In terms of what to backup, it couldn't be simpler. Imagine that your hard drive has just died, right now, and you can't access any of information on it. What do you wish you'd backed up? Now's time to do so. Setting up a good backup system and routine shouldn't take longer than an hour or so. Doing so could save you days of work, chaos and lost income in future.

If something critical happens to your main machine, and you can't fix it yourself in minutes or hours, what then? Having a separate "spare" machine might be worth looking into. It doesn't have to be a top of range powerhorse; an old 486 will be enough to at least deal with emails and process orders, while your main machine gets fixed. If you already have one or more in use, then you might want to look into how usable they are as a spare machine. Do you have some way of transferring your backup data into them for instance? A parallel-port ZIP drive is an odd shaped lifesaver, but it does trick. A little forethought can make difference between an inconvenience and a full-blown disaster.

There's also no shortage of software to make your life easier. Personally I swear by PowerQuest's Drive Image, which allows me to make a complete image of whole of my hard drive. If my system dies unexpectedly and can't be fixed, I can use it to restore either a just-installed fresh Windows 2000, or my system as it was one or two months ago. This should take no more than half an hour - think how long it takes to format your hard drive, install operating system, then all your software. Time and money well spent.

Is Your Web Connection Reliable?

The next link in chain is your web connection. Almost all my work involves some use of web. Take away my internet connection and I'm blind, deaf and soon to be broke! Because of this I have a permanent high-speed connection with one of main phone companies in Finland. I also have a separate account with a different server, that can use my old 56 modem on a regular phone line. It costs me all of $9 a month, but if/when my permanent connection goes down, I can still work - a little slower, but it's certainly usable. I look at it as a very cheap form of insurance.

A few months ago I experienced a real-life nightmare. My website went down one morning; site was unavailable, and email was getting swallowed-up. That's right - not bouncing, but somehow vanishing. So anyone writing to me assumed I'd received email but never replied. My server assured me that problem would be fixed within a few hours. It wasn't, in fact it still wasn't fixed a week later. This problem cost me dearly in time and income. It won't happen again.

I now have a backup site, on a different server. My main site is at www.sharewarepromotions.com, but if this ever goes down for any length of time, a letter will go out to all my clients, and everyone who has ever contacted me, telling them to use www.shareware-promotions.com site and email addresses. The site itself isn't yet finished but a basic version is already in place, and email is fully functional. If I ever need it in an emergency it's there, and I even have letter ready to go out. I pay around $4 a month for web space, taking advantage of low price and reliability available from SWREG.ORG. If I never have to use it, I'll be happy. If my main site goes down, it'll be business as usual, and this time I won't lose any income. Again, a very cheap form of insurance. Be prepared.

A few final common-sense tips. If you have a large number of downloads each day, don't rely on one single location for your files. If they go down, you go down. Also make sure you have contact details for your server. If your server's site also become unavailable, you won't be able to find their emergency phone number on their site either. Keep these details somewhere safe.

Think through every single problem that could happen, and work out exactly what you'd do if each should actually occur. While chances of your office being hijacked are fairly remote, chance of you experiencing some sort of server or hardware problem are high. If website is a critical component of your business, and your business a main source of your income, then you don't want to wait until server goes down before looking for a new host and registering a domain name. Be seen, be sold.

5: Special Offers Make sure to have a section on top part of your home page devoted to featuring your current special offers and sales items. In fact if you happen to have a lot of special offers you can just feature most popular ones and then make a separate web page that shows all of your sales items.

6: Shopping Carts People want checkout process to go as quickly and smoothly as possible, so make sure that your visitors are always just one click away to checkout. Try to reduce checkout process to as few steps as possible. Make sure to offer multiple payment options such as credit cards, Paypal, online checks, mail orders, and such. When you no longer have a product in stock make sure to either remove it from your site or clearly mark it as “out of stock”. There is nothing more irritating for a customer to go through whole checkout process only to find out that you no longer carry item they ordered.

7: Affiliate Program Do you have your own affiliate program? The most successful web sites have one and you should too. By starting your own affiliate program you will develop an increasing online sales force where you only pay them when a sale is made. There is really no risk and it is one of best low cost effective advertising methods that you can use.

If you put these tips into practice you will notice a drastic increase in your sales and web site revenue.