Georgi, Author at Georgi Kamaliev

3 Auto-Responders to start your online business (right now)

May 17, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

With all the different auto-responder services out there, it can be difficult to decide on which one will be best for optimising your business’ marketing. After all, with such a vast range of options, it can be difficult to compare them objectively to see which one fits your individual requirements. Luckily, we are here to help.

We have looked into the most popular auto-responder providers so that you don’t have to. With the legwork out the way, you can easily decide on which one to use based on our findings. Today we will be comparing AWeber, GetResponse and Sendlane.

AWeber

The email marketing and auto-responder tool AWeber is well established. The company’s CEO Tom Kulzer founded it all the way back in 1998, which means that they have had a lot of experience in the industry. AWeber is definitely one of the most popular email marketing assistants, with around 100,000+ businesses utilising it.

AWeber: Strengths

One reason AWeber is so popular is the smooth, easy-to-navigate interface. It isn’t over-complicated and doesn’t clutter itself with too many additional features.

It’s simple, easy to implement, and has a free trial period if you are considering purchasing it. Starting at $19 a month for the basic package, the pricing is fairly reasonable as well.

Some other benefits include:

Good automation features
Live support chat which responds quickly
A range of stock photos available for use within emails
Easy to implement broadcasts and follow-up emails
Email marketing tracking to record the success of your campaigns
Good deliverability rate
Subscriber management features

AWeber: Weaknesses

Unfortunately, the price does increase dramatically if you exceed your subscriber plan. If you want to reach a very wide audience, AWeber may not be the most cost-effective means.

Secondly, the sign up forms offered by AWeber require modernising. Furthermore, the deliverability of emails could use some improvement, as it is not what it used to be. When managing your subscribers, people who have unsubscribed will still be tallied as part of your ‘total subscriber’ count. This means a distorted image of your audience can be projected.

There are some other elements, such as importing leads, that are not the most streamlined and require too much manual input. Based on this, AWeber is a decent auto-responder tool, but has its weaknesses and is slightly old-fashioned in a lot of ways. It was once the industry leader and the best on the market, but we have to consider the wider range of options available now.

GetResponse

This is one of the other major players in the field of auto-responder technology. GetResponse was also founded in 1998, by a man named Simon Grabowski. To this day, over 350,000 customers are happily using the software.

Along with AWeber, GetResponse is up there as one of the frontrunners of email marketing tools. A number of big-name companies endorse GetResponse, including AVON, Hilton and Citroën.

GetResponse: Advantages

Firstly, the biggest benefit to GetResponse as an email marketing tool is an inbuilt software called Hydra. This feature means that importing and uploading subscriber lists is simple, quick, easy and completely secure. This protects your email list from spammers, and means that you can have your email marketing automation set up much sooner, as GetResponse does not need to review your list import.

There are similarities between GetResponse and AWeber, but one thing that GetResponse does better is that it doesn’t tally unsubscribes towards your total subscriber count. This allows you to view a more realistic image of your audience reach.

Other things that the software does well:

Live real-time support chat
Fairly priced
Hydra software makes importing email lists easy
Lots of newsletter sending options
Good list management features
Unsubscribes don’t count towards total subscribers
Good deliverability
Free trial available

GetResponse: Disadvantages

Just like AWeber, if your subscriber plan exceeds their standard package, the price climbs quite steeply. Additionally, the deliverability of GetResponse is decent but doesn’t quite compare to AWeber.

Further to this, the newsletter management features are relatively basic and there is certainly room for improvement. In some ways, AWeber is a much faster software as sending emails does not require verification. Though this isn’t massively important, it is a minor inconvenience for the user.

GetResponse does not offer refunds, so if you do choose to subscribe after enjoying the free trial, you must be committed. Some users have reported glitches on the website when signing up. The management of your subscribers is also quite limited, as you cannot view individual profiles.

Sendlane

While the other two auto-responder companies have been around for a long time, Sendlane is, by contrast, a relatively new company. They were founded in 2013 by CEO Jimmy Kim, but have been growing rapidly since. Sendlane cannot compare to AWeber and GetResponse in terms of size, but the service offered is very similar.

However, there is a notable difference worth mentioning, which is the more affordable price of Sendlane’s software.

Sendlane vs. Other Auto-Responders

Sendlane offers a similar range of features for its users in terms of optimising email marketing automation. You can use it to send an unlimited number of campaigns and newsletters to your list, set up an unlimited amount of auto-responders and create unlimited pages (for landing, opt-in and squeeze).

You can import your existing email list with ease. When registering for Sendlane, you will need to pass a compliance check, but this is part of the company safeguarding their deliverability which could be negatively impacted by spammers making regular use of their software.

Sendlane now serves about 20,000 customers. The amount of users is nowhere near the other auto-responders we have reviewed, however considering how long they have been up and running (they only got their first customer in 2015) they have grown very large, very quickly.

To summarise some of the good points and features of Sendlane:

Personalised features and behaviour based email marketing
Real time and event tracking
API integration
Built in landing page creator
Unlimited campaigns and newsletters
Unlimited auto-responders
Strong live chat support team
Upgrade, change and cancel your plan anytime

Sendlane is a strong contender against its competitors. Packages start at only $9 per month, and before committing you can test their 14-day free trial. Indeed, it is certainly worth checking out, and if you aren’t satisfied you can opt-out whenever you want.

According to their website, Sendlane manages well over 1.5 million subscribers. Their team are fully committed to helping your business maximise its emailing capabilities. Being able to instantly get in touch with someone across the live chat service is a very useful feature, and means you can receive help and support much more quickly than the traditional back-and-forth exchange of emails.

Conclusion

Every company has a different budget and different requirements for what they need in an auto-responder tool. Email marketing automation can help to engage your customers, encourage them to make purchases and grow your business. AWeber, GetResponse and Sendlane are all reliable in their own ways, but in terms of value for money, Sendlane is the software that stands out.

If you are not taking full advantage of the tools available to businesses on the internet, then you are limiting yourself.

To learn more about online techniques that can help your business, the following blogs may interest you: 7 Simple Steps to Choose the Right Hosting Service for Your Business,

How to Start Blogging in 30 Minutes for Free with WordPress and SHARED or DEDICATED Hosting: What is Best for You?.

How to Grow Your Email List with LinkedIn Advertising

May 4, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

Are you looking for new ways to get more email subscribers on your list? If you want to invite professionally minded social media users to your email list, LinkedIn is the top social network to focus your efforts upon. In this article, we’re going to show you how to build your email list with LinkedIn Advertising.

1. Connect with people on LinkedIn.

The first step in growing your email list using LinkedIn Advertising is to grow your personal connections on LinkedIn using your professional profile. Anyone can target LinkedIn Advertising campaigns to audiences based on their professional credentials including education, industry, company size, job title, and skills. What we’re going to focus on is targeting a particular audience on LinkedIn – one that is already familiar with you and your business. (You’ll need a bit over 1,000 connections to make this tactic work.)

To start building your LinkedIn network, import your personal email contacts from Gmail and other email services. This will invite the people you already know on LinkedIn to connect with you.

As you connect with people you know, your LinkedIn network will grow. In addition to your first degree connections ( people who you have invited or whose invitations you have accepted to connect on LinkedIn), you will have second degree connections ( people who are first degree connections of your first degree connections) and third degree connections (people who are connected to your second degree connections).

In the past, LinkedIn required you to “know” the people you connected with on LinkedIn based on your college and work experience. Now, LinkedIn suggests second degree connections that you can message and connect with to further grow your LinkedIn network.

To ensure that your connections actually get to know you, don’t just connect with people on LinkedIn and stay silent. You can send new connections a private message to say hello. You can post regular updates to your LinkedIn profile like you would on Twitter or Facebook. You can even post long form blog articles on your LinkedIn profile – your connections will receive a notification each time that you do.

You can also participate in or run your own LinkedIn group for LinkedIn users with specific professional interests. As you engage with people in LinkedIn groups, you will start to receive more invitations to connect with LinkedIn users who you have helped in group discussions.

2. Export your LinkedIn contacts.

As you build a sizable network of first degree connections on LinkedIn, you can export your LinkedIn contact’s information using the Data Export feature in your account’s privacy and data settings.

Your export file will be a CSV spreadsheet with the first name, last name, email address, current company, current position, and date you connected. The email addresses are what you need for your LinkedIn Advertising campaign as the targeted audience list. You can use the current company and position of your contacts as a way to filter your LinkedIn contacts before you advertising to people who may or may not be interested in joining your email list (if you have a large contact list). Note that you need a minimum of 1,000 contacts to upload, so don’t filter your list to an audience fewer than that.

While you’re at it, you may want to export additional lists of contacts to use in your LinkedIn Ads. Facebook, for example, offers an export of your Facebook contacts / friends as a part of the Download Your Data feature. Many of your friends’ contact details include the email address or phone number they use on LinkedIn too.

3. Do NOT add LinkedIn contacts to your email list.

As tempting as it may be, once you receive your exported LinkedIn contacts file, the next step is not to automatically upload those contacts as new email list subscribers. People in your LinkedIn network have not opted-in to your email list – they’ve just opted-in to your LinkedIn network. You have to get them to take the next step to opt-in to your list.

4. Upload LinkedIn contacts to Matched Audiences.

Inside your LinkedIn Advertising account, look for Matched Audiences under your Account Assets menu. There, you will use the feature to upload a list to create a new Matched Audience.

LinkedIn recommends that you upload a list of at least 1,000 accounts. Hence, you need to have over 1,000 first degree connections on LinkedIn.

Once you submit your file to LinkedIn, they will match your contact’s information to their corresponding LinkedIn user profiles (your first degree connections). After they have finished processing your list, it will be available for use in a LinkedIn Advertising campaign.

5. Upload your current email list subscribers to Matched Audiences.

To ensure that you only spend your LinkedIn Advertising budget on acquiring new email list subscribers, you can upload your email list subscribers as a separate Matched Audience. In your LinkedIn Advertising campaign, you will include the Matched Audience of your LinkedIn connections and exclude the Matched Audience of your email list subscribers so that anyone in your LinkedIn first degree connections already on your email list will be exempt from seeing your ad.

6. Create a squeeze page and promotion to capture email subscribers.

If you don’t have one already, create a squeeze page and promotion to use in your LinkedIn Advertising campaign. Almost half of marketers create new landing pages for new campaigns, and the more landing pages you have, the better your conversions will be as a whole, according to ImpactBND’s collection of landing page statistics. Think about why your LinkedIn contacts would want to join your email list and use that as the focal point of your squeeze page and promotion.

7. Create a LinkedIn Ad Campaign to your squeeze page.

Now, you’re ready to create your ad campaign to entice your LinkedIn first degree connections to sign up for your email list. You’ll start with an ad, the goal of which is to get people to click through to your squeeze page.

After you create your ad (as well as any variations of your ad creatives that you want to A/B test within LinkedIn’s Advertising platform), you will move to audience targeting. Under the Target a list section, you will include your LinkedIn contacts and exclude your email list subscribers like this.

This will ensure that LinkedIn shows your ad to only the first degree connections that don’t match anyone on your email list subscribers, assuming your LinkedIn contact uses the same email for their account and their email list subscription. If you have a large contact list, you can further refine your target audience to include or exclude only your LinkedIn connections with specific job titles, skills, or other professional characteristics.

8. Analyze and repeat.

Based on how quickly you add new people to your LinkedIn first degree connections and your email list, and how successful your first LinkedIn Ad Campaign goes, you may want to analyze your results, determine which ad creative and copy converted best, and continue to run new ad campaigns.

To run new ad campaigns using this tactic, you’ll need to export your LinkedIn contacts, import them to your Matched audiences, and export / import your current email list subscribers for your exclusion list. This will ensure you get ads to the right people.

In Conclusion

As you can see, LinkedIn Advertising allows you to target specific audiences that are more likely to sign up to your email list based on familiarity. If you see good results with your first campaign, make it a point to continue growing your LinkedIn contacts (30,000 is the current max) and continue running ad campaigns to your contacts to move them into the next stage of your business’s funnel.

3 steps to set up your business for success

March 3, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

You can’t build a skyscraper on a sandy basis.

Some business owners make a big mistake thinking too small. When you are just starting, setting up big goals is a little bit difficult thing. And you can do it. The question is: Are you willing to set up your business for growth?

Prepare your business for growth

Now I want to tell you about my uncle John. Uncle John had a normal family – a nice wife and a beautiful daughter. Through the years we have been together often on a family gathering. John always joined our party latter, sometimes he missed the dinner. He missed also his daughter first step because he spoke on the phone, he late for her ballet competition, for the first day of school, for a graduation…. Only because he was in a business meeting. Of course, his wife – my aunt, gets used to eating alone, to drink her glass of wine alone, to sleep alone, to prepare every holiday without him. She was absolutely sure there is another woman. When their daughter grew up and moved out, my aunt decided to reveal the truth, followed my uncle and discovered the terrible truth – her husband was obsessed with his job. I have to admit it – John has a successful company. One of the best in its segment. In private conversation, once uncle John told me what he learned for business through the years and save my family stability.

Here’re uncle John pieces of advice.

1. Prepare your business for growth from the beginning

Even in a beginning of a new business, you should think about his growth – about a growing number of customers who will make more purchases, new types of products and directions of development.

Please, follow these questions:

– Is my brand name illustrating the essence of my business? Your brand name sends message to your customers. He shows what is your attitude to your business, your ideals which you cannot change in the future.

– What are my basic values, constant elements? Every business needs of fundamentals values on which to be built.

– What are my advantages over my competition? Everybody has a unique style, skills, and ideas. You should know what you are better. Refer your efforts in this direction.

– How you send messages to your customers? You should know that you contact your customers not only in your store, fabric or local. You contact them via your brand name, your site, even your labels and packages. Everything needs to bring one message.

– What do you want to reach? It’s good to know from the beginning what is your target group – do you want your business to be a local, national or international? Then you could build your business this way.

2. Good online presence is a must

Uncle John thought that internet changed everything in a business world. He learned that in a difficult way. For a temporary business good online presentation is obligatory. From the beginning you need to prepare your website for more traffic, more hits and more requests.

Here’re uncle John main things:

– You should choose a perfect platform for you which be able to cope with a big weight. Nobody wants site overload and problems with using it. Think about cloud hosting – it could give you more space. Maybe you need a Virtual Private Server and higher or unlimited bandwidth with your hosting account. Make everything to protect your site from a crash.

– Your site is your business identity to the customers and it needs to be in absolute synergy with your business values.

– You should think about a hosting plan which can save you money if you pay for a long period, like a year. Some hosting providers make a 25% discount for advance payment.

3. What is the average day of your customers?

The last advice of uncle John was about information. He thinks that a good information is a key word for every success. Of course, it will be perfect to know what your competition planning to do but I don’t want to make you like a James Bond in the business world. More important is to know your customers – what they purchase and what they looking for. In one word – you need a good DATA for your clients. From the very beginning of your business, you should start to gather information – tracking and measurement will help you to know what’s the reason for your success, where your grow come from or maybe why there is no growth, what are the problems. With Google Analytics you can track your traffic, you can use also Hot jar it “gives you the ‘big picture’ of how to improve your site’s user experience and performance/conversion rates.”

Thеse were uncle John’s pieces of advice. I hope that they will help you in the way they help me!

How to find your right target market

March 2, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

Always, always, always start with defining your target market.

My father told me once good seller can sell an ice to Eskimo. Perhaps he was right but why you should do that? Isn’t easier to find who really needs your products, services or skills? If you make an effort to show all the world what you suggest, you just waste your time, money and ability.

Defining Your Target Market is essential for Your Success

Let’s start with basic – do you know the difference between target market and target audience?

Target market – according to the dictionary – this is a particular group of consumers at which a product or service is aimed.

The target audience is the people you’re selling to.

I’ll explain this with a simple example. In the winter my son and his friends wear warm hats. They are hat’s manufacturer target market. But parents are people who buy these hats for our little boys – we are the target audience. When hat’s creators decide to make advertising they show their spot in kids channel but mostly in magazines and TV programs for grown people.

Use your target market language.

Always think about your target market – who they are, how they live, where, what is their specific slang… If you sell medicine for a sore throat it’ll be ridiculous to use words like Cool, Hundo P, Savage…

If you sell energy drink describes like “good for your health” will be out of place. There aren’t product or service which are good for everybody. Don’t waste your time, focus only on your target market.

But how to figure out who are your customers? Is this possible?

Actually – Yes! With some help.

Site statistic.

Every website has a statistic, from which you could discover the age, the gender of your visitors, where do they live, how did they find you, what they search in your site, how much time they spend in your site…

Connect with your customers.

When I meet someone new I ask questions about getting to know him. You should do the same. Ask your customers about them via phone, mail, a special poll on your site, on your Facebook page… There’re many opportunities.

Speak to your employees.

Your employees are people who meet your customers every day. They know what are their problems, what they ask frequently, even what they expect from you.

Watch out your Competition.

Pay attention to your competition steps. Not to follow them but to know who they direct their efforts and to whom isn’t.

You couldn’t imagine how much you can learn about your customers if you did this effort. Like they are your closest friends. You will know not only their ages, gender, are they married, did they have children, what are their occupation, where they live, but also what are their hobbies, goals, problems, and of course – how you can help them.

You can I summarize three representative profiles of your main clients. That’s enough for small business. For example, if you’re the one who sell kid’s hat your three main clients will be young mothers – housewives, grandmothers – retired and other women – friends of young mothers. All of them probably will live in your shop’s neighborhood. If you sell helmets your customers will be completely deferent.

The easiest way to make these profiles is using special software. You can find free platforms also.

Then start to show your advertising especially to these special clients using social media, Google AdWords, and places where these women can see your advertising – in web and in the real world.

I guarantee the time spent will not be a waste of time. It will thank you back for an increase in sales and business development.

SHARED or DEDICATED hosting: What is best for you?

March 1, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

Handling with the technical part of the online business like considering shared or dedicated hosting can be overwhelming. Some people think that there isn’t a big difference but they’re wrong. There are some basic distinct. You need to know what type of hosting – shared or dedicated, will fix perfectly for your target.

The United States was famous for The Land of Unlimited Opportunities because an idea was enough to make you a rich guy.

Today the things are different. The whole world is The Land of Unlimited Opportunities because of the Internet.

You understand how important for your business success your presentation in the web world is.

Not only appearance but the functionality of your site is something that you should think over.

Of course, usually, entrepreneurs aren’t professional computer workers – programmers, developers, designers… Computer terminology probably sounds you like Chinese and it’s normal. Now I will help you with first steps.

1. Shared hosting

Obviously, this is a hosting which you share with other users. In details that means a server serves a few sites with their own domain names.

There are two red points for this choice:

It’s cheap – The host company gives one server to multiply users and then separate maintenance cost between them. This option is perfect if you have a small budget.
No need any computer skills – The host company cares about everything – maintenance, protection… If you’re having trouble working on your site, just call your host administrator.

But there are two big black points:

Shared hosting crashes are something expected. Too many sites overload the system. Imagine a tree with many branches – this is world web. There are branches with many birds perched on it. These branches are shared hosting. Each bird is a different site. If birds become many, the branch will break. Something like this happens to your site, but while the birds fly away, your site just fails. And you must call your administrator. It’s completely possible to call him more often than your partner’s calls. Independently of words – “unlimited bandwidth” in your contract. Site’s crash = lost a customer. Think about it!
Shared hosting is more vulnerable. Let’s imagine again. If you share your house with other stranger people, it’s possible some of them invite a suspicious person. It’s equal here. Malware could enter through other sites with which you share hosting. If you work with money, accounts, and other important data, this could be fatal.

2. Dedicated hosting

Dedicated hosting offers a server only for your website. You will be the only bird on the branch. This sounds very good – your own computer in your host company with a web server, needed software and Internet connection. But let’s see the advantages one by one and then disadvantages – if they exist.

Advantages:

– Every computer professional will recommend dedicated hosting for sites with many visitors. It can serve high traffic easy. Temporary users are high-feds, they expect site’s loading only 1-2 seconds after they become nervous and search for alternative.
– You can make your site safer with high-level security control. Of course, no one can give you full guarantee against hackers and virus attacks but you can prevent some of them better than shared hosting owners.
– You control what happens to your site. You can use every application that you need. In general, you can customize your site exactly like you want. That is impossible with shared hosting.
I can bet, you want dedicated hosting badly but there are some disadvantages:
– Dedicated hosting is expensive, really expensive like 40 – 60 times more expensive than shared hosting. If shared will cost 2,5 USD a month, dedicated will be 80-120USD for this period. I’ll be happy if this cost won’t scary you but most small companies can afford this price.
– Dedicated hosting needs technical support. You should appoint computer specialist or do-it-yourself if you have computer skills but this commitment can’t be done among other things. You should manage your server and keep track of its good functionality. There is another problem – high-level security needs daily updates and installation of new programs. You can’t make any compromises to make sure you are well protected. Hackers don’t need many opportunities to attack you. Common cases are a denial of service (DoS) attacks, unauthorized access and cross-site scripting (XSS). So they can penetrate your customers’ computers.

I’m sure you already know what variant is good for you – shared or dedicated hosting. In a few words – if you plan to make a blog or some kind of personal site, don’t have a big budget and computer skills, your option is shared hosting. If you plan to make a site with large traffic, want maximal security, have computer skills or you have someone on your team with the technical skills and a huge budget – dedicated hosting is your solution.

How to start blogging in 30 minutes for free with WordPress

February 27, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

What’s the reason one of the most famous companies to use a free and open-source content management system WordPress?

Big organizations like Sony Music, the Walt Disney company, Time Inc, Mercedes-Benz, medias like Variety, BBC America, Facebook Newsroom, celebrities like Beyoncé, Rolling Stones, Usain Boltcould could afford a thousand of dollars for best developers who will create a unique panel for them. What’s the catch? Why they choose WordPress and more important – can I do it for me?

How to start a blog in 30 minutes with WordPress

WordPress is attractive for search engines because it doesn’t just define web pages but emphasizes the meaning of page information using semantic markup

Let’s start step-by-step and find out everything.

1. What’s WordPress offers?

This powerful content management system suggests an opportunity to all users – no matter novices or professionals, to make a website and then manage it – organize, edit, publish it. WordPress is really easy to work and you can do it 24/7, completely free, including all plugins, themes, improvement…

Yes, there isn’t such a proposal in our precious new world – where everyone wants to get your money!

2. OK, but what are the limits?

There are no limits in WordPress. With this software you can create everything you can imagine.

All kinds of sites – private and celebrity pages, information and corporation sites, blogs, social media… You can use infinitely numbers of themes, plugins, and all other possibilities.

There is absolute freedom.

For that reason, it isn’t strange that almost 60% of the sites now are created with WordPress software. 60% – that’s millions of spaces in world web. Unbelievable!

3. Is it possible to exist unlimited opportunities?

Yes, it sounds impossible but it’s a fact. The explanation is simple. WordPress is an open-source platform that means everybody could develop and improve themes and create his own plugins.

Designers and computer programmers around the world make their own ideas and introduce them to all WordPress community.

When you decide to use the software, you customize a new look when combining deferent themes, layouts, and plugins.

4. But I’m an absolute beginner, who can help me if I have a problem with WordPress?

You can rely on numbers of users who can help you for free. You can find them in forums. Plus, there are many video tutorials and detailed guides for all kind of problems. I’m sure that you can solve every difficulty with their help.

5. Maybe I should assign site creation to a professional programmer?

It’s alternative but still think twice. Programmers would connect the site they created with their own hosting service. But is this the best hosting service for your needs? Is this safer, secure, faster option that fix exactly for you? WordPress software works with all kinds of hosting. You can choose the one who is perfect for your ideas.

6. How can I distinguish my site in this sea of millions of sites?

Maybe you talk about so-called SEO or search engine optimization, the main target of all site owners?

Of course, when your site becomes public, it will need traffic. Everybody wants to become one of the first options who search engines offer when someone looking for your service. Good optimization is a keyword to reach your goals. WordPress again is what you looking for.

First, WordPress is attractive for search engines because it doesn’t just define web pages but emphasizes the meaning of page information using semantic markup.

Second, it gives you many plugins to optimize your site, plugins like Jetpack and All in One SEO.

Third, as it became clear, WordPress is very popular. The best online marketing tools just love it. Programs like ConstantContact, CoSchedule, Buffer, Hootsuite, ClickToTweet, Disqus, Google Analytics, LinkPatroland connect their platforms with site’s using WordPress really easy. You should know there are plugins for everything you want to do with your site and much, much more.

Finally: WordPress provides an opportunity to make a site on your own, like you want, to manage it, to control everything that happens in it, to give you full statistics and many options to continuous development. If you choose WordPress you’ll be part of a huge community who growing with light speed since it’s appearance in 2003.

7 simple steps to choose the right hosting service for your new online business

February 27, 2018 By Georgi Leave a Comment

If you really serious about starting your own online business you need a website. As you probably already know whether you are starting one page site or authority blog it needs to be stored and published in Internet. Web hosting service allows your website or webpage to be viewed.

It’s major for every temporary online manager to know how much of his success depends on a good hosting service. You need a website with many visitors and your web hosting provider connect your business with customers.

Choosing a good hosting provider is an investment in your business future.

The Main Points For You To Keep In Mind:

Set up your goals
Define your hosting needs
Speed & Performance
Security, Reliability & Uptime

You have to know a few simple things to make a right solution.

Discover 7 simple steps that will help you to make the right decision.

1. Faster, faster, faster

If you have watched the movie Speed with Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, you had to know the speed is a very important thing. If you lose speed you can explode… at least – your business.

You need a hosting service who can ensure maximum speed for your current needs. When your new potential customer tries to enter your site you have to be sure that he will do it. There is no time for “loading….”.

You should choose servers with SSDs because those servers will load your website faster than spinning hard drives.

If you expect visitors from different places on Earth, you should trust to servers on multiple continents. With this server, you will have fastest connection in every time in everyplace.

It’s important to ask your hosting company about CDN (content delivery network). CDN decrease losses through proxy servers around the world. Some companies offer free CDN, in other cases, you should pay for this service.

The latest version of HTTP – HTTP/2 is a network protocol of our time. HTTP/2 is up to 10 times faster than HTTP. Your host should support it. But what is 10 times faster when you can make your site many, many times faster – hundreds of time. How? With a simple trick – caching options. You need choices like PHP 7 opcode caching, Memcached/Redis object caching, Nginx/Varnish full page caching, CDN, and ElasticSearch/Solr full text searching.

2. Protection and safety

I’m sure that you often read these words from Google: “This website may contain a virus and may harm your computer”. I know what you do when you see it, you choose next alternative. Exactly what you don’t want to make your potential customers. You lost money with every lost click. But how to protect your website from malware? How your hosting service could assure you that the hackers can’t attack you?

Your web host must be updated daily to keep software up-to-date. Check it out is they use the latest software like PHP, Apache, MySQL

Are there automatic CMS updates? Be careful – it’s safer to choose manual activation for new updates because you can lose important information if new updates start running in the middle of your job.

Your web host should be your guard dog – keep an eye on your traffic, block up all the suspicious enters and find all the vulnerabilities handling. Dog’s best helper would be Web Application Firewall but for full security you need backups. Hackers are always a step forward! It’s possible your host company make backups but there is no guaranty how often they do that.

A month is an optimal time for regular backups, more often is better. Insist for this service even this will cost you more, loses may be incomparably larger. Backups will restore your information with a simple click.

But hackers are not the only one who make problems. Like all computer components programs also crash without external intervention. Your host can offer you help – their server admin can log onto the server and find problem solution. Restart the machine it’s possible options in many cases but causes dead time. Nobody likes dead times! Prepare yourself for such a problems and prevent them before they really happen with good monitoring. This secure system will check server status and automatically will fix occurring problems. If you don’t want to rely on your web host can do it for yourself with programs like Uptimerobot, Pingdom and Uptrend

3. Help

You have to know that online business is like a new relationship – you have to be available 24 hours 7 days in a week. But as opposed to love connections someone else could do it instead of you, someone like your web host. This perfect helper is friendly, always ready to support you, work fast, 24/7, you can find him via phone, chat, messenger… Of course, this service will cost you something but will be worth it. Especially if words “hosting support” in your contract means a lot of issues

4. The site is ready

Your website is ready, you’re happy with the result but only one lefts. That spark that will give him life. It depends on your web host. The necessary software and complex of facilities to show your site to the world should be provided by your host. Even it’s simple site. Make a list of all important things that you want by your hosting company and ask:

Necessary software to run your website?
Do they allow plugins?
CMS?
Operating system?
Database?
Web server?
Programming languages?

If you need special tools, do they assure them – SSL, Let’s Encrypt, Staging, FTP, SSH?

About services. If they provide:

Domain registration?
Email hosting?
Database management?
Control panel?
Storage size? Because there are limits always independent of advertising word like “unlimited”.
Free site migration?

5. The hosting service company

When choosing web host you choose a partner for a long period and you have to choose right. It’s easy to find out more about the company.

How solid the company is? Is it small, local provider or a big corporation? What are their advantages?
Check their site – is it easy to use it, clear and explanatory?
Read About us section – what’s company story, goalsand philosophy? Do they invest moneyin events like WordCamp, open source projects or some other enterprises?
Look how they respond to their clients in social networks – how fast, do they keep friendly language even for the bad comments?
How does their office look like?
Their employers – are they look happy?In general – company who take cares of employers, take cares of customers
Is host company eco-friendly, for example – what they do with their carbon footprint? How they save electricity?

6. Payment

The payment isn’t the main when you choose web host but it will be good if you pay as much as the service costs – no more no less. Maybe you have chosen a hosting company because you like their advertising with happy faces who ensure you that you receive everything in a lower price? Although, please, read the little letters to understand what “everything” means for this company. For how long is also a good question to ask? Are there any limits, perhaps “everything” but for basic needs? It’s possible lower price applies only if you pay for long period.

That’s it! If you take the time, follow these steps you will select the best web host for you. The time spent will pay you back!

Live with Master Spas

January 26, 2017 By Georgi Leave a Comment

Success Is A Journey

January 22, 2017 By Georgi Leave a Comment

“It’s not what you have but what you do with what you have that separates winners from loosers.”

Brian Tracy

Everyone has his own personal journey. Sometimes you just need to hear the right piece of motivation to get started. Watch this inspirational video of Brian Tracy.

7 Rules you can apply to any challenge:

Write down your goal and act.
Do not think about possibility of failure.
Focus on NOW and do the best possible.
Get out negative people from your environment.
The obstructions on your road are here to guide you.
Write down your goal twice a day and stay open minded.
You can’t do it alone. Ask for support and give support to others.

9 steps to make bold decisions without overthinking it.

January 20, 2017 By Georgi Leave a Comment

Don’t stick into analysis
Set up time limits
Do it with maximum acceleration
Take the decision which satisfied you now, tomorrow and 10 years from now.
Write down your goals
Make to do and not do lists (Make costs benefits analysis)
Find out how others solved the same problem in the past
Ask your Mastermind.
Trust your intuition.