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How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important

Posted on April 30, 2019 by Hosting

The post How to Backup Your Website & Why It’s Important appeared first on HostGator Blog . You probably already have regular computer backups in place. You may manually back up all your important files to an external hard drive, or you may have found a way to automate the process. Do you do the same thing for your website? Backing up your computer helps prevent data loss if anything unfortunate occurs—like your computer gets damaged or hacked and you need to reinstall your OS and start from scratch. Just as your computer is susceptible to online threats, so is your website. Perhaps even more so. Beyond taking the necessary security precautions to protect your website , you’ll also want to regularly backup your website. That way, if something unfortunate does occur, you won’t have to completely start over. Instead, you can simply restore your site from a previous backup. Below you’ll learn what an online data backup service is, why you’ll want one, and the benefits it’ll bring you, so you can decide which website backup service is best for your needs. What Is a Website Backup? Simply put, a website backup is a copy of all of your website data. What the backup storage encompasses will depend upon your online backup provider. As a general rule of thumb, the more data that’s included in the data backup, the better. This is especially the case if your website runs on a content management system like WordPress, where you’ll need all of your site’s files, content, media, and databases to get it up and running again. How Often Should You Back Up Your Website? Like computer backups, website backups should also be done on a regular basis. It won’t do you much good to restore your site from a backup that’s a few years old. The best case scenario is either daily or weekly backups. Whether you go with daily or weekly depends on how often you update your website. If you only publish a single blog post per week, and that’s the only update you make to your site, then weekly backups will suffice. Why You Need to Backup Your Site It’s hard to imagine what losing all of your website data feels like until you’ve gone through it yourself. Regardless, it isn’t a fun experience. More importantly, it’s something that’s completely avoidable with the right online backup software behind you. Here are three unfortunate situations that could occur when you don’t backup your site: 1. You Lose All the Work You’ve Done Building a website takes a ton of time and energy. This effort only multiplies the longer you’ve been running your site. Could you imagine losing years of work on your website overnight? All the customizations you’ve done to your site. All of the content you’ve created. All the time spent getting everything just right. If you don’t have any backups to restore from, then you’ll have to recreate all of this from the very beginning. Or, if you hired someone to make customizations to your codebase, then you might have to hire them to do it all again. 2. Loss of Site Revenue During Recovery If your site has been generating revenue via content, products, or services, then you run the risk of all of this being lost. If your site is content driven, then you’ll have to create all of this content from scratch. If you run an eCommerce website, you’ll have to completely recreate your product pages, category pages, and more. When your site is offline, any existing revenue will completely stop until you can completely restore your website. Depending on how much data you’ve lost this could be a long time—especially if you’re a small business or solopreneur and you’ve created every piece of content yourself. 3. Loss of Time During Site Rebuild You should spend time growing and managing the day to day of running your website, not having to re-do tasks you’ve already done. Imagine the frustration of trying to re-do years’ worth of work. Some sites that have been running for years will have hundreds of blog posts or product pages. If you haven’t done a single backup since starting your site, then you’ll have to create all of this again. If it took you years to do once, then it might take you years just to get back to your starting point. Of course, this is the worst case scenario. With regular website backups, this nightmare won’t happen to you. How Website Backup Services Work Online backup companies help to simplify the process of backing up your website. By way of example, let’s talk about an online backup service for documents, like Dropbox. If you have a Dropbox account, you drag and drop files into the application, and a copy of your files are stored on a cloud server. It’s pretty seamless, but it still requires you to select which files you need to back up. This is great for documents and other media files, but backing up an entire website is a bit more technical in nature. Websites have a ton of moving parts and a variety of files required just for your website to load the right way. Forget to backup a crucial file and your website might not load properly. If you’ve ever played around with the code of your own website, then you’re probably familiar with how changing a single line of code can bring your website offline. Yeah, not fun. When you use an online backup service, all of this is taken care of for you. You’re not the one individually backing up every website element and file yourself. The service does it automatically in the background. This helps to ensure that every single file is backed up and you can easily restore your site if the need arises. Once you choose your online website backup software of choice and configure it to your website, you won’t have to touch it again. Just select the website you’d like backed up, and choose the frequency. The application will then run in the background, silently backing up data in your site to your preferred guidelines. This helps to take the headache out of backing up your site while giving you a safe and secure backup if you ever need to restore your site to a previous version. 3 Benefits of Using an Online Backup Service If you don’t know how to backup your website , online backup services can greatly simplify the process. All you have to do is sign up for a service and the rest is taken care of for you. You don’t have to worry about remembering to backup your site, or even securing your backups the right way. All of this and more will be taken care of by your online backup service. Here are some of the biggest benefits you’ll realize from using an online backup service: 1. Backups Are Effortless With an online backup service, you don’t have to think twice about whether or not your site is going to be backed up. All you have to do is sign up for the service and the rest is taken care of for you. Cloud-based backup solutions are very efficient. Instead of having to manage your backups yourself and ensure they’re properly stored, the entire process happens automatically behind the scenes, and your site’s files and folders are stored securely on a remote server. You also don’t have to worry about the maintenance, or physical protection of your data storage devices as well. All of this is taken care of by your website backup provider. Usually, your website data will be stored across multiple different storage locations as well, in case one becomes corrupted, or damaged in some way. 2. Enhanced Security Protocols If you’re manually backing up your site and using a basic storage solution, then your levels of security won’t be as high as what a cloud backup solution can provide. Simply using an HDD backup can open your files up to all sorts of risks like data corruption, storage malfunction, physical damage, and more. Even if you’re regularly backing up your site, it’s no use if you can’t actually access your data. Online backup services not only have multiple layers of security to protect your files, but they’ll be stored on redundant servers. This means that copies of your site’s files are stored across multiple server physical servers. It’ll be near impossible to get this level of security and data recovery when managing your backups yourself. 3. Speedy Site Recovery One of the biggest benefits of using an online backup service is being able to restore your site to a previous version in an instant. With quick website recovery and data restoration times it’ll be like your site never took any damage in the first place. When you’re managing your own backups this will be a much slower process, especially if you don’t have the necessary technical skills. A lot of online backup services will also offer technical assistance for restoring your site or even have one-click recovery options. This is a must-have for website owners who don’t want to go through the technical process of restoring their sites themselves. Choosing the Best Website Backup Service When you’re looking for a solid website backup service there are certain features you’ll want to keep an eye out for. The last thing you want to do is choose a low-quality online backup service. Here are three key features you’ll want to keep an eye out for when choosing a backup service: 1. Off-Site Backups You want your backups to be protected from hackers and hardware failure. This means that your backups need to be stored in an off-site protected location, not just on a traditional website server. Look for an online backup service that offers off-site backups as part of their service offering. 2. Automated Backups If you have to create your backups yourself, then you’ll probably never get around to it. Our lives are busy, and you probably have a handful of website-oriented tasks you’re trying to complete every day as well. The last thing you’ll remember to do is backing up your website. Plus, it’s a simple enough task that it’s easy to put off until “tomorrow”. With automated backups, you don’t have to think twice about backing up your website. Just sign up for a service, create a backup schedule, and the rest is taken care of for you. Automation is one of the most important aspects of an online backup service. Without automation, the task probably won’t get done. 3. Redundant Backups Another very important feature of your online backup service is redundant backups. This is where your website files and folders will be stored in multiple server locations. Or, you’re having backups of backups made. This ensures that a single event won’t bring down your backups or storage, and you have multiple lines of defense, instead of a single point of failure. Introducing the CodeGuard Backup Solution If you’re already a HostGator customer then you should probably consider CodeGuard as your preferred backup solution. Think of CodeGuard as a time machine for your website. Have a website update that goes wrong? Or, your site gets hacked and your site will barely function? Or, maybe your site is going haywire for no reason at all? In one-click, you can restore your site to a previous version that functions how it should. CodeGuard is equipped with features like: Daily automatic backups (or whatever frequency you prefer) One-click restore of your entire website, or a single file that’s been corrupted Email alerts for any unauthorized changes that are made to your website 24/7 website monitoring and scheduled scans The ability to backup multiple different websites in a single storage space Download a zip version of your entire site for manual backups (if you want even more stored versions of your site) If you’re already hosting your site with HostGator and looking for a backup solution, then CodeGuard is a no brainer. It immediately integrates with your existing web hosting plan, so configuration is a breeze. Just choose your backup plan, select the websites you want to save, and this tool will do the rest. Hopefully, you have a better understanding of why website backups are so important , and something you must do before an unfortunate incident occurs. With a solid website backup solution behind you and an experienced web hosting provider to rely on, you’ll protect the future of your site from any risks that are lurking online. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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cPanel Server Compromised. Urgent Help Needed to Resolve Issue

Posted on April 21, 2019 by Hosting

Hi, One Virtual Machine running WHM/cPanel latest seems hacked as the few website are showing malware warning while the process seems sus… | Read the rest of http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1761509&goto=newpost Continue reading →

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Domain Name Management

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Hosting

The post Domain Name Management appeared first on HostGator Blog . When you’re in the early stages of creating your first website, you may be surprised by just how much is involved in building and maintaining a website. One of the most important parts of getting your website up on the web, and keeping it running for years to come, is domain name management. What is Domain Name Management? Domain name management is everything involved in finding the right domain name , registering it, and keeping it up to date for as long as you want to use it. Domain management isn’t difficult (or at least it doesn’t have to be), but it’s something important to stay on top of for as long as you have a website. Starting Out with Domain Name Management The bulk of what you need to know about domain name management comes into play when you’re still in the planning stages of creating your new website. What Is a Domain Name? Ever wondered how domain names work ? A domain name is what people type into a browser to find your website. Every website technically has two addresses used to stake out their unique place on the web. Computers identify websites using their IP address, which usually looks something like 111.111.111.1111 (except with more or a mix of numbers than that). But humans aren’t likely to remember a long string of numbers like that, so for us, the main internet address that matters for websites is the domain name. Domain names start with www, and most commonly end with .com—although there are a growing number of top-level domains people and businesses can opt for instead of .com, such as .net, .org, and .biz. Your domain name’s important because it’s directly tied to how people will think about and interact with your website. A simple and straightforward domain name like www.sarahs-website.com will be easier to find and remember than one that’s confusing and overlong like www.examplewebsitehardtoremember1267849.com . But with a huge and growing number of websites already online, a simple and straightforward domain name is getting harder to find every day. Who Needs a Domain Name? In short, everybody that wants a website. Think about it: have you ever been on a website that didn’t have a domain name? It’s a core part of being published online. If you want anyone else to be able to find and access your website, then a domain name isn’t optional. It’s one of the necessary costs of doing business on the web. But the cost is fairly minimal and, in return, you get the possibility of being found by friends, strangers, and potential customers alike. How Do You Find a Domain Name? As mentioned, this part can be challenging. With over a billion websites already published online, most of the obvious combinations of words have already been taken. Or if they’re not yet in use, they’re owned by domain investors who will charge a lot to hand them over. So before you get too attached to one domain name, you need to research first whether that domain name is available. You can quickly determine a domain name’s availability by searching at https://www.hostgator.com/domains If your domain name is available, you can register it right there. If not, the tool will provide recommendations for similar domains to consider. In some cases, it’s worth also putting your desired domain directly into a browser to see if it’s currently owned by someone willing to sell it. But you should expect to the cost to be reasonably high for domain names for sale by investors. There’s a good chance you’ll need to do some brainstorming and a number of searches before you land on a domain name idea you really like that’s also readily available. But it’s worth spending some time to find a domain name that’s a good fit for your website. How to Register a Domain Name Once you’ve found the right domain name for your website, you want to claim it as quickly as possible, before someone else tries to buy it. Registering a domain name is a simple process. If you’re buying a domain name that no one owns yet, you can go through any domain registrant. With HostGator, just add the domain you’ve chosen to your shopping cart and checkout. If the exact domain name you search is available, it will be added to your shopping cart automatically. Pro tip: Register your domain with your web hosting service.   Most companies that sell web hosting also offer domain registration services. While you can always use a previously registered domain name when you sign up with a different web hosting company, that adds unnecessary steps to your process. You can save yourself a little time and energy by keeping it all in one place. What is Domain Name Privacy? As you’re registering your domain, you’ll probably see the option to include domain name privacy as an add-on. It costs a little extra, so you’ll obviously want to know what you’re actually paying for if you choose to get it. Every time someone registers a website, the domain registrant is required to submit contact information to the ICANN WHOIS directory, including a: Mailing address Phone number Email address Having this information published to the wide web makes it easy for spammers and scammers to access, which opens the door to receiving a barrage of emails, texts, and calls you don’t want. And that’s on top of any potential safety concerns that come with your contact information being public for anyone to find. Domain name privacy is a service registrars offer to keep your contact information private while still staying compliant with the law. The domain registrar will provide their own information, so that anyone who has a genuine need to get in touch with the domain owner still has a way to reach you, just with the company serving as your intermediary so you can dodge all the unnecessary contact. How to Set Up Web Hosting Having a domain name is one necessity in getting a new website online, but the other important step you have to take is setting up web hosting for your new website. In most cases, you can combine the two steps by using the same provider for both and make your life easier. Subscribing to a new web hosting plan is as easy as registering a new domain. Simply determine which type of web hosting is right for you , select your plan, and check out with the web hosting provider you chose. Any good web hosting company will also provide a number of useful resources to help you get started and learn how to use their cpanel and other resources. And you can often register your domain, or any additional ones you choose to purchase, in the web hosting account you use to manage your website. Ongoing Domain Management Domain management isn’t something you do once and you’re done. Domain names and all of the services associated with them work on a subscription basis, meaning you need to pay on a regular basis to keep everything up to date. Handling Renewals The most common option for ongoing domain management is annual renewals, although you can often save some money by committing to multi-year plans where you purchase your domain and other services for several years out. In either case, when renewal time rolls around, you need to confirm that you still want to continue: Using the domain name you purchased Keeping your contact information private (if you opted for domain name privacy) Continuing with the web hosting provider you selected The company you work with will send reminders when your renewal is coming due, so you can decide if you want to keep using your domain, and make sure you make the necessary payments on time to keep your website functioning. The Risks of Not Managing Your Domain Name Setting up everything you need when starting your new website is obviously important, but consistently keeping up with domain management is arguably even more important. The risks of dropping the ball when it comes to domain name management are serious. You could lose your domain name. During the initial search for the right domain name, you saw how hard it is to find a good domain name that’s available. If you fail to renew your domain name at the right time and someone else buys it, you lose access to it. And you’re back to square one in the search for a new one. Finding a good domain name is hard enough the first time, why put yourself through all that again? You lose all your domain authority. Even worse, if you switch to a different domain name, all the work you’ve put into building your website’s authority online will be lost. The new domain owner will get the benefit of the brand recognition you worked so hard to build and the backlinks you earned. And all your regular visitors will be confused to find the website they expected to find gone. Unless you’ve built up an email list and can use it to drive most of your former followers to a new website, you risk losing your following completely. And even then, there will likely be former fans that miss the update and give up on looking for your new address online. Someone can charge you big bucks to get it back. When you realize the high stakes of losing the domain name you’ve used for years, you’ll want to get it back. Sometimes people buy a domain name out from under the former owner the moment they see an opportunity to do so for exactly this reason. These domain name sharks know how valuable it is to you and how big of a loss it would be. That means a big opportunity for profit for them. To get your old website back at the address people know, with all the SEO authority it had before, you’re pretty much at their mercy. They can ask for a significant amount of money—and the better a job you’ve done of building up your website’s reputation, the more they’re likely to demand. You can be punished for the amount of work you’ve done and success you’ve accomplished up to that point. Obviously it’s preferable to stay on top of your domain management and keep current to begin with! How to Make Domain Name Management Easy We have good news! Domain name management doesn’t have to be hard. There are two good ways to make the process easy so you don’t lose your domain name. 1. Keep all your renewals in one place. If you have to keep up with domain registration, web hosting, and domain privacy renewals in different accounts, then remembering to do it all is harder. If you have multiple domains and websites and use different providers for each, then you’re adding a lot of unnecessary work to the process of staying on top of it all. If you use one company for all your website services, then renewing everything will only require one step. When you’re logged in, pay for everything coming due, and you’re done. So take a little time when you’re getting started to find a company you can trust to make your life easier for years to come.   2. Set up auto renewals. That one easy step we mentioned? Even that’s not actually necessary. If your provider offers automatic renewals, you can let your domain name management run on autopilot. For as long as you want to keep your domain name, domain privacy plan, and web hosting, just keep the auto renewal option selected for them all. You can avoid doing any work at all—except for what you do to update and promote your website. And trust us, that’ll be enough work without adding domain name management on top of it. One Place for Domain Name Management HostGator offers domain name registration, domain privacy, web hosting, and an array of other useful services that you can manage all in one account. Getting started with HostGator is easy, and you can even use our website builder to make your initial design and future updates easy as well. HostGator can handle all of your domain needs, whether you need to register or transfer a domain name . We will help you manage your domain name and find the best web hosting plan for you and your needs. Contact our team of experts today for more information! Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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Building an eCommerce Website

Posted on March 28, 2019 by Hosting

The post Building an eCommerce Website appeared first on HostGator Blog . It’s easier than ever to build your own eCommerce website and start selling products online. With the help of select website building tools you can have your site online in a day’s work. Of course, coming up with your product idea, along with product sourcing and creation will take longer, but the actual website building process can be streamlined. Plus, eCommerce stores are only primed to grow. By building your very own store now you can take advantage of this trend well into the future. Even if you’ve never built a website before, you can create your very own eCommerce store with ease. By the end of this post you’ll know how to find a good product and niche for your store, how to build out your site, and the approaches you can take to generate sales. Before You Build Out Your Store Before you start the process of building out your eCommerce store there are some foundational things you’re going to need to do first. The first of which is securing your domain name and web hosting services.Without these, there’s no way to actually have a live eCommerce website. There are dozens of different providers and services you can use to secure a domain name and hosting, and you can either purchase them together or separately. If this is your first time building a website, then the easiest course of action will be purchasing them together from the same provider. This will minimize the number of technical tasks you need to complete and speed up the process of getting your site online. If you’re looking for the fastest and most beginner friendly way to secure a domain name and hosting, then consider purchasing them both right here at HostGator. Just select your web hosting package and add a domain name to your order before you check out. You might not be ready to name your store and purchase a domain name just yet, so feel free to return to this section later once you’ve come up with the perfect domain name for your business.   What You Need to Build an eCommerce Website Building an eCommerce website will be a little different than creating a standard website or starting a blog . Beyond securing a domain name and hosting you’ll also need to consider tools and software for processing payments, along with actually creating and manufacturing your products. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s required to build a website from scratch for an eCommerce store: A domain A hosting provider An integrated payment processor A platform or tool to build your store Initial capital to create your products Packaging for product shipping When you’re creating an eCommerce store there will be some initial capital that you’ll need to invest. Building an eCommerce Website the Easy Way Building an eCommerce website is similar to the process of building any other website, except you’re selling physical products. This means there will be greater work upfront to help ensure the success of your website. Here’s the process of discovering your market, finding out what you’re going to sell, and finally building out your store. 1. Market Research and Finding Your Niche To start an eCommerce store you’re going to need a physical product to sell. But, it would be a heartbreaking experience to go through the process of building out a store only to find out that no one wants to buy what you’re selling. To avoid this fate you’ll want to spend time upfront finding the right market and products to sell. You might already know exactly what you want to sell, but if not, no worries, this post will walk you through the process of market research . Ideally, what you want is to uncover a pressing need in the marketplace and fill it with your product. Look for Trending Products One way to ensure that you’ll start selling products right out of the gate is to align yourself with products that are currently trending. By getting into a trending niche at the right time, you can ride the wave in the short-term and long-term. However, you don’t want to hop into a trending market when it’s on the decline. Instead, you want to find a product or a niche for products that are growing in popularity. There are tons of different tools you can use to spot trending products and niches, but here are some of the most common. Google Trends : This Google tool allows you to look into the past and future of certain product keywords. By using the data this tool provides you’ll be able to see if a market is growing or waning in popularity. TrendHunter : This site showcases a ton of different niches and products that are currently trending across the globe. Plus, there’s a nifty filter that lets you sort by different industries. Instagram Influencers: If you spend any time on Instagram then you probably follow a few influencers who regularly promote certain products. The chances are pretty high that the products they promote tend to sell well and can suggest a viable niche. Align With Your Passion Hopefully, by exploring the resources above you have a handful of products or potential niches you could go into. To narrow down that list even further we’re going to do some self-evaluation. After all, it’s going to be hard to sustain momentum with your store if you don’t actually care about what you’re selling. Spend some time with the following questions to determine if you have what it takes to sustain yourself in the niche: Do you care about the market you’ve chosen? Do you have any pre-existing knowledge you can rely on? Can you see yourself working in this space for 5 years or more? Do you care about the people that you’re serving? Explore What’s Currently Selling By now you should have narrowed down your list of potential products and niches to a group you actually care about. Now, we’re going to take this one step further and validate our ideas in the marketplace. The most effective ways to do this are using the Amazon product marketplace and a keyword research tool. First, head over to the Amazon bestseller list in the product category of your choice (link). Then, spend some time digging through the products to see what kinds of things people are actually buying. Look for product multiples and dig through the reviews to see if there are any glaring issues with the existing products. Second, head over to the tool Ubersuggest . This is a free keyword research tool that’ll give you tons of actionable keyword data. Then, all you have to do is input your target keyword and you’ll receive a list of related keywords and their overall search volume. This will help you determine the overall size of the market and maybe even give you a few ideas of products you can sell. 2. Getting Ready to Sell Before you settle on the product you want to sell there are a few more considerations you’ll want to take into account. First, you’ll want to make sure the product is light enough that it’s easy to ship. During the early days of your eCommerce store, you’ll be handling most of the packaging and shipping yourself. This will not only make your life easier, but you’ll be able to maintain better product margins, which can be crucial in the early days of your store. The last thing that needs to be considered in regards to your product is prototyping. With this approach, you’re not looking to create the perfect product the first time around. Instead, you’ll be trying to create an initial product and then iterate and improve based upon product feedback. This will help you get to market faster and build a better product over time. 3. Choosing Your Platform If you haven’t secured your domain name and hosting yet, now would be the time to do it. The easiest approach would be to pick up both right here at HostGator . When the time comes to choose the platform for your eCommerce store you’re going to have a lot of different options at your disposal. There’s all-in-one platforms, website builders, CMS like WordPress, and more. One of the easiest options is using a website builder to set up an online store. 4. Building Your Store Below you’ll learn the basics of building an eCommerce website with the HostGator website builder. For full eCommerce functionality, select the eCommerce plan. This will give you options like inventory management, shopping cart, coupon codes, and additional online payment methods for eCommerce sites. With the builder up and running the next thing to do is select your website template. From the ‘Category’ option select ‘Online Store’ and spend some time browsing through the templates until you find one that you want to act as the foundation for your site. Once you’ve found a suitable template hover over it and click ‘Select’. On the next page, you’ll be able to edit your website. Just click on any existing element of your site and a drop-down list of options will come up that shows you the changes you can make. If you want to design your storefront, then click on Pages> Store from the left-hand menu. To add products to your store, configure your shopping cart, and more, you’ll need to upgrade your service. So click on the blue ‘Upgrade’ button in the upper right-hand corner. Or navigate to Store> Upgrade Now . 5. Launching Your Store and Selling Products If you’ve done everything above, then congratulations, you’ve put in a ton of work and you’re just about ready to launch your store. However, it’s important not to launch your store before it’s fully polished. After all, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Spend some time double-checking every page on your site for typos, broken links, or other things that don’t work. You’ll also want to run through a few sample purchases to make sure the checkout process works smoothly as well. Once you’re satisfied with your virtual storefront, it’s time to launch your store and start selling products ! Marketing Your eCommerce Website Now, if you don’t have any existing social media channels for your business, or a list to promote your store too, you probably won’t get much traffic to start. What you need to do is invest in marketing your eCommerce store to the world. Here are a few of the most common eCommerce marketing methods: 1. Content Marketing With an eCommerce store, you have a multitude of opportunities to create content. Whether you’re creating educational content that’s geared towards your selection of products. Or, you’re creating content that’s geared towards picking up backlinks or social media shares. Often, content marketing won’t give you immediate results, but instead, it’s something that can provide you with traffic over the long-term. Here are a few great resources on building a content marketing strategy from scratch: How to Make eCommerce Content Marketing Work for You Top 5 Tips for a Successful Blog Content Marketing Strategy 2. Social Media Marketing Social media can be a great way to increase brand awareness while driving traffic back to your eCommerce site. There are a lot of social media networks out there, but the ones you’ll probably find the most value in are Instagram and Pinterest. Both of these are more image-driven platforms, so they align well with selling products. Instagram will give you a way to showcase your product itself, along with how it’s commonly used. While Pinterest gives you the opportunity to create and share content that’s related to your niche and drive targeted traffic back to your site.   3. Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing has been used to build some wildly successful eCommerce stores. If you’re not familiar, it’s the process of reaching out to influencers on Instagram and having them promote your brand and products to their audience. You have the option of doing paid shoutouts, but you might also be able to find accounts who will mention your product for free in exchange for your product. If you’re interested in exploring this further, then check out the resources below: A Comprehensive Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing A Simple Guide to Instagram Influencer Marketing in 2019 Building Your eCommerce Website Hopefully, by now, you have a better understanding of what it takes to build your own eCommerce store from the ground up. It’s a lot of work to make an online business, but with the eCommerce market continuing to grow you’ll be setting yourself up for success in the long-run. If you truly want to create your own eCommerce website all you have to do is get started. Use the information above and start implementing. You’re not going to get everything right your first go around, but the most important thing is to experiment, fail, and keep moving forward. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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How To Sell A Domain Name

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Hosting

The post How To Sell A Domain Name appeared first on HostGator Blog . Did you purchase a domain name with every intent of starting a website? But time caught up and you lost interest or never got around to starting the website? Now you’re thinking about how to sell a domain name . Instead of just letting the domain sit there, there is a way to make some extra cash from your unused domains. Now, not every domain you own is going to sell for a huge fee. But, you might be sitting on some unexpectedly valuable domains. Below you’ll learn how to sell a domain name, the best ways to find buyers, and places online where you can list your domain for sale. How to Sell Your Domain Selling your domain is going to be a lengthy process, and you might not get any bids straight away. It depends upon the existing value of your domain and how well you market it. The process will differ from selling a website , however. Below we cover the process of discovering the value of your domain name and hopefully selling it for a nice sum. 1. Determine the Value Of Your Domain The first thing you’ll need to do is properly price your domain. A lot of people end up overpricing their domains and wonder why they never have any interest. Just because you’ve owned a domain for a while doesn’t mean that it has any inherent value. For example… Is your domain a .com, or does it have some other random suffix? A .com domain will carry a higher price. Is your domain name short? Or does it contain a lot of words? Shorter domains tend to sell for a lot more. Is your domain easy to spell? Or have a common abbreviation? Domain names that include common words or regular abbreviations will fetch a higher price. Do you have hyphens or other elements in your domain? Domains that contain fewer words (preferably even one), and don’t include hyphens will sell for much more. Spend time researching what other related domains have sold for. You can use the tool Namebio to determine what other similar domains have sold for. There are a variety of online estimation tools you can use, but these don’t tend to give very accurate quotes. You can use them as a general indicator, but not as a true measure of value. 2. Decide How You’d Like to Sell With a better understanding of what your domain is worth, it’s time to start looking for buyers. You’re going to have a few different ways to find buyers for your domain. Some of the most popular sites are shown below: eBay Afternic Flippa Sedo.com 3. Make sure your contact information is public on the WHOIS directory. Most people don’t want their contact information publicly listed online. However, when you’re ready to sell a domain, this is the time you DO want your contact information available. Let’s say someone searches for a domain name to purchase, but you already own it. If they can find your contact information in the WHOIS directory , they can contact you directly and offer to buy the domain name from you. You can update your contact information through your website host or read more about how to update your contact information on WHOIS . 4. Prepare Your Domain Listing. Once you’ve chosen your marketplace it’s time to optimize your listing. A lot of sellers just upload their URL and call it a day. However, you can maximize your chances of selling your domain by making it more attractive. For example, does your domain have any existing traffic? Does the domain have considerable age? Does your domain have any existing authority? By highlighting the current and potential value of the domain you can help to justify the price and make it more attractive to buyers. 5. Use an Escrow Service to Receive Payment. One way to safeguarding the selling of your domain is to use an escrow service. This will help you avoid being scammed or tricked by a potential buyer. An escrow service will act as a neutral third-party that will safely hold and process the funds. Some selling platforms like Sedo have a built-in escrow process for every transaction done through the site. This will take a percentage of the final price, but safeguarding your domain is well worth it. 6. Transfer the Domain. Finally, it’s time to transfer your domain to the new owner. The process you use will differ depending on how you decided to sell your site. However, the general process is outlined below: The seller will submit the authorization code to start the transfer process. The seller will them transfer the funds from escrow once the transfer is completed. There might be restrictions on the amount of time the funds must stay in escrow, so double check this before you initiate the transfer. Learning how to sell a domain name is a lengthy process, but one that could be potentially financially rewarding. Hopefully, the tips above have given you some guidance on evaluating your own domain names, and maybe even selling a few of them. What about you? Have you sold a domain name and have tips for others on how to negotiate the process? Leave a comment below. Find the post on the HostGator Blog Continue reading →

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