Article Surfing Archive

Most">All of the steps we've discussed in other articles need to be done in preparation for building your list. But there's one more thing you're going to need to do. It's something you can do this afternoon. Get your first web host.

A web host is kind of like the computer that stores your website. It's not your home computer; it's a server that's usually somewhere else and what is does is host the new domain name that you just registered and makes it accessible to the World Wide Web.

When choosing a web host, you have to be sure of three things:

First, you have to know that the host is reliable and won't disappear overnight, taking your web site with it. Unless you were smart and backed up your data completely the night before (which hardly anyone does), you'll have to start all over again from step one or from your last back-up.

Beware of very low hosting prices, too. I've seen some for $1.99 a month! But stay away. Most of these businesses don't last long. Imagine having your list capture page up and running and everything's going along well. Suddenly, your list isn't building anymore and when you go to your squeeze page, lo and behold, it's nowhere to be found!

The second thing you want to be sure of is that the web host is up 99.9% of the time. Every server goes down sooner or later. It's just how things go on the Internet, but your web host should have very minimal downtime. Why? Because when their site is down, so is yours.

Imagine this scenario: You have worked for six months on an info product, you've built buzz, you've crossed all the i's and dotted all the t's. OK, so vice versa. But... it's launch day! You go to your computer that morning and EHHHHHHHhhhh!!! Your site is down. There's no email from your web host telling you the server would be down, and you start to panic. You call your host and can get no answer because they have a recorded message. You can't email them because the server is down. What to do! What to do?

You see? It's very important to have a reputable host that has almost total uptime and back-up servers, in case there's an issue. You should be building your list, every single day.

Third, contact the host company before actually signing up and see what their customer service is like. If they don't like stupid newbie questions, run away, very fast. Your host should be ready, willing, and able to answer any question you need answers for in a kind way, immediately. Or, if they can't answer the question, they should be willing to get back to you quickly. Support should be readily available.

Choose a reliable, reasonable web host with helpful tech support, and you'll probably stay with them forever. Once you start building your list and doing more and more, you may want even more than one host, but that's far into the future, if you're just starting out. For now, go to MyFirstRealWebsite and start building that list. Do it today!