All internet businesses, either personal or for your small business would find web hosting useful. To give a better idea of what a hosting account is, imagine that you have an offline business, now, a hosting account is like the space that you rent for your shop. So, for an online business you would need to build your site - which would become your online store and then promoting it to search engines, to get traffic to your website.
What is webhosting?
According to Wikipedia, a web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that allows individuals and organizations to provide their own websites accessible via the World Wide Web. Hosting website is a service that promotes the websites to reside in the computer in a way that it can be accessible from the Internet 24 hours a day. This computer that host the services is called the host computer and the associated services are called website hosting.
How to get started?
You need to look around for the best web hosting site that suits you. If you are getting started with a website, then consider first to have a proper domain name. A domain name is used to locate your website in the Internet. Make it short and easy. The best domain name would include that which has your company name in it like www.yourcompany.com.You can register for domain names at Yahoo or www.godaddy.com. This is followed by building your website. You can create your own website by using any of the page builders like Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash, or Microsoft FrontPage.
Your next step for hosting a website would be to sign up for affordable web hosting services. Prepare a web hosting account like Business account or Corporate account that can be accessed in exchange of a certain amount of money. Simply fill up a form stating your details and you can get the required account name. I would recommend the Ultimate Marketing Center, because they have a full range of services like autoresponders, trackers and of course a hosting account all in one.
Lastly, involves you promoting the website. Almost all the website traffic comes from search engines. So be sure to design your website with search engine optimization factors in your mind. Submit your website to the major search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. to get traffic to your site.
If you are having a Broadband or ADSL connection, then you can use it to host your own website. Make sure that while hosting website, you choose a company that will best suit your budgetary needs and provide you with a username and password to allow you to FTP [File Transfer Protocol] your website to the hosting space.
Customer service and support
You will need to find a web hosting service that provides excellent customer service and support. You should always search for a web hosting provider that offers 24 hours a day, 7 days a week technical support that fielded with highly experience technicians, so that any web hosting problems will be resolved within a reasonable amount of time. You may also want to consider to test how responsive is their customer support by sending few inquiry emails to the web hosting provider. In general, any response in less than 24 hours is considered acceptable. It is a sign of poor customer support if they take more than one day to response.
In addition, a web hosting provider with excellent support should also provide multiple support channels, such as toll-free phone support, 24/7 email support, live chat, online knowledgebase, Interactive flash tutorials and FAQ.
Above are few major considerations before you choose your web hosting service. In addition, how long has the web hosting provider in business and the number of customers that they currently have are also a good indication of the quality of their hosting products as well as the stability of the company. Even though cost of the web hosting service is also important but it should not be your major consideration. Because the price of a web hosting service has been declining over the years due to competition.
About the Author
Nurashikin is an Internet Business Entrepreneur who is still a student and wants to help other students and mothers to make an income from home. She has successfully generated an income for herself in her first month of business. Find out how she did it at http://www.nurashikin.com
