Web hosting – Do you need it to even read this blog post further?

We have been talking a lot about online businesses since years now, and ways to make it successful. One of the major factors is the web hosting that is essential part of any online business. If you are into online business, blogging, making money online, you should certainly read further but if you are not, it would be worth spending few minutes to increase your knowledge.

Why you need web hosting reviews?

There are thousands of web hosting companies around and not all of them are good, legitimate or reliable. I myself have been cheated by a known company for more than a month’s dedicated server fees. I wish I could have read the web hosting reviews before I would have decided upon supporting my friend’s decision on selecting a web hosting company. So in short, web hosting companies might cost a hole in your pocket.

The biggest difficulty is to choose the best web hosting service! I will tell you the reason why it’s difficult; once you enter into the market of web hosting services, everyone looks cool, everyone offers millions of free domain names, a billion data bandwidth and trillion bytes of disk space. Won’t it be obvious for any new webmaster to get lost in it.

That’s where the reviews are born in this web world. You need to have a friendly website which will give you honest web hosting reviews and make sure you are getting the best deal and all freebies along with your hosting packages. For example, check this out – Free domain forever, Host unlimited domains, $50 Yahoo search marketing credit, 300 GB Disk space, 3 TB traffic for $6.95 per month – Sounds like a great deal, isn’t it? Yes, to me too. It’s just that I will take a step forward and read the independent review about this hosting service and see what experience other webmasters had with their great service. And yes, it certainly helped me to read these 10 independent reviews of the web hosting services and make my decision in like 2 minutes.

My friends tried to grab a dedicated server deal for his clients, and I took help of webhostinggeeks to find the best deal available out there. Why would I have done that? When we were planning to spend $100-200 per month on the dedicated web hosting, we could not take risk at all with any web hosting. Every company claims to have money back policy if not happy with the service, but that’s where we were cheated earlier where the company denied to give money back when we cancelled the service within 7 days of booking.

I wish I could have known about webhostinggeeks.com before, and probably would have saved myself from lot of headache of selecting a web hosting that suits my needs and budget and our wasted money too. As they claim, they have this list of 10 top web hosting services that are cheap professional web hosting services as per your need; all hosting plans include at least one free domain name registration and 30 day money back guarantee in their own words. At least I have heard good things about the companies they have been recommending.

Help go green!

With current movement of Go Green, many of us prefer to go for green things. So why not to go for green hosting too. I did not know that some of the web hosting companies out there are providing green hosting. WHG talks about such green hosting companies for your benefit.

If you are looking for new web hosting right away, don’t forget to check the options available at webhostinggeeks.com. It’s worth checking the options and selecting the best one available.

I have tried many webhosting companies not only for me but for my friend who run a web development business for his clients. I had good experiences and bad experiences both from different companies. I evaluated many of them and finally I figured out few companies that I would always rely on. One of them is dreamhost!

I myself has tried bluehost and dreamhost both, and I found them competitive with wafer thin difference. Today, I am talking about dreamhost, because suddenly they reminded me that I am member of their Dreamhost rewards program. Actually, I saw a paypal payment received from Dreamhost today for the rewards program which I had completely forgotten about. Somebody probably registered with Dreamhost (right decision I would say) through my referral link giving me all the money in affiliate income.

I thought why not to share some of them with my readers. Today, I created promo code “lifeiscolourful” worth $50 that would allow me to share the affiliate income with you bringing down your cost of annual fee to $69.40 for first year. That is only $5.78 per month instead of their regular charges of $9.95 per month for 1 year booking.

On saving this much money, what you get in return is -

• World class web hosting and customer service. Believe me their customer service never failed me in these many years, and that’s what I love them. In many small technical issues as well, they were few hours away from me to get the things setup.
• Unlimited bandwidth and Unlimited + 50 GB diskspace. They are not picking up at you, but seriously it’s worth reading their explanation about that + 50GB diskspace in their unlimited policy.
• Unlimited MySQL databases
• Email account unlimited… Oh my god, there are so many unlimited things for only $5-6 per month. You can make this money by just doing a quick review at any paid for review websites.

Cummon, don’t save so much money that you still need to stick to blogspot and can’t run wordpress just because you don’t have your own web hosting. Get this one right away using our lifeiscolourful promo code worth $50.

Remember to get the $50 off, you would need to use the promo code “lifeiscolourful” without quotes. If you don’t use it, and sign up – you would be charged full amount for the annual fee and it’s irreversible and coupon can’t be applied again.

If you’re like the majority on the Internet who are high on enthusiasm and low on cash, you’re more than likely to go in for a shared host when you want to get your website up and working. While shared hosting is inexpensive and relatively trouble free, you want to make sure that you’re not stuck with a lousy host who doesn’t care a hoot for you or your site. To that end, here are a few aspects you need to be aware of before committing to your shared hosting provider:

• Never pay fees upfront: Even if there’s a money-back guarantee and you’re offered a sizeable discount. This is to protect your investment in case something goes drastically wrong and you’re forced to change hosts midstream. Wait until you’re totally satisfied with your host’s performance before you pay your monthly bill.
• Avoid resellers if you can: While there’s no problem with resellers per se, you never know who they rent their servers from. If any link in the line of resellers should fail, then your site is in jeopardy. Your reseller has no control over issues like uptime and redundancy, so if you don’t know who holds the reins of your server, it’s best you don’t sign up with them.
• Ask about blacklisted IP addresses: A shared host means you share space with various other site owners, some of whom may be in the business of porn or other illegitimate acts. Since you share the same IP address, if any of the sites that share space on your server are blacklisted as spam, you’re likely to figure on that blacklist too. Some hosts have no qualms about redistributing IP addresses that have been put on spam lists, so check carefully before you sign up.
• Stay away from over-sellers: A shared connection of 50 to 200 gigabytes should be enough for your hosting needs on a shared server, so if your host promises a whole lot more, it’s best to look for another host.
• Check database limits: If you run forums on your site, you must have at least 100 megabytes of storage for your database, so ensure this limit with your host before you subscribe. Also find out how many database connections run concurrently; if it’s more than 200, you’ll want to take your site elsewhere.
• Test support options: If there’s a 24/7 helpline promised, call at an unearthly hour to test the response of customer support personnel. Email your query and see how quickly the reply comes in. A good host must provide equally good support; if not, it’s time to check out the competition.

This article is contributed by Sarah Scrafford, who regularly writes on the topic of best web design degree. She invites your questions, comments and freelancing job inquiries at her email address: sarah.scrafford25@gmail.com.

We have talked about triple.com almost 8-9 months back when they were offering free domains to top 333 players of the game and free hosting to top 25 players. My blog must have referred many webmasters to triple that time, but unfortunately there was no affiliate program in place then I believe. If it was there, I must have missed it that I normally don’t.

As per my understanding, recently the same reliable web hosting company has launched an affiliate program that gives you 30% affiliate commission. It’s just great, read on to know why!

Why it’s worth referring webmaster visitors to triple.com?

In last one year, triple.com has come up as very reliable web hosting company. They may not be offering the web hosting and domain names for dirt cheap price but remember “cheap quality product” is a myth and that said, their prices are reasonable with quality support. I have used their service in past, and their support quality is one of the best around the web hosting space. You always would like to recommend something good to your visitors, and here is your chance to become a good webhosting affiliate program.

Well, you are looking for buying some good domain names or hosting, head on to triple.com then!

How much money you can make in this program?

You can make 30% of all the payments made by the customers through the triple.com. Well, it’s lot of money just to refer webmasters who would like to buy services like domain names, web hosting, SSL certificates.

Moreover, you can make 15% extra on the income of referred webmasters. Remember, it’s not one time money like other programs, but it would give you recurring money when your referred webmasters keep spending.

Let’s take an example, I have been spending around $120 in my web hosting expenses, and around $300-400 in domain name renewals (Yes, I do have arsenal of good domain names). Now if you would have referred me, you would have been making $100-150 guaranteed every year from me alone. If I assume, not all webmasters are domainers like me, they would be still spending $100-150 every year – and that gives you $30-50 from them.

Even if you refer 2 webmasters each month to buy their web hosting and domain name, with lowest possible expenses on web hosting and domain name, they would be spending $50 each every year. So around 20 referred webmasters every year would spend at least $1000 minimum adding $350 in your affiliate income. If even few of them are like me spending much more every year, you are all set for residual income from this program. Now as per your capacity of referring webmasters, calculate your affiliate income. Oh! but before you go on dreaming, make sure you register to their affiliate program as webmaster first.

Give away prices and Increase your popularity

You must have been realized by now, that new bloggers like to have free web hosting. You might get better idea about this if you check out the search count for this term in search engines. If your visitor base is full of bloggers and webmasters, you can hold a contest and give away web hosting or free domain names to contest winners from the affiliate money you have earned from triple affiliate program. How about that ? Last year, I had won only a domain in one of the contest, and I was very happy even if that was only worth $10 prize. So I guarantee you that free domains and free hosting are some great prizes for new bloggers.

At the end, I would like to add one note for you. See guys, recently I had faced a huge financial set back because of poor support and lack of commitment to customers from Hostnine web hosting company (Did I promise you a review of facts about this hosting company very soon, yes – it’s on the way!). In such cases, I request rather plead you to go for web hosting companies that are committed to go extra miles for customer satisfaction. I am not pushing you, but I know the owners of triple.com and I must say – triple.com has one of the best customer support around and are committed for your satisfaction.

You must be thinking why Life is Colourful stresses on Web hosting rating companies. It might be a third or forth review of a web hosting rating company over here and that’s not without a reason guys!

Why we should check out web hosting ratings

One of my clients, recently has been literally duped by Hostnine web-hosting for $149. What was his mistake, he did not bother about there are no reviews about Hostnine around the web, he did not bother to take my suggestion seriously to go for reliable and popular web hosting rather than a newly established, no past records company just because they were offering something more than the popular one. I am not saying there would not be happy customers with hostnine, but I am sure there are not 100% happy customers as well. Being webmasters, we are bothered about even a single negative review of any service we opt for. The 99% positive reviews don’t help. This is altogether a big topic to discuss with you, and I am going to post our experience with Hostnine in coming week, watch for it – how we were duped for $149 by Hostnine with proofs of their lame customer service.

I wish this example could have cost my client little less amount than whooping $149 to learn this lesson. That’s why I stress on looking for web hosting reviews before you put your money on stake. Though we cannot rely on the ratings that are available on such sites “completely”, at least they would give us an idea about what kind of opinion the users of respective web hosting have. We are smart enough to check more than one places for reviews of any service we are going for.

Web Hosting Rating Services
I have added webhostingrating.com in my arsenal of review websites, before I suggest any web hosting to my clients. They are trying to build a biggest web hosting directory, and yes as a responsible web master – I am going to contribute to this directory with reviews of web hosting companies I tried so far like Dreamhost, Hostnine, Easy CGI Godaddy etc. You must be wondering how I try all these web hosting companies. I have bunch of clients who like me to help them to buy web hosting and set up their websites in there. Sometimes, I have to go as per their requirements and keep on changing web hosting companies and at times we fall in trap of companies like Hostnine. There is a lesson for me as well, I would not ever give up on my opinion of going for reputed web hosting companies; whatever my clients suggest.

There were few ways, I built up my knowledge base about web hosting companies.

Reading Web hosting tutorials and research

If you are a newbie, web hosting tutorials help to understand what to look for in any hosting service. I do the research by trying out some of those companies on my own – fortunately my client base provides me an opportunity to try out various companies and build up my knowledge base

Browsing Web Hosting Rating companies

Though I don’t completely rely on ratings as they could be bought from users – but still there are 100s of webmasters like me and you who want to honestly contribute our opinion and reviews. And that’s how we can find out lot of reliable information in here. Webhostingrating.com claims that the user reviews are unedited and there is no harm in believing what they claim initially. Moreover, we can see what are the Top 10 web hosting companies each year. This would help us to get a quick glance on what companies are excelling in what area.

Even I look at web hosting awards given to the hosting services, verify that information and keep those companies in mind while suggesting to clients.

So the bottom line is make sure that you go through web hosting rating before you decide upon any web hosting for yourself or your clients. I am right now all set to contribute to this web hosting directory that is supposed to become the largest searchable web hosting directory by contacting them through their contact form – please contribute your reviews there as well! Currently they don’t have direct way to contribute your ratings, but eventually they should have it soon.