Forum Moderators: mack
1) Your Budget
2) Your market
3) Also, see what your competitors are doing (trust me, this helps a lot :) )
then,
1) If you got big budget, pick places like doubleclick or other (Yahoo or DMOZ category would be a good place to look for more names)
2) If you don't have that big budget, try fastclick and few others (I have a *huge* list somewhere on my computer, sorry, it is not handy right now)
3) Think where your target market would be? Once you think you know this, try seeking out good sites on your own. Many a times *some real good sites* don't get selected on *big* ad networks and small ad networks don't pay them enough, so these sites don't use these networks and try to sell ads on their own. I have had some *real* good luck in doing so - and would recommend the same.
Hope in this post, I am making some sence, cuz, I am half sleepy at this time ;)
Hope this helps :)
Good post though :)
lol, now I have really got crazy....
sorry for the mis-leading post.....zzzzzz
where do i buy web space? who is the most reputable company and how do i know how much space i need? it's a commercial site
A cgi-bin is important if you want to have interactive functions like a form people can fill out and send to you (formmail).
If you're going to be doing e-commerce, make sure you can upgrade (for zero or little $) to an account with a database (mysql).
Make sure you have access to your raw stats. With a good traffic analyzer (FastStats Mach 5, etc...) you can download your stats and run your own reports, as opposed to relying on a host's slow, clunky and limited web dashboard analyzer.
And don't be afraid to jump from one host to another. If you can find a host that charges you month to month, as opposed to year to year, this is best because they are more likely to be on their toes, as they know you can bolt at any time. Which leads to my next item:
Don't be afraid to bolt to another host. Some people will say that it endangers your rankings, but not in my experience.
Not sure if this is too important, but it's worth thinking about: Make sure your host servers are in the United States. IP addresses are assigned regionally, as I understand it. So, you have Euro ip addresses, North American, Asian, etc. But this statement is qualified.
Buy a computer magazine and see who's advertising their hosting in the back of magazine.
Don't believe everything you read in online hosting web sites, because some of them are nothing more than vehicles for ads, and their recommendations are paid for.
And if you are non-adult related, then make sure your host states in his/her terms of service (tos) that adult sites are not allowed. I wouldn't want to have my site share an ip with an adult web site, even though I know that search engines are able to resolve shared ip's. There can still be an ip ban out there, and you will be out of luck.
