Jim Daniels Letter

"Before you decide where to host your website take five minutes and read this page. It may help you avoid the same costly mistakes I made."
Regards,
Jim Daniels

From the desk of Jim Daniels, Owner of
BizWeb2000 and HOSTING.com Representative.

Many of you reading this right now probably know that I live and breathe the internet. What most of you may not know is that as I've built, my financial independence online, I've hosted this web site with a total of seven web hosting companies. That's seven since 1996, admittedly far too many.

The fact is, I am not alone. Most small business owners continue to bounce from host to host. If you have been on the web for any length of time, your web hosting experiences may be disturbingly similar. If you're still new to web hosting, you found this report just in time.

Why are small business owners bouncing from host to host? Simple... With an overcrowded web hosting industry, at first glance there is no simple web hosting choice for small business owners. And to complicate matters further, hosting prices ranges from dirt-cheap to exorbitantly over-priced.

So how do you, as a small business owner, select the proper web hosting solution for your company? Perhaps the best way is to learn how not to do it.

Read my little story below and this will become crystal clear. It may even amuse you a bit, how such a successful cyberbusiness owner can learn the simplest of lessons the hard way!

During my first 12 months online (1996/1997) I tried three different web hosting companies. They all fell under the category of "Free web hosting".

Most of this free web space came with whatever ISP connection I was currently on. My sites addresses looked something like www.users.aol/jim and www.netcom.com/?user/ . In short, my business suffered and it took me too long to learn the following facts about the free hosting I was using...

While free hosting is excellent for personal, family, hobby, and "for fun" web-mastering, it is not effective for business. In order to operate a profitable business online, a small business owner requires much more than a free host can offer. (Things like speedy servers, ownership of your own domain name and 24hr. support, just for starters.)

What's more, when people saw my "free" website URL, my business lost credibility and instantly had a strike against it. I didn't know this until I went to the next level of web hosting and my profits immediately increased.

If you're doing business online and considering using a free web hosting company, I strongly urge you to reconsider.

Price was my biggest concern when I stepped up from the free hosting level. This turned out to be yet another mistake. (Starting to get the idea that I learn things the hard way?...)

After three exhausting "budget hosting" experiences, the facts about budget hosting finally became evident. Most budget hosting companies are not a good choice for serious businesses owners. Budget hosts usually charge between $9.95 - $24.95 per month. While these attractive price result in lots of new customers for these budget hosting companies, many of them experience the" revolving door dilemma." Every time someone signs on, someone else leaves. Why?... Slow or non-existent support and a myriad of other "budget host" problems.

With all three of my budget hosting experiences, the level of support and assistance I received was far below what my small businesses required to grow and prosper online. When my last "budget host" managed to creep my pricing up to $125 per month because of my growing web site traffic, I was beginning to wise up. The final straw was when their server crashed, left my entire site dead for over a week and lost all backups of my site. The original draft of the report you are reading right now was born that day!

Unfortunately, that last lesson was a very expensive one. The downtime ended up costing me over $1000. But one good thing came of it. It was the end of my budget web hosting days.

My final take on budget web hosting? The few dollars you think you're saving each month will be lost to sneaky surcharges, frequent down-time, slow and overloaded servers and a variety of other budget web host problems. And if downtime is involved, you may never know just how much your budget web host is costing you, unless you sit up and watch your site 24 hours a day!

With 2+ years of trying six web hosting companies behind me, I finally decided that my business was too important to continue bouncing from host to host. I moved to the final tier... professional level web hosting.

I contacted a few other successful business owners and they came clean. They had been through similar experiences and were happy to steer me in the right direction. I should have asked for help sooner.

I am proud to say that my seventh and final web host is a company called HOSTING.com. I have been with them a few years now and simply put, they are the best web host I have ever had the privilege to work with. I'm ashamed to admit it, but it took me seven tries to learn this simple fact...

In web hosting, just like every other area of business, you get what you pay for. Virtualis web hosting plans start at $36 a month, but the little bit extra you pay, gets you a whole lot more.

HOSTING.com is a proven leader in an industry crowded with tens of thousands of competitors. Why? Mainly two reasons...

Innovation and service. Here's just a partial list of what sets them apart from the rest of the industry. The following items are included with every web hosting package:

1. A simple website management interface where you manage your site through your browser. You upload web pages, add email addresses, activate "follow-up autoresponders" and more, in real-time.

2. CartSnap™, a free online shopping cart builder that will blow your socks off! Customize your own online order taking system, in seconds.

3. Live technical assistance. Tired of dealing with automated help and waiting forever? The Virtualis "human" support team will help you with your website 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. By 800# or email.

Are you starting to wonder why your site is not with HOSTING.com? Let me sum this whole thing up and tell you how you can become a HOSTING.com customer...

If I could go back to 1996 and start over, I would do many things exactly the same. One thing I would do differently though is this...

I would select a professional web host the first time around. After hosting with a professional level host like Hosting.com, I can attest to the "cash value" of fast servers, zero downtime and innovative web-mastering tools. I can also tell you that a company that stands ready to assist you - any hour of the day, any day of the week is priceless in today's web hosting industry.

Now that you have the facts, I invite you to join our growing mass of "web wise" customers at HOSTING.com. Simply put, they offer web hosting services that cannot be equaled. I wouldn't trust my web site with any other host -- and neither should you.

P.S. At HOSTING.com, innovative web hosting is just the beginning. Here's the real twist...

Every new customer is invited to partake in the optional reseller plan -- at no additional cost. It's simple, you refer customers and earn recurring monthly income. HOSTING.com does all the work. For every new customer you bring in, you receive 25% of their monthly charges, month after month. You even get a free reseller site that does most of the work.

Take it from me, if you are interested in a second income source, this can generate quite an a bit of money, month after month. For the entire year of 1999 we earned over $30 thousand in commissions. This is an excellent way to add profit to any website.

If you're ready to really get your business in gear, pick out the Hosting.com hosting plan that is right for you and sign up right online now.

"How the current web hosting industry will affect your small business."

"How the current web hosting industry
will affect your small business."