Most reviews on web hosting plans are written by technical experts for technical experts. My discussion today is from the point of view of a marketer. I believe today’s discussion will provide a different angle to this topic.

Generally there are 4 types of web hosting plans to choose from, namely shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting and dedicated hosting. If you are new, you can see the pricing and detailed descriptions here.

If you are a server expert or you are planning to start your own webhosting service, this article is not for you. But if you are an internet marketer, looking for a web hosting plan that meets your needs, I’m sure my experience in web hosting will help you.

So, which web hosting plan should you choose?

Cheap is better

When it comes to hosting, paying more doesn’t mean you get more. In fact, it’s the reverse. Let me explain.

The cheapest plan is called shared hosting, which usually cost you less than 10 bucks a month. As the name suggests, shared hosting means you are sharing a server with probably hundreds of other users. Because of this, the hosting company has huge liability in these shared servers. It cannot afford to have these servers fail or it will affect hundreds of their clients. As a result, they do regular server updates, backups, maintenance and they provide 24/7 uptime monitoring.

But if you go for other more expensive hosting plans, the servers usually have lesser users and as a result, those servers receive lesser attention from the hosting company. (Most companies will deny this, but that is the truth.)

Take the most expensive plan, dedicated hosting, as an example. Most hosting companies will not monitor the uptime of such servers. Also, they will do lesser system maintenance and updates. Reason? Because you own the whole server and are responsible for the maintenance yourself!

In addition to this, most shared hosting plan offers unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth. Yet, almost all other more expensive hosting plans have limits on disk space and bandwidth. If you are using one of those more expensive hosting plans, you have to worry about your disk and bandwidth usage.

Think about it this way. By paying more, you get limited disk space, limited bandwidth and lesser server maintenance. This is what’s happening when you pay more for your web host.

Of course, there are limitations to shared hosting. But that is when you become a heavy user.

As a rule of thumb, if you are simply running niche websites for Adsense or affiliate commissions, shared hosting should be your best choice…… until you max out your shared server.

How to max out your server?

So far, the message I’m trying to put across is get a cheap shared hosting plan because you get the best server support compared to all other hosting plans. But that is assuming you are just a small-time marketer (most people are).

If you are a big-time marketer or going to be a big-time marketer, things may be a little different.

Below are ways in which you can max out the capacity of a shared hosting server.

1) Mass Mailing

One of the most taxing activities in a server is mass mailing. If you are intending to build a list and send out mass email through your own server, chances are, you can’t live with a shared hosting plan, not even a reseller or VPS plan.

Most shared hosting has a limit of 500 emails per hour. This means if you were to mail to a list of say 5000 people, it will take you 10 hours.

If you are using hosted autoresponder services like Aweber, this will not be a concern since emails are sent through Aweber’s server, not yours.

2) Product Launch

If you are planning a big product launch, there is a high chance that you will max out the server bandwidth.

“Kenneth, I thought shared hosting has got unlimited bandwidth?”

Yes, that’s a lie.

Imagine bandwidth as a pail of water. When you are promised with unlimited bandwidth, what it means is you have an infinitely huge water pail, full of water of course. The catch here is water must flow out from a tap. For shared hosting, you’ve got a small water tap. So if there is a sudden surge of traffic to your server, this small water tap may not be enough to cater to that surge. The result is you get very sluggish web loading speed and occasional disconnectivity issues.

3) Video Hosting

If your server hosts a lot of videos and a lot of people are watching it, you will run into the same bandwidth issue, as explained in #2.

Basically, any activity that involves huge data transfer to and from the server will tax on the bandwidth and create potential bandwidth issue.

4) Hosting Too Many Domains

Did I mention that most shared hosting plans allow you to host unlimited domains? Well, that’s another lie.

Yes, theoretically you can host unlimited domains. But in reality, each domain has files in it and there is a limit to the number of files you can host on your cheap server.

In hostgator, it is termed ‘inode’. Your maximum allowable inode is 250,000. But if you have more than 100,000 inodes, hostgator will stop backing up your files. So to get the best, you should limit your usage to 100,000 inodes.

Now, how is inode calculated?

Very simply, it is the number of files in your server. This means regardless of how many domains you have, you should keep the number of uploaded files below 100,000.

That may sound a lot, but guess what, I maxed that out once! That’s why I know this limitation.

Let me show you how easy it is for an average marketer to max out the inode limit.

Do you know that Wordpress script itself contains more than 700 files? If you install Wordpress to every domain and you have 150 domains, that will make up 105,000 files (or inodes). And I haven’t considered other possible scripts that you may be adding to your domains.

The good news is if this is your only issue, the solution is simple. Just get another cheap and good shared hosting account and you can load another 100 or so domains.

5) Excessive Concurrent Server Usage

If you run online services that require a lot of concurrent script processes or database activities, such as an online forum, or social networking site, you are likely to max out the apache and mysql process limit during the peak hours.

Take hostgator for example, the limit is 25 at any one time. So technically if you have 30 people making a system enquiry at the same time, 5 of them will get an error message. The chance is extremely low, but if your website has a lot of users, it can be possible.

These limits can be raised if you are on dedicated or VPS hosting, not if you use shared hosting and reseller hosting.

Conclusion

Just get yourself a shared hosting account, unless you have no better use for your money or you foresee that you are going to run into one of the five issues above.

When it comes to low-cost hosting, all the hosting providers offer more or less the same thing. If anyone claims to offer more, say it claims that you can send unlimited emails with a shared hosting plan, it just shows that the webhost is an amateur and will run into problem in the future, potentially a server crash!

The key is to get one that is well established (i.e. it has gone through enough server nonsense and implemented the necessary steps to ensure system stability). It must also provide 24/7 chat and telephone support, so that you can get help at any instant.

This week, we are going to talk about how to choose web hosting service if you are a beginner who are starting out, wanting to make some money from the internet. Next week, we will talk about web hosting for advanced online marketers. If you are an advanced marketer, be sure to check out our blog next week.

So, what does it take to make money online? Is it know-how? Is it technical skill? Is it your connection or network?

Well, all of these play a part. But the main factor is Right Mindset + Right Action.

You may wonder what has it got to do with choosing web hosting service. Read on…

Another question. What makes a good web hosting service for beginners? Is it hosting features? Is it price? Is it customer support?

Again, all of them play a part. But the main factor is it should make you money.

When I say it should make you money, I’m not referring to those MLM web hosting systems. I’m talking about web hosting that has a workable system that practically guarantees your success.

Let me share with you my story, one that some of you may be able to relate to……

Many years back, when I first decided to build a website, my first thought was, well, I’ll choose a cheap web host.

I found one that only cost me $35 a year, including domain name and 1 year hosting. So I got a domain, a hosting service and a step-by-step guide that claimed to teach me how to make money online. I can’t remember what I did with the website, but basically I made $0.00 from that venture.

Finally, I gave up on cheapskate solutions and invested in a “guided web hosting system” that claimed to hold my hands and lead me step-by-step to success. The system costs me $300 a year (I think).

But guess what, when your pocket hurts, you work!

I dedicated months to follow the system to a tee, and started making some money and eventually crossed my first $100 a month in less than a year. (As you can see, it was a slow start, but hey, I was a newbie, remember?)

So which hosting is cheaper, the first one that cost $35 a year, or the second one that cost $300 a year?

Remember in the beginning of this article, I said newbies’ success depends mainly on Right Mindset + Right Action?

The $35 a year hosting gave me a cheap alternative, and left me with a ’see-if-it-works’ mindset and a ’step-by-step-but-up-to-you-to-follow’ action plan.

The $300 a year hosting, on the other hand, gave me a ‘I-must-earn-back-that-money’ mindset and a superbly ‘annoying’ system that forced me to do everything exactly its way. And the result was… I was forced to do the right thing and made money!!

Let me share with you what I mean by ‘annoying’. Imagine when you try to submit a webpage, the system will always slap you with tons of error messages, asking you to correct this and correct that. It’s like your nagging parents who insist that you must do things their way. But over time, you mind is slowly trained to do things ‘its way’ and it becomes your second nature. And guess what, that’s how you learn to do things the right way!

Honestly, I might not have the discipline to learn and do things the right way without this system.

But interestingly, I ditched that system after 2 years.

Why?!

On the second year, I bought a cheap web hosting service with unlimited domain hosting, and started duplicating everything I learned from the “guided web hosting system” on several domains. I wanted to try and see if I could do it without the system. A little to my surprise, I quadrupled my earnings with my new sites. That was when I knew I had indeed internalized the process of building a successful website and I could do it without the help of that nagging and somewhat restrictive system.

So for those of you who are just starting out, I don’t mean you must spend $300 on web hosting, but you should not choose web hosting service simply based on price, support and/or hosting features. What is more important for you is the training. Of course, alternatively, you can learn things on your own or get some other good coaching program. If so, just make sure that you get a web hosting service that is low cost, with 24/7 chat support and more importantly with minimal technical restriction, so that you will not run into problem implementing some third party system in time to come. My favorite is Hostgator.

Lastly, if you want to know what is that “guided web hosting system” I was talking about, it is called SBI. It’s still a strong system until today.

If you run your own affiliate program, and also build traffic from search engine, today’s tip will be very useful to you.

Most affiliate links look something like this:

www.yourProgram.com?r=referid

With a good affiliate program, you can easily get hundreds or thousands of websites linking to your homepage through the customized affiliate links.

Does it mean you have hundreds or thousands of backlinks pointing to your homepage? Sad to say, NO!

Search engines treat www.yourProgram.com?r=referid as a new url that is different from www.yourProgram.com. So when someone links to www.yourProgram.com?r=referid, it is as good as linking to another url on your website. That link will not count as a backlink to your homepage.

Fortunately, there is a simple trick to overcome this problem. It’s by using 301 redirect.

301 redirect means “permanently moved”. When you add 301 redirect on www.yourProgram.com?r=referid, pointing it to www.yourProgram.com, you are telling the search spiders that the referral url has permanently moved to your homepage.

301 redirect is search engine friendly. The search engines understand that since a url is permanently moved to another url, all the links on the former url should now belong to the new url.

How To Create 301 Redirect?

This is a technical question and I will not go into the details. There are many technical blogs and forums on the net where you can get the details. In this article, I’ll just show you what I use for my own websites. It’s a simple PHP script that I add to the index.php file of my websites.

<?
if ($r <> “”) {
header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
header(”Location: http://www.yourProgram.com”);
exit();
}
?>

This script simply says if ?r=[someReferID] exist, i.e. if it’s an affiliate link, add 301 Redirect on that page and redirect it to your homepage.

With this code, the search engine will ignore the referral url and credit all the backlinks to your homepage.