How Much Web Server Space and Bandwidth Do I Need?

Don't be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming *unlimited* at you.

If you have to ask, then you don’t need very much.

If you are just starting out, you probably won’t have much traffic. Sorry, but it’s true. You can calculate the page files sizes and multiply by the page views you get a day or a month, but you won’t be able to do that without knowing how many people hit your site. If you have no history, then you can’t calculate, but it won’t be very much at all for a while.

Start out with the cheapest, least amount of space and bandwidth. Don’t be seduced by the flashing neon signs screaming “unlimited” at you. Don’t upgrade until you have to.

You will be surprised by just how little bandwidth you really need. If the average page is 100k, which is not unreasonable, then 100,000 pages a month is one gig. That’s over 3,000 page views a day. Do you have that many? If you have 10,000 views a day, then you’ll want 3 or 4 gig. I think “unlimited” bandwidth would probably cover that.

I really, really mean that you shouldn’t get more than you really need and you probably don’t need as much as you think you do. Really. Don’t do it.

Much more important is the reliability of the company. Do they answer emails quickly? Put in a support ticket and see how long it takes them to answer. Ask the sales people technical questions about redundancy and latency. See how long it takes to answer and does the answer make sense to you. Just tell them that you were told to ask about “redundancy and latency” and please explain what that means. If you are happy with the answer, then great. If you have no idea what this technical jargon they give you means or it takes them 3 days to answer you, then move along and find another web host company.

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Ask Me Anything About Small Business Web Sites

I’ve put up a link under my short bio over there on the right. Put up a new head shot while I was there. If you click on the button, it’ll pop up a window and you can ask me anything you want to know about small business web sites. I’ll answer it as soon as I can. I want to build some traffic to the site, so I thought I’d put that possibility out there for you.

If you have any questions about small business web sites, web hosts, HTML, design, development, management, Wordpress, or anything at all, go ahead and send me the question. We’ll see just how much I really do know. You can also leave a comment below, if you want to do it that way. Either way should work.

Thanks!

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How To Set Up A Small Business Web Site

So you think you need a web site for your small business. You’re right. If you don’t have one by now, you’re behind the curve. If you have one that sucks, you need to make it better.

Don’t worry, we’ll walk you through the steps to get one up and running. The overview of the process contains the following steps:

1. Register a domain name.
2. Find a web hosting company.
3. Set up the domain name to point at the web host.
4. Design the web site.
5. Develop the web site.
6. Post them to the web host.
7. Maintain it.

There are a lot of companies out there promising to do it all for you for cheap, but be careful of who you give your money to and what you get stuck with. There are deals and there are dangers.

The first rule of web site development is DO NOT DO ANY BUSINESS WITH NETWORK SOLUTIONS!. They are evil. They will suck you into a black hole of fees and never let you go. They are the La Brea tar pits of the Internet.

Each of the steps above has it’s own page dedicated to it and they are many other resources out there on the web for information about each subject.

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Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions

Don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions. Use any other registrar. Not only do they charge you 4 times what most other registrars charge, moving your domain name to another registrar is almost impossible.

We had a client who had a name registered at Network Solutions. I showed them the difference in cost and customer support, so they wanted to move to GoDaddy.

La Brea tar Pits, Where You Get Sucked In And Never Get Out

First, they needed to submit a request. Then the request had to be approved. You have to actually call them to have the transfer approved. In this call, they try very hard to get you to stay. This isn’t a technical call or a call to protect you from someone stealing your name, it’s a sales call, a hard ball sales call.

When they finally do approve your request, it’s 5 days later, after multiple emails and a sales call.

Customer service is another issue, but this one is more subjective. They generally are not helpful and it takes twice as long to get things figured out with their support.

Bottom line, no matter what, don’t register your domain name with Network Solutions.

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About Conrad Walton

I started working for a large corporation in 1986, where I learned how to use a dumb terminal on a main frame computer. The computer was in one of those air conditioned rooms that you see in the movies. When personal computers came along, my mind was blown. I bought a 28.8 modem and hooked up to a BBS, a bulletin board system, in about 1989.

The Internet was just a myth to us back then, a place for academics and government workers. My wife bought an “Internet Starter Kit” for Christmas in 1992. I sent me first email that day and my life was changed forever. I soon learned about FTP and Gopher and MOOs. When the web came along in about 1993, I learned HTML. My first web host gave us 200k of space on the server. Yes, that’s “k”, not “MB”. I serve images bigger than that now.

I put my own web server on line on June 24, 1994 and it’s been on line ever since, except for that time that the hard drive quit while I was out of town for a week, but that’s another story. I’ve been designing, building, and hosting web sites ever since.

I got a “day job” as a web developer for Vivendi Universal Games, a video game company in 1998. We built promotional sites for the games we sold. I learned about marketing from that job. They hired developers that we a lot better than I was, but I turned out to be better at project management. I’ve been a project manager ever since, working with technical people, creative people and managers. I learned what it took and how to make things happen on the web.

When Vivendi laid off 40% of the company in one day, including all of my department, I started to work for Intermix, the company that created MySpace and sold it to FOX. I worked on other sites for them, including some pretty spammy, sleazy sites, I’m sorry about that. I learned how to work with an online community, with email lists, and the finer points of advertising. I learned the right way and the wrong way to do things.

I worked for FOX for a while, before they started to reorganize everything and all of the people I worked with left for greener pastures. I went to work for ePublishing, who does high end (read: “unneccesarily expensive”) sites for publishing companies. The clients are people who had old school print news companies and were desperately trying to make the switch to online. I learned how to deal with difficult clients and unreasonable decisions. We cranked out some great sites in spite of it all.

In the meantime, back when I was starting out in 1994, I built a site for a friend who owned a company so that I could say that I had built a companies web site. I got the domain name “survivor.com” for that site. When the TV show hit in 2000, my poor little servers didn’t stand a chance under all of the traffic. I learned about buying web hosting.

When I learned about SEO and AdSense, about 4 or 5 years ago, I started to optimize the site. It was on the third or fourth page for search results and I was making about $1200 a month. All that traffic was from people typing in “survivor.com”, thinking that was the official site.

I actually bought an eBook about “making your millions on line with AdSense”. It cost $75. I was afraid to buy it, but after I read it, I started started doing the things in the book, trying various changes to improve the search results ranking as well as the click through rates. I soon got on the first page of the search results and I started making $2500 a month. After the first year of working on it, I was making $3500+ a month. Interest in the show has since waned, but I made $35,000 in one year, all from AdSense at a dime or so a click .

Now, I write about how to put your small business on the web, and market it effectively for free or really cheap. By “small business”, I mean five people or less. Car repair shops, restaurants, contractors, wedding flowers, or real estate agents.

While I can do everything it takes to get your site on line, I’m best at coaching you on how to get it done yourself. I want to give you the knowledge and power to get the best deal on the most effective web site that you possibly can. I know the tricks and the tips on how to get it the way you want and get it for not very much money. You can hire me or read my site. I’ll be here for you. Thanks for spending your time here.

-conrad walton

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