Archive for September, 2010
Everyone is searching for reliable hosting. Stability and reliability are actually the key features of any services offered on the market, but what makes those features so crucial when it comes to hosting? The trust and respect of the visitors, of course! If your website or online store goes down all the time, your visitors will not be interested in dealing with it. Nor will they care if it’s the store owner’s fault or the fault of their hosting provider. They will simply start purchasing products from a different online shop, which does not experience such issues. However, one should understand that 100% uptime is not possible and that different server side issues can take place. This primarily concerns small business websites using budget solutions. Thus, if you own some web service and cannot cover the server side aspect of hosting (e.g. if you use not a VPS or a dedicated server but a shared hosting package) you may need to use some recovery tips. Those are not actually aimed at downtime minimization, but they can lessen the impact on your customers and might help decrease their irritation.
1. Report on the Issue Read the rest of this entry »
Choosing The Right Solution. Image source: planetgreen.discovery.com
Last time we spoke about making a choice of a Virtual Private Server in terms of the configuration varieties. Today we are going to continue our research and tell some useful facts about types of websites, applications and services one may use on a VPS and the related dependencies.
There are many types of websites and online services on the Internet that differ by system requirements, performance or way of work. Sure, most websites work with a standard configuration and software set but some websites and especially services need an accurate configuration pick and fine software tune up. In this regard we are going to list the most popular services and applications in the today use and find a correspondent VPS-based solution for each. Well, let’s start.
1. Email and ftp transfer services
Email and FTP transfer
VPSes are widely used for establishment of certain separate services on them. If you want to get a simple email or ftp server which would need no constant web-access, you may get the simplest custom configuration of your virtual server, which would include just the OS and basic mail exchange/file transfer services. If you wish to run some additional scripts, you have LAMP installed as well (you will anyway need Apache in order to provide webmail access or check the uploaded files via web). In such cases the control panel is not essential (some users do not even include it to their orders) what makes the choice of the OS not crucial as well. Neither is the choice of the virtualization type. Such web-inactive resources do not usually require severe monitoring or many maintenance efforts, especially when strict connection quotas and transfer rate limits are set. CPU/RAM parameters may also be minimal, however those exactly parameters will let you define, which limits to set. Read the rest of this entry »
Blogging for Promotion. Image Source: flickr.com
Nowadays any serious company aimed at constant growth and concerned with its reputation is being actively promoted in social media. B2C relations and behavior models have changed, so now the companies do not just inform their users – they communicate with them, expecting feedbacks, alternatives, suggestions, etc. Those relations become more and more bilateral; therefore it is very important to work out a social media strategy.
First of all, a company should use social media as a mean of communication with its customers. It is very important, since the more customers share their ideas and suggestions, the better the service will be. Another point is inter-customer communication which is important for community building. Finally, building brand advocates around a company will definitely attract those, who may become customers later.
Social media strategy usually involves constant and active communication with customers within social networks. Twitter and Facebook are the most popular ones. Another means are newsletter delivery and launch of the corporate forum on community building purposes. Additionally, if a company sells some goods, the social media marketers may create a dedicated YouTube channel to release videos with their products commercials, tests and how-to’s, etc.
Today we are going to talk specifically about blogging as a means of social media promotion. Read the rest of this entry »
Choosing The Right Way. Source: thefrisky.com
When website owners decide to purchase a Virtual Private Server for their websites, they are often concerned about its configuration. If upgrading from a shared hosting account, a user may pick a too weak server and put it down right after the website launch, as virtual servers do not have such strict limits on resource usage set, as shared ones do.
If someone is purchasing a VPS at once, without having the site actually tested elsewhere before, its owner may pick a wrong software configuration and not even have the website started (we don’t think that error pages hosting is funny or profitable).
A fair question is “Which VPS configuration to choose to provide my website with the most optimal hosting solution?” Here go the answers.
VPS Configuration Types
Virtual private servers differ in their configuration by many parameters. Those usually depend on their vendors’ likes and commercial interests; presence of trained personal, able to work with this or that software; welfare and funding, etc. Studying the market of VPSes we can define the following main configuration options: Read the rest of this entry »
You probably remember our articles on how to pick a platform for reseller hosting business and Reseller billing software comparison. As we continue the series of useful articles for resellers, the next thing we are going to talk about is domain reselling.
What Does It Work For?
Domain reselling business is to some extent easier to run than hosting reselling, and because of this many people choose to conduct this business. The advantage is obvious – unlike a hosting reseller, you don’t need to administer anything but the name servers (in most cases only once – after the domain purchase) and you are not supposed to resolve any technical problems, as there can hardly be any. What you need to do is just watch them being updated on time.
Taking into account the latest trends of services unification, it becomes understandable that in order to attract more customers a company should provide a range of services. Thus, to become a successful professional hosting reseller you also need to provide domain reselling. Your clients will be really glad to realize that they can pay for several services using one client area. Additionally, this will make things easier for both you and them in terms of support – you will be able to manage your customers’ domains.
How It Works?
Domain reselling is a special service, offered by domain registrars. The idea of this service is to increase the domain sales by attracting new registrants not directly, but through a reseller. This idea became very popular since domain reselling is more profitable for both the registrar and the reseller, than an affiliate program, which is not that easy to manage, considering the amount of domains sold annually.
Being resellers, registrants are able to control all their resold domains under their own accounts and to set custom prices. Branding is allowed as well. Branding option may be useful, if a simple reseller wants to become a featured one or even a domain investor. Usually, domain resellers choose a range of TLDs they are going to offer. Usually, the so-called popular TLDs: .COM, .NET, .ORG, .INFO, .BIZ. Domains with such TLDs used to have a floating price on the market and considering the discounts, the registrars provide their resellers with, the latter can make a good profit out of it. Additionally, being a domain reseller, a hosting reseller can make such marketing moves as free domain provision for the top hosting plan.
Summary
Reselling is a nice small business solution for those who do not have their own platform to start an own independent company. Such business, however, is a perfect launch pad, so it should be organized so, that it would look professional. We hope, that tips we publish will help you with improvement of your business. Next time we are going to bring out more ideas on how to improve your reseller business, as it may grow into a standalone company one day.