is an easy one. Lets look at a few of the ways that the fast food industry is very smart at keeping us coming and eating food that we know full well is the worst for us.

First of all I have to say that fast food marketing just like most consumer goods is a commodity that can be marketed on it’s strengths while totally avoiding it’s weaknesses. That is the food can be created easily and changed with a marketing plan to improve sales and to do product testing. Here are a few things that marketers have done great in the past to sell us fast food.

How fast food marketing Works

Sell to the kids and the adults follow – In my house I would like to say that my wife is in charge but really it is the kids.  The commercials for McDonalds are obvious with the selling of the free toys but really the happy family in the commercial is selling to us adults. If you are tired and driving and looking for something to eat the kids may plead for the toy but we as adults know it will happy and serene once we get in the restaurant (I know, it is not really true and so do you). This is a great example of how fast food marketing sets a tone and an expectation. Read the rest of this entry »

A web hosting reseller package allows you to cover the cost of your web hosting or even make an income by offering hosting services to others.

If you have a web hosting reseller package on a Linux server you will usually have WHM or Web Host Manager, a central control panel from which you can set up accounts and allocate disk space and bandwidth to each account. You can also set new passwords for the accounts and control the account overall.

Why have a Web Hosting Reseller Package?

Many people have web hosting reseller accounts for their own use and do not resell the hosting as such. They may do this because they find sites easier to manage when each has its own account, or because they have a lot of data to store so that they need a real allocation of disk space.

For example if you are frequently buying and selling sites, it is often easier to transfer them if they are in a web hosting reseller account. You could offer free hosting to the purchaser and still have them control the site through cPanel without having access to any of your other sites.

Companies and individuals who offer web design and build services also often provide hosting through a web hosting reseller account. Here they may not charge separately for hosting, but include it in an overall retainer rate for their services.

Selling Web Hosting as a Reseller

Offering web hosting as a free extra to your other internet-related services can be very lucrative. Being a web hosting reseller serves to lock customers in to a standing charge or membership fee, or at least make it harder for them to leave. Many clients will be reluctant to cancel your services when they know that it will mean they have to find (and pay for) new web hosting and transfer the site – something that the average small business owner would find extremely scary.

On the other hand there are some pitfalls associated with operating a web hosting reseller package. Most of these apply to resellers who are using the account in the way that it was designed, i.e. reselling web hosting services. But even if you offer hosting as a free add-on to other services, there are some points to watch out for, especially in a situation where customers have access to their own control panel.

Downside of Being a Web Hosting Reseller

First and foremost is the question of support. Will the hosting company that supplies you with the web hosting reseller package provide support to your customers, or will your customers have to request support through you? Clearly the first option is better, but not all hosting companies offer this. If you have to act as a go-between then you will need to either be prepared to field their support questions and watch for downtime 24/7, or outsource this.

You will also need some way of accepting payments and keeping track of whose payments are due. The usual method is to have a monthly recurring charge on a credit card, but this has to be updated whenever a credit card comes up for renewal. Plus of course people sometimes lose or cancel their cards.

As a web hosting reseller you may decide to offer plans where people can buy 6 months or a year’s hosting at a discount. This can be great for ensuring that customers stick around, but it leaves you more vulnerable to fraud. People buying with a stolen credit card number can leave you with expensive chargebacks some time down the line.

Always ask for a phone number and consider calling any customer who orders more than the regular monthly package. You should also, of course, check that the name and address on the account match the name and address on the credit card, and have your system take the IP of the computer that places the order. It is easy to check the city, state or country of any IP so you can then check that this IP matches with the customer’s credit card billing address. These measures should help to protect you against fraud when operating a web hosting reseller package.

Finding a good web host is never easy, but a web hosting review can make the task a whole lot simpler. If you are new to the idea of setting up a website on your own domain, hosting can be a scary subject. You have to commit to monthly or even annual payments to a company you never heard of before. The costs can be high and if you make a mistake, transferring your site to another host is a time consuming business.

Even if you have several years’ experience of web hosting, when it is time to upgrade to a different level of service you may be a little lost. Perhaps you are not entirely happy with your current hosts and feel it is time for a move. Or perhaps they do not offer the service that you are now looking for. This is where web hosting review will come in

Whats in it for the Web Hosting Reviewer?

Of course you can find a web hosting review online and you may manage to track down the best website host for your needs that way. It is worth keeping in mind, however, that many web hosting companies offer a commission to anybody who refers a new customer to them. This means that the owner of the site where you are reading that favorable review of a certain hosting company could be paid for recommending them. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian hosting companies do exist but do you really need hosting in Canada? The answer depends on your website and what you want to achieve with it. In some cases there could be disadvantages to having your website located in Canada. In this article we look at when you might need Canadian hosting and when you would not, and where to get it.

Your web host will have a bank of physical servers which store all of the data for your websites. The internet is accessible from anywhere in the world so in this respect, it does not matter so much where these servers are located in the physical world.

Web hosting is not like a lawyer or a dentist, where obviously you need the office to be close enough for you to visit. There is no need to visit your web hosting company. So perhaps it is not so important to have Canadian hosting just because you happen to live in Canada.

Many people use web hosting services on the other side of the globe. Most of the biggest hosting companies are based in the USA. These companies are used by people in Australia, Europe and many other countries as well as people in North America.

The advantage of having US hosting is that your website will then have a US-based IP address which may make it come up higher in the search engine results that are returned to American visitors. Google and other search engines are now able to return search results depending on where the person searching is located. The USA is the biggest national user of the internet so this can be a big advantage if you just want to attract as many visitors as possible.

Why Web Host in Canada?

However, if it is important that your website attracts Canadian visitors, then you might want to have Canadian hosting. For example if your client base is entirely Canadian, you would naturally want Google to know that your website is a Canadian site.

In order to do this, you would start by having a website that ends in the letters .ca, which is the country indicator for Canada. So for example if your business is carpet cleaning with offices in Canada, you would want to get a website with a domain name something like ABCcarpetcleaning.ca.

Then you could look for Canadian hosting to host your website. Then your website would have a Canadian IP address and it would be very clear to the search engines that this was a Canadian website. Result: your site would be presented higher in the search engine results to internet users located in Canada than a US based carpet cleaning website, other things being equal.

If you want to go for web hosting services in Canada, you should know that it can be a little more expensive than the US companies. Very heavy competition keeps the prices down in the USA. However, you can still get a good deal on Canadian hosting from many companies including primehost.ca and webserve.ca.

Here we have reviews of 3 top web hosting sites. All of these are large and reliable web hosting providers offering shared hosting services for under $10 per month. The packages vary a little, but we have tried to compare like with like as far as possible in these hosting sites reviews.

HostGator Web Hosting

Baby plan: $7.95 per month, unlimited domains, unlimited space and bandwidth (subject to fair use policy).
Reseller plans from $24.95 per month. VPS from $19.95, dedicated servers from $174.

HostGator is one of the most popular CPanel top web hosting sites for internet marketing and other internet-based businesses who own or manage a large number of websites. There is a very wide range of plans which can be confusing for beginners but makes it easy to upgrade as your business grows. Read the rest of this entry »

The most important question when you are looking for the best website host is something that many people do not take into account at all in their choice of a web host, this is the question of hosting technical support.

There are so many web hosts on the internet, it is confusing enough just trying to compare all of their packages. Shared, reseller, VPS or dedicated … which is right for you? This is the big question that most people spend all of their time on. They will look at the different packages and what is offered.

But the truth is that with most web hosting companies hosting technical support is not so important because upgrading is such a simple matter. Provided you start out with a company that offers one or two levels above what you need right now, you can sign up for the minimum for your current needs and know that all it takes to upgrade is an email to the web host’s support desk. They love customers who upgrade and will usually do everything for you, including transferring your sites to a new server if you are moving from shared hosting.

So the package should not be an issue. The next question that most people consider is cost. OK, this can be important, but is it really going to make a huge difference to you whether you are paying $7.95 or $9.95 per month for shared hosting? How much do you waste in a month on stuff that you don’t really need? A lot more than $2, we guess!

So don’t stress about an extra dollar or two on your web hosting costs. You can almost certainly afford it. It is worth a little extra to get what really matters – excellent hosting technical support. Read the rest of this entry »