Your Hosting Account

In order to become a successful affiliate marketer, you must get a hosting account to build your blogging empire. Everyone has said it but if you’re new to the whole industry, you may not understand why it’s necessary.

What is Web Hosting?

Whenever you browse the web, you’re using your computer to look at files made by another person or computer. When you go to a site like Google.com with your browser, you enter a location in the address bar and it appears instantly.

By entering the URL in your browser, you’re telling your computer the name of the particular set of files you want to read. Just like all electronic files, they have to be kept on some type of storage device; your computer probably has at least one: a hard drive.

In order to show you those files, those storage devices have to be accessed by a computer other than yours. Those files are being hosted on another computer called a “host” or a “web host”. This is similar to a foreign exchange student. The student would stay at a “host family’s” house during their stay abroad.

Why Should I Use a Web Host?

There are a lot of people who feel adventurous enough to set up their own server and host their own website right from their home. Unless you are absolutely sure of what you’re doing and have the proper equipment available, this isn’t a valid option.

Internet Service Providers

Many Internet Service Providers have blocked the ability for your computer to act as a web host. Internet traffic is expected to be sent and received a certain way; if this doesn’t happen the way it’s supposed to happen, then it just won’t work.

You can think of it being similar to trying to plug a three-pronged electric plug into a two-pronged outlet; it won’t work unless you have a plug with two prongs or an outlet with three.

Internet traffic can be of any size, and if you are running a web server from your home, you could be taking away bandwidth from other people who may need to use it since bandwidth is shared in most areas.

You can think of bandwidth in terms of water for a community. Local water systems have a certain amount of water they can distribute to residences and businesses in the area; in periods of drought, everyone is told to conserve the water so there is enough water for everyone.

Consistent Service

Hosting companies will offer a guarantee to clients: they guarantee a 99% percent “uptime”. Uptime just refers to the ability to remain available for use. A website is experiencing “uptime” if you can access it and “downtime” if you can’t. Two important things can affect uptime: internet access and power.

If you manage to drop your modem and it breaks, then you will have no internet access. Any interruption of service will affect your uptime, and if you have a popular site then the loss of traffic could be substantial.

If there is a thunderstorm and your power goes out; then you will have no internet access. Sometimes it can take a long time for power to be restored and unless you have a generator you can expect to run out of power.

Hosting companies are protected from situations like these as they have computers hooked up to surge protectors, backup power generators, air-conditioning (because any electronic equipment runs better if it’s cold), and even security.

Other Considerations

There are other factors making your choice for web hosting unavoidable, and here they are: overhead and freedom.

Unnecessary Overhead

The costs of setting up and maintaining a web server can be costly in addition to require advanced technical knowledge; and if you have a limited budget this isn’t realistic since most hosting companies are very inexpensive. It’s must more cost effective to use a hosting company than to set one up yourself.

Freedom

If you use a free host for your blogs, such as WordPress or Blogger, you’ll have to abide by their rules. If you use a hosting company, you won’t be bound by those rules and you’ll only have to make sure it’s legal.

Finding a Host

Now that you’re convinced you need a web host, it’s time to find one and that is going to be really easy. There are several different kinds of hosting plans and you can think of them in terms of “tiers of service”; the more you pay the more services you get, either in terms of available bandwidth or storage.

The first requirement you have is that the server software should be Linux based. The server software is just the operating system similar to Windows or OSX for most home PCs and laptops.

In order to help demonstrate what I mean exactly, I’m going to use HostGator as the example site. All information is taken directly off their site.


Hosting Plans

A host computer is usually a special kind of computer that is very different from the computer that you use daily. You can think of it as a laptop that you can’t upgrade very well.

To keep costs low, hosting companies employ “cookie cutter” server technology: they are ordered en masse and thrown into a server management system.

There are several basic types of hosting plans (listed from lowest to highest cost in terms of subscription level, maintenance, and included services): virtual, reseller, virtual private, and dedicated.

Virtual (Shared)

The subscription fee you pay per month is a “rental”; in this use the server is like an apartment building and your websites would be tenants. All of your sites can be easily access by you through a single file manager, but all sites are considered extensions of your main site (or the site you used to sign up with the hosting company).

For HostGator, the basic shared hosting packages are Hatchling, Baby, and Business. Hatchling allows you to have only one domain; Baby allows for unlimited domains , and Business allows for SSL and dedicated IP address.

The advantage to this kind of plan is that it’s low cost; but you can’t have specialized server statistics (that show detailed traffic) but can only see the last 100 or so visitors to your site.

Reseller (Shared)

This allows you separate each of your websites so you can keep track of traffic, emails, and other important information individually. This also allows you to sell space on your server that you’re renting to recover some income.

HostGator’s Reseller Hosting tiers include unlimited domains, dedicated IP addresses for an additional cost, and allows private name servers, such as ns1.yourdomain.com instead of ns1.hostgator.com. The price breaks for each plan reflect storage space on the server and bandwidth available.

The advantage here is the ability to isolate your domains and more services are included to make administration easier if you’re going to resell services. With custom name servers, it allows for more credibility and professionalism for you and your clients.

Virtual Private Server (Shared)

Also called VPS, this is a shared server that doesn’t act like it’s shared; you can change anything you want on the server without worrying it’s going to cause system failures for the other users also sharing the space.

VPS Hosting with HostGator use higher grade machines than the Reseller Plans and price scaling reflects CPU speed and RAM in addition to disk space and available bandwidth. You can also add up to 16 unique IP addresses.

The biggest advantage is being able to customize anything you want on your server; there are no restrictions on what you are allowed to do with it as long as it’s legal. You pay less than a dedicated server because although it looks dedicated, all of the resources, space, and processing power is still shared.

Dedicated (Not Shared)

A dedicated hosting account has everything it needs for one account only; it’s dedicated to the customer that purchases it outright or is leased or rented for more than a virtual server since only one account is allowed on it.

HostGator’s dedicated servers include 5 dedicated IPs at the lowest price break and all the others have 13. Other differences once again include processing power, RAM, storage, and bandwidth.

You have complete control over this particular choice but you are going to pay for it; depending on available hardware, this could be over $400 per month.

Your Requirements

You probably don’t need much processing power; but you shouldn’t get the cheapest either. Not only do low tier plans (i.e., Baby Croc) offer very little freedom and organization, but you should make the right choice for the future of your successful business.

Here are some very good criteria that you’ll need to measure all hosting companies for a complete comparison: these are the very minimums:

  • Service and Support that is always available. (24/7/365)

You want your website to be up and running 100% of the time and your hosting company should always be ready to troubleshoot, diagnose, and fix any issues that come up.

  • Linux OS

WordPress works best with Linux (as opposed to Windows) and many plugins require Linux as the server software.

  • WHM/cPanel

WHM (Web Host Manager) manages your sites easily and is only available at the Reseller tier and above. This sets the foundation for a separation type structure between your sites which can be individually managed by cPanel.

  • Fantastico

Fantastico is a plugin for cPanel that makes installing software like WordPress very easy.

  • PHP 5.0+

PHP5 is required for WordPress to run.

  • Adequate RAM allocated to PHP

You should get a plan that includes 64MB of RAM allotted to PHP5. WordPress plugins require sufficient RAM to run properly; this is similar to your computer’s operations.

  • Adequate Space

For every 10 GB of storage on your host, you will have a maximum of 15 blogs that you can create.

  • Adequate Bandwidth

You can comfortably host 15 blogs on your server if you have at least 3 GB of available bandwidth.

Places to Try

There are several hosting companies you can choose from, but here are three that are very good for entry level accounts:

1. HostGator
Obviously the most used as an example, this is also the favorite among internet marketers.

2. Site5
Similar in price and support to HostGator

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