Setting up your own web server is not best approach for an individual or a small/medium business. You can rent space for your web site from a web hosting provider at a far lower cost.

If your web site is text-based, you won't need much web space - text takes almost no space at all! Select a provider that supports CGI and other advanced features that you think you might use in future. Better safe than sorry! And in this category, BrandBlast offers our Bronze package for only $9.95 / month!

If you're developing a web site for a small/medium business or organization, you should carefully evaluate possibility of further expansion in future. It will be a bit of a hassle if you discover later that you need a database for your web site, but your provider doesn't offer it.

If you're planning to sell a product (or products) online, look for a provider who can provide you with a commercial web solution such as a Merchant Account, Shopping Cart Software and a secure online payment system certificate that is compatible with their hosting platform. Choosing a large web space with a high bandwidth allowance is a good idea in this case.

Data Transfer allowance really depends on how many visitors you're expecting and how well you promote your web site. For most sites, 3 to 5 GB should suffice, and are provided by our Platinum and Diamond plans.

With all hosting plans, there will be some features that you need and some offered that you don't need. Be sure to focus on essentials that are required to launch your website.

You may want all nice extras but will you use them? It's a good idea to choose a host that will allow you to expand and upgrade your plan as and when your website grows. If you want to start selling online, for example, an additional e-commerce option for an extra fee will be easier and quicker to implement than looking for and transferring to a new host.

BrandBlast's plans differ only in their web space and data transfer allowance, features such as shopping carts, website builders, technical support, and much more are available as standard options on all of our hosting plans, you can upgrade or downgrade plans at any time, and manage multiple domains from one control panel. View a demo of our control panel.

Lesson Four: Evaluate their support service?

Customer support is very important - often critical. To cover yourself from start, take some time to look around at several providers' web sites to see what their support policies are.

Email them with a few sample questions to check speed and quality of their responses. Nothing guarantees that they will respond at same speed and manner if you do become a customer, but this approach is quite accurate and telling about 90% of time.

Look at a number of providers' web sites to see how they handle support. Many providers provide lists of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and support documents on their web sites.

Closing Thoughts

Selecting a provider with many years of experience is a good decision. Look at provider's web page for a list of its customers and check out some of their pages. Take a minute to view some of BrandBlast's current hosting and webdesign clients.

Nowadays, web hosting market is full of resellers. Even well-known providers can be resellers of a large web hosting provider or wholesaler services. Sometimes, they are resellers of resellers. Choosing a reseller provider is not always a bad idea. The reseller may provide you with faster technical support service. They usually offer other services too, such as web design or web maintenance.

To investigate reliability of providers, we recommend you check contents of their web sites. Experienced providers should have a large web site containing several pages of services and support documents, plus their phone and fax numbers, as well as their physical address.

You have gained valuable knowledge in this quick lesson, we at BrandBlast wish you best in your search for a website hosting provider.

--Solution--: Run Solo or Top sponsor ads. These ads get more exposure. They are exclusive (solo mailings) or only have 2-3 (sponsor ads) per issue spaced out between content.

Mistake #4: Going for Large Subscriber Bases

Large subscriber stats are impressive. 30,000 subscribers is a ton of eye balls and potential to return a profit is greatly increased. Well, this is completely untrue.

A recent test we ran took our breath away. We spent $180 on a solo ad to a subscriber base in a general marketing publication of 30,000 subscribers. We ran that same solo ad for $65 in an ezine about website design strategies with a subscriber base of 1200.

Ad #1 to 30,000+ brought back $0!

Ad #2 to 1200 specifically targeted subscribers brought back $900 in pure profit!

--Solution--: While tons of subscribers may seem like right way to go, before you invest money, check out smaller, highly targeted ezines and test your ads in those. You'll save money and odds are your returns will be greater.

Mistake #5: Running Your Ad Once

When I first started advertising in ezines, I would run one ad one time. If it didn't produce results, I would switch ezines and run ad again. This was how I tested ad. Many business owners are doing same thing today. By running ad only once, you're cutting your chances to profit in half.

Running it 2-3-4 times, even if first run didn't make a profit, gives your ad more exposure. Readers will "think" it's producing because you ran it more than one time, therefore other subscribers must have thought it was worth looking at, helping your ad produce.

--Solution--: Run every ad at least twice. Then instead of switching ezines, switch ads. Run that ad twice. Do this with all your ads. You'll be suprised to find ezine actually produces profits for one ad but not another. So now you can run that ad 4-5-6 times and squeeze more profits from ezine.

Ezine advertising is profitable. It takes testing, tracking, solo or top sponsor placments and more testing to pin point ezines with high sales ratio's. Don't give up on ezine just because a successful ad from another test didn't work. Place another ad, test it, test another and so on.

All you need is 5-10 profitable ezines and you'll increase sales and profits for your business.