Affordable Hosting

Many of the domain registrar companies will offer you all kinds of services, including web site hosting. These can be fine, but for Internet marketers may not always represent the best, or most affordable hosting option.

What is hosting?

When you build a website you generally do so on your own computer. The files that make up your site sit on your own hard drive.

Now, it would be technically possible for you to allow people to view your site by coming into your PC, but it wouldn't be advisable. Not only would you have security issues, but your Internet connection would soon become overwhelmed by the traffic. Your ISP would get fed up with you very quickly!

Instead, websites are housed on special computers called 'servers'. These servers are directly linked to the Internet and are set up to safely allow your website to be viewed.

Hosting companies own the servers and will happily sell you a hosting account - which is a posh name for space on their server.

You transfer your website's files to the server space that you've bought and the hosting company makes sure that it is available for anyone to view.

The process of transferring files from your hard disk to the server (and back again if you want to change them) is dead easy - the process is called FTP (file transfer protocol) but don't be put off by the technical name. FTP programs are rather like Windows Explorer - they allow you to drag and drop the files. Some website building programs even take care of that bit for you so you may not even need to learn it!

There are, broadly, three different types of affordable hosting account that you may like to consider, and I make recommendations for my favorites of each on the relevant pages:

• Single site hosting. This is where you buy one hosting account that allows you to use one domain. If all you ever want is to build one site, it is the cheapest option, but if you plan to make a lot of sites, the individual charges may mount up.
• Multiple domain hosting. This is here you buy one hosting account, but that account allows you to host several (or many) domains. All serious Internet marketers use multiple domain hosting accounts as they keep all you site under one roof and offer the most affordable hosting solution.
• Bells and whistles hosting. Some companies offer hosting that is augmented by all kinds of additional services, such as site building tools, autoresponders, stats packages and much more. These companies can be gret value for a newcomer to Internet marketing as they remove the need to buy other services.

There are other affordable hosting options available for serious online marketers, such as shared or dedicated server hosting. You can even buy a server of your own. But all these are beyond the scope of this site right now.

Check out the recommended affordable hosting solutions throught he links above and see which would be most appropriate for your own needs.