Why keep a plugin on your blog when all it does it junk up your site?

Commission Automator seemed like a good idea at the time if it actually worked as specified.  What it was supposed to do was write a new review post on a product.  Unfortunately, it did not write the post in the category I created for it and the post frequency is not as advertised.

So all those tweets that have been going out are driving me crazy and I am officially removing the blog posts that were created.

Why did I install it in the first place?  For the simple reason that I thought it might help keep the blog alive, since I seem to have little time to post on a regular basis.  Well – you betcha I will after this experience!

Why I Am Forced To Do This

I have contacted the support team several times on the issues I was having and have never received a response.  I kept checking my email inbox and junk/spam folder, but never received even a courtesy message.  What the hay?

Since I wrote the “book” on Internet customer service, you can imagine how this really ticked me off.

Hey – if it doesn’t work as expected or as advertised; if you don’t get a response to a cry for assistance, especially when they tell you where to go to get that assistance, then I pretty much have the right to write about my experience – right?

I really hate doing this, but they had a chance to make a customer happy and they blew it.  Nice idea for a product, but how about supporting what you created instead of just pushing out more products?

Hey – if you offer customer support, make sure it’s working!

What to Look For in a Web Hosting Company

Every web hosting company has reseller accounts.  This means anyone can resell the services to you.  But what happens when the reseller goes out of business?

That happened to me recently through a hosting company that I started using through a membership site of theirs.  Suddenly they were not responding to support tickets and their phone had been disconnected.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, I came across a blog post from one of their customers whose sites had completely disappeared on January 1st.  Her problem was even worse since she didn’t know how to recover her sites without a recent backup.

Shared Hosting
If you’re new to online processes, you’ll want to start with a shared hosting account.  This is affordable, but means you have other sites on the same server with yours.  This could be a problem if one or more of those sites suddenly become high-traffic sites and consume excessive bandwidth.  It’s good to know that you can communicate with your webhost and know they will address the issue if it becomes a problem for you.

Support Team
You’ll want to know that you can communicate with your support team and that they are qualified to answer your technical issues.  Many of the day-to-day issues can be supported by outsourced staff, but make sure more difficult technical issues can be escalated to more qualified technical staff what speaks English.

Data Center Location
Find out where the data center is located.  If it’s located in a hurricane path you could experience more outages than you anticipated.

Data Center Ownership
It’s vital for you to confirm that the website hosting company you select owns their data center and reports 99.9% uptime.

Servers
Most of the web hosting companies offering shared hosting use Linux and Unix servers.  This is what you want to use.  Some have the option of using windows servers – don’t do it!  These are the most unreliable servers and should not be used for business services.

Free Website Hosting

Most of the searches for website hosting are for free services.  This is a very bad idea.  Why?  Simply because you get what you pay for and with free hosting – you haven’t paid anything!  So how do you think they make their money?

• By collecting your personal information when you signup for an account and marketing other services and “get rich quick” programs back to you.
• By selling your eMail address to lead generation services
• By selling your personal information when available
• By displaying lots of advertising on your website dashboard and/or your site

Usually these free website hosting companies are into other businesses and use their free website hosting service to collect leads for those businesses.  Wouldn’t you rather host your website with a reliable hosting company that you know will be around?  I’d hate for you to wake up one day and find your site(s) gone!  This is a very real possibility.

Paid Website Hosting

Remember – you get what you pay for, so let’s look at the most reliable hosting companies.  These are the best website hosts I have used and recommend:

HostGator

These guys have been around for years and many marketers swear by their service.  I have found you either love them or you hate them.  Fortunately, I’ve never had the issues some of the haters had.  You can buy their “baby” package and host an unlimited number of addon domains.  This allows you to run several websites from a single account.  This also means you don’t have to point to the root of the domain.  Although this creates a sub-directory within your main domain, it is accessed in a browser window just like any other individually hosted domain so nobody ever knows it’s hosted on another account.

Addon domains do not have their own cPanel (web hosting manager) and can be more confusing to maintain.  Personally, I don’t like addon domains because they can affect the performance of all the other sites you have on the account.

Servers located in Houston, TX

Live Chat
Help Desk System
Toll-Free Phone Support
User Manuals
FAQs
Video Tutorials

IXWebHosting

Excellent customer service and hosting.  Unfortunately, they do not use cPanel as their web hosting manager.  If you are purchasing software to use on your website, you will find that most require or use cPanel.  Regardless, I found their dashboard quite difficult to use and navigate.  But – they’re hosting is hard to beat – NEVER had any issues with them.

The data center is located in Hopkinsville, Kentucky

Live Chat
Help Desk System
Local and Toll-Free Phone Support
User Manuals
FAQs
Video Tutorials

1 and 1

This is another best website host that does not use cPanel as their web hosting manager, but the dashboard is much easier to use than IXWebHosting.  One of the features I like about 1and1 is you have access to your eMail on the server through a web browser.  This makes it easy to pickup your eMail when you’re not at your computer.  Most other hosting companies make you go through cPanel to get your eMail.

Founded in Germany with server sites in several European countries and Chesterbrook, PA in the US.

The data center is located in Lenexa, KS in the US.  They have their own trained support staff located in Chesterbrook, PA.

FAQs
Help Desk System
Toll-Free Phone Support
Video Tutorials
User Manuals
Easy Setup Guides

GVO

If you’re an experienced business builder on the Internet, this is the host I recommend for Internet Marketing.  It’s owned and operated by the same people who previously had Kiosk.com.  Not only do you have unlimited domains on reseller accounts (don’t need to use an addon domain), they have other software including an AutoResponder that comes with your account.  These are tools that you will use in your business and would otherwise have to purchase separately.

This company is built and run by Internet Marketers to provide the services you need, like builk eMail.  Their customer support is quick to respond to issues and know their technical requirements to be able to assist whatever issue you may have.  Some of the biggest Internet Marketers on the ‘net are with GVO.

In addition, they don’t just have an affiliate program – they have it setup as an MLM.  This means you make more money by building a downline with recurring income.

Data center is located in San Antonio, Texas.

Live Conference Room
Contact Form
Help Desk System
Video Tutorials

There are many other hosting companies I have used, but refuse to review because many of them are already using main sites (like WordPress) to market their services.  I tried many of these that were highly recommended and for many different reasons, had to move all my sites to a new host.