Archive for the 'Guides' Category

After we have delivered you numerous articles on different aspects of VPS hosting, we’ve noticed that we need to get back to this topic again. Once again we are going to talk about the problem of choice of a VPS server. This time we are going to take a look at this question under a different angle – let us share some interesting tips on how to tell if what you see when checking out the feature/pricing page of your potential VPS host is what you are going to get. While introducing you choice-making tips in our previous articles we usually referred to the technical aspect of VPS hosting, today we are going to analyze the VPS hosting from the point of view of a customer.

How much RAM do you get in fact?

When you see a 1 GB VPS plan at a very low cost, don’t be too fast in making optimistic conclusions. Check if this entire amount is guaranteed RAM. The best option is to contact sales support – then you are going to have a proof – a copy of your chat or email. But if you don’t have time for those checks, there is a quick way to find it out on your own – check the virtualization type used by this host. If it is XEN – be sure the entire 1 GB of RAM is guaranteed. If they use OpenVZ (the hosts that use it often say their VPSes are powered by Virtuozzo), there’s a risk, that their pricing provides the combined amount of RAM – guaranteed + burstable (RAM, that may be allocated only for a short period of time and thus – not constantly available). Since RAM is the main feature of any VPS server, this should one of the first points you verify before moving any further.

CPU units

Checking out pricing of some VPS hosts, one can find such feature as CPU units. This parameter shows the CPU frequency, available for the given VPS. Although it looks rather informative and lets the potential client compare the offered plans in more details, it’s not quite a correct way to represent VPS CPU specifications. To find out how powerful the CPU of the given VPS is, you need to know, what number of cores the entire VPS-carrier has, what their frequency is and how much of this power is delegated to the specific virtual machine – the latter factor depends on performance priority.

If you don’t know, how to interpret this information, you can simply ignore it. If you do need the details, you can have a brief consultation with the sales department of your potential host. This will let you find out the specifications of the carrier. The more powerful it is and the bigger the plan you are looking into, the more powerful your VPS is going to be.

Disk Space

Since VPS servers are usually offered as a fast solution that is cheaper than a dedicated server, those are not designed for large data processing. The minimal plan at some VPS hosts may offer as little as 10 GB of disk space. If you are going to host a few web pages, it’s alright, but if you work with email and databases, you need to consider disk space allocation rather carefully. Now let us count what you have in the end – after your server is setup, the system may take up to 2 GB of disk space. Any backup you make is going to create a file of the size approximately equal to the size of your /home directory. Not that much space left, isn’t it? That is why another Gigabyte of your virtual HDD may become vital. Well, it can also be taken by swap. According to the architecture of OS Linux, swap is a fixed disk partition, not a file, unlike on Windows – therefore, before you order a XEN-based VPS, you need to consult sales department first, to find out whether /swap is counted with the disk space offered or not.

Summary

If you want to be completely sure about your future VPS host, you need to find out as many details as you can before you actually sign-up for their services. Your potential host may not list everything on their web-page, it’s alright, but their sales and technical team should always be able to explain these or those aspects of hosting with their company. If it happens that some of your questions remains unanswered, you have serious reasons to not consider this host. If you are looking for an affordable and reliable VPS host right now, please spend another minute checking out our plans here at SiteValley.com.

We are back to the topic of affiliate marketing and today we are going to tell you what a perfect affiliate should look like. While running your own web hosting business you may need to involve different marketing tools for promotion of your company. If you involve affiliate marketing, you will need to work out an affiliate program that would look and actually be fair and interesting for people to start referring customers to you. The main interest is about the commissions, of course and you surely understand that they can’t be too high – otherwise you will hardly get any return. Still, the conditions of your program should attract your potential partners, so you are most likely to offer performance rewards or monthly commission raise after they bring you a certain number of referrals.

These measures are definitely going to work – you will start receiving affiliate program signup requests as soon as you announce your program and its conditions. If you are too open for partnership so you don’t even check and filter requests, you will get a great number of partners, but their performance may disappoint you. If you pick your affiliates and manage your program carefully you will later understand that some of your affiliates are worth being provided with higher commissions, sometimes, right from the start. Here’s who you should look for.

Socially Active People Read the rest of this entry »

If you deal with web hosting reselling you might have thought of different solutions that would bring you more clients while spending less funds to attract them. If you did, you must have definitely considered affiliate marketing as one of the most appropriate tools. Well, it really is, if you analyze the way it works. The thing is that this client attraction strategy requires minimum of preliminary investments. Whether you are going to place your advertising banners on some popular relevant websites or run a Google Adwords campaign, it means you will give out your money for a chance to attract more customers or partners. But what if your company cannot afford such investments that don’t grant 100% results while your service is really worth being promoted? That’s where affiliate marketing can help – you cooperate with partners, who help you promote your company and reward them for bringing you signups. A nice and promising strategy, isn’t it? Let us take a closer look.

How Affiliate Marketing Works in Web Hosting Read the rest of this entry »

If you have your hosting business you have to take care of every single detail concerning your team, your hardware, your clients… and their billing. Today however, we are not going to talk about invoicing, transaction tracking or fraud control – our article is dedicated to money back guarantee.

Frankly speaking being a web hosting provider you are not obliged to have this policy and you may not offer money back with any of your services. On the other hand, offering money back may help your customers build trust in your company and the service you provide, which is a very important factor for attracting new sales.

Attracting Customers Read the rest of this entry »

Everyone is searching for reliable hosting. Stability and reliability are actually the key features of any services offered on the market, but what makes those features so crucial when it comes to hosting? The trust and respect of the visitors, of course! If your website or online store goes down all the time, your visitors will not be interested in dealing with it. Nor will they care if it’s the store owner’s fault or the fault of their hosting provider. They will simply start purchasing products from a different online shop, which does not experience such issues. However, one should understand that 100% uptime is not possible and that different server side issues can take place. This primarily concerns small business websites using budget solutions. Thus, if you own some web service and cannot cover the server side aspect of hosting (e.g. if you use not a VPS or a dedicated server but a shared hosting package) you may need to use some recovery tips. Those are not actually aimed at downtime minimization, but they can lessen the impact on your customers and might help decrease their irritation.

1. Report on the Issue Read the rest of this entry »