Q & A (Plus a FREE Download)
I frequently get asked questions from visitors and subscribers about different aspects of the ebook business or online business in general. I figure that, for every one person who raises their hand to ask the question, there are many more who are also looking for an answer.
With that in mind, I’ve decided to start including some of those questions and answers here on the Ebook Times blog. If you have a question you’d like answered here, please leave a comment below.
Before I get to today’s questions, I just want to draw your attention to a handy new ebook that’s just been released. It’s called The Resource Report and it’s available for Free here. In it, Mike Filsaime lists the tools and resources he has used to build his business. Some of them are free and some of them are not. All of them are quality tools.
The Resource Report is ESSENTIAL reading if you’re using GoDaddy as a domain registrar (and fascinating reading if you’re not). Mike does NOT like GoDaddy. Big time. He explains why, in a stunning exposure of GoDaddy’s modus operandi that’s certain to scare the living daylights out of anyone using their service. Read all about it in The Resource Report.
Okay, here goes, two questions and two answers….
Q. Please could you offer advice regarding reliable and cost effective providers of domain name registration and hosting. I am now about to launch several more sites and require a more cost effective solution with more facilities. I have researched the subject, to exhaustion, on the internet, but everytime I come up with a possible solution I read elsewhere of why I should not go that route because “they are unreliable”, “screw things up” or are “out and out b*!%£*$’s” and take money from retained credit card information etc etc. I feel that, after 3 months, I have gone round in a circle and have made no progress and am now totally confused.
A. What I’ve done in order to be able to launch new websites quickly and cheaply is get my own webhosting reseller setup — and then use it only to host my own sites. It sort of happened by accident. In the beginning I DID intend to start selling hosting accounts but I decided that it might result in a lot of extra support issues so I decided to abandon the idea. However, I realized that this would be a great way to host all my OWN websites — and it would cost me just $39.95 per month. The service I use now costs $99.95 per month if you’re opening a new account, but still represents reasonably good value. The service is reliable, there’s cPanel with all the bells and whistles and they give great support. You also get a WebHostManager admin area where you can set up your new websites any time you want.
You get a huge amount of bandwidth and hard drive space, so there’s virtually no limit on the number of sites you can host. You’ll find the details here: http://www.webhostingrevenue.com/solutions.html.
If you look around on Google, you’ll probably find other, similar services — perhaps at a better price.
While you’re at it, search for ‘multi-domain hosting‘ or something along those lines. This type of service (that’s becoming increasingly common) allows you to host X number of separate domains on one hosting account.
One other approach worth considering is outlined in this article from the Ebook Times archive.
As regards domain names, I buy all mine at Namecheap.com for $8.88 each. I can manage them via one admin area and I can pay for them using PayPal which is handy (for me anyway).
Even if you have to deal with one company for domain names AND one for hosting, it’s still pretty painless. In my setup, for example, I buy the domain at Namecheap, then (still in Namecheap) I change the DNS settings to point to my hosting (the settings are the same for every site). I then go to the WebHostManager admin area and set up hosting for the domain. It takes just a few minutes.
Q. I have been looking into using AWeber.com as an autoresponder service. Would you have any comments on this as a choice or maybe recommend elsewhere? Any suggestions from your personal experiences?
For a while I used an autoresponder script installed on my own domain. However, after some instances of unreliability with the script and, more recently, accusations of spam, I decided to stop hosting the script myself and go for a third-party service.
I now run all my autoresponders using prosender.com (which is actually just a labelled version of Aweber.com). It works well for me and the price is right so, yes, I’d have no hesitation in recommending Aweber or Prosender.
Okay, that’s it for now. If you have any questions on the topics above — or anything else that I might be able to tackle in future Q&As, please leave a comment below. Don’t forget to download your free copy of The Resource Report.
All the best,
Michael
