According to Forrester Research, Co., U.S. online retail sales grew 12.6% to 176 billion in 2010. That number is expected to be as high as $279 billion by 2015. Not in the online retail game yet? You’re missing out. Dying to get into online retail but don’t know how? Here are some simple 6 steps to start your own business. 
Start by getting your own cheap hosting. You can find reviews at ananova.com
Setting up a WordPress with hosting site
If you’re new to the world of website building, WordPress is the easiest way to get things up and running. It is more than just the most popular blogging platform out there (it boasts over 66 million sites worldwide) offering plugins and themes for free. Users can also download software from WordPress.org in order to create their own website.
Read our tutorial on http://www.ananova.com
Reducing Data Transfers Amount:
you can reduce your transfer amount by;
1) building simpler websites.
2) more efficient websites.
3) optimizing graphics.
4) Remove unwanted tags, white space and comments.
5) Capitalize on CSS, call java script externally instead of embedding in every page.
6) Do not use too many keywords.
Alternatively, Avoid fancy flash presentations or streaming audio. Limit your META tags to those absolutely necessary. Besides many search engines will only review the first few and ignore the rest.
Another good idea is to cache your website but you might want to set an expiry date in the HTTP headers so the browser will refresh the content after a certain time. Use mod-gzip. It could save you as much as 40% of your bandwidth. Out of control robots can also suck down your bandwidth like a black hole. So use robots.txt to keep spiders in check.
So many hosting companies now a days in the market providing this kind of hosting in which they offer no charges for any kind of hosting or disk space.
Most free hosting companies make money by
1) selling adds on your website.
2) from banner ads to pop-ups
So it proves to be a good revenue source also for users.
They make money through their adds but some of them make money through a hope that you may upgrade and pay for the advance features.
Another reason they can give it away free is that you are sharing a server with sometimes up to 100,000 other people. This overcrowding limits the amount of storage space and bandwidth transfer that a free host can provide. Most of the popular free hosting companies offer only enough space to have a small personal website. The good ones have paid upgrades available so you can graduate to paid web hosting when you are ready.
You have to manage your site yourself in your way. If the free web host allows anyone to signup and if they provide the features like PHP or CGI.You have to manage your site yourself in your way.You have to keep upgrading it and have to add catchy ingredients so that you could add more and more audience to your website.
Well as in every business there are threats involved,so there are threats of spammers,security loss,etc associated with free web hosting.You have to be very careful in dealing with these threats.
Dedicated IP address is a need for all e-commerce websites and for those who requires ssl certificate.Without this you have to use extra steps to set up ssl certificate after all initial payments .So dedicated IP is flexible for having a ssl certificate. Private SSL are essential for your e-commerce store. In fact dedicated IP address, allow your website to be access directly through IP address instead of domain name. This is a extra advantage in term of speed of locating the website and speed of retrieving content. In large website architecture, each website will be having their own dedicated IP address. Well if you are looking at cost factor and thinking to solve this problem through shared ip then stop you are committing a big mistake as by doing this you are making your website a burden. If you need a fast website, get a dedicated IP.
Sometimes your ISP may block your if for some reasons and this might cost your business. A blocked IP cannot proceed with its business. So You will need to find a dedicated IP address, and you will free from the blocking issue. When there is a need, you will need to look for a dedicated IP address.
Selecting a web hosting company is like sending one of your children off to college. You may have complete confidence in your son or daughter’s abilities but unless they are placed in the proper environment they will not have the opportunity to thrive. Likewise, no matter how sophisticated or impressive the website you have designed, if you do not place the site where it can perform optimally you will likely be disappointed in the results.
Selecting web hosting is not just to find out the place where your website can reside. It is finding the company that offers the resources that will allow your website to operate effectively and to grow as the business or public demands. This means that you must be able to store and transfer enough data so that your site functions smoothly but also remains affordable.
Free web hosting services normally require that you allow ads to be placed on your site. These generate revenue for the hosting company by enabling them to display ads to visitors to your website. Only you can determine if the ads are appropriate for visitors to your site.
All commercial web hosting companies are not created equal. Of course, cost is an issue but reliability and service will likely be major factors in the decision making process. You should expect your host to be up and functioning 100% of the time but you will likely only see guarantees of 99.99% uptime.
If you are managing personally some activities for your website, make sure that you are comfortable with the Control Panel. Some hosts present Control Panels that are cumbersome and complicated. You want to easily navigate through routine functions. You will also want to make sure that the hosting company has functionality that you may not be using now but will likely use in the future. These would include PHP, MySQL, SSI, .htaccess, SSL, etc.
Cpwebhosting web hosting services offer very low rates if you commit to a year or more of hosting. While this may turn out to be an excellent value in the long term, it may be advisable to pay each month until you are confident in the service and, quite importantly, the quality of the technical support that they provide. Getting accurate responses to questions quickly will make your life as a webmaster less stressful.
Cpwebhosting provides you the very affordable and reliable web hosting services or we can say that cpwebhosting provides a good home for your websites.
Any website comprises the following?
Domain name, Webspace, Webpages.
Let’s say, you have got your Domain Name. Its time to check for a good hosting service provider to have your files uploaded in the domain. If you are opting for Linux Based Hosting Plan, make sure you have the following included in your plans:
1. Control Panel: This is the nucleus of your website. In a Control Panel, popularly known as CP, you can literally do anything. The moment you signup for a Hosting Pack, you must be provided with a CP to manage your webspace.
2. POP3 email Ids and Aliases: yourname@yourdomain.com is an example POP3 ID. You must be provided with ample of POP3 email ids and it depends on the Package size.
3. FTP Accounts and Virtual FTP: This is where you upload your files, delete them, and update them. This again comes along with the CP. Make sure you have handful of FTP sub-accounts also to provide your clients/users password protected directories. This is very much useful wherein your clients / users can use the FTP to upload /download files from particular password protected folder of your website.
4. Backup: Most of the Hosts take Automated Backups. But users do not take much care on this while choosing the Hosting Pack. This feature is as essential as any other in this list.
5. Web Statistics: Analysis of your website visitors plays a key role in the success of your website. If, your website has been launched and you get NIL Visits or More than 100 Visits per day. Whatever the case may be, you can view the Report using Statistics Application that run in the server backend.
6. Bandwidth: Choose the Hosting Plan that gives enough Bandwidth for your website. Even though you cannot judge at the beginning, as time progresses, you can easily deduct the Bandwidth required.
7. PHP and Mysql Support: All the Linux Plans support PHP and Mysql. Make sure you get this free of charge when you buy the hosting plan. Few Hosting Providers may charge extra for MYSQL Database Support and PhpMyAdmin.
8. Webmail and SMTP: Email becomes key part in your life once you launch the website. Check if the Hosts provide with WEBMAIL (mail.yourdomain.com) to check your mails thru a web based interface using Squirrel mail or Horde. Corporate Users prefer downloading mails thru Email Clients such as Eudora or Outlook Express. Only if SMTP or IMAP support is enabled you can use this option. Hence check if SMTP support is provided.
9. SPAM ASSASIN: No email user is free from a spam attack. Hence you need to have Spam Filters installed on the server where your website resides.
10. IP: If your website prefers SSL Support (https://) as time grows, makes sure you get a DEDICATED IP. Most of the websites are hosted on shared IPs. Ask your Hosting Provider about the extra charges involved in getting a dedicated IP and SSL Support.
If your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a yearly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee.
The solution is to open a reseller account. Reseller accounts were created to allow web designers to offer hosting services to their customers, to create a one-stop-shop for all their web design and hosting needs. However, you don’t need to be a reseller to buy a reseller hosting plan.
Reseller accounts are usually slightly more expensive than regular hosting accounts, but they will allow you to host different domain names without incurring in the add-on domain fees, making more efficient use of your space and bandwidth.
You want to choose a reseller account that offers:
As far as pricing is concerned, it all depends on your requirements and the hosting company you choose, so shop around to get the best possible deal in terms of cost and reliability.
The best way to explain this is by comparing it to a real-life situation. A web hosting company as the owner of a shopping mall. The shopping mall owner invested a lot of money on hiring architects, constructors, engineers, etc. to build it. Now all the stores on it are empty and the owner is going to rent them to smaller businesses that can’t afford (or who simply don’t want) their own building.
As a small business owner, you can rent this store space on a per-month basis. But remember it is empty. So it will be your responsibility to decorate your store, fill it up with your own products, furniture and displays and to advertise your store to the world in order to get new customers.
The responsibility of the shopping mall owner is to keep and maintain the building in a top condition for your business to prosper. In the exact same manner, a hosting company invests a lot of money to set up high-speed connections and a full-fledged data center. And as a small business owner, you may rent virtual space on the web to set up your store and offer your products or services to the world.
When you set up your account it will also be empty and it will be up to you to design your own website (or hire a web designer to build one for you), and to advertise it to the world.
While choosing a web hosting company there are a lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. The biggest factors should be:
1) Phone support:
Email support is nice, but email occasionally falls in between the virtual cracks. Getting someone on the phone when your site goes down can take a lot of mystery out of the entire process. Cpwebhosting offer toll free support and weekend hours to boot. Phone support is a great benefit for the cpwebhosting client.
2) Another factor to use in deciding whether to use a particular web hosting company is their history. How long has this company been in business? Web hosting companies that have been in existence for less than a year might not be the best choice. A hosting company with a proven track record and a ton of happy clients is certainly a good sign and might work well for you.
3) How about the company’s software?
This varies widely between web hosting companies. You will rather fond of Hsphere merely because you are used to it, where the buttons are and what the features do. It’s much easier to stick with something you know than switching to a new User Interface. Some web hosts offer FrontPage features and others don’t. Another specific area you might want to research is the statistics programs. What sort of web statistics software is included with your web hosting account? Is Awstats included? This is one area you definitely want to heavily research before signing up.
4) Fees:
You have to pay a little more to get all the features than fight it out with a sub par web hosting company who you can’t reach if your site goes down. You have found decent web hosting for as cheap as $4 per month but generally pay around $15 per month if you want all the bells and whistles that you’ll need to host a larger site. A lot of people worry about hosting fees, but you’ve had the experience that I generally get what I pay for. Finally, I’d look carefully at the web hosting company’s refund policy. Most offers a full refund if you aren’t happy with your service. If you are paying for a full year of web hosting up front, you might want to examine the company’s refund policy in detail.
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