Read more on "What You Don’t Need in a Web Host"]]> People are trying a wide assortment of new business ideas out in this tough economy. No, they’re not buying buildings and constructing on-location businesses. That’s just not a wise investment. What they are doing, however, is building online businesses, consisting of little more than a website and a great idea.

Online businesses do not always succeed, but since they require little startup capital and very few products to buy, it’s worth the small risk to attempt to take a giant leap forward. Of course, to do this properly, you need to ensure you pick up the best web host.

It doesn’t matter if you’re building a site to put up cars, jewelry, and furniture for sale, or if you’re attempting to just bring traffic to your site and get paid through ad clicks, a solid web host is imperative. But when it comes to web hosting, there are many things you just don’t need in a package. We will cover three things you do not need in a great web hosting package.

Unlimited Storage

Unless you’re building a site with massive potential for storage, like an americanlisted.com type of classified site, then you can save money by going with little storage. A few GBs of storage is plenty for most businesses. You can always purchase backup storage later.

Multiple Emails

Unless you’re setting up multiple businesses, there is no reason you need multiple email accounts and multiple email features. A few addresses and a mass mailer and a few other tools are all you need; you can skip on the advanced features. (They throw advanced email at you because they assume you won’t know what it is and thus will assume you need it.)

Years of Services

Any good service plan should be no longer than two years. You do not need to sign up for multiple years in order to save money and receive the best features.

Read more on "Need Hits? Be Extraordinary"]]> Getting people to come to your website is one of the biggest challenges of running it once you have settled on a good host. The fact is that there are as many websites out there on the internet today as there are drops of water in the ocean: way too many. Getting people to take time out of their busy day to see what it is you’re putting out there ain’t easy.

Marketing guru Seth Godin talks about the notion of the “purple cow.” When you’re driving through farm land, you might say “hey, neat, cows!” but do you ever really get that excited? Can you tell one cow apart from the rest? Have you ever stopped the car, gotten out, and looked at one? Of course not. But if you saw a purple cow, chances are you’d at least pull over and take some pictures and tell all your friends about it as soon as you got home.

A purple cow is something weird, extraordinary, bizarre. It might not be the heartiest, healthiest cow in the world. It might be old and frail and not really all that great if you’re looking for milk, beef or leather. But if it’s naturally purple, isn’t that strange enough to at least draw attention to it?

Marketing often comes down to not being the best at anything, but being something out of the ordinary. Of course, today’s extraordinary is tomorrow’s mundane, as those little yellow balls on top of car antennas have shown us.

Maybe you can’t afford top web designers, maybe you don’t have the experience to make the most stellar, high-production-value website in the world, but if you can do something weird, something odd, something different, out of the ordinary, a “purple cow” of sorts, then you’re at least guaranteed noticeability.