podcast about web hosts and web hosting topics
Inspiration for a web site’s content is often hard to find. So when I find myself in trouble, I turn towards my own list of six different content writing ideas that should help inspire you to get that new page up and running.
I would suggest you bookmark this list of content ideas, and save them for a rainy non-creative day.
Over the past few weeks, I have been doing a lot of looking around at web sites I run, and asking myself, “What can I do to make this web site better?”. Well, after some experiments, trial and error, I have a few solutions I want to share with you.
Today I’ll hand to you four areas of your web site you can improve to get more web site visitors, have the search engines love you, and get more visitors to your web site, right here on the Web Hosting Show.
Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 202!
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Large corporate enterprises are not the only ones that need to be careful about security and having the tools in place to recover from a web hosting disaster.
My good buddy Barry, from Layered Tech posed an interesting quandary to me the other day.
As someone who works for a major player in hosting, one of the biggest problems I see on a daily basis is people having their server hacked and used for some nefarious purposes such as spam, DOS attacks, and more. There are many ways to combat this costly threat, what is the most cost-effective way for the small to medium-sized business?
It is important for everybody to have a good offense and a good defense when it comes to all the proverbial “natural disasters” that can happen in the web hosting world. My best advice would be to have a good strategy in place first, so you can prevent the problems from happening in the first place. You have to be proactive, and not reactive.
One thing you have to watch out for when you start working remotely in the web hosting world is how many hours you work. Now some might think you should be working as much as you can, while this is true – you also need to have limits. Any web host who would hire you as a remote worker should get you a set number of hours per week to work.
Don’t do more for less. When looking for a remote position with a web hosting company, many hosts may ask you to do as much as you can. You should do your work assigned to you, however don’t let them get away with not giving you a set number of hours a day to work. Any remote position should have the same benefits of a regular “going to the office” job, meaning you should work X amount of days, get X amount of days off and work a set number of X hours per day.
I can speak from experience, as somebody who will usually go beyond the call of duty, and as somebody who was fooled into this in my first remote web hosting job. At the time, I was inexperienced and thought it might be normal to be on call 24/7 to help out with answering e-mails, or working live chat for a web hosting company. What was the end result? I was so burnt out I didn’t take another remote web hosting job for two years.
Now, I am not saying any web host out there will go out of their way to screw you over, sometimes they need all the help they can get and they might forget about the fact that they are overworking you. If there is one thing I could tell every remote web hosting tech out there, to sum things up, it would be don’t allow yourself to be available 24/7.
So when you sign up to work remotely for a web hosting company, be sure to get it in print in your contract your weekly hours, days off and when or how you get paid if your asked to work overtime. Both the web host an yourself need to be clear on these limits so that they can get the expected work out of you, and you don’t get overworked in the process.
A lot of the appeal of Facebook or Twitter is that you catch people in the buff. No, not that there are a lot of nudist on the social networks. What I mean is there is a lot of “raw” and “un-edited” thoughts out there. Of course, that isn’t to say you can’t organized your “raw” thoughts before you get them out there.
How should web hosts act on social networks? It is all about striking the right balance of many different things you want to get out into the public. Here are a few topic ideas.
Contacting Customers – Be sure to search around Twitter, Facebook and the like for people who are mentioning you, good or bad. With the people who might be saying they are having trouble with you (you can often spot this, because they are saying that you suck) be sure to lend a helping hand. To those who are singing your praises, be sure to thank them for doing so.
Support Updates – Having a major problem that is effecting many customers? Rather than hiding under your desk and sucking your thumb, it might be better to get out there in the angry mob and let them know what is going on. For the most part 95% of the population out there will be ok with disaster, as long as they know what is going on. Just think how happy those people on the Titanic would have been, for example, if the ship had a better PR person. It is something to think about.
Plug Yourself and Market to All – If you have a good following of people requesting to be your friend, you need to make sure you strike a good balance between giving your current followers something they can use, and also give the searchers out there a reason to look into you. Half you marketing posts should be focused towards your base and the other half should be focused toward potential customers.
So there you have it, follow these steps and you will finally have something to do on that Twitter account or Facebook fan page you haven’t touched in a while.
Did you know that you can become a better web hosting client? No wait, isn’t the web host suppose to be bending over backwards to suit your needs? Well, yes – however a good customer service relationship works both ways. Make sure you don’t fall under one of these types of hosting customer stereotypes.
Bad Hosting Customer Stereotypes
The Baby – This is the customer that cries or throws a fit when he doesn’t get things his way. Making the proverbial checks his rear end can’t cash and saying things, such as, “If you don’t fix this, I am going to the police to report you!”.
The Negotiator – This type of hosting customer thinks he can wheel and deal his way into or out of any situation. Now while making some negotiations and compromises is a good thing, The Negotiator takes it a step too far. Watch out for his stereotypical, “Well, I can upgrade but if I do I want you to cut the VPS price in half and give me a pony”.
The Know it All – Be very careful when it comes to arguing how to fix a problem when you come to support to fix your problem. The Know it All thinks he knows more than the web host and likes to point it out in every occasion he can.
Be a Better Hosting Customer
Now with that said, I don’t want to color all hosting customers with the same broad brush. There are many out there that are perfectly fine. However, just keep these tips in mind next time you contact your hosting support team.
The customer is always right? Yes, but sometimes the customer can be more unwelcomed than a midget working in the men’s big & tall section of your local mall. If you work as a team with your hosting support, and try to relate with them, and then do the whole “give and take” dance you will have a higher success rate when it comes to getting quality hosting support.
The core foundation of any web host is a great support team. With that, almost anything else can be overlooked. What is the reason for that? Well, good support is hard to find these days. So if you are a web host or a worker in the industry, I am going to give you some advice that will make sure you provide that support, in a way that the customers will enjoy.
Getting Ahead of the Web Hosting Support Curve
The first bit of advice I have for you is to provide the support, before it is even asked for. This preemptive strike will cut down on your quantity of customers coming and looking for a answer. Providing proactive support can be achieved a number of different ways. Two of the ways I like the most are posting tutorials and articles explaining how to tackle anything you might need when it comes to your web hosting business and the second would be to send out announcements and updates when big changes come.
Provide Tutorials and FAQs – Many web hosts have a help site or tutorial database where they can cover some of the most frequently asked questions. This will cut down on your ticket time, because the answer is already out there.
Get Ahead of Big Changes with Announcements and Updates – Now, with getting ahead of the curve with big changes, like a server going down or something else to that effect, make sure you announce as much information as you can about the problem, and be there with your customer to give updates. No matter how small they are, you customers will appreciate it. Things you should be telling your customer include ongoing maintenance, advance notice of maintenance, or new features.
Get to the Point, but Give All the Details
No matter if you are answering a ticket desk or working the phone system, you have to realize people (for the most part) don’t want to talk to you. It is nothing against you personally, people (in general) already feel like they are wasting time when they reach the point of reaching out to a support team for help. So remember to get to the point, but give all the details you can.
Don’t waste time, if you don’t need a ‘bit of information, don’t ask for it. Try your best to troubleshoot the issue, find out all the information you need to gather to get the issue fixed or to find out more, and then get that response sent out. Also, do your best to stay kind, no matter how big of a jerk the customer is. You should consider yourself the web hosting world’s version of Ghandi or Mother Teresa at all times.
Keep those response times as low as possible, so you can keep your work load light, and spend more time with the customers who need your attention.
I have really just scratched the surface, but hopefully this will help to inspire somebody to give a little more when it comes to web hosting support. Now this one is aimed all of of those out there who give the support, not the ones that receive it. However, when push comes to shove I think we all are responsible for supporting our projects, businesses or jobs so hopefully the lessons learned here will be something everyone can be educated from.
There are a number of different ways to make money on your web site, however, Google AdSense might be the most popular choice of all. Google has made it a brain-dead simple process to get up and running their their ads, so there is no question why they are number one at what they do.
How do you Sign Up and Use Google AdSense?
Signing up is a pretty easy process. All you need to do is sign in with your Google login, and follow the on screen instructions. Once that is done, you can create the ads you want to use, then grab the code for them to place them into your web site. I have been using it for so long, I don’t see where this could be seen as a complicated process. They make it all pretty easy.
You also have several different ways you can setup ads.
What Are the Rewards of Using Google AdSense?
The good thing about Google AdSense is that it automatically crawls the content of your pages and delivers text and image ads that are relevant to your audience and your site content. Relative ads are what you want in the long haul.
Now you will not become rich over night, so if you want to quit your day job – you had better set your goal a little lower. However, aiming at small goals first (such as having the ads pay for your $5 a month hosting bill) is a good start.
Want to learn more? Here are some Google AdSense resources worth checking out:
Overall, I would say it is definitely work checking into. If you are looking for a name you can trust, Google has won many people over in that aspect too. Sometimes, I don’t want to sign up with some company I have never heard of, especially when I need to get or receive important information from them (thinking about tax related stuff). So overall, I would say Google AdSense will not make you uber-rich but it is a trustworthy choice out there.
When it comes to web hosting you can serve everybody you see, or you might look into hosting just a few. A niche is a special area of demand for a product or service. As far as the web goes, that could be web sites based around a certain topic, style or idea.
For an example, webhostingshow.com is a podcast – that is a niche. Some web hosts out there are doing specialized hosting just for people who podcast.
The premise of this argument can be understood with one simple idea, they need hosting too. No matter what the niche is out there; any group of people would be happy to have a web host that looks out for just their needs.
Focus on the Features
You want to offer your customers a few special perks they will not get by going elsewhere. These could be:
All you have to do is ask yourself, what I can do for them to make their lives easier?
Not a Web Host? Grab a Reseller Hosting Account!
For those who are not web hosts, but would like to host for a specific niche of people a reseller account might be a good way to start. Having a reseller hosting plan is already like running your own mini web hosting company. So that proves the point that this is something anybody can do – not just your high dollar hosting companies.
The last benifit of hosting to please the niche markets out there is that you will also be building a community of like-minded web sites. Encourage your customers or clients to talk to one another, share ideas and give each other help and feedback. The social aspect to the Web is the hot topic right now, and you can build a hotspot of your very own.
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Mitch Keeler is nothing more than your average Joe trying to leave his mark on the world though both his professional work and his online projects, articles, podcasts and more.
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