First forget all the Hype you see about Disk Space, Bandwidth, and Uptime Guarantees. These three widely marketed Features are NOT as important as what I am going to tell you. Why? First off – any competitive host will offer a plan that has plenty of storage, bandwidth, and there is no way to verify an uptime guarantee.

So let me ask you a question? What is important in any business relationship? In my view it’s Honestly, Integrity, and Quality.

An affiliate marketer relies on the performance of their hosting solution. And an honest web hosting provider doesn’t make outrageous unsubstantiated claims about their features, A Web Hosting provider with any integrity will price their plans based on real world profitability. And they will provide you with a competitive quality web hosting solution you can rely upon.

Free Webhosting Solutions

Do you believe in Santa Claus, the Ester Bunny, and Tinkerbell? If you do then you can stop reading because free webhosting might be in fact your perfect hosting solution. But if you are serious about making money as an affiliate marketer your quickly realize there is no such thing as free. A Web Host has got to turn a profit somehow, some way to make money and stay in business. Web hosting is not charity. So you really have to ask yourself what is the “catch” and there is always a “catch”. And it can be anything from a framed page the search engines will not crawl, to display ads, to super poor performance, to horrible unprofessional looking URL’s, email spam, to… fill in the blank. Forget about it. Crazy thing is people still search for free hosting no ads every day. These people do not understand how business works.

Cheap Webhosting Solutions

What is cheap? What is Best? What does Best Cheap Webhosting mean? Do you expect to do a quick search in Google and suddenly just see the “Best Cheap Webhosting solution” right in front of you. And if you did would you recognize it?

Is $5 a month cheap? How about $6? What is cheap hosting? I remember watching and old Tonight Show rerun with Johnny Carson and he so eloquently said the following: “I would not want to go on a spaceship built by the lowest bidder”. Think about that an apply the metaphor to webhosting. If a host is offering a rock bottom price what is the catch? And why are they offering this discount pricing? One way they can offer the pricing is to oversell the product. Do you want your websites to be on the same computer as 10,000 other sites?

What new affiliate marketers don’t understand is all hosting is not the same. One host may have the latest equipment tied into a huge data center directly and the other may be operating out of an old warehouse with PC’s they picked up at a going out of business sale.

What about Tech Support. Suddenly you log on to your site, but it’s not there! What do you do? Can you pick up the telephone and talk to someone or do you have to send an email and hope it gets answered? And how long can you afford to have your site down? And so what if they had a 99% uptime guarantee. You site is down! So what is cheap?

Truthful Information about Web Hosting

I know a little bit about web hosting. I currently use several hosts and I’ve used at least a dozen over the past few years to find the hosts I currently use. And you probably have never heard of my primary host – they are a smaller firm, with prices about double what most people expect to pay. And worth every penny!

Just so you know there are no affiliate links on this page. I’m not here to tell you who to use for a Web Host, I’m explaining what to look for so you can choose your own web host.

In fact I’m going to give you an example of a rock solid web host that doesn’t even have and affiliate program. Why? Because their word of mouth is so strong they don’t need a bunch of affiliates pitching their service. That company is Rochen. Rochen is the base host for Joomla – and if they are good enough to host Joomla then they are doing something right!

I’m going to use Rochen as and example of what you should really be looking for as an Affiliate Marketer. Rochen offers a variety of hosting plans from basic business hosting to full enterprise hosting including managed virtual services.

Look for a host with a track record. Do they host small sites, large sites, resellers? This is important because you want to know ahead of time that you can trust them as your business grows to scale your site. Once you commit to a host it can be a real challenge to move. And you want to know that the host has been around and will be around in the future.

Rochen offers free managed backups with each account. Why does this matter? Because no matter how careful you are mistakes can and will happen. Imagine you are running a small WordPress site. Then you do an automatic update and your whole site goes haywire. What do you do? What if your host can not restore your site? What if you do not have a backup copy? How many people actually backup their WordPress sites? No imagine that you have an automated backup and you shoot a quick email to tech support and within an hour or two your old site is back up and running smoothly? Wouldn’t that be great? It can be a disaster or it can be a huge relief. All depends on the host you choose.

Here are some facts about Rochen you should compare to the Host you are considering:

• High Efficiency Quad Core CPU’s
• RAID10 Disk Protection
• Seagate Cheetah 15,000 RPM drives – think fast!
• 100% Cisco powered switches and Hot-Standby Routing
• Zero downtime since 2006
• No outsourced tech support – This is very very important
• 24/7 Tech support 365 days a year.

To some people the tech details go a little over their heads. But think of it like this… do you want to work with a company that uses the best names in the hardware business or a company that doesn’t even tell you what kind of equipment they have or who does their tech support?

Is it worth spending just a few more dollars a month to be on the latest, fastest equipment, with backup protection, and quality in house tech support. It is to me!

There you have it. Worry about what really matters to your business. Look beyond the hype of the Web Hosting Solutions offered by companies with affiliate programs. Find a real business host and get to work!

Final thought about Web Hosting Reviews

Generally if a website is pitching a Web Host they are doing so because there is an affiliate opportunity. Companies like Host Gator pay as much as $100 to the affiliate for each sign up. So you can’t really trust the reviews can you? I mean seriously can you trust a review that is done just for the sake of profit?