Hosting
Once you have a site designed, you need to put it somewhere so that surfers can access it. You need a host.
One point should be mentioned up front--hosting is not the same as access. Do not think that you have to use a local host because that is with whom you have your internet access. You can use AOL or a local access company, yet host your sites on a large commerrcial server in another part of the country.
The three keys to deciding on a host, in declining order of importance, are:
1.
Reliability (is it always up, is the tech support good?)
2. Speed (how fast can your surfer connect?)
3. Price (how economical is it?)
One of the most common mistakes is choosing by price alone.
There are various basic options to hosting a site: free, non-adult hosts, free adult hosts, commercial providers, co-located/decdicated servers, and your own server.
1. Free hosts, such as AOL and Geocities are not an option for the adult webmaster. Most of these providers do not allow them, and even if it might take them a little while to discover the site, and most adult link sites and search engines will not list them. So just forget about this option.
2. There are several companies which offer "free" adult site hosting. They host your site if you use their age verification service, and some even provide you the content. There are limitations, of course. Most will not allow you to link to other sites not within their list of sites, and most have tons of advertising. Also, speed may be lacking. Using a free host may be worth the effort to put one up, but do not expect to make significant amounts with one.
3. Commercial providers may be the most popular method to host a site, especially for people new to the business. While some companies charge $500-$2,000 per month for hosting, this is way too much, particularly as new sites take a while to build up traffic. You can have a good, fast, reliable host for $50-$150 per month. Yes, some companies will offer hosting for $19.95 per month, but usually, these services are not very fast, and as your bandwidth builds up, your costs can escalate out of hand. (Before signing up with a host provider, check out the costs for bandwidth should you exceed the contracted amount.)
Three good providers, based on the judging criteria, are:
A. Hurricane Electric. Ranked as one of the top 5 providers in the country, they are used to dealing with adult sites. They are very fast, they are reliable (great 24 hour tech support), and at $59.95 per month, they are quite reasonable. This is a great option for people just starting out.
B. Cavecreek Wholesale Internet Exchange. Located in Phoenix (where they have the least natural disasters in the US which might interrupt service. CWIE offers comparable servcie to Hurrican Electric with a slightly higher set-up fee and monthy fee ($150 and $100/month). But they are highly thought of in the adult business and host some of the biggest adult sites in the world.
There are other good services, some in Europe, but with cost factors added in, only US or Canadia host providers should be your choice.
4. Running your own server requires that you have have the hardware, the technical expertise to maintain the hardware, and be on hand to take care of problems. It also requires that you have the connections to the internet to handle the required traffic. I do not recommend this option to anyone staritng out in the business, nor to pros unless they have significant technical expertise and time to manage the system.
5. Co-located/dedicated servers are basically your own private server located with a servcie provider's building, using their connections and monitoring. With a co-located server, you provide the hardware and the systems knowledge, with a dedicated server, the hosting company provides everything. As you grow in the business and your traffic grows, this is a logical step for people to take. With your own machine, speed typically improves, and as you get bigger, it becomes more cost-effective than having mulitple smaller accounts. Hurricane Electric, Adult Serve, and Cavecreek all offer dedicated and co-located servers.