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Use Forums to Drive Affiliate Sales

With a good amount of hard work and time you can create affiliate profits from taking advantage of forum marketing. All types of people gather at online forums to exchange information on a topic they are passionate about so why not take full advantage of this free method in which you can increase traffic to your website or blog.

Posting is the terminology used when someone is adding messages to a forum. If you take the time to post quality information that is tied into your affiliate offerings being sure to include your website link and with time you are going to have a steady stream of traffic and with luck plenty of sales. This is a simple link building method which can be used to increase your search engine ranking and placement of any web site as well, and not only as a traffic funnel.

If is essential that you educate yourself to the rules and regulations of posting at a forum well before you send your first message. Many forums and discussion groups will allow you to have your link in your signature line while others will not allow affiliate links but will allow users linking to their blog or landing page.

Signing up to start posting on forums is incredibly easy. All you need to do is provide a small amount of information, you are all set to begin creating new topics, and responding to the posts that other forum members have created. Choosing to participate in online forums and discussion groups you are both creating new relationships as well as networking to expand your business and your overall profit margin.

The basic definition of networking is the act of exchanging either information or services with other individuals or groups. By networking through online forums and discussion groups you are putting yourself in a position to establish your credibility as an expert in your field and driving more traffic to your website.

To achieve the best results for maximum affiliate profits you are going to need to provide useful information and forums posts on a consistent basis. It is easy to see that there are a huge number of forums that you can choose from. The best forums to select are the ones that most closely relate to the affiliate programs that you are promoting and have a very active amount of members so that you can optimize the amount of exposure that you are getting.

A great place to get off to a running start with posting comments is Yahoo Answers. This free service pulls in millions of visitors that are seeking information. While you are providing these information seekers with useful information you will be able to include a link to your affiliate site for those seeking additional information.

It is very plain to see that by acting appropriately and making quality posts in online forums you can easily increase the traffic to your website and your affiliate earnings all without any out of pocket cost to you.

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How to Make Money Blogging

On the Internet today there are close to 80 million bloggers trying to turn a profit with their blogging efforts. This should be the tip that there really is something profitable about the world of blogging however, it should also tell you that you are up for a ton of competition.

The best part of deciding to start blogging for profit is that you can start with a shoestring budget and have a low risk potential.

Think of it this way: a domain name for your blog can be purchased for under $10 and very often can be had for as little as $1.99. Finding a solid and reliable host for your blog should only cost you around $10 per month and will have all the required attributes to sufficiently house your blog.

Once you have secured a hosting package and have decided on a great domain name then you are all set to select the platform that you will be blogging on. With just a little research you will find plenty of very useful tools and information that can assist you in getting your blog up and running on the world wide web.

While there are a plethora of blogging platforms to choose from such as Blogger and Typepad without a doubt the most popular choice of platforms by far is WordPress. WordPress is extremely easy to navigate through so you can get up and running quickly. There are also a ton of valuable plugins and tools at your disposal and the very best part is that it is all free.

Ok now you have your hosting package and domain name set up and you have selected your platform of choice what do you do now? That is very easy, you start blogging.

The specific niche that you choose should be something that you are truly passionate about. You do not have to be an authority on your topic when you first begin but if you are producing quality content it will not be long before you are building both a steady stream of regular readers and traffic.

That traffic that will soon be streaming into your blog is what is going to be creating your profit. So your very first goal to reach for is creating quality content so you can build a huge reader base. Once that is achieved you will be well on your way to very profitable blogging.

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Finding Products For Your Online Store

There are many things that you need to learn when you are considering starting an online business. However let’s say that you have decided that you want to sell products online and you are all set to get started. Even though you have made up you mind about what you want to do you may be facing the problem as to where you can find the best products to sell.

If you know where to look it can be extremely helpful. The following are some excellent places to get started and will hopefully set you brainstorming on additional places that you can utilize.
Drop shipping directories are a great place to find products to sell online. The great thing about drop shippers is that they will ship your products for you. So you do not have to fork out a lot of money for inventory and you do not have to worry about shipping costs either. You can easily gain access to directories of drop shippers online, you just need to put in the research time to make sure that you partner with a solid reputable company.

An easily overlooked source for great products to sell online is local stores. There could be a great product that has not yet hit the internet yet right in your back yard. You can either purchase the products outright and resell them or your can approach the business about selling their products online for them and then pocketing a portion of the profits.

Craftspeople are another greatly untapped market of unique items that you can sell online. There are a lot of crafters that will reduce the prices of their items if you make an offer to purchase bulk amounts.
Garage sales and flea markets are the perfect place to find items to sell online at a great price. Take some time to find a product or products that you are excited about selling and then hit the sales to find the best prices.

EBay is as always a great source for finding bulk lots of products that you can later break down and resell for big profits.

These are just a few of the sources that you can utilize to find great and profitable products to sell online. They will make a great jumping off point to get your online business up and running.

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How Privacy Policies Promote and Affect Your Business

A business website necessarily needs to collect details of its visitors before they get converted into customers. These details can either be contact information such as email addresses and telephone numbers, or sensitive information such as social security numbers and / or other means of personal identification, or even critical financial information such as bank account or credit card numbers. Whatever be the case, the need to ensure that these details remain safe with you is of huge importance if you want to win over the trust of your valued client base.

It is easy to see that any of these bits of information if not handled carefully, could lead to big trouble if it falls into the wrong hands. Not all miscreants would want to misuse plastic money or impersonate you by indulging in identity theft; some offenders will be mere irritants and cause you unnecessary hassle by repeated unsolicited emails and / or marketing calls. It is therefore very important that your website is equipped to protect user information besides making it known to your customers or prospective customers that their details are safe with you – that you will not knowingly part with their details and that you will do everything within your capacity to ensure that all the information that you collect is not disclosed to a third party under any circumstances. You can get a privacy policy written out for you by firms that offer content writing, copywriting and generally any search engine optimisation firm will have this kind of service offering.

What a Privacy Policy Is
A website’s privacy policy details your company’s views and procedures associated with the information collected from visitors. A privacy statement can also be looked at as a declaration in which you describe how you intend to handle the privacy of your business relations. In this respect, it is one of the most important documents on any website.

It is essentially a legal document and hence it tends to be long-drawn and teeming with legal terms and obscuring clauses embedded within reams of text; however, a good website will ensure that its privacy policy is both concise and easy to understand, without leaving any scope for confusion in the readers’ minds.

Main Sections of a Website Privacy Policy

  • Introduction: Here your visitor gets to know a little about your business, as well as any special functions that your website has. Any special conditions for collecting information (for e.g. from children under 16 years of age), should be stated clearly in this section.
  • Information Collected: Mention what types of information you are collecting here. Ideally, also include information logged by your website servers, like IP addresses and host names.
  • Method of Collection: The different methods that you use to collect the information such as automated or using forms that are filled up by visitors must be detailed here.
  • Storage of Information: Visitors have the right to know how their details are being stored by you and how secure this database is. It is a good idea to register with the local government so as to enforce the data protection act; this will instill a certain degree of trust in your practices amongst your website’s visitors.
  • Contact Details: Allocate a separate set of contact details for visitors to get in touch with you in case of any concerns pertaining to your privacy policy. Include an email address (or online form), as well as a postal address and telephone numbers and ensure that these are responded to in a timely manner.

Importance of a Privacy Policy
Indisputably, one of the most important aspects that conducting business online depends on is the ability to win the explicit trust of the people you deal with. It has been found that people usually are willing to provide simple information like names and e-mail addresses but when it comes to sensitive details such as phone numbers, postal addresses, credit card numbers, age and social security numbers, they are skeptical. Concerns about security and privacy are not unfounded given the numerous instances of misuse of personal information in the recent past. It is therefore vital for an online business to offer an assurance that information pertaining to potential clients will not be abused in any way. Consequently, having a clear and straightforward privacy policy on your web site has come to be an essential component of online success.

Guidelines to Develop Your Website Privacy Policy
You can define the elements of an effective privacy policy by simply looking at the basics of what your business is. Several resources are available to help you with creating the perfect privacy policy for your business. There also are specific tools that you can use to enhance your website’s privacy practices such as enhanced data encryption resources.

Here are a few questions that your privacy policy should be capable of answering:

  • What types of information is being collected?
    • System specific data such as IP addresses, browser tags, and user location
    • Demographic data such as age, family size, income level, etc.
    • Contact information such as email and postal addresses / telephone numbers
    • Is any information being collected without the user’s consent?
  • For what purpose is the information being collected?
    • In order to administer your site
    • To customize the visitor’s experience
    • To communicate with the user
    • How exactly will the information collected be used?
  • How is the information being collected?
    • Through online forms?
    • Using cookies or any other identifiers
    • From where can the data be retrieved?
  • Who, besides yourself, will have access to the information collected?
    • Will the information gathered be sold, leased, or shared with third parties?
    • Will affiliates or business partners have access to it?
    • Will data from third parties be used to supplement your database?
  • Where is the information actually stored?
    • What is the geographical location of the server that holds the information?
    • What is the mode of transmitting data?
    • What security features protect the database?
    • For how long is the information kept before being rendered inactive or redundant?
    • How is information deleted / disposed off after use?
  • How does one go about removing or modifying information?
    • Is it possible to manage, modify, or update one’s own information?
    • What are the procedures involved in opting out of any future services or communications?
    • Can users restrict the extent to which their information is shared / used? If yes, how can they go about doing so?

In keeping with the very purpose of your website’s existence, which is to increase your online sales, the best way to ease your prospect’s buying experience is by making sure that their details are not under any threat of being misused. What better way to do this by telling them about your true intentions using an effective privacy statement? Increase not only your sales but also your repeat and referral sales by making a sound privacy pledge, and online success will follow automatically.

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Guide to Hiring a Web Designer

The ever-increasing popularity of the World Wide Web is causing more and more businesses to invest in a good website to make most of the wide-reaching exposure that this marketing medium provides, at very affordable rates. The purpose of a website is very similar to that of an advertising campaign – increase sales and improve the value-perception among current and prospective customers. In order to ensure that a website accomplishes these goals, it is essential that it is pleasant in appearance and professional in its demeanor besides being easy to use and rich in information. It is needless to say that you will need to hire nothing short of the experts if your website must possess these attractive qualities. A professional web design company provides complete web solutions that effectively satisfy your goals and maximize your returns on investments.

The Art of Web Site Design

When it comes to website development, the color pallets, resolutions, sizes and layouts are all important and it takes a skilled website designer to make the most of different operating systems and browsers versions that the website may be viewed upon. Constructing the web page code is more of an art which comes only with true skill, knowledge and experience to accomplish this. Besides looking attractive, the web page must also be coded properly to load quickly on different browsers and operating systems and more importantly, to be indexed well by search engines.

A word of caution here: There is a general trend amongst graphic designers (who specialize in the realm of print media) to consider themselves to be qualified enough to indulge in web designing and don’t see the need to update themselves on the specialized areas that are an integral part of the same. This in particular can have rather disastrous results since there is a huge difference between graphic design and web design – while print media is heavily graphics-oriented, websites need to be more focused on the content and the layout of the contents. It is therefore all the more important to choose the web designer for your website prudently.

Choosing the Right Web Design Experts

Before zeroing in on a web site development company, it is important that you know the various skill sets possessed by the company so as to be able to determine whether it provides all the services related to web page design that you are likely to require. Some of the basic web-designing services include flash or graphic designing, shopping cart, e-commerce application development, dynamic website, Search Engine Optimization and SEO oriented copywriting. It is advisable that the same company providing web site design services also undertake and search engine optimization services since it is usually essential to alter the website to be able to achieve a better search engine ranking.

While there are several ways to go about looking for a web development company that you can safely rely on for your business’ web site design, a combination of these different approaches is usually the best method of finding a web site design company that will suit your requirements.

Top 5 ‘Must-haves’ in a Web Design Company

Here are some aspects that will help you be reasonably sure of the caliber of website design talent that you are hiring:

  1. Samples of past work / portfolio: While it is good to be encouraging to rookies, it may not be the best occasion to go about doing so – not with your website at stake! Always check for examples of past work; if they are unable to do so, they must be ready to create a sample for you – this way you can be sure of what they are capable of. It must be ascertained that they are amply skilled to produce work that is in line with your requirement. Here are some of the qualities that their work must possess:
    1. Clean and professional appearance
    2. Effective layout
    3. Easy navigationAs long as their portfolio / samples look appealing to you, you can safely move on to the next screening steps.
  2. Mode of web site update: Your website will require to be updated from time to time and for this reason, this aspect must be clarified well in advance. If you need to pay the web site designer every time you want to update content on the website, it will work out to be more expensive besides making it a tedious affair. It is hence advisable that you make a provision to update the website yourself using some sort of a control panel type interface or else a Content Management System (CMS) that will allow you to make changes to the website content.
  3. Technology used: A good web site developer must be confident of his skills and experience dealing with the modern HTML and cascading style sheet (CSS) techniques which are critical to a professional, modern web design. A simple way of ensuring that they know their job is to ask them how they go about generating the web page code – if they rely on some sort of a software package to do it, they probably are not very proficient with the basics of web site design.
  4. Specific web site design requirements: The construction of your website depends largely on the purpose of creating the same. For instance, interactive website may require Flash programming while an e-commerce website will need shopping-cart and accounting functionalities. When you discuss your project with your prospective web design company, they must seem confident enough to deliver your specific requirement. A functional and effective website usually has a talented web design expert who specializes in creating dynamic websites backing it up.
  5. Web site performance: Web page load time and search engine indexing are vital factors that affect a web site’s performance and can be accomplished using intelligent design techniques. A web site’s indexing is hugely dependant on good web page code that will in turn maximize the website’s content for search engine indexing. Improper HTML coding techniques or including too many graphics are some of the causes of slow loading websites. Simply look at the amount of time it takes to load web pages that have been created by your prospective web designer – if the samples take long to load, chances are that they don’t have a good grasp of their job!

Over and above these vital aspects, as long as there is a team of professionals who are committed to delivering your exact requirement and over-achieving expectations with sheer hard work and diligence, there’s no stopping your extremely successful website from wiping out competition!

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Reseller Hosting vs Shared Web Hosting

Shared and Reseller web hosting have many similarities, many web hosts offer both shared and reseller hosting. The main difference between the two are…

  • Shared Web Hosting: You are sharing resources on a server and there are other shared web site hosting clients on the same server.
  • Reseller Hosting: Similar to shared web hosting in the sense that you are also sharing server resources with other clients. However, you can create your own web hosting accounts and manage them.

The upstream reseller hosting provider still remains in control of their server and are responsible for updating the server software and maintaining the server. The upstream reseller hosting provider will usually also provide support to the reseller, so if there are any issues or faults the reseller will be able to contact the host.

Do I need a Reseller Hosting account?
Most personal and small business users will have no use for a reseller account, a reseller account is useful to those users who have a number of web sites and want to save money, as a reseller account can be cheaper than purchasing multiple shared hosting accounts. Even though, depending on your web hosting provider, you may also be able to host multiple domains under a shared hosting solution and so making a reseller hosting account only worth it if you weigh up the space or bandwidth versus cost for both types of accounts as well how much of those resources you require for your accounts.

With a reseller account you can also sell hosting, so this can be a relatively cheap step into the web hosting business. You have the flexibility of controlling your own clients, creating, suspending and terminating accounts. You also have the knowledge that the server is being maintained for you, so you only have to worry about your clients and web site.

The Benefits
If you own a number of web sites, using a reseller account can save you money, and you can create accounts when you need them and share the resources between your web sites easily. You can find reseller hosting accounts with plenty of bandwidth and disk space from around R350 a month, which can be a big saving if you have a number of web sites needing hosting.

You also don’t have to worry about the maintenance of the server, since the reseller hosting provider should have this covered. You should also receive technical support included with your account.

If you have plans to start to own web hosting business, a reseller account can be an easy first step in the hosting industry. It is a relatively low cost solution, meaning you can concentrate primarily on building your business slowly and generate a steady monthly income. One of the biggest mistakes new hosts make is try to accomplish too much in a short period of time.

The disadvantages
Potential clients may not be totally confident purchasing a hosting account from a reseller, because you in affect are the middle man. If a problem arises with the server or a customers account, they need to contact you and if you are unable to deal with the problem yourself, you would in turn have to contact your upstream reseller hosting provider. This can be a long process from initially receiving the first support request to getting the problem resolved. However if you have proper customer support in place this shouldn’t be a major problem.

As mentioned previously, as a reseller you have certain access to administrative functions and if you have experience with the control panel and server software you may find managing your clients and their accounts easier than doing certain tasks manually.

Final thoughts
Reseller hosting is worth the money but only if you require the resources its offering. It is a good step in selling web hosting and if done properly enables a small business to generate a profit from reselling shared hosting accounts.

If you have high bandwidth or disk space requirements reseller hosting may not be the best solution and you may possibly require a dedicated server. This however does require you to have the technical knowledge otherwise you may just have to get a high resource reseller hosting account or multiple reseller hosting accounts.

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End of Days for PHP 4

A few days ago an announcement was made by the developers of PHP at http://php.net concerning the discontinuation of of PHP 4:

Dated: [13-Jul-2007]

Today it is exactly three years ago since PHP 5 has been released. In those three years it has seen many improvements over PHP 4. PHP 5 is fast, stable & production-ready and as PHP 6 is on the way, PHP 4 will be discontinued.

The PHP development team hereby announces that support for PHP 4 will continue until the end of this year only. After 2007-12-31 there will be no more releases of PHP 4.4. We will continue to make critical security fixes available on a case-by-case basis until 2008-08-08. Please use the rest of this year to make your application suitable to run on PHP 5.

For documentation on migration for PHP 4 to PHP 5, we would like to point you to our migration guide (http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.php). There is additional information available in the PHP 5.0 to PHP 5.1 (http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration51.php) and PHP 5.1 to PHP 5.2 (http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration52.php) migration guides as well.

We have many servers running PHP 5 as default and it is completely stable. Pretty much all commercial scripts work with it or can be made to with a few tweaks. We recommend that all our clients that have PHP 4 dependent script look to their code to migrate it to PHP 5.

If you have a dedicated server with Osirion System Technologies please request the PHP 5 upgrade any time between now and December. If you don’t want your server upgraded to PHP 5 that is also fine, though the upgrade is highly recommended.

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Reseller Hosting As An Online Business Choice

Reseller hosting is an easy way to make money from the web industry. Though some might think there are technicalities involved, most hosting firms that offer reseller hosting can either directly or indirectly offer the support to the reseller hosting clients. All that reseller hosting entails is the division of a server’s resources, both disk space and traffic (or otherwise referred to as bandwidth). From this allocated disk space and traffic, Reseller’s make their hosting packages from their reseller control panel and can create a new client through this control panel and assign the relevant hosting package to the client.

Your reseller hosting provider should also be able to give you tutorials and any help you may need with using the reseller control panel. Actual server maintenance and software updates are handled by your reseller hosting provider and they manage the dedicated hosting server so you don’t have to. Not only does this give you more time to do more important tasks, but it saves you on requiring the technical knowledge of running a dedicated server. As a part of a marketing plan, you can offer similar packages that other hosting companies are offering at lower rates due to your lower costs. You can also use some reseller hosting programs and GUI control panels that will enable your clients to manage their web resources which will take some work load of you.

Once you have your reseller hosting solution and have created your shared hosting packages that you will offer to your clients, you are ready to start.

Dealing in reseller web site hosting you might have offer more space and bandwidth than a regular shared web hosting plan. Web hosting is very cut-throat trade that your triumph depends on the performance of your dedicated server. Cheaper reseller hosting to win the price war may sometimes be dangerous in case of long time downtime. That is not to say that every reseller hosting provider that is affordable has low downtime, but you should do research into all your narrowed down list of hosting provider choices to avoid a provider that has a lot of downtime.

Offering multiple or even unlimited domain names, parked or add-on, on a shared hosting account can be one of the value added features of your shared hosting packages from your reseller hosting package. Other selling points of your service can be flexible packages in terms of space, bandwidth, other features and price. Giving your clients the option to upgrade space or bandwidth over time, whether at an additional upgrade cost or for free, can also be beneficial to you. A successful client will generally need more of both these resources over time.

Before you dive into a reseller hosting plan, make sure to:

• Choose a dependable reseller hosting service provider that has a good record and has been running for some time.
• Choose a trustworthy reseller hosting service provider that offers flexible reseller web hosting packages in terms of price, space and bandwidth / traffic.
• Choose a reseller service provider that offers a powerful and user-friendly reseller hosting control panel to you as well as a user-friendly control panel to your clients.
• Choose a reseller hosting provider that can handle your queries and perhaps those of your clients fast and efficiently

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Logo Design – The Great Company’s Presentation

A web page without a logo may not look too good. This depends on the company however choosing to host a web page. They will also need to specify what kind of company they have, and thus it will make it easier for the designers to do the needful. The clients will have a very good idea of what they need, and this is what one would need when it comes to the design.

They of course need not give any rough sketches, but a good input will make a lot of difference. Artists will play a very important role in this.

The more creative they are the better the logo looks. The logo will also have to be compatible with the content of the site. It is a must that the logo will match the mood of the site, as well as what the content is all about.

A logo speaks about the company and no one should compromise on the logo design at all. This should involve a lot of time as well as effort, as this will allow the projection of the company to be on a large platform when it comes to quality.

The designs could be complex or even very simple, based on the need of the client. Sometimes there will be a need to create a simple logo, even if the content is heavy. This will blend in with what is needed, and will also attract the viewers in such a way. Simple logos too can speak volumes about a company.

If a complex design is needed, it is always a wise idea to match the entire web page with what the other requirements are. Soon after this, the placement of the logo on the web page is very important.

It will not do, if the logo is placed just about anywhere on the web page. One has to see to it that a lot of care is taken when it comes to making the logo prominent on the web page. Though it is prominent, it must not clash with the rest of the content. It is also a good idea if the company designing the logo, keeps an eye on the use of the colors.

They must blend with the idea of the site content, and must also not look out of place. Even if it is placed in a good place, it must look attractive without occupying unnecessary space.

A web logo design company will have the necessary professionals to carry out this task, and the client will get what he needs. He only has to specify what he needs, and together as a team they will bring out the best. The design professionals are trained in such a way, that they will not overshadow the thoughts of the client.

Yet they will give good inputs and also make sure the best is given to the client. If the right effort is put into the task, the best logo can be attained.

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Web Hosting – Choosing The Best Server

When it comes to web hosting, we will have to first understand that the World Wide Web connects people all over the world. The communication standard is called http. This method can be used to connect computers all over the world. Web pages are basically documents on the computer that store required information, depending on the individual owner of the site.

These in turn will be stored as files on the computer with the help of servers. These pages can then be viewed then on the web browser. This will need an Internet service provider to do the needful, and these are all interconnected.

Web hosting is all about making the web page with information created, available on the World Wide Web with the help of a server. There are different ways to host web pages. One way is that it can be done by you.

The other way is to approach a good web hosting company to do the needful. While hosting a web page on your own, you will have to take into consideration that a lot of things will be involved. This will include hardware, software as well as maintenance expenses, and this could run up to a big amount.

It is easier to ask a company to host it for a good fee, as they will have the correct technical team to do the support. This will be their job, and they will be working constantly to provide the needful. You could also rent a server from an Internet service provider, but that too will have its drawbacks.

The whole problem about hosting it yourself is that you will have to spend a lot of time maintaining this. When the web page is being hosted, it will also need a domain name. This is what makes the web page unique.

This will allow each web page to have its own domain name. There will be no two web pages that will have the same name. While approaching a company to host the web page, the domain name has to be registered. Only then will it become visible to all the viewers. While some web hosting companies offer a free domain name with their hosting package, the domain name still has to be chosen with care. It has to be in a way that it is connected to the site content or name. It should also be short and probably very easy to remember. If these steps are followed, there will be more traffic to the site.

Web hosting will also involve monitoring the web page often. The owner of the site will have to make sure that the site has not expired. This will happen if the subscription with the hosting company has not been renewed. Losing this will mean losing a lot of customers and visitors, so it is better to keep track of the hosting services.

The web hosting services will also not cost much, so it is a good idea to spend that money and maintain a good site. The hosting company will take care of your every need.