3 Reasons to Invest in a Premium Domain Name

It’s no secret that economic times are tight, and it’s quite possible that no group is more profoundly affected than small business owners. Every penny counts these days, and it’s important that every investment yield a significant return. So in this economic situation, why would you even consider paying top dollar for a premium domain name? The answer is that premium domain names, also called “simple domain names,” can make a huge difference for your business.

What is a premium domain name, you ask? A premium domain name is a domain name that was registered at one time but is now available again. Shrewd business owners bought up the most intuitively-named domains long ago such as pizza.com and flowers.com. But owners of these domain names are now willing to part with them for the right price. Some domain names have gone for as much as $7 million, but many are available for anywhere from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.

Given the amount that a domain name can cost, why would you choose to pay for a premium domain name? Here are 3 reasons.

1. Instant Branding. When you use a premium domain name, you automatically brand yourself. Not only will your domain name be a breeze to remember, but people will instantly associate your product with your name. If your domain name is vodka.com, you won’t need to spend much time trying to educate your potential customers about the nature of your product.

2. Increase Search Engine Ranking. Search engines take into account the relevance of your domain name to your product or service, so the easier it is to associate your domain name to your product, the higher your search engine ranking will be.

3. Increased Traffic. Direct navigation occurs when an internet user types a search word directly into the browser address line rather than using a search engine. So if a person types “shoes.com” into the address line, comes up with your website, and clicks the link to your site, that user has navigated directly to your site. As you might imagine, having a premium domain name can make a huge difference in the amount of traffic that comes to your site via direct navigation. And you didn’t spend a single penny on marketing that would direct that user to your site!

When you consider the fact that 80% of adults in the United States use the internet regularly, it seems like a good investment to spend whatever it takes to purchase a premium domain name.

If you’re a small business owner, consider the possibility of purchasing a premium domain name and set some of your marketing budget aside to do so. Go to the website “register.com” to see if there is a domain name available that is relevant to your product or service, and then do some research to see what kind of return on your investment you might see if you purchase that domain name. If this kind of research seems overwhelming, consider consulting an internet marketing professional to help you determine whether a premium domain name is a worthwhile investment for your business. An internet marketing professional can also help you access search tools that will tell you which domain names will benefit you the most.

Although it seems like a big investment, purchasing a premium domain name can make a huge difference in the success of your business. A premium domain name will allow you to cut down on marketing spending in the long run, it will increase your search engine rankings, and it will help potential customers associate your business with your name. Consider the investment. It may be well worth it!

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What is Reseller Hosting?

Reseller hosting - it is the special type of hosting service package, which can separate the carrying capacity of channel and disk space of hosting account, and gives possibility to resell it to other persons as separate accounts. It means actually, that a provider can purchase the large volume of space on a server, and then to separate it to resell it to other users. Remarkable that during the work with this package there is no need to be keen in technical sphere, therefore practically each, who feels in the Internet, close as an oyster in water, has possibility to begin the own business.

Conception of the reseller hosting is aggressive industry. Principal reason consists in the comparatively small amount of capital investments of businessman for the beginning of work in this area. As a rule, this service package is used by small companies or private individuals which want to create small hosting company. In addition, it is chosen by developers, designers and Internet consultants. From point of cost, it is acceptable, especially for web masters, which want to manage and place a few sites on a separate control panel. Hosting resseling has all chances to become very profitable with planning of the expenses and incomes. Resellers can provide individual hosting packages on an order, which can not be offered by other hosting service providers. Moreover, resellers can better control quality of services, because they can choose a server.

In most cases, hosting providers offer complete freedom of actions to the resselers to create their own packages and suggestions. Par ailleurs, majority of the hosting providers can offer to resellers standard packages for a direct sale to users. Some hosting providers offer to resellers already finished sites which they can use as a platform for products advertising. Resellers have possibility to use such interface as Web Hosting Manager for the hosting accounts management. With it's help they can get access to such functions, as a payment system, forms, applications et cetera. With their help resellers can manage such tasks, as addition of domains and DNS-records setting.

Reseller hosting is ideal for small business or individuals which want to get an income in the field of web hosting. Fortunately, the amount of efforts which reseller expends, to set up the business, grew short with prepared hosting packages and website templates, offered by providers. It allows to resellers to endeavor in a job without any difficulty. If to take into account, that the web hosting market is enormous enough, then failing will not be in demand, and in this sphere doors are always opened for you.

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Windows Hosting versus Linux Hosting

The matter of choosing between the operating system (OS) running the web server hosting your web site as old as the web hosting business. The OS controls all the functions of the web server hosting your site, so it comes naturally to pay special attention when choosing one over another. But what are really the options you have?

Mainly you can choose between web hosting based on Windows, Linux or Unix operating systems. A brief description and analysis of the different systems will narrow the list of options to only two.

Microsoft's Windows server operating systems (NT/2000/2003) have a rather friendly and familiar user interface, making IT teams to easier in this aspect. Another plus is given by it�s excellent integration capabilities with other applications developed by Microsoft and let�s face it their range is absolutely impressive. The main key point of Windows based hosting is its support for .ASP (Active Server Pages) or the advanced ASP.NET. This language for web development was created by Microsoft to facilitate the creation of dynamic web pages linked to SQL databases. It also provides capabilities for integration with other systems.

It can be said that Unix is the OS that powered the beginning of the Internet era and due to his qualities is still used today. Linux OS was developed having Unix as starting point and this is how the two share many features. Today the Linux version of the Unix system is more common on web servers and this has to do with the higher licensing costs and with the rather specific hardware requirements for Unix. This is why we will continue with Linux only, but Unix is taken into account as well. Linux hosting has its strong points in fulfilling ones requirements for a good web server and Web serving, file serving, mailing, and streaming are only a few. It proves itself is a very cost-effective choice from using hardware efficiently, and allowing an increased web sites per server ratio, this ultimately resulting in a decreasing the cost of hosting per account.

So here are our two choices Windows and Linux.

Reliability

In the past Linux OS were seen as more reliable over Windows. However with the release of Windows 2003 server Microsoft has gone a long way and closed the gap in this area. Linux servers are compatible with certain Microsoft extensions and applications and the same is true for Windows.

Web Programming

Even if trying to host a simple personal web site, your might want add some simple scripts to spice up your pages. The issue gets bigger when you are looking to host an e-commerce site supported by some serious server-side programming. So how are our two contenders doing in this aspect?

Supporting java scripts is not a topic to be argued upon as they are executed on the client side (the users web browser) and both Linux and Windows have no problem feeding this content to your visitors.

It is a whole different matter when discussing server side scripting. For web site owners trying to implement forms on their site it is common knowledge that ASP is supported by Windows and PHP is the tool to do just that under Linux. However both developed solutions to support each others programming language for web development. This support is not perfect and its limitations recommend Linux for a good PHP support and Windows for ASP, especially when it comes to hosting web sites that require the full use the advantages offered by PHP or ASP.

Linux offers a support for Front Page extensions. Windows has a weak point in offering only limited CGI/Perl support, so if Perl is the scripting language of your choice, you should opt for Linux.

Databases

Dynamically driven web sites require some sort of databases. Beyond sites employing databases, most frequently you will encounter mySQL or MSAccess. If your web site is relying on mySQL, then you'll have no problems hosting it on either Windows or Linux. For MSAccess databases, look your only option is Windows.

Price

Linux web hosting is cheaper. The reason must be searched in licensing costs, that are lower that for Windows, and in the ability of Linux web servers to support a higher web sites per server ratio without compromising the quality of service.

Although Windows hosting cost a bit more, you will get something for your money. It�s reduced development time and functionality

As the option of one over another depends basically of your actual needs and of the plans you have made for the future of your web site. For example will it move from a rather static web site to one relying heavily on server side scripting? And if it is so what would be the programming language used: PHP or ASP? Consequently your web site will be set up on a Linux or on a Windows web server.

Almost all serious web-hosting providers will offer you the choice between Linux and Windows.

There is no winner of this contest, at least not yet. In today's terms, your preference of one system over another should be given only by your requirements and the needs of your visitors.

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3 Important factors you must consider before choosing your web hosting provider!

If you are planning to transfer your business online, or even will start your business on the internet from scratch, the first thing you will face is: where you will host your websites? and if you are new to this area (web hosting), you will find yourself a bit confused about many web hosting terminology, so it'll be very important to you to understand these terms before you take your decision.

Here, I will mention to the most important factors you must take in consideration:

1. Bandwidth: (data transfer) is measured in gigabytes. A gigabyte is one billion bytes. Each letter is one byte. Images can take up a big amount of kilobytes (thousands of bytes), and file downloads can be several megabytes (millions of bytes) in size. You must logically think of how much bandwidth your website will need. Unless your website has a lot of downloads, it will be unlikely that you will need many gigabytes of transfer - 10 gigabytes should be very enough. Any more, and you will just be paying extra for something to use.

On that note though, you should be careful and make sure you always have some extra bandwidth - many hosting providers charge $3.00 and more for every extra gigabyte of bandwidth you use. That can add up very quickly

2. # Of hosted domains allowed: One of the most important factors which must be taken into account when choosing your hosting provider is the number of websites that allow you to host on a single account, some hosting companies allow only for one domain per account, some other companies will allow you to host an unlimited websites per one account, meaning several website at the expense of one.

If you are serious about your business on the Internet then you must be aware of the fact that you will sooner or later will need to launch more websites to expand your business to high levels. Therefore it is important to take this point into consideration where you will remove the burden of purchasing additional web hosting accounts to host the new websites in the future.

3. Control Panel: Before you buy a web hosting plan, ask the hosting company show you a demo for the control panel from which you will administrate your hosting account. Control panel is the place where you can check your website visitor statistics, add or erase email accounts, host additional domains on your account, install scripts and make other nominal changes for your website. Control panel should be easy to use with friendly interface and you should take some time to understand what it is all about before purchasing your hosting plan.

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Web Hosting, PHP vs ASP

Web pages used to be simple affairs, where everything you needed to do could be done in HTML, there was really one set of rules and one set of expectations. Today's world is far more complex.

Web pages can be more complex and customers expect more from web pages. Terms like PHP and ASP now compete with HTML when starting a web page and it can be hard to figure out what option best suits your needs.

If you've ever driven an import car, you can appreciate the importance of being able to find support that meet your needs, if you're going to kick the tires with your website and turn it into something exception, having a large community that can support you is critical.

PHP, Personal Home Pages has more support on the internet than ASP - Active Server Pages. The larger user base gives you more allies; more people who can help you develop your own talents and your website.

Another advantage of PHP is that it's based on unix, giving it more cross platform capability than ASP as increasing demands of Microsoft's operating systems level the cost playing field between Microsoft products and Apple, this is ever more important.

And did we mention that in the grand tradition of unix, PHP is free, while ASP needs support software that isn't? For add-ons and additional tools, PHP's open source has a strong base of free tools, whereas ASP demands that you purchase these tools.

You can find help for your PHP programming from free to paid. Most professional ASP support is very expensive by comparison.

Also, you have to consider the costs associated with a web hosting on Windows Server compared to Linux Servers. For most cases, you will notice a substantial difference in prices.

Not only that, but Windows severs do tend to be unstable and prone to failures, are more likely to be attacked by viruses, Trojans and exploits. Linux servers on the other hand are much more stable and the attacks windows servers suffer in a daily basis are non-existent in Linux.

If you are considering either a dedicated server or a shared hosting, your fist choice should be Linux. I've yet to find a problem that can't be solved using PHP and Linux.

With all this, you might wonder why ASP still is out there at all. Part of it stems from ASP being based on the same methodology that's used to make macros in other Microsoft products.

People that have invested the time learning how to use macros in Word or Excel will be more comfortable using ASP. PHP is based on C++, a robust computer programming language.

Before this intimidates you, the free tools that exist out there allow for a lot of this to be hidden, until you're ready to take advantage of the power behind PHP.

Putting it all together, the power, the cost, flexibility, stability and support of PHP is far superior to that of ASP. If you're going to commit to building the best web page you can, commit to using the best tools you can.

Investing in learning PHP will pay off when you're able to pop the hood, invite your friends over and transform your web page from a normal, average, page to a sophisticated and highly toned performance page.

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