Why Should I Pay for Web Hosting?

Why Should I Pay for Web Hosting?
by: Nate Landerman

The advent of blogging and free blog space has brought about a revolution in web publishing that pushes the boundaries of terms like “webmaster” and “website.” In today’s brave new world of Internet publishing for the masses, the traditional means of building and hosting a personal website has fallen out of favor for many new webmasters.

If you count yourself among the many bloggers who use a free subdomain blog account, you’ll have to think about web hosting sooner or later. Unfortunately, most don’t consider the ramifications until it’s too late. In the beginning, a free blog account or ad-supported web hosting seems like the obvious choice for a personal site. Unfortunately, this decision – or lack thereof - can cause problems down the road. Issues with free hosting and subdomain hosting range from SEO complications to ownership and control issues. Both free and paid hosting have their own merits and drawbacks, of course, so the ultimate decision is yours to make. But understanding these pros and cons is the first step in making a good decision for your site.

Free Hosting

Pros:

• It’s free. This is obviously the single most important advantage of free web hosting.

• It’s easy. Anyone can open an account on Blogger or any number of other free services and instantly get a free website requiring no more effort to publish than writing an email.

• No experience necessary. Anyone can create a site using one of these free services, with no programming, technical, or even HTML knowledge required.

Cons:

• Branding. As your blog or website grows, a subdomain hosting account offers little in the way of branding, and may adversely affect your credibility.

• SEO. If you move away from a subdomain account to your own domain, you will have to start over building links to your new domain.

• No control over ad content. With free hosting, you are at the mercy of your hosting company’s discretion as to what type of ads will be displayed on your site. Pop-ups and ads for adult sites are not uncommon.

• Limited or no accountability for site outages and other problems. When you’re getting something for nothing, it’s all too easy to become the victim of corporate apathy.

Paid Hosting

Pros:

• You can host your own domain. With paid hosting, you can brand your site with your own domain name (e.g. MySite.com) and add legitimacy to your content.

• Control. With paid hosting, you control every aspect of your site, including design and advertising content.

• SEO advantages. With a paid hosting account and domain name, you can build links to your site safely without worrying about whether or not you’ll be changing domain names. In addition, a hosting account allows you programmatic and scripting abilities not usually found in free, pre-built websites.

• Custom site development. Unlike free blogs, a hosted website can typically run a variety of CGI and scripting applications, and can be built any way you choose.

• Accountability and Portability: When you pay for hosting, you hold more leverage over your hosting company in the event of problems. Additionally, by retaining control of your source code and data, you can easily move your site to a new host.

Cons:

• Expense. Though you can get hosting plans as cheap as $2-$3 per month, it’s still a cost that free hosting does not incur.

• Some assembly required. Though many paid hosts offer site builders and blog software as part of the package, it still requires more technical work than signing up for a Blogger account.

• Maintenance. When you create a site yourself, you become responsible for the upkeep of your own code. In fact, you become responsible for just about everything involved with the site except for the server and connectivity.

So in summary, making the right choice between free or blog site hosting and paid hosting is heavily dependent on both you and your site. Though I’ve focused heavily on hosting for blog sites, much of the same information applies to free hosting vs. paid hosting for other types of sites as well. The important thing is to take a good hard look at what you want your site to eventually be, how much effort you’re willing to put into it, and then make your decision.

If you do decide on paid hosting, make sure you look at all options available. Use a web hosting review website such as I Net Publication to compare available options. Not all web hosting is alike, and many hosting companies offer free tools to ease the pain of migration as well as other perks you may not have realized you were missing.

About The Author

Nate Landerman is the owner of www.inetpublication.com, a web hosting review website. This article may be reprinted freely, provided that all links to iNetpublication remain intact.

n.landerman@inetpublication.com

Why Blogging Is Essential To Your Business

Why Blogging Is Essential To Your Business
By: Chet Holcomb

In the 'good old days' - about three years ago - you used to keep in-touch with your customers using phone calls, email messages and face to face meetings. Nowadays the world has changed. People expect even more frequent updates, yet it's nearly impossible to meet with every business contact on a regular basis.

Thankfully, blogging has come to the rescue. Setting up a blog on your web site - and having an associated RSS feed - means you can keep in constant touch with your clients and potential customers. Plus you don't have to email them and they can get your latest news without having to visit your web site.

So how does this all work? A blog is really a fancy name for a web page that gets updated regularly. It's nothing special. There are several methods of writing 'blogs', but they are nothing more than computer programs which allow you to easily update a web page. Far and away the easiest way to start a blog is with a website called blogger.com.

However, for keeping in touch with your customers, RSS is the key. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. What this means is that your blog can be automatically delivered to people who want to read it - you don't have to send it to them and neither do they have to come and collect it. All they need is the address of your RSS Feed and their RSS Newsreader can do the job for them. There are several RSS readers available and new web browsers incorporate the ability to read RSS feeds and keep them updated.

Why Blogging is Essential to Your Business

Whenever you add new content to your blog, the RSS Feed automatically gets updated in everyone's Reader program or web browser. That means you are guaranteed to be able to keep in touch with clients and prospects. You don't have to do anything other than produce the content. Equally, you don't face the problems of email filters and anti-spam programs blocking your email. Furthermore, people tend to read RSS Feeds because they have subscribed to them. Whereas they tend to ignore non urgent emails.

As you can see, there are several advantages to Blogs and RSS Feeds. But it doesn't stop there. Search engines love them. That's because blogs provide fresh and new content - precisely what searchers are looking for. Hence the search engines are actively pushing blogs higher up the search engine ranking. This means if you don't have a blog for your business, you are seriously reducing your chances of a high search engine ranking. You need a blog nowadays to get noticed by the search engines.

So, blogging is essential. Not only does it improve your web presence, it also means you can keep in touch with clients and prospects more easily. And all the marketing research you can find will tell you that keeping in regular touch with your customers is an important component in gaining new business. So get blogging!

About the Author:

Chet Holcomb of Internet Promotions is a successful marketing expert providing advice for web marketers and webmasters on how to promote your website, or product using marketing tools that work.

Read more articles by: Chet Holcomb

Article Source: www.iSnare.com