Choosing a Web Host – Frequently Asked Questions

Choosing a Web Host – Frequently Asked Questions

This article was provided useful information about choosing a web hosting provider. There are several things to look for when choosing a reliable and yet cheap web hosting. The following are provided to frequently asked questions and answers to frequently asked questions.

P. How reliable is the service a web hosting service?
Most surveys indicate that reliability is an e-businesses main concern. You should look at least 95 percent uptime guarantee to ensure that the service is really reliable.

P. What kind of results I can expect?
A great hosting company has one or more T3 lines that are always connected to the Internet, not going through another hub of the network. The servers must be fast, ideally Pentium Pro or Linux. You should also let your host know if you are using bandwidth murderers like streaming audio or video.

P. What is the phone support?
When it comes to phone support, you should seek assistance 24 / 7 telephone is always available with a live operator. Once you have discovered, you should always check it. Call or e-mail technical support line at 10 o’clock at night or on Sunday and expected to be answered.

P. How much will it cost?
The hosting service with an entry level single domain name, 20 to 30 MB (megabytes) of hard disk space, email services and up to 1 GB (Giga Bytes) of monthly bandwidth should not cost more than $ 50.

P. How do you handle security?
Most of the time in a process to get good and cheapest web hosting finally trapped in wrong hands. Such companies provide pathetic security mechanism that ultimately gives you nothing but suffering. The passwords to your website or domain should be required to control the host, and manage the website. Every file on your server must also be supported on a daily basis. You should always find a host that provides security for transactions as well.

P. How much bandwidth needed for data transfer?
Around the estimate, 2 GB bandwidth should be perfect for a very small personal site. If you are running a medium site with text and images but no large files, 5 GB would be ideal. Largest sites on the other hand, require 30 GB of bandwidth. Good hosting company will send you an email if you are about to run out of bandwidth, letting you know that your site can be turned off if you exceed the quota. In this way, you can upgrade your plan if you choose.

P. What about a control panel?
Almost all hosting packages have some kind of control panel, allowing you to configure hosting packages, as well as its settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. The control panels can be accessed through a secure web page, and then appear in your web browser. The most popular control panels are Helm, Cpanel, Hsphere, Plesk and Ensim. The most common is Cpanel, which only works on Linux. Most beginners and other users would be more suited to Cpanel, and running on the Linux platform cheaper.

P. What about a POP3 account?
When sending and receiving email, POP3 account are very important. These types of accounts you can assign to individual users their own email addresses. POP3 accounts you need enough for the amount of email addresses to be assigned to other people. Many times this number will be cited as unlimited, although there are only so many email addresses that you can actually create.

P. What about spam and viruses?
I have very bad experience with hosting provider when virsues actually destroy my whole site then  I decided to find another provider that not only  have control on spamming but on viruses as well. In this process I ended up on very famous  Canadian web hosting provider and from that day to now I never been faced this problem again.These features are classified in a separate category, and can include autoresponders, spam filters, even anti-virus protection. May be important to you, but in reality varies from one host to another. Basically, these are all things without which the host will give you when you register for an account. If you’re plan does not offer quite what you want, your host may be flexible in setting up your account.

P. What about running my own online store?
If you are planning on running your own online store, there will be some factors that will participate in that decision. First, you need an SSL certificate for your website, so you can process credit card transactions. Basically, these are three parties that will take care of each and every transaction, a small price percent, eliminating the need for greater security on your server. You also need to ensure that the server and the software is able to run the script you have for your shopping cart.

P. Do I need help making the final decision.
If you plan on having a website that is entrusted to the income or storing important data, you must make sure that you go with a host that will offer a high level of customer support. A lot of hosting companies offer forums as well as their contact numbers, however the forums can be excellent when it comes to very little problems.

In Conclusion

By taking your time and check to see what each host has to offer, you can find the service that best suits your needs. There are many machines and many different packages out there to choose from, which means you should not go with the one you see first. Take time to compare plans, costs and customer service and you should have no problem choosing a web hosting service.

Love to write quality content about best hosting providers

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How to Sell on eBay: Frequently Asked Questions by New eBay Sellers

How to Sell on eBay: Frequently Asked Questions by New eBay Sellers

I get a lot of questions from both new and experienced sellers.  Here are the common questions I get from new sellers. 

As you will see below, these answers are short answers aimed at beginning sellers. As a new seller gains experience on eBay, you will learn that all of these issues are more complex and nuanced and any of these questions can have many answers depending on the given situation.

Most of the topics I cover here are covered in much more detail in The Complete eBay Marketing System.

Q: Where should I set my starting price?

A. It is a fact that lower starting prices attract more bids.  It is also a fact that auctions with lots of bids end up with higher prices.  So you always want to use a low starting price.  The exception to this is if you are selling a very expensive item that you could not afford to lose money on, or if you are selling an item that is so specialized that there will not be many bidders.  In these cases you may want to use a higher starting price or a reserve (see below for info on reserves).

Q: When is the best time to start my auction?

A. The better question to ask is when should my auctions end.  Deciding which day to start depends on the auction duration you select. Statistically auctions ending Sunday and Monday evening between 5PM-7PM Pacific Time (all eBay times are Pacific) get the most visibility and the highest number of bids.  But this is not true of all products so it pays to test.  For example, if you are selling something to retired people, they are online more during the day than in the evening.  Students tend to be online between 3PM – 5PM.  If you are selling something to a business, then the morning and early afternoons might be best.

Q. What should I sell on eBay?

A. Start with items around your house. Essentially you want to have an eBay garage sale.  Just take a box and go through your house and place things in it that you haven’t used in the past year or so or don’t really need or want anymore. This will give you some experience, clear out some space in your house and give you a little cash flow to invest in merchandise to sell.  In general, you will find that items sell on eBay for far more than you would realize at a garage sale.

Forget trying to sell popular or hot consumer products.  Look for a specialized niche of some kind where there isn’t so much competition.  As a beginner and a small seller you just don’t have the resources to compete against the huge sellers on eBay who can spend thousands of dollars at a time buying inventory in bulk.
Once you are ready to find merchandise to sell, I recommend OneSource.  They are the only source of wholesale and dropship information that I recommend other than my own. (See The Wholesale Buying System). 

Do not join any of the many drop ship supply companies that require membership.  Many of them are pure scams and the rest are pretty much a waste of money.  These sites are basically middlemen who take a percentage.  This results in not having enough margin to sell profitably on eBay. OneSource actually connects you directly to manufacturers, importers, liquidators and master distributors so you can buy at the lowest price.  Best of all they charge a one-time fee instead of an ongoing membership cost.

Q: Should I use optional listing features like bold, highlight, gallery, etc.?

A. This depends on a lot of factors but mostly it is a question of return on investment.  For example the Bold option costs .00.  So it would not make sense to use this on a low cost item.  eBay claims adding Bold will raise your final value by 11%.  If you were selling an item that you though would go for around this would result in a break-even result.  But, if you are selling something that you think would go for more than that, this option makes sense.  In general I use the Bold Option on items that I think will bring in over .

So look at each option, calculate the cost and figure out if it makes sense.  The one option I always buy is Gallery (.35).  If you don’t put a gallery photo next to your listing you won’t get many views to your auction.

Q. How long should I run my auctions

A. If an item is popular you can use a short duration like 3 or 5 days.  On most items I use 5 or 7 days.  I rarely use a 1-day auction unless I am selling something like an event ticket for something that happens in a few days.  I save 10-day auctions for very expensive items when I want to get the most exposure to insure getting the highest price.

Q. What should be included in my listing?

A. Write a clear and concise description that fully describes what you are selling.  Include any specifications or physical description.  If you are selling anything used be sure and describe its condition and reveal any flaws. Include clear photos of the item being sold and a close up of any damage (tears, scratches, dents, etc.)
Include details about shipping, payment types accepted and your return policy.
Writing listings is a real art they you will learn with experience.  If you want to learn more, the topic of writing listings and auction titles is one of the longest chapters in The Complete eBay Marketing System.

Q: Should I use “Buy It Now”?

A. eBay’s Buy-It-Now (BIN) feature is one of the most talked about of eBay’s optional features. Some love it and others hate it –but the trick to using BIN is knowing how to use it.

Buy-It-Now (BIN) is a feature that lists a fixed price next to your current bid price that allows a buyer to end an auction at any time by paying the BIN price. However, the BIN price disappears from the listing and search results once the first bid has been placed on an ordinary auction, or once the reserve price has been reached on a Reserve Price Auction (RPA).

One problem with BIN items that start with a low bid is that someone interested in the item will place an early bid at the minimum just for the purpose of getting the BIN to disappear. Remember there is no cost to bid. Low bidders have nothing to lose by placing unreasonably low bids. If they win, they get a bargain. If they lose they just move on to the next item.

Q: Should I use a reserve price?

A. If you want to protect yourself from selling an item at too low a price you have two options:  Set a high starting price or use a reserve. Reserve Price Auctions (RPA) are very controversial.  There are some people who hate them and will not bid on an item that has a reserve.  However, I have tested RPAs extensively and found that I get a higher conversion rate (successful sale) if I use a low starting bid and place a reasonable reserve on the item, than if I use a high starting price.

The biggest risk with a reserve is the extra fee. eBay charges .00 for items with a reserve up to .00, .00 for items from to 0 and 1%  (up to a maximum of ) on items over 0.  But if your item sells, then eBay credits the reserve fee back to your account.

In general you should not use a reserve on items that are popular and get lots of bids as these will always do well without it.

Q: When should I leave feedback?

A. If you consistently offer a quality product, communicate effectively with customers, offer a generous return policy, and give great customer service then I recommend you leave feedback as soon as your receive payment. You may get the occasional negative feedback, but your total feedback score will be highly positive and will grow quickly.

Q: Is it OK to mark up my shipping cost?

A. The short answer to this question is:  Be fair.  You should recover your costs but not try to make money on shipping. If you try to make shipping a profit center, buyers will resent this and may leave you poor feedback or hit you with a low star rating on the new eBay feedback system.

Clearly state your shipping charge in your auction. If you are adding a handling fee, you should tell the bidders. For example you might put a statement like:

I charge the actual cost to ship an item plus a .00 handling charge to cover the cost of boxes and packing materials.

eBay gives you the choice of using calculated shipping or putting in a fixed shipping amount.  I prefer to estimate the fixed amount as this allows bidders to see the shipping next to the search results.  I find I get more hits to my auction when I do this.

Q: When should I offer free shipping?

A. Free shipping can attract additional buyers, but obviously you would not want to offer free shipping on very heavy items as the cost versus distance can be a very high variable.  But on low weight items it can make sense.  I like to use free shipping with Buy-It-Now.  I set a BIN price high enough to cover the shipping and my profit and offer buyers free shipping if they buy it now.

Q: Should I sell  internationally?

A. I used to ship internationally.  Typically you get higher bid results from people overseas, however, the increase in postal rates has made this less attractive. There is also a higher risk to your feedback when shipping internationally as shipments can be delayed and more things can go wrong.  So if you are a new seller, I would leave international selling to later when your feedback is higher and you have more experience.

Q: Should I include a photo of my item?

A. Always!  Bidders rarely bid on listings without a photo. Actually I prefer to use 2 or 3 photos.

Q: Should I offer a return policy?

A. Yes.  I have offered a very generous return policy since I started selling on eBay in 1999.  Over that time I have sold thousands of items and probably had fewer than a couple dozen returns.

Q: Do I need a PayPal account?

A. Yes. PayPal now accounts for over 90%