What do I need a web presence for?

Before you go any further in building a web presence, you need to answer an obvious question: “What do I need a web presence for?” This also includes the answer to: “What am I going to do with my website after I publish it?”.You may not realise it but answering these questions about your existing or upcoming web presence would clarify a lot about whom your target audience is and what your message and content should be. You may be surprised by the fact that your viewers are actually coming to your site for a reason you didn’t even think about while developing your site or your marketing message.

What do I need a web presence for?

Just because you want to find your name with Google
Getting yourself out there is probably the lowest investment you will make. Having an URL on your business card also makes a good impression and allows people to see a bit of you and discover how you think, even if it’s only a marketing image of you, and make an impression about yourself as your website acts like your most detailed business card.

Create a constantly available interface (Provide information)
Let everybody know who you are. Provide information about your organization, business, products, goals, history, ideas and person. Anything that others may be looking for in you is the subject of a web site providing constant availability of your message and an entry point to exploring more about your message.

Promote your products
Providing information about your products and/or services, FAQ lists and contact information for visitors to ask questions and get answers, helps businesses even if the product itself is not sellable online. Many businesses provide information about the products or services they are selling from a physical store.

Promote your interests, hobbies, ideas, activities, groups you belong to
You are not out there for the gold but because you have a passion (backpacking, basketball and swimming, cooking…). You can share this with millions of people and you most likely need a BLOG.

Write your own column or provide Information
Information is a valuable commodity. You can make it widely available with a blog or an information specific web site or you can sell it to “members only” or “subscribers” in an easy to provide electronic format.

Get people in your store
Provide information about products and services as well as opening hours, a few representative pictures and location information, maybe allow printing a discount coupon, and people will be walking into your store more often.

Make some money, affiliate marketing
You don’t have your own products or services but you can still create sales by affiliating your web presence to an existing online store like the one I have at Amazon or the affiliation to a hosting service like 1and1. Buying from a real store is still generating the most sales, but the internet gains ground every year in an accelerating rhythm.

If you sell something, take the money
There are quite a few online money services you can subscribe to and you are instantly capable of accepting credit cards and provide a virtual shopping basket. Most of the companies providing Credit Card services give you the shopping basket that you easily integrate in your website. You can provide an easy to complete checkout point and get the money fast.

Create presentations and demos of your software or e-book
Create presentations of your products or the software you develop. Provide a few chapters of your book in electronic format (usually PDF) or publish your weekly flyer online.

Provide technical and customer support
Customers always appreciate a company or a vendor that stands behind its products. Provide FAQ’s and Knowledge base articles. User Manuals and User Stories, a discussion forum and a support email address can greatly reduce the number of time-consuming support calls you receive.

Live Large, Retire Rich
Certainly you may hear that the internet is the new El Dorado. It’s definitely NOT Dorothy’s Yellow Brick Road and it’s not a gold mine either. It is, however, possible to make nice profits in the cyber world. Most of the money is made through sales. You can sell services and products, information, ads, digital products (photos, videos) and cyber real-estate (space on the web site).
This is a real arena and competition is fierce. You need to do your research before you start selling online, especially if you’re selling your own product. There are a few standard marketing questions you have to answer here, like:
Is there a market for your product or information?
Can you sell your product online (buy-download or buy-ship sale)?
With a continuous attention to promoting your space online and a constant Search Engine Optimisation you can make a nice profit online.

Beware of hosting scams

If the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is!

Let’s begin exploring the hosting traps you may encounter out there by clarifying the basics about hosting and hosts.
All hosting companies enjoy the same basic limitations, no matter how much iron they throw at the problem. There is no mystical realm of unlimited CPU power and endless memory and storage capacity.
The average web site uses around 50 Megs of disk space (when you start your web site, you will probably be more than comfortable within 10 Megs) and not more than 1 Gig of bandwidth per month (unless your site is overwhelmed with images or is dealing with pictures or videos, lots of them).
Beware of “unlimited” space or bandwidth deals as there is no such thing as unlimited resources. Those deals often end in site termination by the hosting company under the excuse that “your site uses too many resources”. If the deal is too good to be refused, make sure you will require less than average resources to make sure your site stays up. Usually, one or two percent of the sites use all the bandwidth or the space advertised anyways so here is where those deals play.
Most people don’t realize that the bandwidth and space used have little to do with the server resources being used. The resource usage refers to the amount of CPU and RAM as well.
Keep in mind that the cheaper the plan is the more pages-per-server they have to pack to get their money’s worth.
Here is a nice list of Scams I stumbled upon: http://www.websitehostingchat.org/web-hosting-scams.html or just type “Web Hosting Scams” in Google.

Basically, if it says unlimited resources, stay away.

Stay away of hosting companies that offer FREE DOMAIN names, unless they specify that the domain name is “personal”, meaning it’s yours, not theirs. There are a few deals out there that offer free domain name bought by the hosting company and if you’re still with them after a year, they offer to transfer it to you. I just like to imagine what would happen if that domain would bring a six-seven figure revenue that year. Also beware of the transfer free, it usually costs more than buying the domain for a few years.

You may need to pay up front for a year to get a good price. There usually is something fishy behind that request. There are also reputable companies that offer that, but as an alternative and they encourage you to pay monthly. Just imagine paying less and getting less or nothing (downtime, sluggish servers, terrible support, low bandwidth) and being stuck with that plan, not even being able to move your domain to a decent host. You should only pay up front if you researched the company and it’s solid.

I encourage you to check the many “reviews” out there about the company you’re doing your research on. You may even start by checking out the reviews before starting the research on a particular hosting company. Recommendations and forums are usually the best places to get an insight on what a certain company is like, and those resources are usually made available by reputable hosting companies themselves so that you get as much info as you need, on them, before you buy.

This is but a glimpse of what the subject covers and it’s out here just to raise the question and make you do your research and buy from a trusted company or a company you were referred to by a trusted source.

How to choose a Hosting Company

Now that you have decided to go ahead and buy a domain, you have long struggled trying to find the right name for your business or blog and tried them out using availability tools like the one I'm making available on the home page of my blog, the next step is to go ahead and find the hosting company that offers the right plan for you.
If you are writing a blog, you might consider standing out by getting http://www.yourname.com/ (org.. net..). Usually a .com domain gravitates around $6 / yr, of course if you're looking into having the "music", "movies", "programming" or other obvious name domains, the road is bumpy unless your bank account stands out as well. In this case, you can get your domain and direct it towards a free bogging service like the one I'm using. There are hundreds of them out there and they all come with any kind of bells and whistles imaginable. If you're interested in having a business site, a free service does not cut it. You really need to have a distinct and direct link to your customers, even if you're not monetizing the traffic by displaying ads, a site that presents a "hosted for free by ..." footnote just makes me think about a garage company which I would not trust with my credit card number. That service is more suitable for public services and students and it actually makes the daycare (for example) look good as it shows that you, as a parent, are not paying for website hosting as well. There are too many to count hosting companies out there and you will find all price ranges, and all kinds of catchy features. One of the resources I stumbled upon in my search is http://www.findmyhosting.com/, a hosting plan search engine. I never used it as I got my insights on 1and1 the company I am currently using and I found that they are offering the technical solutions and the packages I was looking for. At a certain moment, it's time to stop shopping and go for it. I've put together a list of features and services that a hosting company should really offer if you have got a marketing plan or wish to sell a product or service of your own.
· Domain names - You may not need to buy your own domain, the hosting plan may come with it. There are many hosting companies offering a free included-in-hosting domain name for as long as you are their client, even with their basic, cheapest plan. WARNING, the registration of those domain names included in the plan should be Private (you should own it, not the hosting company)

· Money Back Guarantee - the longer the grace period, the better. You need a way out if it turns out you can't do there what you came for in the first place.


· 24/7 Support - Essential to hosting. Make sure they're not just offering a "comprehensive FAQ" and email support. They should offer live chat and phone support. You need a real person on the other end of the phone, not a recorded message.

· Control Panel – it’s your central neural system where you control your account. Here you manage email accounts, services, statistics (very important), affiliation links, search engine optimization, websites, domain parking and all other aspects of your hosting. Easy upgrade – you should think ahead and get a company that allows you to easily change your hosting plan as your needs may grow. “Think Big – start small”. You should always start with the basic plan though.

· Statistics – Comprehensive report on what pages were shown, how often and to whom (even the geographical location of your visitors is an interesting factor). You may be thinking your site targets the North American market but you get more European hits. That’s good; it’s just that you have to put on your marketing hat again. Statistics should be up-to-date and easy to browse through.

· CGI, PHP, ASP, FrontPage Server Extensions, Perl, other - What each of this things is part of some other conversation. You should be able though to use some server side application to get back the data from your customers (a guestbook, a form, orders, and suggestions). Those should be offered for free.

· Email Accounts – Now that you’ve got http://www.yourcompany.com/ you need an office@yourcompany.com email account that you can reach with your email client. That’s a POP account and you should be able to forward, auto-respond, check for viruses and filter out SPAM right there on the server.

· FTP Accounts – You need to be uploading files through your ftp client. Maybe not right away so the basic account may miss that, but make sure the next-in-line package offers that. If your business grows, you shall definitely need to upload files or the entire website developed with other tools than the branded Website Builders most hosting companies use.

· Shopping Cart and Password Protected areas, paired with SSL communication- If you are selling something, your hosting company should provide a shopping cart so that you develop your virtual store and provide secure checkout for the products your visitors are buying. You may also display your user Account information and reports and all this should be secured. This is not the starter plan but keep in mind you may get there.

· Newsletter – You are out there because you want to create a community. It makes good sense so make sure you can offer that without choosing the most expensive plan.
There are even more things to consider when you are choosing your hosting provider. Your site may grow and provide media streaming, photo printing (and thus require storage space), online gaming. Make sure your host allows you to grow or allows you to move to another host without hassle. If you are writing a blog, you will need Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and a blog system.

Domain Tasting

Domain Tasting is actually the subject of a US Federal Cybersquatting Lawsuit. You should be aware of the pros and cons when you go ahead and "taste" a domain as It's NOT yours yet. Owning a domain is a different story that just tasting one. You may come up with a great name for a domain and "the big sharks" out there may simply seize it for themselves. Read up on it here.

Domain Parking and related terms - Monetize your unused domain

Domain parking is an advertising practice to monetize traffic visiting an under-developed domain or web site. The domain name resolves to a page containing relevant advertising listings and links. These links will be targeted to the predicted interests of the visitor and may change dynamically based on the results that visitors click on. You may have a technology site, if your visitors click on the web programming links a lot, they will be presented with web programming links more often as the Ad system learns the dominant behavior of your visitors. The owner is paid based on usual pay per click rules (number of clicks and sales generated). The keywords for any given domain name provide clues as to the intent of the visitor before arriving.
Another use of domain parking is to be a placeholder of an existing site. A site has moved and instead of presenting the visitors with a "you will be redirected in 5 seconds or click here", it presents relevant ads to monetize the old address as well while your visitors begin to move to the new one.
There are 'one-click' and 'two-click' implementations, that generate ads without the selection of a keyword or may require the visitor to select a keyword that will bring in a list of ads. The ads are targeted based on the domain name or the keyword being selected by the user.
You can park your domain without monetizing but.. let's not go there. We all know the "Under Construction" animated gifs that completely turn me off and I probably never come visiting that site ever again. Placing ads on your unused domain makes much more business sense, presents a welcoming page to your visitors and imagine their surprise when.. coming back to where-they-saw-that-offer, they find an entire site trying to get their attention. People usually like that, it's human nature. They also don't like if they were misleaded and the topic they thought the url stands for turns out to be a totally opposite or to have nothing in common with the one presented before while the domain was parked. I would not be too worried about that though since you were not advertising your domain while it was parked.
You are not allowed to tell people to go to your domain and click the links.
It's a quick way to have a web presence on your domain names before you build up your web site. It is also a service almost all hosting companies offer to their clients (as they are affiliates to third party parking companies) so it should be easy to find and implement.
Oh, and when you buy a domain, read up on "Domain tasting". It's a neat way to check up on the marketability of your domain.

First step has been made

Ok, I guess I have a fair idea about what makes this blog tick. Have you stared your own blog yet? If not, remember that the hardest part is to find its direction. It should naturally flow on its own afterwards.
I have started by buying a domain and got it hosted. I also need time to develop it but now that I bought it.. I've got to act on it or it'll be yet another good idea lost along with some money. Don't you hate it when you lose money? The old "boot up" thing, it’s so actual with so many (if not all) of us.
So here I own a domain name and I am paying for it (Hugh, that's got to make some people sweat). What now? Well, while I start on developing a website and take my time to play with colors and graphics (Did I tell you I am a programmer? Yeah, I am a teckie, right.) I got it parked. So here is an interesting concept: "Domain Parking".
Believe me, getting the domain name is a tough job, it's easier to decide what to do with your website afterwards, at least from where I'm standing.
So what is Domain Parking? You get the domain and, before doing anything, you put it to sleep? Well it certainly sounds like that. In a few words, you get the domain and direct it to a parking service that displays ads targeted to the activity you decide to use the domain for when you're ready. Believe it or not, this brings in some revenue as people stumble upon you parked domain every day (oh you will be surprised. I know I was).
Here you go, domain parking brings in some dollars, maybe enough to pay for the hosting for the first year, while you bring yourself together and put up the best web site you can come up with, one step at a time.

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