Just found a small post on MediaTemple.net’s knowledgebase page. It says that existing customer can make profit by referring new customer. The post was created on May 9th, 2007. I have never heard about that offer. So I guess not a lot of people knowing this offer. So what exactly the referral program can offer to the existing customer? Is it worth? What’s the catch? You can find the page from the following link.

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Few days ago, I published a small article on EzineArticles.com about “Small Business starts small – Does domain name matter?” Choosing a domain for your small business is as important as host your domain and web site. If you just start a new small business, you will have to host your domain somewhere and finally get your web site up. Now you have a domain name, but you have no idea where to host your web site.

First of all, it does matter how much your hosting budget allows and what you will do with your web site. Are you selling goods on the internet, or just provide web based services to others, or you just want to have a company web site to show people that you are in business. Most small business owners have no idea about the modern internet technology, they have spent a lot of time put together their business plan and ready to move forward. Now they are hesitate because they don’t know where to start their business with Internet. I will give you some basic guide line to choose your hosting company without getting ripped off by those ridiculous hosting plans.

Let’s assume you are selling products and requires a merchant account, which is the most complicated hosting for small business to end with. These are the requirements you need to operate your business.

1. A Merchant account to accept online online payment.
2. A web site with shopping cart that can process customer order and process payment.
3. Hosting at least one domain. Sometimes with multiple domains. This can be done through parked domain, domain forwarding, or add-on domain features.
4. Lots email address to use. Let’s assume you need 200 email address. That is a lot of email to do small business. I have never use more than the following emails. info, sales, customerservices, webmaster, security, privacy, admin and so on. Of course, you will need one email for each of your employees. Most of hosting companies give you more than 1000 email address, which is enough to run a corporation.
5. Mailing List for people to subscribe your newsletter or company press release
6. A stable server that you can count on without change your hosting provider every few months.
7. A true 24/7 customer services and tech support with really phone number to contact.
8. A fast and easy to use web control panel to manage your web hosting account.

So how do we choose the hosting company to start with? In my case, I need an e-commerce web site to host my online store.

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