Domain Name Registration – This one is the most obvious additional service a web host can provide.  Who doesn’t want to give customers the ability to register a domain and buy the hosting in one place?  By doing so, you keep you customers from looking elsewhere for one of the most important add-ons you could branch out into.

Backup Hosting – Many web hosts move into backup hosting too.  You could provide off site personal backup as a secondary service, or you could offer a subscription based service for the customer’s web site backup and the process of restoring that backup.

SEO or Marketing Services – When it comes to selling search engine optimization or any sort of marking packages, make sure you have the support team to back you up.  This sort of service has a bad reputation, because many people see it as selling snake oil.  It is a tricky one to show real results from, so if you do move into the SEO and marketing business, just make sure you provide your customers with the goods.

Gift Cards – Providing gift cards can be an excellent way to make yourself look more compassionate about the customer’s needs.  It might not make loads of money, but providing a way to give your services as a present is never a bad thing.  It could help out beginning web hosting gurus, and help young webmasters in getting their first works on the Web.

Affiliate Programs – Why sell your web hosting plans yourself when you can get somebody else to do it for you?  By giving people a “finder’s fee” when they bring you a new customer, you give your community a reward, just for sharing their opinion.  Now it might be hard to lure affiliate professionals, when some companies pay 95% of their profit to affiliates, but start out low and work your way up.

Web Site Design – Like domain name registration, offering a web site design service or an internally built WYSIWYG editor is another nice extra service to add.  It is one of those web hosting necessities that everybody needs, and not everybody has the time to do themselves.

Other Flavors of Web Hosting – When it comes to adding extra services, do not just look at things outside web hosting.  You could offer more web hosting plans.  For example, if you only provide shared web hosting right now, you could move into VPS or dedicated web hosting services.  You could even make shared hosting plans that are a little cheaper (with less extras) or a shared hosting plan that is a little more expensive (with more extras).

There are many ways a web hosting company can diversify.  The important thing to remember is to keep your quality of the service as high as possible for each new service you provide.  I have seen web hosts launch a new product, then forget about it the next month, too many times.  Make sure you give yourself ample time to build up each new service you decide to provide.

Get the Podcast! Listen to this article and more on Web Hosting Show, podcast #204!

Since I now have 200 podcasts under my belt, and with a new year coming up quick, I thought now would be the perfect time to introduce to you my new project.  I want to help you with marketing.

Mitch Does Marketing!

Now, I will not create a new podcast or a blog.  Instead I am going back to my roots, and diving back into producing another book – shades of the long forgotten Lockergnome’s Guide to Web Hosting, which was the inspiration for this podcast four years ago.

So what can you expect? I’m not really sure just yet, other than I am looking to offer to the public at large tutorials, tips and advice on how to market your web site or online business, with as little cost to you as possible.  Think of it as a good ol’ southern boy’s guide to marketing.

As soon as I have more information on the project, I’ll be sure to share it with you here.  I hope it is as successful as my other projects are, and that most of all, you will get plenty of use out of it.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #200 of the Web Hosting Show!

You do not have to drastically change the way you do business though.  If you are successful in one area of business, do not toss it aside to do something else that is more popular.  I got a question submitted to me the other day from Matt, which touches on this very topic.

Here is what Matt had to say:

I run a free hosting site, and I’ve been at it for 4 years, and we’ve got very high rating, and uptime, and server speed, but I’ve still got this problem where everyone expects our service to be a sort of scam or not very good because of the price. If I start charging for it, I have to say goodbye to a lot of people who I’ve been helping for a long time, and if I don’t, it seems to me there’s always this group of people who wont choose it. I mean, if you want to pay money for your hosting, I’ll gladly take donations, and I have many people who do donate. If you have time, because I know you’re very busy, could you give me your honest opinion of our service and what we need to do to appeal more to small businesses and community organizations?

How can a free host become successful?

People are always skeptical when it comes to getting something for nothing, so as long as you give free services – you’ll always have somebody out there dismissing your claims of success because they think you’re a fraud.  Thankfully, they might also think we never landed on the moon or one of the muppets assassinated JFK.  The fact of the matter is there will always be somebody out there to complain.

My question is, do you have to pick one business plan, free hosting versus paid hosting, or can you have your cake and eat it too?  I would suggest you keep your free hosting in place, it sounds successful, and you have happy customers – which is something many web hosts, free or not, can not claim.  As a secondary service, roll out a paid hosting solution that offers a few perks over the free version.  It could be in features, support or anything else you feel like you could offer a little more of to the people willing to pay for it. Then, once that is in place, start marketing your new paid hosting service to those customers you do have, and let them know that it is an option you are providing for them.

Some might bite at the proverbial worm you are tossing out there, and others may say no thanks.  Past that point you can sell your new paid hosting option to the masses using the free service as a way to get your foot in the door, as far as seeing how great your hosting setup is.  You might even sell it as you are so confident they will enjoy their hosting with you, you are willing to give it away for free.

Thanks to Matt for the question, and to check out his web site – or maybe send some more suggestions his way, be sure to check out ismywebsite.com.

Like This Article? Listen to it and more like it on podcast #200 of the Web Hosting Show!

Yes, it is really that simple!  Here is what I want you to do right now.

1. Visit the new “Submit a Question” page
2. Give me your name (first name is fine), web site address (if you have one), and question about web hosting, marketing, search engine optimization or anything else web site related
3. Hit the “Submit” button

That is it.  Simple right?  Oh, it gets even better!

Once you have done so, I will get your question, mention you on a future Web Hosting Show podcast, and answer the question along with giving you a plug for your web site on the web hosting industry’s number one web hosting podcast.  How can you beat a deal like that?

With podcasts #199 and #200 coming up pretty quickly (both will be delivered this month!) I hope to be able to answer a lot of questions, and help you get your web site “out there” by mentioning it on the show, and linking to it off the site here. Web hosts, web hosting clients or people who don’t even have a web site are welcome.  This new feature to show is something I want to open up to everybody out there.

Help me help you, and get your questions of any shape, size of form submitted today!

Should you host your own videos, or should you turn towards some of the free video hosting services out there to do it for you?  This is an internal battle going on with many web hosting providers out there – and I’m going to tell you why the second choice might be the better one for you.

Video Sharing, Converting and Playing are All Server Killers

The number one reason why you should not host your own videos, is simply put in two words, server resources.  By outsourcing this task to a place like YouTube, Revver, and other online video sharing services, you take the load video hosting and distributing takes on a server.  For those of you using shared hosting services, this is particularly important, because you want to keep your resource usage as low as possible.

Open Your Videos Up to a Wider Audience, to Gain More Eyeballs

My second reason for saying you should not host your own video content is for marketing reasons.  Stop and think for a minute, who gets more traffic – you or YouTube?  YouTube would be the obvious answer to many.  Now, how could you turn that to your advantage?

• Publish videos people are looking for
• Make sure to include your brand name and domain name

Now you are creating one more way for people who might be randomly surfing for content via YouTube (or any other video sharing service out there) to find your videos, and your web site.

If you have the resources to host your own videos, because you do not fear the server resource issue, chances are you don’t need to market yourself using these means.  However, for us small guys and gals in the wild and wacky world of web hosting, we need every advantage we can take – and this is one free service available to you worth taking advantage of.

There are a great number of web hosts using Twitter for social communication, support and marketing.  If you get any big group of web hosts geeks together though, on this topic, the argument usually goes one of two ways.  Either people are really for it, or they are really against it.

For those of you who may not know, Twitter is a micro-blogging service that lets you post message under 140 characters online to your own page, (like the great and wonderful twitter.com/mitchkeeler).

Let us take a look at both sides of the argument.

Wasting your time? Some may say that your time is better served doing one on one support with customers, rather than virtually pimping your goods on Twitter.  Others might also not really understand what Twitter is all about, since it is highly referenced as that site where you type what you are doing, such as “about to mow the lawn” or “I’m really bored”.  There is a good side to this coin too though.

A helpful marketing and support tool? I have seen a lot of tweets that pretty much can be summed up as “_____ sucks”.  Now I ask you, wouldn’t it be handy to be able to go out and communicate with that person if they think you suck, and ask why?  Twitter can be used as a quick and easy customer service tool.  Also, posting news about your web hosting company,  links to your blog articles, or even coupons and deals can lead to a lot of new eyeballs seeing those, and coming into your digital empire.  Think of it as one more proverbial driveway they can drive into, to get to your services.

• Check out the large list of web hosts on Twitter!

My final opinion on the matter would be to go for it.  I think that it always helps to get your name and brand out there in every way possible.  I would really be interested to hear what you think though – do you think web hosts should tweet on Twitter?

Extended Unrated Version of the “Marketing” Commercial

Now the first one is actually a better commercial that makes a lot of sense.  It gets to the point quickly, like any good commercial should.  Now the second one has a soft spot in my heart because it includes three things I love – marketing, a midget and a lot of eye candy in the form of both Danica Patrick and Candice Michelle.  I just can’t choose!  Well, if this is a list for the best “ads” I guess number one would have to win.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5,  #4,  #3,  #2,  #1

Makes me wonder what ever happened to these two guys, Doug and well… the other one.  Seems like GoDaddy wanted to make them a staple as well in the ads, however the GoDaddy girls seem to still get more attention.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5,  #4,  #3,  #2,  #1

Now you might watch that and say it wasn’t that funny.  I will give you that, but at least it had a point and told a story a little better than most of them have.  In comparison, you have the Basic Instinct knock-off ad which, well – there is nothing funny there.  They just tried to rip on that movie’s most famous seen but do nothing to make it their own.

Best GoDaddy Ads Countdown: #5, #4, #3, #2, #1

The perfect comparison that is often used is the hot girl that brings her ugly friend around to parties, so when they hang out together, the hot girl looks even hotter.  I am going to go in a different route.  Let us say it is lunch time in the office and your boss has put out two sandwiches for you to choose from.

One is cheese on bread, and the other is the greatest sandwich known to mankind, ham and cheese on bread.  Now if there was just a cheese sandwich, you might settle for that.  Now that you have the ham and cheese option though, you want that instead.  It looks better cause you are getting a better deal.

Now let us look at web hosting accounts.  Every web hosts should have one plan they consider their hot girl or ham and cheese sandwich.  It is the one that gets the best sales.  Now, you need to develop a plan that might seem appealing to some, but has enough flaws that it makes people want to check out the hot girl plan more.

The one hosting plan on its own might be great, but putting it beside a cheese sandwich plan would be even better.