One of the coolest parts of the web, especially over the last couple years, has been working from home opportunities.

Tired of the 9 to 5 grind?

Considering starting an online business and pick up your domain at 515hosting.com today!

#workfromhome

There's a disconnect in the web design industry. Customers often don't fully understand what they're paying for and so it can be difficult to quantify why a website costs as much as it does.

It's hard to reason with someone that building an additional page to their website will cost 4 hours of labor when they're under the impression their entire website was built for less money.

A lot of times, I've found these customers aren't aware that their website is a theme that isn't uniquely theirs. They think they've paid $1000 for a custom website and what they have is a theme that someone downloaded off the shelf for $60.

While themes can be valuable and useful as a starting point if they meet the clients budget and expectations, without that transparency the client can end up quite surprised to learn a few small changes will take more effort than what uploading the theme as an entire website and swapping text and imagery did.

On the flip side of alterations potentially costing more than expected, transparency can also open the doors to justifying discrepencies in significantly lower costs. If a website is quoted at costing $500, but all the competitors are quoting $2000, that can seem alarmingly cheap. It could very well be the most fair deal though at an apples to apples comparison level if each company is effectively offering a template.

I mean, at the end of the day why reinvent the wheel of a header, navbar, body and footer when it's been invented over 100,000 times in a #WordPress repository?

Web design is a spectrum of effort and priorities to match a business' budget and needs. How much a website should cost depends on where the website falls on that spectrum and on a more important level is that professed transparently.

It's hard to say exactly what a website of differing types should cost because there's such a push and pull of features. A better method would be to look at the line by line break down and how that corresponds to competing bids.

Is one bid based on a free theme and another based on custom theme development?

If you can't answer that question its impossible to know if your price is fair.

#webdesign

If you have a website, you need web hosting and when I started 515Hosting & Web Design I made it one of my missions to be transparent, honest and fair about how I approached offering web hosting services to customers.

Here's the deal.

A lady selling pies out of her house probably doesn't have the same size customer base as an #entrepreneur selling shoes inside a mall.

And yet many #webhosting companies will sell them into the same one size fits all hosting packages.

Oh, and then hit them with a slew of upsells!

Want to be on Google? Buy this.
Want to be faster? Buy this.
Want to be more secure? Buy this.
Want to scan for malware? Buy this.
Want to sell stuff? Buy this.
Want an email address? Buy this.

Often, it's all unnecessary or available free!

There's this idea you get what you pay for and that's often true even in web hosting, but if you don't know any better it's also a prime rationale for just mindlessly selling people into packages they don't understand enough to know its not needed.

Before I started 515Hosting, I was a hobbyist with 7 websites driving 35,000 organic visitors total per month on a single shared hosting plan.

Through the use of caching, free SSL certificates, built in email and a CDN, I was able to maximize my traffic capacity on a shared server and handle thousands of visitors per month at a total cost of $15 per month...and you could, too!

By leveraging that expertise and through educating customers, I've been able to save many hundreds of dollars a year on their web hosting.

I'm proud to provide a simple, no gimmick web hosting sign up form. There's no ridiculous upsells and no getting lost between different shared hosting plans whose only apparent difference is their price and names.

With delegated access and a partnership with LiquidNet Ltd., I can offer the local service customers appreciate with the critical 24/7 tech support customers need for shared, VPS, or dedicated servers at amazing prices.

Oh, and I did I mention the free trials (no credit card required) and 30 day money back guarantee.

#webdesign #webhosting #smallbusiness

Having a personal website and email address likely costs for an entire year than a single tank of gas.

Seriously! You can have a personal website with a free domain, web hosting and a custom email address for less than $50 per year (unless you have high traffic).

Here's 5 reasons you might want to consider it.

1.) Professionalism - A website about you that exudes professionalism will yield a reputation of #professionalism about you to those who visit it. Plus, having a website for #networking and portfolio purposes is in and of itself perceivable as having professional connotation.

2.) Scalability and Visibility - From collecting mailing lists to just having a place on the web to create a personal "brand" identity, a website is a great tool for scaling up your networking potential and outreach efforts.

3.) Custom Email Addresses - Not only is it plain cool to write your own domain on a form, but using your own email server eliminates Gmail and other email providers from profiting off your data.

4.) Controlling Your Search Results - Even if you don't have anything to hide or bury in search results, knowing what people are searching for to find you (or products and services you could offer locally) is valuable. Plus, even if the information that pops up on Google isn't bad, there might be stuff about you that you'd prefer to encourage to the top of search results.

5.) An Outlet For Your Thoughts - Ever have something you want to post that just doesn't make sense for social media? Maybe something lengthy or something you'd like to be a little more prominently displayed comes to mind. Boom. Get a website.

Ask me how!

https://www.515hosting.com/how-to-create-personal-website-for-under-50-5-reasons-you-need-one/

#wordpress #webdesign #webhosting #smallbusiness #freelancer #virtualassistant #workfromhome

Behind the walls of several inconspicuous building just blocks from the heart of downtown Chicago is the #Steadfast Data Center - the world's largest.

It's home to server infrastructure trusted by leading networking companies such as Verizon, CenturyLink, and Sprint as well as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and Intercontinental Exchange thanks to it's close proximity the Chicago financial district and fintech corporations.

It also happens to be home to a number of #515Hosting & Web Design customer websites.

Built originally the headquarters for RR Donnelley printing presses, the building was converted into over 1.1 million square feet of mission critical data center space with full power, network, HVAC, and security redundancy. Sitting atop several power grids and with UPS battery backups and diesel generators standing by, Steadfast has been built to meet the needs of demanding Fortune 500 companies and telecommunication providers.

With over 95+ enterprise customers, 10+ content providers, 35+ IT providers, 90+ network service providers, and 25+ cloud service providers (including 515Hosting's own partnering #LiquidNet Ltd.), you might be wondering how your website fits in.

Let's peal back the layers.

As a colocation data hotel, the physical buildings (owned by companies such as Digital Realty that lease out the physical structures) are occupied by networking equipment owned by companies such as Colohouse, Level3, Tata, and others who then offer carrier neutral leases to companies needing networking structure to cover their bandwidth and storage needs.

One of these companies is LiquidNet Ltd, which offers worldwide #webhosting services through servers managed by and located in these data centers across the globe. Businesses like 515Hosting & Web Design then partner with companies like LiquidNet Ltd to work with small businesses on a local level, ensuring even the smallest business isn't overlooked by creating a pipeline from local level to enterprise level for support requests.

#webdesign #wordpress #smallbusiness #momandpopshops

I get it. It's not 2000 anymore.

The Internet has changed and the term webmaster has seemingly been deprecated alongside Netscape Navigator. Jack of all trade webmasters have seemingly been replaced by teams of dedicated software engineers, graphic designers, UI/UX experts, and full stack developers that collaborate in bringing beautiful visuals to life on devices.

These days, it's assumed pretty much anyone working on a website in some capacity can fulfill the role of "webmaster".

While that might be the case and the term is rarely used in the industry as a self-reference of title, I'm convinced there still exists a market of small business owners that seek to delegate their website maintenance tasks.

Despite the stigma the word represents in the industry, for businesses needing some help with DNS, emails, or general website maintenance, the term still has relevancy.

For that reason, 515Hosting & Web Design continues to offer #webmaster services aimed at small businesses looking for a middle ground between full fledged network engineering and asking a grandson for help.

#wordpress #webdesign #webhosting #seo #smallbusiness