Naturally when folks think about building a web presence, they are thinking in lines of business – but why?

The statistics show that 90% of small business are out of business in 5 years; people are lucky to have a job for anywhere near that length of time; so why create a web presence only for your business?

The internet has become a vast database of information and as such, you should contribute to you “file”, if you will.  When people search for your name, are you just hoping that they will find tasteful, appropriate information posted by someone with a name like yours?  or, would you prefer them coming to your website, blog, etc. ?

So, a neat seguay into the web presence for yourself is the explosion of social networking online.  You can have your very own profile up and running with the same information about you – with all these profiles linking to each other, ad whamo!  You have yourself a pretty decent web presence.  However, what’s to say some if not all of these companies allowing you to post yourself on their web wall, won’t at some point in the future, gve you the boot? or go out of business? or even worse, get hijacked and shanghai’d so that your information becomes null and void?

This thought is the primary reason that I prefer to blog on my own server and link it up with my profiles elsewhere.  I can control the content here (no ads of naked dancing women, etc…).  I don’t have the social aspect, other than readership and it’s portable to me.

So, I submit to you, get your own domain name and hosting, setup a platform like wordpress (it’s what I use, love it too :] ), and start linking it up to all of these other social networking platforms.

Keep in mind, this is also a neat place to store al of your collective thoughts, trainings, seminars, videos, etc.. the list goes on – this platform, being the “hub” of your web presence is not only effective, but it’s energy efficient as the blog can be imported to most social networking profiles via RSS.

If you need a reliable source to find a domain name or hosting look up: TUPOS Domains

If you need some assistance setting up your own (hosted) blog, give TUPOS a ring at 888-41-TUPOS.

Joshua Jones

Once you’ve decided to get your business started online – one of the first things you’ll need is your domain name and hosting.

Here’s an example of how these things relate to one another: your hosting is like your house and your domain name is like your mailbox.  In other words, the meat, the property is sitting on your hosting, but you don’t get mail (traffic) without your domain name.

So what does that mean, right?

Here’s the bottom line for domain names:

OWN your OWN domain name!  Don’t let some third party go about being the “registering agent”.  If you can’t control your domain and business get’s cranking online, you may find yourself in a situation where you are paying through the ears just to keep the domain name active and allowing traffic to your hosting.  If you aren’t sure whether or not you own your own domain name – you can always look up the records through any “whois” service.

Be sure, when you register your own domain name, that you never, ever pay more than $10 per year.  If you are, you’re making a sore mistake for a false sense of security.  That’s just huge margins in someone’s pocket.

Moving along to hosting… now a rule of thumb for hosting is this:

If you are just hosting ONE website (regardless of how many domain names are pointing to it) never pay more than $5 per month.  If you are looking to have a static IP or host multiple websites on the same hosting account (like having 5 acres with 4 houses, etc.) then keep the price under $10 per month.

Domains and Hosting are an incredibly cheap resource these days and if you are unsure of where to do, you can always use the resource I setup years ago for my clients: TUPOS Domains

Once you have your domain and hosting, it’s just a matter of getting your website/blog/or whatever you’re planning, live!

If you require assistance with any of your web contact TUPOS

Joshua Jones