Before you decide to launch your own website, here?s a warning: There are more than 100 million sites on the Internet and the number is rapidly growing. So what are your chances of being successful? As good as anybody?s provided you know what you?re getting into. In the meantime, take heart and open the Yellow Pages to see how many restaurants, lawyers, or dentists are making a living in your neighborhood. Success is achievable despite the crowded landscape. But here?s the best news if you?re seriously thinking about an e-business. The vast majority of small business websites ? upwards of 99% ? fail, leaving plenty of opportunity for you. These baffled site owners don?t know why they failed, or are failing, because they don?t understand how the Internet works.
Meanwhile many of the web-hosting companies that they?ve signed up with do understand and they?re making money off these website failures by ?churning? ? turning over new accounts ? and shearing the sheep. Some search engine marketers, however, are very good at what they do, but you?ll pay for their rewarding results. Watch out for discount web hosting firms offering $4.95/month Web hosting or free hosting for six months. It?s very tempting for a dissatisfied business owner to switch Web hosts and start the hunt for visitors all over again. Along with low monthly fees these hosting firms will tell you it?s ?quick and easy? to launch your website. Maybe they?ll throw in a $10 domain name, a couple of gigabytes of storage space, multiple e-mail accounts, and a load of bandwidth.
This is like offering someone a box full of car parts and making them think they just bought a Cadillac. What happens to the box of parts? It gets parked in a dark warehouse on some deserted street in a dying industrial park. Get the picture?
Bottom line, the old-fashioned method of web-hosting allows more small businesses to fail, rather than succeed. To succeed, a website must be highly ranked during a generic keyword search in Google (ex: person types in ?orthopedic shoes? and your company comes up on page 1 or 2). The major search engines, or information retrieval systems, like Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and others have their spiders (electronic snoops) crawl all over your sight. They?re looking for nearly 100 signs of popularity including the number of visits to your sight, inbound links from other sites, and mentions in the online media. And these could increase over time as their search algorithms (website ranking methods) become more discriminating.
Meanwhile many of the web-hosting companies that they?ve signed up with do understand and they?re making money off these website failures by ?churning? ? turning over new accounts ? and shearing the sheep. Some search engine marketers, however, are very good at what they do, but you?ll pay for their rewarding results. Watch out for discount web hosting firms offering $4.95/month Web hosting or free hosting for six months. It?s very tempting for a dissatisfied business owner to switch Web hosts and start the hunt for visitors all over again. Along with low monthly fees these hosting firms will tell you it?s ?quick and easy? to launch your website. Maybe they?ll throw in a $10 domain name, a couple of gigabytes of storage space, multiple e-mail accounts, and a load of bandwidth.
This is like offering someone a box full of car parts and making them think they just bought a Cadillac. What happens to the box of parts? It gets parked in a dark warehouse on some deserted street in a dying industrial park. Get the picture?
Bottom line, the old-fashioned method of web-hosting allows more small businesses to fail, rather than succeed. To succeed, a website must be highly ranked during a generic keyword search in Google (ex: person types in ?orthopedic shoes? and your company comes up on page 1 or 2). The major search engines, or information retrieval systems, like Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask and others have their spiders (electronic snoops) crawl all over your sight. They?re looking for nearly 100 signs of popularity including the number of visits to your sight, inbound links from other sites, and mentions in the online media. And these could increase over time as their search algorithms (website ranking methods) become more discriminating.
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