Archives for September 2004

Web Hosting Resource Kit – Editor’s Opinion 7/2004 

An article on News.com yesterday talked about a web host (or data center provider) to have all his servers and equipment powered by green energy. Solar and wind powered web hosting? Is that the market of the future? Is it a niche market? Or is it a hoax? The idea to power always on equipment with just solar power sounds not very promising. If your business depends on 24/7/365 availability of a web server – can you trust mother nature and her helpers to provide the ‘juice’ to power these machines long enough? I consider this business model not really as a viable option for the masses. Nobody expects the majority of web hosts to move to a ‘greener’ data center soon.

However – look at the marketing effect of this project. This company gets free publicity all over the place. They are trying something completely new. Something that has never been there before. They sure will get more attention than what other hosts will ever get in 3 life times. That is what we call free advertising. Now they just need to funnel this publicity into the right channels to really profit from it.

For us normal web hosts we can learn a little bit from this marketing stunt. Sometimes doing something really in a different way can get us the needed attention to have our business thrive and prosper. Think about it. Even a nice, free marketing blitz in local newspapers, radio, and TV would probably bring you a big bunch of new clients. Need something to think about? Maybe donate a new server to a local college or school or a charity. You get the idea ….

Until next time.

Christoph Puetz

Web Hosting Resource Kit – Editor’s Opinion 6/2004 

Web Hosting Resource Kit – Editor’s Opinion 5/2004 

Hello everyone,

The labor day week is over – back to work.

This week was the week of free .info domain name registrations all over the place. The offer itself is very compelling and interesting. Go and get your name registered while it lasts. 😉

Overall – this special offer is just part of the overall trend that we see in the domain name registration business. Discount prices wherever you look. 1 & 1 offered $2.99 .us registrations – an offer even below their rock bottom prices for normal domain name registrations ($5.99). Yahoo dropped its domain name registration fees significantly, too.

What does this mean to us web hosts? Well, if the broad masses hear about this offer we could see a significant need for more business. 🙂 But before you order the next server – let’s have a look at this whole domain name thing first.

Are you offering domain name registrations at all? Do you give your .info domain names away for free? Do you offer special incentives for .info customers? Are you hunting down those .info customers? If your answer has been “No” to these questions you need think about how to get these new clients to your website. You also need to consider that not every newly registered .info name needs hosting or that the customer is not a professional related to web hosting or web design himself. But there is more – why are the names given away for free at all? Is it just that the .info registry wants to increase its presence? Or will the large registration providers who offer tons of services (domain pointing, domain parking, email hosting, etc.) be the winners of this special offer. Most likely they will. If you register 25 new names – how fast can you actually turn them into websites and develop them? In most cases you just register a name to have it. Then those clients will think about what really to do with the newly registered name. So, the impact to the normal web host will be very limited.

But here is something to learn from the situation. The message mentioned above spread through several forums on the Internet in light speed. Imagine how many new .info domain names were probably registered in a few hours. Got some dollars left in your marketing budget for 2004? Why not set up a nice marketing campaign with free domain name registration.

A domain name costs around $5 – $9 to register – depending on where you buy them in wholesale. Now spread the word in some forums where Internet freebies are discussed. Example: Limit the number of available free domain names to 100 or 200 – depending on you word your marketing campaign you should be able to get tons of visitors to your website. Now also offer a special web hosting package – no matter if it is a new domain name or an existing.

The above exercise could also be done with a $1.00 domain name registration special to keep the advertising cost low. But in general – the cost to get customers to your website is very low and you will actually receive very targeted traffic.

So, by looking at the big guys playing their games you can easily use a similar approach to start a great marketing campaign. 🙂

Let us know how that works out.

Until the next time …

Regards,

Christoph

Web Hosting Resource Kit – Editor’s Opinion 4/2004

We mentioned it already in our first column this year when we were researching providers for a dedicated server. Some providers seemed to avoid the basic rules of doing business and were selling servers lke crazy. Sale after sale went live but no additional resources got added as well as they ‘forgot’ to look at the cash flow.

Last week a nightmare came true for many web hosts and ‘owners’ of a dedicated server. Their provider Angelnetworkz got caught with the pants down – and the providers of Angelnetworkz did cut the line. No payments, no servers. The real victims were the clients of Angelnetworkz. Their servers shutdown without a warning. No time to get a the latest backup of the server – many businesses at risk.

An incident like this should teach us all a good lesson. Growth of a business or the economy is good. Excessive growth is not good. Look at the federal reserve bank. If our eonomy grows too fast they will raise the interest rates to cool down the excessive growth. An overheating of the economy would raise inflation and cause more problems down the road. It works the same way for a business. If your business is growing too fast you will run into problems. You will not be able to support your existing clients properly because the growth rate is just too fast. You will have difficulties keeping things like cash flow under control as well as managing the growth with the existing resources. You will have problems recognizing mistakes and to correct them. Controlled growth is the way to do it. Remember – a business is not supposed to be a race car – it’s more like a vessel going from A to B.

Why should you grow your business slowly? Slow, but continous growth allows you to allocate resources properly. It allows you proper financial planning and to make corrections when necessary. It is easier to correct mistakes that everyones makes this way. Remember – you are building a business that is supposed to last. It will be an assett at one point and hopefully worth a lot. Guess what – a one-year old business with 1,000 customers will be less worth than a 3 year old business with 1,000 customers. Why? The 3 year old business is already on its way to establish a brand. It has proven that it can last for a while. It is build on a solid foundation. The 1 year old business has yet to prove that it will survive a downturn. There is more to it but you get the idea.

Another dedicated server provider who was doing the same fast growth thing like Angelnetworkz did get some bad publicity on well-known web forums for a lack of support. If you as a business put new customers on a higher level than your existing customers, your business will fail soon. Do not ignore your existing clients. They are the ones that already generate income for you. Ignoring your income will eventually result in a loss of the same.

I hope all clients of these 2 providers will soon be up and running again. I hope that the failure of 2 businesses will actually open the eyes for other ones to reconsider the way they are doing business.

Have a great week.

Christoph