Hosting Your eBook Website
It should be obvious that if you need a website to sell your ebook then you need web hosting as well, otherwise your website won't be on the internet and nobody is ever going to see it. So far so good.
The problem is making a choice of host from the vast number to be found all over the internet, because they not only vary considerably in quality, but also in price. A thumping $15 a month is not unusual and is still at the lower end of the scale.
Companies charging this much usually throw in a few basic features such as a WYSIWYG editor, unlimited emails and so on. But the real reason for the high price is that they pay commission to affiliates for selling their services. And even with these payouts, which may be as high as 50% or more, they are still making a very healthy profit.
I have had first hand experience of a number of these schemes - which is what they really are - and I can tell you they are not worth the money. Despite the wild claims of many they will not increase your sales by a single dollar, and there are much cheaper, and in many cases better, alternatives available.
If the whole idea of building a website is new to you, then I strongly suggest that you start out by paying nothing. You can get free hosting, including a very workable WYSIWYG editor and a number of other very useful features from www.freewebs.com. They also have a selection of templates to get you off to a flying start.
The "cost" to you of hosting through Freewebs is a banner ad of their choice placed on the top of each of your web pages. You can either live with it, or get it removed by paying a flat fee, when I last checked, of $10 a year.
By the way, you will come across articles on the web telling you that using free web hosts is unprofessional and will cost you sales. Bull dust! Most people won't even notice. If you have something they want at the right price, they'll buy it.
It may that Freewebs is all you ever need, but somehow I doubt it. Good as the service is, it still has its limitations and sooner or later you will want to overcome those.
I have just one recommendation, and it's the service I have used for the past five years: hostingrevolution.com.
All my sites are with them, and the most I pay for any of them is $20 a year. No, that's not a misprint - I pay a yearly fee of $20, period.
For that I get a fully-fledged, fully supported service with all the bells and whistles, but - and there's always a but - I don't get an editing package (although there is an html editor), marketing features or similar add-ons. And that's no problem because I can easily get those elsewhere and still beat the bookie in terms of cost.
This website is designed to show you how to do the same thing.
You're not going to get very far without one of these, and buying one is like swimming with sharks. Did I really see one company charging $125 a year and calling it cheap?
Do what I do; go here - cheap-domainregistration.com - and pay around $8 a year for exactly the same thing.
A great many of the people charging silly prices for domain names are, in fact, reselling from this source, and the company offers a number of other bits and pieces which you might find very useful.
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