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The website hosting industry is EXTREMELY competitive right now. Hosting services are becoming as important as regular utilities. They’re the engines driving innovation on the web from the latest website ideas to the hottest blogs.

So, how do you get in on the action? How do you choose the best host for your blog or e-commerce business? As I’ve written about before, if you want to be taken seriously on the web, you need to have your own domain name on your own hosting.

The good news is that hosting is so competitive right now, it’s easy to get a cheap deal on hosting if you search hard enough.

What Website Hosting Features Will You Need

If you’re looking for start your first website, what are some of the features you should look for? Whether your buying hosting for a blog or for an online store, these are the things you should look for.

Unlimited Space - So you can throw whatever you want on your FTP server and use it as a backup source

Unlimited Transfers - So you’re site doesn’t go down if it gets a spike in traffic.

Unlimited Websites/Domains - So that you can start as many websites as you want.

Unlimited SQL Databases - You’ll need SQL databases for most Content Management Systems and E-commerce systems.

Unlimited E-mail - So you can have as many e-mail accounts as you want.

Latest Web Hosting Deals

I’ve rounded up the latest deals and offerings from the major hosting providers and have compiled a list for all of you. You can see that many of the hosting companies have cheap hosting but vary on the features.

Web Hosting Services	Cheapest Plan	Storage/Transfer	Features
	$4.99/Month - 6 Months Free	1,000 GB Storage Unlimited Bandwidth	Unlimited Domain Hosting Unlimited E-Mail Unlimited Databases Unlimited Everything
	$5.95/Month	600GB Storage 6,000GB Transfer	1 Free Domain Free Setup 2500 E-mail Accounts Unlimited Domain Hosting
	$9.99/Month	300 GB Storeage 3000 GB Transfer	Free Domain 100 Domain Websites 1,000 E-mail boxes 25 SQL Databases
	$4.95/Month	Unlimited Space Unlimited Transfers	Unlimited Websites/Domains Free Domain Unlimited E-mail Unlimited SQL Databases Free Setup
	$5.95/Month	Unlimited Hosting Unlimited Transfers	Unlimited Websites/Domains Free Domain Unlimited E-mail 100 SQL Databases
	$9.95/Month	300 GB Storage 3,000 Transfer	5 Free Domains 1,000 Email Accounts Unlimited Websites/Domains
	$4.99/Month	10 GB Space 300 GB Transfer	100 Free E-mail Accounts 10 SQL Databases
	$7.95/Month	Unlimited Storage Unlimited Transfer	Unlimited Websites/Domains Unlimited SQL Databases Unlimited E-mail

How to Choose a Good Web Host Conclusion

Which would I go with? Well, I currently use GoDaddy.com and have had no problems with them. However, if I was going to get new hosting, knowing what I know now, I’d go with HostRocket.Com.

Why?

GoDaddy’s hosting packages don’t provide a good value for money compared to the other hosting companies. For example, I only get 25 SQL databases and if I want more, I’d have to upgrade to a more expensive hosting package.

HostRocket.Com has a great package. It’s amongst the cheapest and pretty much has unlimited of everything (except data storage - which is 1 TB - plenty if you ask me). You can host all the websites you want and won’t have problems with data transfer or database limits.

Once I hit the limits at GoDaddy.com I will definitely get an account at HostRocket.Com.

Abunza is a scam.

There I said it.

What the hell is Abunza, you ask?

Well, it’s the latest get rich quick, pyramid scheme making it’s way around the various social media networks. It’s not really clear what Abunza exactly is, all I know it that the followers of the cult are so convinced that it works that they are dangerous.

Abunza is some crackpot scheme involving selling bilingual advertising on the internet (you have to buy their expensive software to do this). But that’s the secondary purpose of the whole operation. They make money by reeling people in. If you sucker people into joining the scheme, you get a commission, then a commission of everyone they bring in and so on; assuring that those at the top of the pyramid are the ones making the big money.

You’ll hear tall tales about struggling moms who have made it big working from home, doing seemingly very little. One of these names is Bardi Toto. I fail to see how she makes any money online when her website insults my sensibilities. Looking at it simply makes my eyes hurt.

The worst part about these MLM schemers is that they’ve discovered the internet, an endless pool of idiots waiting to buy into the latest get rich quick schemes. These scammers are out in force on social networking sites, marketing their wares (or lack of them), taking full advantage of Web 2.0 mediums. They’re especially prevalent on Twitter.

They put themselves everywhere so they can insert themselves into your life. They even provide their cell phone numbers in public places so they are easily accessible. Also, be wary of websites telling you not to join Abunza because it’s a scam and they have a better online business opportunity. I’m shocked that Google is still allowing these operation on Blogger and Adwords. They won’t be for long.

People believe in these programs like religion but I’ll be the first to tell them: You’ve been had. And if your at the upper levels of the pyramid, you’re using people and it’s wrong.

Times are tough right now and people are desperate for ways to make money, these scams thrive on this desire in tough times. Don’t get caught up in them. Avoid Abunza like the plague.

If you want your content to get seen by as many people as possible, you need to plan ahead and make sure that when you release it, it is seen by as many eyeballs as possible.

In the old days of PR, the general rule was to release a Press Release on a Wednesday or Thursday. The logic behind this was that on Mondays, people were too busy catching up from the weekend and whatnot to notice a press release. Same goes with Tuesdays. Friday is also a bad day to release one because no one will notice on a Friday because all they will care about is getting off for the weekend. This leaves Wednesday and Thursday; mid-week is when people take the time to notice things or look for something to take up their time.

These old rules pretty much still apply to the Web 2.0 and social media worlds.

I’ve submitted blog articles to various social media sites on every day of the week, at different times and have had different results. I quickly learned that trying to push a blog post on Digg or Reddit at 9:00PM at night will mean that your content will get no where. Things happen quickly in social media and you need to put your stuff out at the right time to ensure maximum penetration.

So, what time of the day is best to have a social media campaign? After lots of experience in this, I think the best time of day to submit things to social media is mid-morning on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

Why?

You catch the people who have slept in and are just getting online. You catch the people getting mid-morning blues at work and want an outlet. You catch people going on their lunch (and coming back who don’t want to work at first). Then you also catch the mid-afternoon malaise. There are die-hards that will spend hours when they get home from work playing around on the net, but a lot of people go home and spend time with families or loved ones and don’t have the time to do that. You want to catch them when they’re watching and that’s during the day.

Despite the fact that the internet is a 24 hour business environment, most business and content consumption occurrs during regular business hours. That is something that won’t really change.

It’s also been my experience with Webinar Central, that it’s best to have new Webinars posted during regular business hours because that’s when my target audience is watching their Twitter and RSS Feeds. So, I when I set new webinars to post, I have them automatically come out gradually so that I have a steady stream of traffic throughout the day.

I wrote this article at 11:00 at night. I set it to post in the morning. Hope you all find it helpful.

What do you guys think? When’s the best time to submit your stuff to Social Media sites?

I’ve seen it again and again, Blog Misunderstanding Syndrome. It’s very common. A company gets convinced by someone, probably on their staff, that they should be blogging. Not wanting to spend money on the medium, said person starts a blog on a free service such as Blogger or Wordpress.com.

Great! They started a blog! But wait. When you read the snazzy new blog you see that the URL address is http://company.blogspot.com. Your eyes screech to a halt. Whatever blog you were about to read just completely lost credibility. It automatically gets lumped into the same category as ‘Joan’s Period Blog.’

Folks, not having your own domain name hurts your credibility and shows your inability to understand Web 2.0 mediums.

It does not take much work or internet knowledge to use your own domain name on Wordpress or Blogger. Both platforms allow you to use your own domain name. I think many people would agree with me that http://blog.company.com looks a hell of a lot more professional than the alternatives. Wordpress charges $10/year for this. Blogger charges nothing.

You may think, “oh, I’ll just use this until the blog is established, then move it.” Bad idea. Moving domains, unless you are an SEO expert, will destroy any search rankings your blog may have had.

But nothing destroys your corporate credibility more than hosting your shiny new blog on Blogger or Wordpress.com

Don’t have a domain? Get one, they aren’t that expensive. As soon as you start a compnay you should buy the related domain names to prevent the chance for squatters to steal them first.

How do you buy a domain name?

It’s simple, you use an easy to use service such as GoDaddy and register your domain for as little as $7.49
. You can even get a cheap hosting package with them and roll your own blog hosting. It’s really not that hard and they’ll hold your hand through the whole process. Read my article on How to Set Up your Own Self-Hosted Wordpress blog for more detailed information.

If your company is going to blog, buy the domain name and host it there!

I’ve been developing another site for the past few weeks and it’s now ready to go live. I present the Essay Outliner.

Free Essay Outliner is a simple tool that will help anyone outline a standard five paragraph essay. All you need to do is input the data in the form such as: main thesis, idea 1, idea 2… etc and then a script will compile the data and present sentence by sentence instructions on how to write your essay.

This is a very simple, yet invaluable tool that I wish I had while going through cool. It’s perfect for young students whom are still trying to understand how to structure an essay or for seasoned college students who don’t have time to do the legwork. This could conceivably help you outline blog articles as well. The possibilities are endless.

I hope to develop more sophisticated tools based on this concept (such as a term paper outliner) in the future, but for now, this tool does the job simply: outline an essay.

Check out the Free Essay Outline Tool Today!