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?

Made for TV Version of the “Marketing” Commercial

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.

It offers a unique service for one.

Think about it like this, if you are comparing two web hosts and one has a special offer for you only good for 24 hours and the other has nothing special going on, which one excites you more?  I have said it time and time again, to get “buzz” in the hosting world we live in you have to strive to be different and unique in every way.

This is a way you can make yourself stick out like a sore thumb in a good way.  Not like that time you wore the sombrero to your high school reunion.

The first place I saw doing this was GoDaddy.com.  They have a special “Today’s Offers” section that is well worth checking out if you are needing some inspiration.  Last marketing tip for the day would be to also use this to pitch offers and specials to your current customer base too.  Try to find something you can offer them that is new and they would be happy paying for.  Perhaps you give them a special deal for being current customers or yours?  Now you are thinking along the “today’s special” line of marketing.

For example, if you were looking for web hosting you might try typing webhosting.com.  Who owns that?  It redirects to AT&T.  So anybody who takes this route would have an instant gateway into AT&T’s web hosting services.

These days when you type in a phrase into the address bar and hit the “enter” key you are taken to a web search.  Before 2002 though, most people were taken to that phrase with a browser placed “.com” at the end.  That is how this practice of Type-in traffic began.

If your looking to move into this marketing tactic yourself, you may want to keep a few things in mind:

• Stay away from copyrighted names. Trying to buy, for example “hewlettpackard.com” might get HP’s legal team after you for cybersquatting.
• Your wallet better be pretty fat. Getting a generic phrase top level domain name is not going to be cheap. Get ready to pay top dollar.

Type-in traffic, if you can get it going, can be a great way to get people to your domain with little to no work at all.

For the clients looking for hosting, they too have a fair share of questions such as, will they get a better deal going with a closer hosting provider?

Although the web hosting business is a global game for one and all – one thing we can not get over is no matter who you are or what you do, there is always going to be somewhat of a lag when crossing the ocean. If you are wanting to deliver your services to a group of people in one region then it would make sense to have services there to cut out this issue all together.

It is a niche too or specialized hosting solution that gets attention. Which out of the two web hosts is going to get the most attention. The one that says they specialize in super fun windows hosting or the one that says they pride themselves in generic boring hosting that everybody else does. Saying that you specialize in UK hosting for an example is a good niche inside of the hosting world to separate yourself from some of the other players in the game.

One good example of a company that is doing United Kingdom hosting is UK2.net. With both shared and dedicated servers they have carved out a nice chunk of the UK hosting experience for themselves. They do dedicated UK web hosting that looks really exceptional and they are even using some US based servers too – so they are expanding themselves from one niche into another.

So remember that the regional-based hosting solutions are nothing to sneeze at. From a technical side of things they could give you a better connection if you are around their region and from a marketing standpoint it does a great job at giving you something to brag about to separate yourself from the rest of the web hosting pack.

How does one sell their web hosting company? I’ve got Errett Cord on the show today to answer your questions on this hot topic in hosting.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 149!
Running Time: 9 minutes | File Size: 3.94 MB

Here are just a few topics from this special edition of the Web Hosting Show.

• Why would you want to sell your hosting company?
• Is it easy to sell a web host?
• What are some of the legalities and loopholes?
• How long does selling a web hosting company take?
• What is the best advice for anybody looking to sell a hosting company?

No matter if your looking to retire for the hosting business or you just want to get out now and do something else I have your exit strategy planned out and ready to go on this episode of the Web Hosting Show. When it comes to doing something new, why not talk with somebody who has done through it before?

This video to date has over 200,000 views and counting and is about as obvious of a commercial as you can get. It is simple, gets your attention and apparently keeps somebody coming back for more with that many views. If somebody was to get more creative with this idea I think you could really double the views even this video has.

When it comes to bringing in new folks into your web site you would be willing to try just about anything and everything, right? One thing that you might have not of considered is the idea of developing something for the public and then giving it away for free. A perfect example of this would be making a free layout for your users to use.

If there is one thing that gets attention it is free MySpace or free WordPress layouts. Those two seem to be the hot search items these days, and you should cash in on the benefits as well. First thing you need to do is find a designer or learn some basic design skills yourself.

The next thing you should do is decide on what audience you want to target. I mentioned both WordPress and MySpace themes earlier, but you could just as easily develop a basic template and design for anybody to use for a standard static web site.

Lastly you need to find a way to release this theme out to the public. Put it on your web site, and then ask some of your blogging buddies if they will mention something about it. Going down the chain there, hopefully you will get the friend tells a friend effect. Before you know it, you might have the Web’s hottest new design.

One good place you can see this type of marking in action is Lunarpages. They have just released three free WordPress themes for anybody to use. Notice the use of ads on the theme preview pages. Your watching a Lunarpages commercial and you didn’t even know it.

Now where to you reap the rewards? Well with all of these people coming back to you to check out the theme, you get page views and hits. For folks inside of the web hosting business (web host or not) this makes a perfect combination of supply meets demand.

All that and oh so much more on this edition of the Web Hosting Show podcast.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 119!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 6.17 MB

Here are just a few topics from this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Tips for Disabling “Index of” File Listings for Folders!
• Free File Hosting (Up to 1GB) With File123.com!
• Positives and Negatives of Cheap Hosting?
• Marketing: Free Layouts Are Traffic Hunters’ Gold!
• Who’s the Fastest Growing Domain Name Register?

Link of the Week: BlueFur.com’s Blog

From free file hosting to tweaks and edits you can make to your own hosting setup, we try to give and teach a little ‘bit of everything here on this show. What good is it to have a web hosting account if you are not using it to its full potential?

When you talk about online marketing, a phrase you hear a lot about is landing pages and creating effective landing pages. If your new to the online advertising or marketing game, this phrase might be a new one for you so let me break it down.

Landing Pages 101

A landing page would be a special page (or series of pages) that you create on your web site for a certain audience or set of visitors.

Lets say I started an advertising campaign with Web Hosting Talk. Now I could have them all come to my index, just type in WebHostingShow.com but that wouldn’t give me a chance to sell myself to them or to see how effective this advertising deal really was.

Instead I would create a landing page with maybe some of my most popular podcasts, some of the best interviews and sell myself a little more than I would on the other pages. I would want to make people feel like, “hey, I’ve found a good deal here and I’m coming back!”.

Reference and Transactional Landing Pages

For the most part there are two types of landing pages out there. A reference landing page would be like the one I described above. You highlight some of the best, sell yourself and hopefully you’ll hook a few new visitors or clients. The second kind is transactional landing pages. The transactional landing page is created to help you complete a step of some kind. From that page I want you to complete a transaction, such as going through a sale of a product.

For an example, for web hosts you could put your hottest plan on your transactional landing page, have the form there to put in the domain, client information and more and then to move on to step two all they have to do is hit that “order now!” button.

So hopefully that now gives you a better handle on what landing pages are and why you might want to look into setting a few up for your next advertising campaign.

The Word Unlimited – There is no such thing as unlimited anything in Web hosting. Everything has it’s boundaries and that is something the Web hosting clients must understand. Does your personal computer hold an unlimited amount of data? No. So why would your hosting disk space? If somebody does say they offer unlimited this, that or the other ask them how the support it.

More times than not the good hosts will say, “Well, we have this, this and this on the back end that lets us support this type of unlimited feature”. The bad hosts will say, “Its unlimited! That’s it! If you move fast though we can upgrade you to our super unlimited plan with even more unlimited goodness!”. Don’t laugh, it does happen.

24/7 365 Support – Is there any Web host out there that offers real 24/7 support. Sure, there are a lot out there that do. Customers get this topic confused more so than the Web hosts do. Yes, I am saying it is your fault. Just because you have support 24/7 doesn’t mean you get instant fixes for your problems.

Some problems take longer to fix and address than others do. Changing your domain name will take a shorter amount of time than moving your account to a new server. Just sit back and let the professionals do their job.

99.9 Percent Uptime – There is no doubt that “uptime” is important to all of us. Nobody likes having the Web site that can not be reached. Thinking like a Web hosting marketer – saying 100% uptime sounds like too much of a lie. Let’s make it 99.9% – that’s a more reasonable number. Customers buy into it hook, line and sinker though.

I am telling you that you will never be able to tell the difference between a 99.9% uptime host and a 99.5% uptime host. Just stop trying. Nine times out of ten this is just a marketing term thrown onto the hosting account to build up your confidence in the Web host’s abilities.

Overstuffing Servers with Clients – One of the complaints I hear a lot from Web hosting customers is that they don’t want to be on an over-stuffed server. What does that mean? It means you have a shared hosting account and you are packed onto a server with so many other customers it is hard to get anything done on the Web site. The performance is slow and you don’t have many server resources to work with.

No Web host is going to tell you how many clients they put on a machine, because that would scare you away. The only true way you can see how the hosting account’s performance works is to try it out for yourself – or read options on how well it has worked for other people.

So Why Are These Topics Taboo?

It all comes down to marketing and sales. If Web host number one is saying he’s got 99.9 percent uptime and Web host number two says he has 99.5 percent uptimes – most people would say go with Web host number one. If these numbers were real would you ever notice the difference?

Probably not.

The Web hosting industry has got so caught up in trying to look better than the next guy though it is hard to figure out who is really better than who. There is no overseeing power to check these numbers so you either have to be able to read the fine print pretty well or get caught up in the marketing jargon and sales talk.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 109!

Seven Ad Design Tips to Learn From and Try Out

1. Decide if you want to keep it serious or make it a little zany. Serious ads hold a lot of respect, but funny or creative ads might lead to more clicks.

2. If your not a well known name inside of the business that you are advertising to, include your domain name on your ad somewhere so at least if the people don’t click on your ad they now have that domain in the back of their head.

3. Try something different. Most Web hosting ads have a picture with a server on it and the world “unlimited” plastered all over it. You could go down that route, but try something new as well.

4. Experiment with four or five different ads and see how they do. You might even want to try more than that if you have the cash to do so. This way you can see which one works best.

5. Talk to and target your audience. If you are running and ad on a Web development forum for a Web hosting company, you could focus the user on the fact that after they learn the basics, they can come to you for the hosting. Now the only hard part is to figure out a way to put that into a 160 x 600 ad space.

6. Put up some text link ads as well and try them out. Graphical ads are highly ignored these days because people are used to them and tune them out on Web pages. Text link ads give you yet another alternative and space to try to capture somebody’s attention.

7. Don’t ask me to punch a monkey, midget, baby, Paris Hilton or George Bush.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 107!

Today I talk with their marketing mastermind Amy Armitage. The Web Hosting Show is now on the air.

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 106!
Running Time: 21 minutes | File Size: 9.61 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• An Interview with Amy Armitage of Lunarpages.com
• What is a Woman’s Place in the Hosting Industry?
• Marketing Tips Everybody Can Learn From!
• Do I Love or Hate the New cPanel 11?
• Finding Domain Registrars for Wacky Extensions!

Seems like we have had more people accepting or asking to be featured in an interview here on the podcast. This week is Amy – last week was Julien and hey, next week could be you.

I have a few more Web industry movers and shakers I am talking with and trying to bring onto the show. So if you know of somebody or if you are somebody who’d like to come on and chat just drop me an E-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com. I’m a real easy guy to get a hold of.

Link of the Week: Lunarpages Lunatics

Define Your Confusing Way of Doing Things

There is a lot of room for explanation in the Web hosting business because so much of the terminology is down right confusing. Do you know your ASP from your HTML? Have you got a clue why you can backup but you can’t go forward? These are topics that need explaining and you could be the one to do it.

I would like to see Web hosts talking to the public, explain something they offer that is confusing and then tell me, “Hey, we are a great place to get this service!”. Think of it as the classic door to door salesman but there is no snake oils involved.

Excellent Marking in Action

If your not sure what I mean, take this latest post I found on the Lunarpages blog. Here Amy talks about JSP, what it is and how you use it. She writes up a very good explanation about it and, heck even I learned a few things from the post. Basically she explains JSP and how Lunarpages offers it and pitches it for folks what might want it but are not sure what it is. This is excellent marketing.

Information + Marking = Love for You

When push comes to shove, people don’t like to be confused. If you are telling them what it is they just signed up for or why they might need something and then toss in you are the place or person to make it happen, they will love you. If you try to talk over their heads and say, “Well, let us take care of the confusing stuff” that show little respect for your customers.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to Episode 101!

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 101!
Running Time: 15 minutes | File Size: 7.05 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• More Hosting FAQs From You to Me!
• Can You Get Paid for Hosting Your Images Somewhere?
• Classic HTML vs CSS – Who Suplexes Who?
• Teach, Then Sell (Marking Tip From The Field)

Don’t change that dial, don’t pick up that remote – you have stumbled upon the most entertaining thing in the Web hosting world since that one system admin in Georgia found a cooked rat in the server rack, the Web Hosting Show.

Grilling rodents with our dedicated servers isn’t the only topic we cover here though.

From Web development to Web hosting, we got it all. I will teach you the insides and outside of hostology so you can make it work for you and not against you.

Link of the Week: Hosting Hoopla News Section

Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 99!
Running Time: 13 minutes | File Size: 5.81 MB

Here are just a few topics that we discussed on this week’s episode of the Web Hosting Show.

• Is There a New Go Daddy Girl?
• RegisterFly Customers Get Help from a Competitor!
• Use StumbleUpon as a Marketing Tool?
• Win Yourself a Xbox 360 by Reviewing Your Web Host!

New Feature! Record and Send your Questions, Feedback and Segments via Odeo!

Hello, I am not the one with the big knockers – we will get to those later. What I can give you right now is the promise that you are now tuned in to the best hosting tools you could ever find. This podcast delivers a little ‘bit for both Web hosts and Web hosting clients. A little odd, but always informative – the Web Hosting Show is now on the air.

Link of the Week: The Best Hosting Bloggers!

Maybe you wanted to announce your new service. No matter what the reason is, the fact of the mater is – is that you will need a press release written.

Now I have seen a lot of them while combing through the Web hosting news and I have to say some are good and others stink. Here are a few tips from me to you on how you can make your press releases a little better.

#1 – Tell Me What You Did and Who You Are

The most important part of a press release is the actual announcement, so make sure you put that before you start rambling about who you are. Sell me on the idea first, and then tell me how to find it.

#2 – Give Me A Quote About Why It Is Special

Quotes from somebody important in your company are always good to have. It makes it feel much more personal than just a three or four paragraph story about your new features.

#3 – Let Me Know Where To Go To Get More Information

You always have to remember to close out the press release with letting people know your name and how to reach you for more information. Just posting that you are John from That Hosting Company ain’t going to cut the cake. Give details and quick details on you, your company and contact information.

#4 – Write A Headline That Gets To The Point

Writing the headline should be first, right? Wrong! Your headline should come last, so you know what you have written before you give it a name. Make sure you sell the service first – rather than your company name. The general public doesn’t care who you are for the most part, but they will want to know after you tell them about your big new idea.

What if you suck at writing press releases?

Now if all else fails, and you still find your press releases lacking in the excitement department, you could always hire a firm to write them for you. One of the most widely used and best known is PressAdvance.com. It might cost a little money but it will get that monkey off of your back so you can concentrate on other things.

Related Podcast Link: Listen to the Web Hosting Show, Episode 98!

Download This Segment! (via TopHosts.com)
Running Time: 36 minutes | File Size: 16.4 MB

This interview is brought to us by TopHosts.com and their coverage of HostingCon 2006. For more Web hosting news, information and HostingCon coverage check out TopHosts.com!