Your website is up and running, search engines found you and indexed your pages, and you got your fist visitor. The question is, how many visitors you need to make money? In this video I explain, how to calculate your estimated monthly traffic to achieve your goal. I used an example of a search engine traffic (and only a search engine traffic). In real life, you will have many sources of traffic - hopefully. My intention is to illustrate how to make projections for your website success.

Moving your website to a new host is not complicated. One important thing to remember is to do it all at once. If you let the process linger, the old site will not match new one anymore. For a small site, allocate about 3 hours of uninterrupted time and get going. Here is your checklist.

Step 1: Prepare you old site for transfer

1. Sign up for a hosting plan from the new host. Make sure that the plan matches your old plan: if you hosted your site on Linux, sign up for a Linux plan. Be prepared for your old and new hosting to overlap for a month.
2. Use FTP program (Filezilla, for example) to log into your old account. Your old host should have sent you a username and password when you registered. If you do not remember your FTP login information, create a new FTP user through the old host's site.
3. Find the folder with your website files and copy the whole folder onto your computer to a new folder. Let's name it My Site.
4. Go the database manager (PHP Admin, most likely) through you old host's web interface and export your website database(s) in zip format.

With internet rapidly growing and most companies realizing the power of internet presence, we are questioning SEO once more. Should all of us optimize for the search engines? Is it really important to fine-tune your website if everyone knows who you are? You are already a trusted authority and people flock to your website, should you stop optimization? Nate Moller raised this question in his blog post Is There Ever an End to SEO? He asked the following question of authorities in the field as well as his readers:

At some point can’t we just STOP the SEO consulting and rely on word of mouth and viral marketing to keep us in the top of the SERP’s?

The answers are very thought provoking. Read the post to see what the experts are saying. My main thought is that regardless of what you think of SEO, there is nothing wrong with following conventions. If your website is easier to read, if your content is easier to find, you are providing good experience for your visitors. And I am the hugest proponent of usability. We would not read books that are written as one paragraph. We already despise "all caps" emails. We look down on people who write their resumes in SMS language. And that is good! We are used to quality in our communication. We should stick to quality in our websites. That is good for business.

There are hundreds of hosting services that will host your website for a fee. Selecting a website hosting service (ISP) depends on your business needs. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What kind of website do you have? If you want to host a small, five-page website describing your business, the answer is very clear - pick any reputable ISP. If you want to host an e-commerce website or a community forum, you might want to pay attention to how much bandwidth comes with your package. If you expect to have thousands hits a day, you might want to budget for it. But honestly, pick the cheapest one but monitor your usage. If you frequently go over the limit, then you can upgrade. Think of it like your cellphone plan and minutes you are allowed to use.
• Should I pick shared (virtual) hosting or a private server? If you are a small business, go with virtual or shared hosting. It is the cheapest option and all it means that your website willl be sharing a server with other websites. No big deal. If you ever need to upgrade to a private server, you can do it later. There are other types of servers you can pick - ignore them all. Shared hosting is the option for you.
• What platform to pick? Here you will have two major choices: Windows (Microsoft) or UNIX (LINUX). Ask your web developer which one they use. It would not matter to you at all which one to chose. It does not matter if you work on a Mac or PC at home. Don't make it too complicated. Ask the developer a question and go with their answer. Better yet, ask your website developer which provider they prefer and consider their choice. Never consider hosting your website on your web developer's computer. Always pick one of the big guys

Ok, I get it - you do not have resources to hire a website developer or marketer. Yes, it costs money and effort and requires strategy and execution and more money. But there are several things you can do for free. One of them is adding your business to Google maps. It is not complicated. You just have to be prepared. You will be asked for the business name, address, phone number, description, etc. Work on the description part - make it appealing to your potential customers. If you have pictures to include, make sure they are professional (good resolution, nice setting). You are allowed to add up to 10 photos. You can choose to include photos from the web (make sure they are yours!) or from your computer. Make sure you read guidelines for photo upload. Pictures should be square and the right size otherwise they will look crooked, stretched or weird. Have your business information ready. Be prepared to fill out your business hours, credit cards you take, additional information, like if parking is available.