by Robert Plank

Hosting Your Website On A Shared Server, Dedicated Server, Or VPS Server


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

Sometimes there are just too many choices, especially when it comes to where you host and how you host your website. Today we are going to help you decide whether you need a Shared, Dedicated, or VPS web host.

Chances are you will be just fine with a Shared web host. Here is how the internet works, websites are actually running on computers. These computers with hard drives, with access to the internet, and so on. One single website does not have to be limited to one computer. You can one computer hosting dozens or hundreds of different websites.

That is exactly what a Shared web host is. You have space on a computer that serves websites, and web pages. You might be sharing that computer with hundreds of other people who own websites, and not even realize it.

The draw backs to this is that the server might be a little slower, but you probably won't notice the difference on a normal website. The good news about Shared Hosting is that they are extremely cheap. $10 per month is a good price for Shared Hosting, and I recommend hostgator for that purpose.

What if you need something bigger? If you have a large website containing thousands of pages or you have thousands of websites of your own, or you need to use your website to send out email messages - you will be better off on a Dedicated server.

A good Dedicated server will cost you about $100 per month, and there is a little more technical know-how involved. You might need to be able to log into the server and type in different commands. You will more open to people hacking your server. Only get a Dedicated server if a Shared server is slowing you down.

A Shared server is more for people who have a few dozen websites, which might include blogs, shopping cart systems, and so on. Many people who need to use the email marketing component will have their auto-responder be a third-party, such as Aweber.

Use a Dedicated server if you have a big site, or you need to send out email messages from your own server.

So what is a VPS - Virtual Private Server? A Virtual Private Server is a type of web hosting account where you have a happy medium. You can still have a fast server, and you can have more control over it. Which means that you can log in and type in commands if you know how to do that, and the server is shared with a few less people.

Basically, you have the server that is shared with many people but they all act as if they are their own computer. A VPS is good if you have hundreds of sites but they are not massive, or if you need to send out emails but you don't have a huge list of subscribers. You will only really need a VPS if you are a techy-programmer.

So, your decisions are narrowed down to Shared or Dedicated Hosting.

If you are brand new and don't know what you are doing, start with Shared Hosting and as your site grows, work your way up to a Dedicated server.

I want to get all the obstacles out of the way for you, and have your site set up today at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How To Use Nameservers After You Have Purchased A Domain Name


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

The first time you set up a web host and a .com name of your very own, it can be kind of scary. The tricky part in this is telling the domain name registrar, or the people you pay yearly for your domain name where to look for, and what web host people should land on when they type in your web address.

This is where name servers come in. You don't need to understand why they are called nameservers, or anything about the history of name servers. Just know that name servers tell your domain name company what web hosting company you are using.

That means when someone types in your domain name, they will end up at the place where you host your files, your blogs, and so on.

Here is what is going to happen. First, you register your domain name. Then, you get an account with your web host. When you get this web hosting account, they will tell you specifically what nameservers you need to use. They will usually be listed as NS1.example.com and NS2.example.com. Anything after the NS1 and NS2 might be different.

Once they give you these two pieces of information, you need to log back into your domain name registrar and paste in the primary nameserver, and the secondary nameserver - the NS1.example.com, the NS2.example.com and after this, it might take about an hour for the changes to take effect. But if all goes well, after an hour - you should be able to type in your web address and end up at wherever your webhost is located.

By default, they might show you a welcome page. From there you can upload any page or file you want to appear when someone types in your web address.

Get your site set up right now by following along with these to understand step by step how to videos at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Why You Need A Domain Name Registrar And A Webhost


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

When you have your very own website on the internet, which means a site with your own .com name that you have full control of. You will need two components. A registrar to take care of your .com name or domain name, and a web host to store your files and web pages.

A domain name registrar such as GoDaddy or NameCheap is a place where you buy a .com name. When you type in any web address that ends in .com, .net, .org, .edu and so on. These are all called domain names and someone is paying a yearly fee to some company to hold on to that domain name.

A good price to pay for a domain name is $10 per year. That is where you have a .com name. But, that alone means nothing. It means that you have reserved this address on the internet. But, if someone goes to that address there is nothing there, there is no website there. To establish your website, you need to get a web host. This is a place where you can upload your files and make changes and people can then view your site.

This is a service that you usually pay monthly for. I recommend hostgator. You can expect to pay $10 per month for their service.

Now what this means is when someone types in your web address, whatever your URL is .com, or whatever your URL .com/blog - they end up on your web host. You can't have your registrar without a web host because your .com name would not lead people anywhere. And you also cannot have a web host without a registrar because your visitors need some address to type in to land on your website.

The good news is because these are both separate, you can be hosted anywhere. If you want to move your files to a different web host, or change your .com registration to a different domain name registrar - you can.

But, to have a fully functional website with your own .com name you need a registrar for the domain name and a web host to handle the files.

I want to walk you step by step through the process of choosing a niche, getting a domain name, setting up web hosting, and uploading your very own web page today at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

The Quick Start Guide Web Hosting, Terms You Need To Know


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

Webhosting and having a website on the internet is not that difficult, especially considering that once it is online - it is on there forever. But, some of the terms and definitions can be confusing. So, let's explain what a web browser, hosting service, cPanel, and FTP is.

First of all, you already have a web browser on your computer. This is Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Safari, and this is how you get on the internet. This is the program where you type in a web address and view a web page. This is how other people will find your website. They will open up their web browser, type in your web address, and end up on your web page. This is the thing that allows you to view files and pages on your site. You set up what is called an HTML page, this is what any web page looks like. It has graphics, and different font sizes and colors. When you link to a downloadable file, called a zip file, this is downloaded through the web browser as well.

What is a hosting service? This is a service that you pay on a monthly basis, probably about $10 per month, to store your files. You don't want to store your files on your own computer because if you got offline, no one would be able to get to them. You want to put your web pages, articles, or your blog on a $10 per month web host so that it is fast and that anyone can get to these files and pages 24-hours a day.

When choosing a web host make sure that webhost is a cPanel webhost. This is an interface where you can do things to your website, set up email accounts, sub-domains, or additional domains. This is where yau maintain your website. You can change your password, add extra users, all kinds of fun stuff like that.

Finally, FTP or File Transfer Protocol, is the way that you can upload your files to your website. You will use a program such as Filezilla to connect to your site using FTP, and then drag and drop whatever audio files, .pdf's, .zip files or HTML web pages onto your website so people can view them through your web browser.

What happens is, they type in your address in their web browser and are contacting your hosting service and then they see the files that you have set up using cPanel and FTP.

Look over my shoulder as I show you in video formats how to set up your website step by step at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Avoid Free Web Hosting At All Costs


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

When you are looking for web hosting, in other words - a place to store your website, any good webhost is going to charge you a monthly fee. But, you might come across cheaper or even free web hosting and I want you to stay away from these types of offers for many reasons.

The first reason is that you get what you pay for. If you are not paying a webhost any amount of money, it probably won't have very good service or very good support. Some web hosting companies will webhost you for free if you display an advertisement on your site. But why would you set up a site just to advertise someone else's business? Just pay for web hosting, pay the monthly fee, and find a way to justify that cost.

After all, a good price to pay for web hosting at a place like hostgator, is $10 per month for unlimited domains. That means you can pay $10 every month, and if you have 20 .com names and 20 different websites, you still just pay $10 per month. And, this price is even cheaper if you pay on a yearly basis. If you can find a way to budget $10 per month out of your budget or make the site profit more than $10 per month, then you have made your money back.

In addition to free and cheap web hosting offers, I want you to avoid lifetime hosting or super-expensive hosting. There is simply no reason to pay $50 a month for a shared server. If you are paying $100 or more, you can actually get hosted on a dedicated or faster server - but again, you don't need this if you have a small website or if you have a small number of visitors.

Avoid lifetime hosting, avoid free or cheap hosting, and avoid expensive hosting - just look for something in the $10 per month range.

I want to get you set up on your web host, I want to give you a .com name, and help you make your content at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How Many Hours Per Week Are Necessary To Maintain A Membership Site?


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

Even for large membership site, you don't have to spend tons of time taking care of your members and adding in new content. In fact it is very easy and tempting to overload your members by updating too much and piling too much into that site. All you need to maintain a membership site is about one hour per week. And here's how I would structure it, 30 minutes for content, 20 minutes for promotion, and 10 minutes for maintenance.

With the membership site, one big piece per week is all you really need. This might be 30 minutes making a video, or an audio, or a handful of articles, but you can compress a lot of good information into one single block of time, then, that's good enough. Hence, what you can do then is have one big piece and cut it up into smaller pieces like, 15-minute interviews or fifteen minute halves. You can take your one 30-minute video and add an assignment to the end of the video that drips out a few days later. You can add a checklist or places you were able to brag about, what you have done or a quick start guide a few days after that. But if you just have one chunk of content every week, you can then build on that. And 30 minutes is good enough. An hour of content recording is good if you want to have a higher priced membership site, but basically, 30 minutes of recording video content.

But content is not enough, you also need to promote your site and get new members in to replace the ones that drop out every now and then. So spend 20 minutes doing something to get either one new member in or one new person to promote. This might mean posting a special offer on a forum, contacting someone new to be an affiliates or even just e-mailing your subscribers and talking to people one on one and asking them, what will it take to get them inside of your membership site.

And for the remaining 10 minutes added every week, you do need to just check in and make sure that everything is okay with your membership site. Some people may not know this, that they can grab their lost password and need to tell them the password. Some people might have left comments or forum posts that you need to moderate and make them live or even respond to people who have asked questions or run across problems. You also might tweak your membership site theme, or plug-ins, or structure for those few minutes because we are always improving, because you don't have to set-up your membership site perfect the first time, just get something out there and improve it incrementally as it goes on.

Make a membership site complete with the sales letter, opt in page and more at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Keep As Many People As Possible And Retain More Members In Your Membership Site


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

When you have a monthly membership site, people will drop out from time to time, sometimes in their control, sometimes it's not. But you can take a few preventive measures to make sure that if they have a choice, your members will stay inside your site as long as possible. Be upfront about your rebilling, announce what content is ahead, and keep in touch with your members using e-mail follow-ups.

It just is common sense on your sales letter to tell people what amount they will be charged every month and how much will they be charged. But far too many people skip this step. If you're offering a hundred dollar per month membership site then tell people that when they buy they will be billed $100 immediately, and then $100 every 30 days until they cancel. You would be amazed that people who get confused about this. They might think that it's free now but they won't be charged until 30 days, or that they will be billed every 31 days, or on the first of the month, so you need to tell them ahead of time this is exactly what you're being charged. And this is a good reason to avoid trial offers, or up sells, or forth-cut nudie when a monthly membership site is concerned. Tell them what and when they will be billed and bill them in exchange for the content or the services inside of the membership site.

And once you were inside the membership site, tell them what content is coming. Will you be providing two audio files per month? What day of the month will they be played out? Tell them and let them expect it. Even if you say it on the sales letter, it really can't hurt when they log in to the site to see what's coming up and you might actually save a few cancellations. What if one of your customers sees that they have been billed, logs in to cancel, but then notices that if they just wait a few more days they would have access to a video that they really want. Make it simple and tell your members what content is ahead.

But you can't expect them to keep logging in and checking in, can you? That is why you should also keep in touch with e-mail follow-ups. Tell them what's coming out tomorrow. Tell them what you just posted, tell them what you posted last week, but think of an excuse to contact those members at least once per week either telling them about new content or asking them to participate in some way. Every blog post you have in your membership site could be an excuse to mail. Every comment someone leaves in a blog post could be an excuse, every form post, or apply in a form post can be an excuse to mail as well. So get your paying customers to log back into your membership site so that they actually consume what they are paying for.

And those are some easy ways to keep people or retain members in your membership site. Be upfront about the price and the rebilling, announce content that's coming up, and keep in touch about your e-mail responder about what content you just added.

Your membership site, your sales letter, your blog, and more created in just a few minutes with these easy tutorials at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

Fully Or Partially Outsource Your Membership Site Using This Easy Guide


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

A membership site sounds easy and sounds like a lot of fun, right? If you can get a certain number of people to pay you a certain dollar figure every month then you can pay for your car payment or pay for your house payment. It sounds fun, to get things started and to make content and to get people into your site, but, how can we automate this so that it does not become a chore?

And the thing you need to know about outsourcing anything especially membership sites is that you do not have to outsource the entire thing. And I'm not even sure that everything can be outsourced at all.

I trust myself. I trust myself to make my own videos, or make my own connections, or get my own traffic, but I am okay with outsourcing the non-creative items. For example, if I make a video and I want to add a transcript, I trust other people to make transcripts out of those videos. If I am running low on membership site content, I trust many other marketers who offer resell rights to have decent content, and I have no problem purchasing resell rights from others to use as content inside the membership site. I am fine with buying a design or a WordPress theme or paying someone to have graphics made for me, but I still want to make my own videos and do my own promotions. Outsource the non-creative laborious stuff that takes you a lot of time and do the creative parts on your own.

And also, make sure that you automate most of your membership site software as possible. For example, with a software like wish list member, you can automate not just a part really were they buy but also the security which cuts off their access when they cancel. If someone loses their password, WordPress will take care of resetting their password or e-mailing a new one to them.

A lot of the tasks that go towards maintaining your membership site are not that difficult and you can devote just an hour a week towards making sure everyone who has cancelled is cancelled, anyone who asked for a password has a new one, and anyone whose payment didn't go through is taken care of.
But, don't think about outsourcing or membership site outsourcing as an all or nothing choice. You can outsource the things that take you too long or that you don't want to do and leave the creative stuff to yourself.

Watch these videos right now to overcome all the technical hurdles you've been coming across and set-up your website in the next 48 hours or less at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

How Much Content Do You Need To Launch Your Membership Site?


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

Warning, I don't want you to get caught up on creating tons of content before you launch a membership site.

You don't need to make a year's worth of content in advance before launching a site. You don't need to make 6 months, 3 months or even really an entire month ahead of your subscribers before you launch. All you have to worry about is staying ahead of your very first subscriber. Think about that, if you have 6 months of content inside your membership site and no one joins, then what good is it? What is the difference between having a month of content and six months of content if no one is even inside to look at it. There is no difference. That's why you should start off with just one week.

Can you make just one or two videos to keep people happy and give them something to watch or stay busy with after they join your site? If you can, then, that's all you need to launch. And if no one buys, then the problem is not of the content, it's with the promotion of that membership site. But if you get a handful of subscribers, now you know that you have to create another week of content.

And it is fun to stay about a week ahead of your earliest adaptor, because you can schedule yourself in advance, you can create two videos at a time and so on. But don't use content as an excuse not to launch. It's too tempting and you might not have any buyers. Worry about the buyers and then worry about getting far ahead in the scheduled content.

Set-up the very basics of your site. Make an opt- in page, an auto-responder, a blog, a sales letter and a membership site with the training available to you right now at www.newbiecrusher.com.

by Robert Plank

What Price Can You Charge For Your Membership Site?


Warning: A non-numeric value encountered in /var/www/vhosts/incomemachine.com/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/paper-template/papertemplate.php(15) : eval()'d code(3) : eval()'d code on line 392

You want to have a membership site, but what should the price be? Should it be free? And how can you justify the price you charge?

These are all very good questions and the first thing I want to tell you is that a free membership site is something that should come later. For now, charge a fee for access of this site. Just to make it simple, for now charge a one-time fee, not a recurring fee, just charge a one-time fee, even if it's $20, $50, whatever seems about right, charge now and worry about the free membership site later. The point of a free membership site is to get a lot of people in and to get a lot of participation, and I prefer to set-up the paid membership site first, so that when it's time to make the free membership site I can push them all into buying the paid program. The free comes later, charge for now.

But what exactly should you charge? Does $50 sound right, or does $20 sound right?

The easy answer is to look at what your competitors charge. I will look at my top 5 competitors and average out that price they all charge and that will be around what I should ask for. Maybe you have some of thousand dollar people in there, some of hundred dollar people, and the average price point is $500, then look at how those competitors justify the price they should charge. And naturally the secret because whether you're asking $10, $20, $50, if you can show a clear result, then you can justify that price. That's why there were some weight loss products for hundreds or thousands of dollars because they explain to you, "if you pay this money, you can get these results." That's why real state courses start at $1000 on the low end, because, you take a training, you flip a house, you get thousands of dollars back.

Charge for your membership site, for now, make it a single-payment site, worry about the monthly site later, don't make it free, but charge for your site. Look at what the competitors are charging and figure out what clear result you can promise or, at least explain so that any price you offer seems cheap.

Set-up your membership site sales letter, opt-in page, and more at www.newbiecrusher.com.