Seo

Keep reading and we’ll not only define the concept of what a web host is, but we’ll also show you how to select a really good one, without high prices – and without hidden extras.

A Definition of a Web Host

Web hosting is a service that allows anyone to post a website or web page onto the Internet. A web host, or web hosting service provider, is a business that provides the technologies and services needed for the website or webpage to be viewed on the Internet. Websites are hosted or stored, on special computers called servers.

Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server owned or leased for use by clients, as well as providing Internet connectivity, typically in a data centre. Web hosts can also provide data centre space and connectivity to the Internet for other servers located in their data centre, called colocation, also known as “housing” in Latin America or France. The most basic is web page and small-scale file hosting, where files can be uploaded via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) or a Web interface. The files are usually delivered to the Web “as is” or with minimal processing.

As WordPress is the most popular content management system in the world, many web hosting companies offer specific WordPress hosting services that are ideal for website owners who have one or more WordPress sites. WordPress hosting is a type of web hosting that’s optimized for the WordPress platform in terms of server configuration, features, software, and support. Besides the differences between web hosting vs. WordPress hosting, the WordPress hosting services offered by different hosting companies might also vary in software architecture (apache vs. Nginx server, different Linux OSS), hardware architecture (Shared vs. Cloud hosting), the scope of support (full vs. Partial site management), pricing models, and other features.

Shared Entry Level Hosting

Shared hosting, by far, the most common. Shared hosting is low cost. In the US, for one or two websites it’s just a few dollars a month, but the cost is kept down by the hosting service shares resources between different websites. Dedicated hosting means that you hire a whole server or at least a virtual part of a server for your use and nobody else’s. Naturally, this comes at a higher cost, but it allows account holders to have a more reliable dedicated, personalize service within a hosting centre. Now, a few dollars a month for a shared site is relatively inexpensive in most cases. If we were to buy this equipment or to have a dedicated site to house this equipment, it would typically cost thousands of dollars to accomplish. So the few dollars a month or sometimes even cheaper, if we pay for a year in advance is definitely a bargain.

What exactly is a server? A server is a computer that connects other web users to your site from anywhere in the world. As the name implies, web hosting service providers have the servers, connectivity, and associated services to host websites. By offering a variety of hosting plans, they cover the spectrum of hosting needs, from small blogs and large organizations.

What is a Web Host When Web Hosting is in the Cloud?

Generally, with regards to web hosting, “cloud” means that a large number of computers are all clustered together, and any applications running on them can make use of their combined computing resources. With this type of hosting, your virtual private server isn’t one of several on a single server. Rather, it is one of the hundreds all sharing a giant pool of computing resources.

Consider These Points When Choosing a Web Host

4.3 billion people use the internet almost every day. Appreciating the vastness of that number, businesses have become progressively bullish on building out their web presences in order to better connect with and sell to prospective customers. While usually the last thing that you think about when building a website, at some point, every business owner needs to decide on which provider they’re going to host their site with and which hosting package they’re going to opt into.

While some companies provide free hosting, we don’t recommend it as you lose out on performance. If you sign up for free website hosting and realize it’s a bad experience, you either need expensive add-ons or must migrate to a legitimate paid option. It’s not worth the extra work. While these alternatives may not be the best fit when building your website, if you’re a developer, you can learn a lot by diving into these free tools. Ultimately, we recommend avoiding these free providers and going with a high-quality paid-for option.

There’s nothing more damaging in the online world than a site being down, which means its inaccessible. It doesn’t instil much confidence in your web visitors if they can’t access your site. Also, if your site is unavailable when bots are due to crawling it, then this has an adverse effect on your search engine rankings. When looking at a web hosting company, check their uptime metrics, which indicate the amount of time their system is operating successfully. Whoishostingthis.com shares tips and advice to help webmasters find their ideal web hosting provider, and here are the top five ranked web hosts based on their uptime.

Why pay for web hosting?

In the world of web hosting, the saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely true. If you’re running a personal blog you might be able to get away with having lower quality hosting (although we wouldn’t recommend it). However, if you’re a business, your reputation can really suffer if customers find your website to be down or offline frequently. Our best recommendation is honestly to spend a little money on hosting to save a bigger headache down the road and preserve the online image of your business.

Web Hosting Services

One of the top reasons why people change web hosting providers is that they want to cash in on better pricing. If you feel like you’re paying way too much to have your website hosted, you’re going to want to make savings a top priority in your plan to switch. Web host pricing isn’t too hard to find. Just go on a host’s website and they should have their rates promoted on their front page. As a matter of fact, any hosting provider that’s being coy about letting you know how much they charge is a) a scam company or b) a company that’s targeted at enterprise customers.

• When looking at the web, you’ll see many offering the same perks: “free domain names and SSL certificates!” “unlimited disk space and bandwidth!”

So, are these the best criteria by which you pick a host? No, as most offer these privileges. In fact, although these things may be important there are other factors worth considering.

What is a Web Host? Beginners, Listen Up!

When shopping for a web host, a very common concern, and a legitimate one, is the amount of bandwidth you will need. When you are buying insufficient bandwidth, you might find yourself in two undesired situations: paying, usually high fees, for the extra bandwidth your web site needed or having your web site shut off. Overbuying bandwidth is not a good thing either as it will put you in the position to pay for something you don’t use. This article is intended to help you determine just how much of bandwidth your web site requires.

When you go to a party, there’s always a host. The host is usually the one who sets the location so everyone can come and enjoy the party. When you’re thinking of website hosting, think of your site’s host like the host of the party. Your web host, just like a party host, offers you a place to put your website so it can be enjoyed by everyone on the internet.

What Is Web Hosting? Explained

Your website is the place where you drive all your traffic so potential customers can read about your company. More importantly, a place where consumers can purchase your products and services. It’s the core of your online presence. It doesn’t matter how visitors find you. Whether on Google, a landing page offer or on Social Media, your website is the destination that converts leads to paying customers.

Each apartment that you lease has different amenities, living spaces, dimensions, and so on – web hosting is no different. The more you spend on web hosting, the more you get out of it generally. Here are the basic metrics you should pay attention to when considering hosting plans.

What is a Web Host and How Does it Work?

SiteGround Hosting certainly lives up to its recent reviews by having some of the fastest plans out there from any shared host, when you use their advanced caching plugin. In their case, you get way more than you’re paying for. Their mission is to provide the best customer service in the industry. So, if you ever need help with your hosting services, they’re right there to handle it for you. They also offer domain registration and all the same services as the other leading website hosts, including free domain privacy. They even offer managed services for WordPress, and premium virtual and fully dedicated servers for when you need to move up. At the time of writing SiteGround are also offering 3 months of free hosting in your first year.

In the world of web hosting, the saying “you get what you pay for” is definitely true. If you’re running a personal blog you might be able to get away with having lower quality hosting (although we wouldn’t recommend it). However, if you’re a business, your reputation can really suffer if customers find your website to be down or offline frequently. Our best recommendation is honestly to spend a little money on hosting to save a bigger headache down the road and preserve the online image of your business.

The next step is to find a web hosting company. If you want your domain name, you’ll need to pay for your site. Paid sites are also great if you plan on monetizing your solar blog.

What is Managed Web Hosting and How Does it Work?

Managed hosting – in managed hosting, the service provider owns and operates servers leased to a customer. The provider is responsible for server management, backup services, software maintenance, security, technical support and more. Rackspace is an example of a managed hosting provider. Cloud hosting – with cloud hosting, the service provider supplies a private, public or hybrid cloud, and the customer pays for system time and storage. Cloud capacity can be scaled up or down, depending on a customer’s computing needs. Leading cloud hosting providers include Microsoft® and Amazon Web Services®.

When your website’s down, that’s a potentially missed opportunity to engage with a customer (or potential customer). That’s why we offer a 99. 9% service uptime guarantee. And if we don’t uphold the guarantee, you may be eligible for a discount on your monthly shared hosting purchase during that time. Product disclaimers
4 special introductory pricing valid for the initial purchase term only. Product renewal pricing subject to change. Products will automatically renew until cancelled. You may turn off the auto-renewal feature by visiting your GoDaddy account.

WordPress. Org is one of the most popular blogging platforms out there, thanks to its versatility. Here’s the deal with WordPress. There are two different websites: WordPress. Org and WordPress. Com. WordPress. Org is a blog-building platform on which you can construct your blog from scratch. It’s free to use, but you will have to pay for a domain name and hosting.

WEB HOSTING IN THE CLOUD

Cloud hosting is the latest hosting type to hit the market, and it’s become extremely popular in recent years. This type of hosting operates across many interconnected web servers that supply an affordable, scalable and reliable web infrastructure. Cloud hosting plans typically offer unmetered, reliable bandwidth and an infinite amount of disk space for unlimited domains which explains why so many large businesses are turning to the cloud. It’s an effective method of running a website with resource-intensive applications or a large number of content assets such as images, but it can have a much higher cost.

While other web hosts may offer large discounts for paying several years upfront, most of them lock you into a contract that does not allow a refund after 30 days. Bluehost recognise that many of their users are beginners, so they offer very affordable hosting but also offer a no-hassle refund policy in case you change your mind.

Besides signing up for a web hosting service, you also need to purchase a domain name. While web hosting allows you to rent server space for your site, the domain name acts as an address of your site. When your users want to check out your site, they type the domain name into their browser’s address bar and your server transfers the content they requested for. With most web hosts, you need to purchase your domain name separately. Or, if you already own a domain, you can also transfer it to your current hosting provider. Similarly to web hosting plans, you need to pay for your domain name annually in order to keep the ownership of the domain.

What is a Good Web Host – 9 Tips on How to Choose a Good Host

1. Find several reviews when you are searching for a web host. Only relying on two means that lots of errors could exist in your decision because their experience levels could be different from yours, or they could have an affiliation with the particular business that is providing the hosting services. Using an unreliable web host means, your visitors may have times that they cannot access your site. This is one of the many reasons why choosing a good web host is important. This article has much advice on helping you find the right web hosting company for your needs.
2. Choose a web host company with adequate room to grow. If you want to add data intensive things, like video or photos, you will need more space. Be mindful of any storage space limitations a company might have.
3. A lot of web hosting services will make you back up your own information. It is very important that you do this, not just for compliance, but mostly because you want to have your data backed up and safe. When you have your backup, you always have your site code, no matter what happens to your hosting service.
4. Be aware of your web host’s guarantee policy and whether they offer all your money back with no questions asked if you’re not satisfied. If you become unhappy with your provider, what are the consequences of canceling your service? This is a question you must be able to answer from your contract. You can have a reasonable expectation to be able to cancel within the first month of your contract. Be sure to read the fine print and speak with other users to be sure the company is true to their word.
5. When looking for a host, research online aside from reading their promotional ads. Customer reviews on independent websites or blogs will give you a much more accurate picture of your host’s abilities. Outside reviews by customers of the host will offer the best indication of the host’s quality.
6. If it is important for your site to have multiple emails, be sure to ask your web host what formatting they use for their email service. It is likely that you will discover the need to stick with POP 3. This kind of email is linked to your domain, and it can be utilized from anywhere out there on the Internet.
7. Choosing a host which offers SEO options can help to boost your traffic. This feature can help your site get registered with the search engines. It may be a little more beneficial for you to list the site yourself though. This is because you’ll be able to create a better description and that can help improve your site’s ranking. Be aware that web hosts can either use Linux or Windows as their server operating system. Depending on which host you choose, you may have to familiarize yourself with one or the other. Linux is cheaper than Windows and can lead to lower rates for your website. Be wary of web hosts with a price that seems too good to be true. A low price may be tempting; however, you must understand that there is a reason a company is so cheap. Either their business model is questionable, or they cut corners in a manner that will have a negative impact on you, as well as on your website.
8. Be sure you can contact your host in various ways if you have issues. 24/7 service in chat, email or telephone format is usually an excellent indicator that a web host will go above and beyond for their customer base. In the event that you need assistance, this support will be invaluable.
9. Don’t just choose a cheap web host. It’s normal to want to get a good deal, but when it comes to hosting you get what you pay for. There is a good chance you will lose out on either support or quality of service, which are both essential elements of good web hosting.

That list provides some of the reasons why a good hosting company is so important. One of the biggest problems associated with using a web hosting service that is unreliable is that visitors trying to access your website will not always be able to successfully. Always use these tips to pick a great web host!

The post What is a Web Host? And, How To Choose a Good Cheap One appeared first on GQ Central.

With more than 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram has established itself as an obvious platform for brands looking to expand their reach and engage with their audience.

Figuring out how to launch a successful Instagram contest, however, is much less obvious. Sure, it sounds like an effective strategy for stirring up conversation — it capitalizes on user generated content (UGC) and typically requires very little commitment for participants. But where do you start? And how can you be sure that you’re covering all the bases?

How to Run an Instagram Contest: A 10-Step Guide

To help give you some direction, we put together a detailed list of steps to run through when planning an engaging Instagram contest. From setting goals to monitoring submissions, we’ve covered all of the basics below — and we’ve included some inspirational examples along the way. Check it out …

Disclaimer: This blog post includes some information on legal issues surrounding internet marketing, but legal information is not the same as legal advice — applying the law to a specific circumstance. We’ve conducted research to better ensure that our information is accurate and useful, but we insist that you talk to a lawyer if you want professional assurance that our information, and your interpretation of it, is accurate. In a nutshell, you may not rely on this information as legal advice, nor as a recommendation or endorsement of any particular legal understanding, and you should instead see this post’s info as for entertainment purposes only.

1. Plan objectives and goals.

Before you dive into an Instagram marketing contest, it’s important to plan it out first. The key to running a successful contest is to have a purpose — one that aligns with the interests and behaviors of your target audience.

Whether you’re looking to grow your brand presence on Instagram or build out your list of followers, it’s important that you set a specific goal so that you’re not left wondering whether or not you were successful in the end.

To help narrow your focus, think about the audience you’re trying to reach: What kinds of posts do they like seeing on your account? What kinds of posts do they enjoy posting on their own feeds? How do they behave on the platform? If you’re looking to drum up a lot of engagement, you should aim to center your goals and purpose around content that your audience actually wants to post and engage with.

Don’t forget to establish a time frame and budget for your contest, as determining these logistical details upfront will help you design a more effective contest.

2. Create an entry method.

Although the most effective and engaging Instagram contests are those that actually prompt your audience to post their own photos, there are number of different ways brands can create contests on Instagram. Because of this, it’s important to establish and emphasize what it takes for your audience to actually enter the contest.

Here are some ideas for how your audience might enter your contest:

• Have your audience post a photo or a video to Instagram with a specific hashtag and a specific theme.
• Have your audience solely follow you or do so in addition to creating a post.
• Have your audience tag your brand in their post.
• Have your audience Like or comment on one of your posts.

(For more ideas, click here.)

Make sure you establish what the guidelines are for entering the contest, and make that clear on your promotional materials. Maybe your contest is centered around a hashtag that doesn’t include your brand name. If you still want your brand to be tagged to gain recognition, you have to make that clear in your rules.

3. Find the perfect hashtag.

A good hashtag is a key to any engaging Instagram contest. Without it, there’s no link between the contest and the content being generated. In other words, hashtags help create brand and/or contest recognition by serving as a mechanism for sharing and driving participation.

Trouble is, creating the perfect hashtag can be tricky. If your contest is going to have a time frame (and it should), you want to create a hashtag that you’re not going to want to use over and over again. Not to mention, there are tons of hashtags being created each day, making it difficult to land on something unique and catchy.

To help you come up with the best fit, consider these contest hashtag guidelines:

• Short: Create a hashtag that sticks in people’s minds. The more readable and identifiable your hashtag is, the better it is for your contest.
• Relevant: Make sure you’re creating a hashtag that is very clearly related back to your brand name, product, or services. If you settle on a generic, crowded hashtag such as #ThrowbackThursday, it’s likely that you’ll have a hard time figuring out who your participants actually are.
• Memorable: Users are likely to see promotions for your contest prior to actually posting the content. This means your hashtag needs to be memorable enough for users to think about it once and remember to act sometime later. Try to make your hashtag catchy, easy to search, and easy to write. Avoid weird spellings and confusing word choices.
• Universal: Think about your audience. Does everyone speak the same language or use similar words? If you have an international audience, make sure you’re careful about using slang words or region-specific terms that might confuse people.
• Rare: Do a search before you choose a hashtag. Are there lots of users using your ideal hashtag for some other purposes? If so, you may want to head back to the drawing board.

An example of an effective, engaging hashtag:

Mint.com, an online personal budgeting and financial management company, hosted their #MyMintMoment contest.

The contest was well-designed for a number of reasons, one of which is its hashtag. The hashtag — #MyMintMoment — is simple, short, memorable, and easy to understand. It stayed on-brand and had a clear theme.

The goal of the contest was to get users to post about the things they were saving for. Participants posted pictures of tattoos, vacations, weddings, children, cars — you name it.

This is a great example of an effective hashtag, but it’s also a great example of how UGC can be used to drive marketing decisions. Think about it: Mint asked participants to share posts about things they were saving for. Sounds like an easy way to gain insight surrounding the unique motives and interests that fuel the usage of their service, doesn’t it?

4. Clearly define a theme.

Because most Instagram contests are UGC-based, it’s important to pick a theme so your users know what kinds of pictures and videos to post.

Ideally, you want to a pick a theme that aligns with your market, product, or services. But you can also take advantage of holidays, seasons, and events that align with your product or brand.

An example of an effective theme:

Last summer, D Magazine, a city and lifestyle magazine based in Dallas, used the Texas summer heat to create an effective #StayCoolDallas contest. The contest encouraged participants to submit photos of ways to stay cool in the Dallas heat. Submissions included everything from cold drinks at favorite bars and restaurants to fun summer activities.

This contest and hashtag worked particularly well because of the double meaning of the word “cool” — which ultimately left room for participants to get creative with their interpretations. This is a great example of how to make engagement super easy.

While the hashtag wasn’t totally brand-specific, the theme was very much in line with their brand and passion for all things Dallas. And as a result of the contest, they were left with a ton of new material to get ideas for their next issue.

5. Decide how winners will be chosen.

Part of a well-designed contest is informing your participants of how the winner will be chosen. Most contests are determined based on one of two ways: a vote or a jury. Let’s explore how each option works …

Voting:

A great way to boost the virality of your contest is to have participants compete for the most Likes. If the prize is valuable enough, your participants will likely share their posts with their friends across channels in order to get as many Likes as possible.

This strategy helps maximize your audience’s reach. At the same time, it can be detrimental to your contest, as you run into issues with folks using “Like bots” to gain artificial Likes. To avoid any complications here, you’ll want to put forth very specific rules that address the use of these types of workarounds.

Jury:

For the sake of quality and overall fairness, the jury method is the clear winner. With the jury method, you select a group of experts to decide upon a winner, rather than relying on a voting system.

There are pros and cons to votes or juries, but no matter the way you choose, make sure to clearly state your method so your users know what they’re vying for. Many brands choose to have a mixed-method approach and use a combination of voting and jury to determine the winner.

6. Choose an appropriate award.

When determining what the award for you contest should be, you need to consider your target audience, your budgetary constraints, and how aggressive your goals are.

Remember that by asking your audience to participate in the contest, you’re asking them to take action on something. As with any effort like this, you’ll need the value of the prize to outweigh the cost and energy required to enter the contest. While people might gloss over an opportunity to win a free t-shirt, it’s likely that they’d be willing to jump through a few hoops for something like a free trip.

While your prize should match the entry action, it should also align with the interests of your target audience. Ask yourself: What might my target audience like to have? Your list of answers for this — budget not considered — might be huge. Sure, everyone wants that free trip we mentioned earlier, but that’s not the point. The goal is to find a prize that’s both valuable and relevant to your brand.

Gift cards, free services, coupons, giveaways, and product goodie bags are all common prizes that brands use for contests, but we’re always in favor of getting creative, too.

Example of a creative contest prize:

One of our favorite examples of contest prizes was Sperry’s Photo Real Design Contest. Sperry encouraged users to post “epic photos” that represented an “odyssey.”

Participants then submitted photos of all kinds of things — nature shots, colorful art, real people, etc. — to be judged based on creativity and the number of Likes it received.

The winner that was chosen received a unique pair of Sperry shoes featuring their photo. Talk about a creative prize, right? Not to mention, it served as a great example of how brands can use contests to inspire real product ideas.

7. Create terms & conditions.

Don’t forget that when you create a competition with a prize, you must follow legal guidelines. The laws that will apply to you depend on where you’re based and who you allow to enter your contest, so you should consult your lawyer for help drafting your terms and conditions. Creating a terms & conditions page is a must.

Here are some common terms people include:

• The name and contact details of the promoting brand
• The dates of the contest
• The rules of who can enter (such as age and employee restrictions)
• The guidelines for how people enter
• The guidelines for how a winner is chosen
• The date and way winners will be announced
• The date and way the winner will be informed
• The time period the winner has to respond and claim their prize
• The specific of the prize (including number of prizes, description of prizes, and any caveats)
• The details of how the prize will be delivered
• Acknowledge that the promotion isn’t sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Instagram or any other social media used throughout the contest.

Note: Check out Instagram’s Promotion guidelines and make sure to comply with their rules.

8. Promote like crazy.

Now that you’ve got a solid plan in place, it’s time to promote the heck out of your contest.

Where’s the best place to start spreading the word? The possibilities are seemingly endless, but here are a few ideas to inspire your promotion efforts:

• Your blog. Write a post on your site detailing the contest, and use it as a launch point for your contest’s landing page.

• Social media. What better place to launch a social media contest than on social media? Direct your existing followers to the contest by including a shortened link in your bio and referencing that link in your promotional posts.

• Email. Extend the invitation to participate to your email subscribers by sending over a quick and friendly email to announce the offer.

9. Monitor submissions.

Monitoring both your promotional efforts and the level of participation during your contest is essential for meeting your goals and creating a plan to follow up on your contest.

Make sure to determine what metrics you’d like to use and how you’ll keep track of them. Here are some metrics to consider using:

• Number of submissions – Total number of posts submitted in compliance with your terms and conditions.
• Likes per submission – Helps you keep track of potential winners if your contest is decided by vote.
• Number of participants – If users can submit more than one submission, how many unique participants contributed to your contest?
• Top participants – Who shared the most content during your campaign? Keeping track of this helps you better engage with your biggest fans.
• Total Likes – Measures the total number of Likes on all submissions in your contest.
• Total reach – Captures the number of followers of your participants at the time of submission. Meant to show you the potential reach of your campaign.
• Follower growth during contest – Measure how much your following increased during the contest’s time period.

If your current audience is relatively small, and you don’t expect more than 30 submissions to your contest, you may decide to monitor your contest manually. To do this, assign someone the task of keeping track of submissions each day. At the end of the contest, someone will have to go through each submission and measure and write down the results from each submission.

If you’re monitoring your contest manually, try using a tool like Tagboard or Google Alerts to keep track of when your hashtag is being mentioned online, making it easier to track submissions. (HubSpot customers: You can set up a custom Stream in your Social Monitoring tool to keep tabs on a specific hashtag. Learn more here.)

If you’re expecting well over 30 submissions, however, you can imagine how difficult monitoring your submissions might be. If that’s the case, you may want to explore an Instagram-specific tool such as Iconosquare.

10. Follow up accordingly.

Once the contest is over, you can’t forget to follow up on the rules you set in the first place. Keep your terms and conditions in mind when reviewing the submissions to ensure that you’re being 100% fair in your evaluation.

Again, this is why establishing your terms and conditions early on is so important, as it will provide you with an documented plan for selecting, contacting, and awarding the winner.

Once you’ve selected and notified the winner, don’t forget to make the announcement publicly. Here’s an example of how to do so from D Magazine‘s #StayCoolDallas contest:

Instagram Contest Ideas

Now that you know how to run a contest, you’ll need to dream up ways to make your contest interesting, compelling, and appropriate for your brands. Here are some of the top contest ideas for Instagram:

1. Caption Contest

The perfect caption can make or break an Instagram post, so why not source the creativity of your audience and get some laughs along the way?

The caption contest is a great choice for Instagram because it allows your audience to stop and think about the contest (and, in effect, your brand) while providing a low-friction way for them to participate.

2. User-Generated Content

User-generated content — or any content produced by unpaid contributors — is a win/win for a brand. They get to participate and possibly win prizes; you get to enjoy extended reach by tapping into your audience’s audiences (say that 10 times fast). Not to mention that your brand benefits from the social proof of de facto testimonials from their participation.

Plus, to get even more mileage from the contest, you can ask participants’ permission to feature their content on your channels, giving you more content to promote.

3. Trivia Contest

With a trivia contest, you’re challenging your audience to demonstrate what they know. This encourages engagement on your posts and generates awareness for your brand and/or the topic that you’re shining the spotlight on. All you have to do is ask a question and reward those who get the answer correct. That reward may come in the form of a prize or as entry to win a prize.

4. Engage to Win

These types of contests are perhaps one of the more popular on Instagram because they solicit direct engagement as a way to enter. This may come in the form of likes, follows, shares, or tagging people. By doing this, you receive a ton of engagement as a result of the incentive, and this can increase your brand reach.

5. 1 Like 1 Vote

This contest usually relies on user-generated content but takes it a step further. The content gets promoted, and the audience is asked to vote (with a like) on the best entry, whether it’s a song, drawing, selfie, or other showcase of talent/personality. For this reason, your “contestants” are further incentivized to promote your contest to their audiences.

6. Raffle or Game

A raffle is just as possible online as it is in person. You can direct your audience to participate in whatever way you see fit to choose a random number or receive a raffle ticket. At the end, use a random number generator to select the winner. You can also do games such as “guess how many marbles are in the jar” or “how many differences can you find in these two pictures” as a way for participants to win/enter.

7. Offline Challenge

Just because you’re spreading the word of your contest through Instagram doesn’t mean it has to be based or held on Instagram. You can incentivize your audience to do something outdoors, participate in a fitness challenge, or perform some other activity.

Ready to Run a Contest on Instagram?

Now that you know everything it takes to run a successful, engaging Instagram contest, go put your knowledge to work for your brand.

Not only will you end up engaging and expanding your audience, but you’ll also end up with great new content you can use to inspire future content and contests.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in July 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t describe myself as a “technical” person.

In fact, the technical aspects of marketing are usually the hardest ones for me to conquer.

For example, when it comes to technical SEO, it can be difficult to understand how the process works.

But it’s important to gain as much knowledge as we can to do our jobs more effectively.

To that end, let’s learn what web crawlers are and how they work.

You might be wondering, “Who runs these web crawlers?”

Well, usually web crawlers are operated by search engines with their own algorithms. The algorithm will tell the web crawler how to find relevant information in response to a search query.

A web crawler will search and categorize all web pages on the Internet that it can find and is told to index.

This means that you can tell a web crawler not to crawl your web page if you don’t want it to be found on search engines.

To do this, you’d upload a robots.txt file. Essentially, a robots.txt file will tell a search engine how to crawl and index the pages on your site.

So, how does a web crawler do its job? Below, let’s review how web crawlers work.

This means that a search engine’s web crawler most likely won’t crawl the entire Internet. Rather, it will decide the importance of each web page based on factors including how many other pages link to that page, page views, and even brand authority.

So a web crawler will determine which pages to crawl, what order to crawl them in, and how often they should crawl for updates.

For example, if you have a new web page, or changes were made on an existing page, then the web crawler will take note and update the index.

Interestingly, if you have a new web page, you can ask search engines to crawl your site.

When the web crawler is on your page, it looks at the copy and meta tags, stores that information, and indexes it for Google to sort through for keywords.

Before this entire process is started on your site, specifically, the web crawler will look to your robots.txt file to see which pages to crawl, which is why it’s so important for technical SEO.

Ultimately, when a web crawler crawls your page, it decides whether your page will show up in the search results page for a query. This means that if you want to increase your organic traffic, it’s important to understand this process.

It’s interesting to note that all web crawlers might behave differently. For example, perhaps they’ll use different factors when deciding which web pages are most important to crawl.

If the technical aspect of this is confusing, I understand. That’s why HubSpot has a Website Optimization Course that puts technical topics into simple language and instructs you on how to implement your own solutions or discuss with your web expert.

Simply put, web crawlers are responsible for searching and indexing content online for search engines. They work by sorting and filtering through web pages so search engines understand what every web page is about.

Read on and I’ll tell you how to make a passive income from the internet, but I’m going to tell you my experience. It’s the experience of one person. This is a hype-free article. I tell it how it is, in my experience. This isn’t the usual thinly disguised sales letter you may be expecting, so quit now if you want the usual hype…

How To Make A Passive Residual Income From The Internet

Passive income is money that is usually received regularly without any or only little effort. You either have to do much, in the beginning, to set up your passive income stream or/and you regularly have to invest your time, effort and usually, also your money to create and then maintain that income. There are thousands of best passive income ideas you can come across on the internet for earning monthly residual income, the problem is being able to filter these down to some easy passive income ideas and strategies that work.

As defined above, residual income, also known as passive income, is income earned after an initial task is completed. Residual income opportunities have contributed to the success of many business owners and are rapidly growing in the number of people who would dearly like an extra income, thanks to the internet. All manner of websites offer, what might appear to be, a means of earning passive money. These range from Shopify to Amazon Kindle. There is no doubt that for many early adopters they provided a new era for business owners who, for a while, were able to cash in passively from publishing online stores. For a while, it was also possible for the average person to write Kindle Books and without advertising or any other promotion produce a best seller. With online websites removing all the technical hassles, it is now easier than ever to open an online store. But the competition is huge now, and you won’t be at all likely to start collecting passive income. Five or so years ago all you needed to do was set up a drop-shipping website selling other people’s products one week. Go on holiday, and when back from a week-long vacation you would quite likely find that your online storefront has made a few hundred dollars. Not only that, but the best thing about passive income in those days was also that once you learnt how to set up one source, it could be a simple matter of duplication to set up multiple passive income sources.

How to Make a Passive Income Writing Ebooks

This one is was a great source of some passive income, but you have to market the eBooks competition is now fierce and the price you can command has also plummeted. If you can write a good e-book, you can put up your eBook on sale at various-eCommerce websites. You can also get your e-book converted into kindle eBook and get a royalty on every sale. You can create your author account at Author Central Amazon and start writing. If you are good at content writing, there are many ways to earns from your writing. You can join HubPages to monetize your articles. There are other content aggregator websites like News Dog which can pay you on the basis of the number of views, your content gets.

However, the eBook will need to amazingly good, and in a new subject, due to the high competition. HubPages was once listed by Google for a wide range of search words. However, Google noticed and changes their algorithms to avoid such dominance of the internet many years ago now. You will not make that much money through HubPages unless you manage to write a hub that gets 100,000’s or millions of views a month somehow lands a lot of affiliate purchases. Some of the top HubPages authors have made 2-4,000 per month, but that was before Google down-ranked the entire HubPages domain.

How can I make $2000 a month passive income with only time to invest?

Don’t get me wrong make $2000 a month passive income with only time to invest is possible, but also don’t believe the hype used to sell 99% of all products that promise to tell you how. Patience is a key element of success if you don’t have the money to set up paid ads. Time is the most crucial factor when it comes to building a source of passive income. All passive income source take their time to become an actual source of passive income. For example, WordPress blogging or YouTube video ranking may take six months to 1 year to build-up to be a stable source of passive income. The days of the online gold-rush are long gone. The internet is much more like the rest of human endeavours now. Investing in the stock market or real estate can be very worthwhile but nobody would deny that for the average investor it takes many years of time to show results, but it can be almost completely passive giving you returns without working hard.

Investing in real estate isn’t even possible without money to invest! Online does have the advantage that with very little initial spending and applying yourself to a money-making activity can result in $2000 a month close-to passive income, or more. Investing in real estate offers a more passive income cash potential than investing only your time in online money-making ventures by applying your intellect over a period of time. However, when you do apply your time to make money online, there is no guarantee that you will do so, and you might waste your time. The internet is a place where users expect to get the information they seek for free. Some people will be happy to pay, but will almost always beat a path straight to the big online stores such as Amazon, Walmart etc., and won’t stop to look at your little website – no matter how good it might be.

If you can invest now for your future there is a lot to be said for bricks and mortar. Building an apartment, for example, is a great option. Buy a landholding and construct an apartment with 30-40 flats. I know this requires a lot of money, but keep in mind that you are building a passive income stream so if you can’t spend much now, you can start with a small house and start adding flats as you get money. From flats, you can generate rent every month for your lifetime. If you have taken a loan to build a house, you can use some amount of rent to pay-off loan. I know people who are living an easy life from apartment rent money.

Some of the Ways you Earn Passively

Software writing and sales are one area which is in very high demand, but the number of good coders is low. The result is that competition for those that write good mainstream software applications is much lower than for say an eBook. I certainly don’t have the know-how to write software but many people do, and if you have the technical expertise, savvy, and drive, spending a few hours after work coding and developing software that you think people might have some interest in is an excellent way to make some passive income down the line. The only caveat is that this one certainly requires some preemptive work and discipline before you start earning those passive income dollars. But if you’ve got the gumption and the ideas, the right software, should there be a market for it, can go on to make you a ton of money.

One of the simplest ways to enjoy passive income streams is not on the internet at all. It is to buy stock in healthy and growing companies that pay dividends. Better still, look for dividends that have been increased regularly at a good clip (many companies often hike their payouts annually) and that have room for further growth, as evidenced by a dividend payout ratio of around 70% or less. The payout ratio is the amount of the annual dividend divided by the trailing 12 months’ earnings per share. It reflects the portion of earnings being paid out in dividends. The lower the ratio, the more room for growth. A ratio above 100% means the company is paying out more than it earns, which isn’t too sustainable. However, choose wisely and there is passive income right there.

We are not going to tell you that no matter how busy you are in your career, you can always be generating extra income with not much extra work. Some achieve it, but many spend long hours of work for a pay rate no greater than $10/hour or less, even in the United States. You may diversify and simultaneously run many different income streams, but that does not guarantee that you will always be earning. Passive income is lovely and once you have it, it affords you the ability to take risks. If you are experimenting with something new in your career or going through a slow period, passive income can be the extra boost to keep you going. It’s just that you should not expect passive income to necessarily appear, having followed the route taught by a guru, even if you completed all the actions the training required.

Create a Passive Income Asset

A website is one of the only true ways I’ve ever found to bring in passive income. Create more assets and decrease your liabilities should always be your policy. My favourite thing is when I am able to go do something fun and then come back to check my affiliate accounts to see that I’ve made sales. Yes! It’s seriously the best feeling to watch your bank account grow while you watch. That’s a major reason I think you might want to create and manage a website. Not all passive income is created equal. There are many different ways that you can make money while you sleep! In general, passive income is money made from assets that you control. Whether that be things you own that aren’t being used, spare time that you need to occupy, or using existing wealth to increase your cash flow.

On their retirement, many people wish to create passive income streams. In retirement, people are trying to maximize the time they spend on leisure activities while making some money, and minimizing work on burdensome endeavours. So, to retirees, we say that you can generate passive income from savings, your other assets or even with smart use of your time. Passive income streams are income sources that you benefit from without too much effort — the money just flows in. There are a ton of ideas out there on the internet for how to create a passive income.

What Is Income School?

Blogging is my main side hustle. Okay, this one is not quite passive. I spend 20-30 hours per week every week on it. Blogging can be a lot of work, but it can lead to huge opportunities down the road. Many bloggers left their day job to pursue self-employment and they are doing quite well. Some elite bloggers are making a lot more income than they ever made working for a corporation. I encourage everyone to start a blog. The great thing about blogging is that you don’t need to know how to do all the technical stuff. You don’t even need to be a great writer. I was way better at stem subjects when I was in school and I never thought I could write like this. My early articles weren’t great, but I improved little by little. Like anything, the more you practice, the better you get. Seriously, if I can write a blog, anyone can.

Income School is a Youtube channel. A while ago, income school had a contest on their Youtube channel. They would travel to whoever won and help them create and optimize their niche site for monetization. It was fairly simple to enter; all you had to do was a comment on one of their videos. So I did it. I commented and low and behold, I won, and I was lucky to receive some very good training!

Earning passive income can be a great move for everyone, but do avoid falling for the scam of many products available. Don’t believe it when the sellers say that by buying their product you will be able to build an entire website in 60seconds, for example. Whether you’re in high school, college, or well into your career, it is better to consider investments with decent yields, you may utilize your passion and monetize it. And, luckily, there are many different ways to go about it, both safe and risky. Either way, you’re able to pick and choose what works best for you and set up your bank account for the future.

How to Make a Passive Income And Have More Free Time

A REIT, or real estate investment trust, is an alternative to traditional real estate ownership that is actually the more passive of the two. REITs are good for people who want to own real estate and to bring in a passive income stream but cannot give up the money or potential time to be the sole owner of properties. This form of investment involves a group of people coming together to collectively invest in real estate properties that might be too big an investment otherwise. This allows more freedom in buying both higher quantity and quality properties.

Don’t forget, there are massive numbers of products you can promote. You can also take the time to create your own products similar to how iHeartcats.com sells t-shirts. This is how I do it with
affiliate commissions and a bunch of other ways that are included in the products available on the “Shop” pages. The biggest lesson to learn here is that for you to make money, you have to sell something. There is no magical elixir that you drink and bang passive income starts flowing out of your laptop! Life doesn’t work without you making an effort as a salesperson (I wish it did trust me).

No matter how much someone loves podcasting or blogging, no one’s time is free. But there are thousands of podcasts and blogs, so why would people pay for that content when there is so much available for free? The truth is that they won’t, but people who are selling products or services will pay to have access to your audience. That’s why podcasts and blogs sell ads and blogs include affiliate links. Starting a small business is probably the most difficult and most time-consuming source of passive income to build. Still, it also has a low bar for entry, it’s very forgiving, and when you get it right, you can make a lot of money through affiliate marketing.

Active and Passive Ways of Earning Online

If you have your own blog or website, one of the best ways to make passive income is through affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing involves promoting someone else’s product or service, and earning a commission whenever a sale is generated directly from your recommendation. The most well-known affiliate program may be the one run by online retail giant Amazon, but there are thousands of other companies with programs of their own. Affiliate income takes time to build, but if you’re successful, it can be one of the best ways to make passive income.

Ready to make passive income online? You’re not alone! Earning while you sleep is the dream of many. But how do you continually add to your bank account 24/7/365 if you have no clue how to start? The answer depends on you! Even if you’ve never made a single dollar online, you can definitely get into the passive income game. It’s a matter of playing to your strengths and finding the right revenue stream(s) for you. Whether you’re a creatives maker or a right-brain thinker, there are beginner-friendly ways to make passive income online.

Artistic? You could sell your art online. For earning money without a job that’s 9-to-5, there are dozens of ways to sell your art online. One of the most popular art-related passive income creation methods is to use sites that print your designs on merchandise for you and pay you based on sales, like Society6, Redbubble, and Merch by Amazon.

Have a technical skill? Want to convey that skill to others out there while generating a healthy passive income stream? creating an online course on Udemy is a great way to automate some of your cash flow. However, like any other income stream that’s passive, it takes a significant amount of effort on the front end. There are so many things that can be taught through an online course. I opt to teach technical skills in my courses such as how you can become a web developer or learn search engine optimization, but you can also opt to teach other skills such as playing an instrument, learning a new language, becoming a photographer and so on and so forth.

Amazon Affiliate Income

If you have a website or blog, use affiliate marketing to make referral commissions with partner stores. Mention a company’s product on your site to make a commission whenever your readers purchase it using your link. Amazon Associates is one of the most popular affiliate programs. This method isn’t completely passive – it takes a lot of time and hard work to build an audience and you’ll need to provide consistent, high-quality content. But once you have a large following, affiliate marketing can provide a nice stream of income.

Affiliate marketing is a passive income opportunity for people who are running their blogs and websites. Here, you can start signing up with various platforms and promote their products or services on your website. E-commerce platforms like Amazon provide a healthy payout to their affiliates once their products get sold through them. You can start by contacting the vendors directly or find them on specialized sites such as Clickbank.com. Make sure that the products you are promoting on your website are highly relevant to the content of your website.

Affiliate programs pay based on various metrics. With a site like Amazon, they pay you a percentage from your referral’s purchase. Other sites pay per click or lead. You can earn money even if none of your audience buys anything. Affiliate marketing can also be done without a website. Sharing links on social media is an effective way to earn passive income for those with large followings. You could also start a Youtube Channel and review things you already buy or are going to buy. No matter what your platform is, you have to earn the trust of your audience. If you are genuine and honest with your audience, you can earn commission on some really high-end products.

How to Make A Passive Income Through Online Stock Investing

I already wrote about investing in REITs. REITs provide passive income like high dividend-yield stocks. You’ll receive regular dividends from the rental income of the properties inside the REIT.

Investing in stocks that pay quarterly dividends is the oldest and one of the best ways to generate passive income. Let’s say you buy shares of the stock of a large multinational conglomerate. When you buy stocks the price is likely to rise over time, you will get paid for each share of stock you own. For example, over the past seven years, Colgate-Palmolive has paid between $0. 34 and $0. 68 each quarter for every single share owned by stockholders. If you’re trying to develop a long-term investment strategy, you might want to reinvest those dividends but if you’re strictly looking for passive income, you do well to cash those dividends.

Below you will find all the passive income ideas i researched over the years (including the things i am doing today to build my own revenue streams). Some of these passive income strategies require more work than others upfront, and some come with financial risks that you will have to evaluate before jumping in. Here is a list of the ways to generate passive income:

• investing money you already have
• renting out things you own
• getting paid for things you already do
• creating an online business.

Making a Passive Income With Dividends

Shareholders in companies with dividend-yielding stocks receive a payment at regular intervals from the company. Companies pay cash dividends on a quarterly basis out of their profits, and all you need to do is own the stock. Dividends are paid per share of stock, so the more shares you own, the higher your payout. Since the income from the stocks isn’t related to any activity other than the initial financial investment, owning dividend-yielding stocks can be one of the most passive forms of making money opportunity.

Investors that have a huge amount of cryptocurrency investment do earn interest on their crypto passive income coins without knowing that they’re earning passive income with almost no effort applied by them. They mostly earn interest by just holding crypto passive income coins in their wallet possessions. However, learning how to develop a passive income stream is not just going to be for making passive income with cryptocurrencies. It’s equally not only by holding these cryptocurrencies that have the potential of earning dividends, but there are other ways you can also make money fast with cryptocurrencies. Unfortunately, cryptocurrencies can fall in value as well as go up!

We like best that fact that when you buy stocks you can choose to get paid via dividends. This means that you own part of a company’s stock and they will pay you a small part of their earnings in the form of a dividend. The amount that you get paid will depend on the amount of the stock that you own and how much the company decides to payout.

Other Ways to Earn Passive Income

Passive income is defined as revenue earned through investment activities that do not require the habitual, active involvement of the investor. There are a large number of passive income ideas, which can range from listing a room on Airbnb to investing in REITs. Creating passive income with real estate will sometimes require you to put in some legwork upfront so that you can enjoy the spoils of your efforts later in life when you need them the most.

Domain name parking is a common practice that many domain owners indulge in order to make some money and there are many different ways to earn money from name via domain cash parking. Parking domain names is the simple process by which domain owners park them within a specific host and earn some passive income. The income is generated by using pay per click advertisements that are clicked by the visitors. These visitors mainly come from various search engines. Parked domains keep on earning money until they are used or sold.

You’ve got a steady paycheck from your 9 to 5 job and that’s cool. But deep down inside you know you’ve always wanted more. More money. More freedom. More flexibility. And so you finally decide that it’s time to take action. So just possibly you can finally get more than you’ve ever dreamed of if you really work hard at it. There are thousands of products you can start selling online.

Passive Income Ideas You Can Use to Build Real Wealth

Did any of these ideas interest you in building passive income? Want a clearer picture of how different income streams might fit into your overall wealth-building strategy? All you need to do is sign up for an EZi-Gold Network Membership and follow the training given by David Whitegold Edwards and his group offered here.

It’s amazing to start and build up passive income streams. I hope that these passive income ideas inspire you to try some new things and create some new revenue streams. It always seems hard in the beginning but once you pushed through and have started, it’s actually not very hard enjoyable to see your visitor number rising. For example, I was scared to start my blog. Since I started my blog, I realized it’s not difficult at all. It takes a lot of work, patience, and commitment but it’s worth it for sure!.

For someone who is trying to build wealth, investing in a rental property can be an attractive option. There are many positives to investing in real estate that people should consider. Here are a few of the positives. The income from real estate is relatively passive income meaning besides collect rent, there isn’t a lot the landlord has to do. Real estate is a relatively stable investment. As long as the property is purchased at a good price, the property will not normally depreciate in value barring the neighbourhood going downhill.

Earning money takes effort, but once they’re set up, blogging on subjects which interest you visitors will help you earn as you sleep. The phrase “passive income” is a bit misleading. Unless you inherit it, making money always requires some level of work on your part. What’s nice about passive income is that you earn in a way that calls for less structure than a regular 9 to 5 job. And with time, what you earn can add up. No matter the stage of life you’re in, creating streams of passive income is a smart way to make your money work for you. The opportunities we have discussed in this article are by no means exhaustive but we have suggested five passive or semi-passive income ideas that have worked for others.

Passive income is income that is generated regularly from a source with minimal continual effort. You can set up a passive income source to supplement your salaried income, or, if you find a way to earn enough of it, it can be your primary source of income. The initial monetary input to generate any meaningful amount is generally substantial, which is why not all people can easily deploy a passive income strategy. Setting it up takes a fair amount of time to research and plan, but once you have the income stream up and running, it won’t take up much of your time going forward.

The post How to Make a Passive Income from the Internet – The Truth appeared first on GQ Central.

When I was cooking steak the other day, I had to use a meat thermometer to check and see if the meat was cooked all the way through.

In other words, I had to look for an indicator to see how the cooking process was coming along.

Marketing is fairly similar.

As a marketer, instead of a meat thermometer, you’re going to use key performance indicators (KPI) to measure success.

Below, let’s learn more about KPIs and review some examples of marketing KPIs that can help you improve your marketing.

Essentially, KPIs are measurable metrics that gauge overall performance over time. A great way to analyze and report on your KPIs is to create custom dashboards in your automation software.

So, now that we understand what a KPI is, let’s look at some examples.

For today’s purposes, we’ll focus on marketing KPIs, but to learn more about sales metrics, check out our ultimate guide.

1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) measures the amount of money it takes to convert a potential lead into a customer.

This metric can be used to improve your marketing because it helps you make important budgetary decisions.

For example, you don’t want to spend too much money acquiring a customer if it won’t result in a profit. Basically, this helps businesses decide how much money to spend on attracting customers.

2. Lifetime Value of a Customer (LTV)

Another metric that can help determine how much money to spend on marketing is the lifetime value of a customer. This metric indicates the total amount of revenue a business can expect to make from a single customer.

This is a useful metric to compare to CAC. For example, if your CAC is higher than your LTV, then you’re probably spending too much money acquiring your customers.

3. Return on Investment (ROI)

Return on investment in marketing refers to the amount of money you gain compared to the marketing cost.

To calculate this, you’ll subtract marketing expenses from sales growth and then divide that by marketing cost to get the return on your investment.

In marketing, keep in mind that it can be hard to directly attribute sales growth to a marketing campaign. If that’s the case, you can subtract your average organic sales growth and marketing cost from your sales growth and then divide it by your marketing cost.

4. Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)

Return on ad spend is a more specific KPI that you can use to determine the success of your ad campaigns.

This metric measures the revenue that’s generated compared to every dollar you spend on an advertising campaign. It’s usually a ratio.

For example, let’s say you made $10 for every $1 spent on an advertising campaign. That means your ROAS for that campaign is 10:1.

5. Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL)

An MQL is a lead that has engaged with your company and could become a more serious prospect if you nurture that relationship.

This is a great KPI to measure because it helps your marketing team understand how many leads they’re bringing in.

Additionally, when compared to sales qualified leads (see below), your marketing team can measure how many MQLs become SQLs and then customers.

6. Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)

If an MQL is nurtured correctly, then eventually they become a sales qualified lead. An SQL is a prospective customer that’s ready to talk to someone on your sales team.

Usually, these leads have been researched and vetted by your marketing department.

Again, this KPI is helpful because it can help your marketing team understand how many of their leads are talking to your sales team.

7. Follower Growth

As a marketer, one of your duties might be to manage social media accounts for your company. If you work on the social team, a helpful KPI to track is follower growth.

Most likely one of the goals of your social media team is to increase brand awareness and interact with your audience. Increasing your followers is a great way to measure success for those goals.

To grow your follower base, you might consider running sponsored campaigns. One brand added 36X its typical number of followers each day during the 4 days it ran a set of sponsored posts on Instagram, increasing its follower count by 18.15%.

8. Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action. The desired action could be anything from completing an online form to signing up for a service or purchasing a product.

This is a helpful KPI to track because it can let you know how successful you are at attracting leads.

For example, if the desired action was filling out a web form, measuring your conversion rate could let you know that your web page isn’t converting many leads. If that’s the case, then you could start to rethink your strategy.

9. Website Visitors

As a marketer, attracting people to your company is the main goal. A great way to do that is to attract website visitors.

Website visitors is an important KPI because it could track the success of several campaigns.

For instance, if you’re tracking organic web traffic, then you’ll be measuring the effectiveness of your SEO team.

On the other hand, if you’re tracking web visitors from social media, then you could use web visitors to see how many referrals your social team sends to your site.

10. Social Media Engagement

Not to reiterate, but a major role in marketing is social media. One of the main KPIs for social media is engagement.

You could track likes, shares, comments, messages, tags, or mentions. Any way that a customer or lead is interacting with you, you can count as engagement.

Measuring engagement can help you analyze the success of your social media posts.

11. Referral Traffic

Referral traffic is a KPI that can help you understand where your web visitors are coming from.

This is a great KPI to track because it helps you understand how most people find your company. This could be useful information when building your overall marketing strategy.

12. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

Net Promoter Score is a way to measure customer satisfaction. This KPI measures how likely your customers are to recommend your business to a friend.

When you calculate your NPS, you’ll most likely leave additional space for comments. This metric can give you direct, actionable feedback and insights from your customers.

As a marketer, it’s important to listen to your customers and truly understand them. This KPI will help you do that.

13. Organic Traffic

It’s important to measure the success of your SEO efforts. To do that, you’ll likely track the KPI of organic traffic and keyword performance.

With an SEO tool, you can see how well your company is ranking on search engines for certain keywords.

This KPI will inform your overall organic and SEO strategy.

14. Event Attendance

As a marketer, you’ll have KPIs for every campaign you’re operating.

If you’re running an event, for example, then you’ll most likely track event attendance. This KPI will let you know how well your marketing team did at attracting people to your event.

15. Customer Retention

While you might think customer retention isn’t a marketing KPI, it actually is important to consider.

Customer retention is a great KPI to track for marketers because you can use the information in your messaging for your marketing campaigns.

Additionally, this metric helps you better understand your customers, so you can market to them better.

Ultimately, KPIs are important because they’re how you measure success as a marketer. You’ll use KPIs in almost every situation because you’re going to need to track success for short and long term campaigns.

Nowadays, it’s critical you invest in a video marketing strategy to build brand awareness and expand your reach, particularly since so many people prefer watching video over other types of content.

But even the most robust video marketing strategy often misses one key element: live streaming.

Over the past few years, live streaming has become a popular marketing tool. In fact, in 2019 alone, people watched 1.1 billion hours of live video, and 82% of people prefer live video from a brand over standard social media posts.

Additionally, live streaming is an effective method for building trust and demonstrating authenticity.

Besides the trust factor, there are plenty of other incredible live streaming benefits that can boost your brand, including maximizing audience reach, demonstrating creativity, enabling direct communication between your brand and audience, and cost-efficiency compared to other video strategies. 

However, one significant downside to live streaming is the unpredictable nature of it, which makes your content prone to flaws. To minimize those risks, it’s of the utmost importance to thoroughly plan your streams beforehand.

Here, let’s dive into six common use cases for live streaming, as well as how some major brands use live streaming to promote new products or reach new audiences.

6 Ways to Use Live Streaming to Build a Brand

Now, let’s take a closer look at some of the most common use cases of live streaming for brands.

Unlike traditional videos, live videos allow for direct communication with your audience. Therefore, brands tend to take full advantage of this factor in the following types of live streaming.

1. Brand news and messages.

If you choose to pre-record your company updates, it can appear inauthentic and lack warmth. Announcements or other news-related messages are a wonderful opportunity to keep in touch with your customers, and live streaming is an effective method to do that.

By live streaming brand news, you’re showing your audience you care enough about them to speak directly to them. Additionally, you can live stream such announcements internally to your workers and achieve the same effect.

2. Live interviews.

Let’s talk about something very exciting — live interviews. Although it might seem obvious, live interviews should be live streamed, not pre-recorded. Creating such content can certainly raise awareness about your brand, especially if you invite big names to your stream. You can host pro live interviews in a matter of two clicks in Restream Studio. No third-party apps are needed — just your browser, web cam, and microphone.

3. Webinars.

Another effective opportunity to boost your brand via live streaming is by hosting webinars. Get your leads and conduct an educational session, explaining the principles of your work and promoting your brand values.

Such educational events can potentially attract a more diverse demographic. This way, you will be able to positively impact your brand’s awareness and the desire of the viewers to become its advocate.

4. Live Q&A.

Similarly to webinars, live Q&A sessions allow for continuous communication with your viewers. This provides your audience with an opportunity to learn exactly what they want about your brand, and gives them the sense that you care about making them feel heard.

Additionally, live Q&As seem to be the easiest and quickest way to tell the world what is your brand about. Depending on the topic, you can ask any employee to provide answers in the Q&A.

For instance, if you feel the questions are going to be product-specific, consider asking a Product Manager or Product Developer to answer questions. Alternatively, you can always ask a PR, marketing, or social media manager to participate in the Q&A. Your audience will appreciate being able to put a face behind the brand.

5. Product promotions and releases.

A few major brands such as Apple or Nestle — which we’ll dive into, below — use live streaming to promote new product releases. This provides a sense of authenticity and trust into your product releases — plus, seeing a live release of a product is exciting and builds excitement around the release.

Additionally, you can always record your streams and repurpose them on product landing pages later on.

6. Influencer live streams.

Using influencers in live streams is rapidly gaining popularity, particularly since influencer marketing allows you to reach a larger and more diverse audience. Plus, influencers likely already know how to speak on-camera to an audience, so it saves your employees some stress if they don’t want to be on-camera.

Additionally, you might be able to save some resources by hiring an influencer to conduct the live stream with his or her own equipment.

6 Examples of Brands Using Live Streaming

Now that we’ve covered potential use cases for live streaming, let’s see how a few brands use live streaming to build or expand on their own brand.

1. Apple

One of the biggest tech companies in the world, Apple is continuously developing and expanding on its products, and often chooses live streaming to promote its new releases.

The company vigorously promotes its new products online twice a year. The live product release doesn’t need any explanation. However, Apple makes a “Show El Grande” out of a traditional presentation. These events gather more than 10 million viewers across the world.

2. Microsoft

As another tech giant that uses a similar strategy to Apple, Microsoft live streams product announcements and internal training for workers, as well as software releases and updates.

Events like XBOX games releases gather millions of viewers, which results in consumer awareness and excitement.

3. Nissan and General Motors

Both these automobile manufacturers have presented their new cars via live streams. Nissan streamed its Maxima at the 2016 New York auto show, and General Motors became the first automotive brand to showcase its product on a Facebook live stream.

 

4. Kohl’s

Another successful live streaming strategy was used by Kohl’s in 2016. It used influencer marketing to promote its Black Friday sales on Facebook Live. Kohl’s partnered with famous vlogger Judy Travis and managed to raise awareness and increase sales.

5. Nestle

Another example of a successful influencer live stream is Nestle’s Drumstick marketing campaign. The brand masterfully took advantage of the trending hashtag #FirstDayOfSummer and partnered with some rising influencers on Twitter’s Periscope.

The campaign quickly went viral thanks to the influencers’ live videos, promoting Drumsticks.

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6. Ninja

Arguably the most exciting development of an individual brand has been shown by Richard Tyler Blevins, better known as Ninja. He used to be a professional gamer and started live streaming in 2011.

Blevins actively followed the gamer trends and achieved his popularity thanks to Fortnite. By the year 2020, Ninja had more than 23 million subscribers and an extremely popular brand in the gaming world. He often uses live streaming to connect with his audience and expand his reach.

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Which streaming platform is the best to build your brand?

The golden rule is to choose a live streaming platform where you believe most of your consumers are. This way, you ensure your resources will be spent well. However, if your goal is to attract some new potential audiences, you can try investing in a platform that could help you expand your reach.

Another important factor you should consider when choosing a platform is how many viewers it has. The more people circulate around a streaming platform, the better it will be for your campaign. Some of the best streaming platforms include YouTube Live, Facebook Live, LinkedIn Live, Periscope, and Instagram.

However, you don’t necessarily have to choose one specific streaming platform. With services like Restream.io, you can simultaneously multi-stream your live content to as many platforms as you’d like, thus maximizing your audience reach.

If you’re convinced live streaming could be an effective strategy for your own brand, take a look at How to Live Stream Successfully: A Preparation Checklist for Marketers to learn how to plan your first live streaming event.

Posted by AnnaleisMontgomery

With businesses making the move to serve their customers primarily online and the footfall of customers in physical stores dropping dramatically, the value of SEO has been rediscovered. Businesses are now paying closer attention to their online experience and how they can compete on the internet.

This post will offer a guide to businesses looking to enhance their organic reach and traffic, by providing some SEO solutions to issues they might be experiencing. This includes information suitable for businesses that haven’t engaged with SEO as a channel before, as well as those who have had more experience with it. The goal is to gain more traffic and increase conversions.

Scenario 1: You don’t know what keywords you should be ranking for

Targeting the right keywords is central to getting a return from SEO. Targeting the most valuable and relevant keywords to your product/service is crucial.

How to know what keywords to target:

• They should be relevant to your product/service offering
• They should have a search volume large enough to target an audience that is worthwhile. This can vary depending on the country, how specific your product/service is, and seasonality. Using your judgment is crucial here; your own knowledge about your specific industry and market will help you target the right keywords with the search demand relevant to your business.

Tools to conduct your keyword research:

1. Moz Keyword Explorer → a keyword research tool that offers access to millions of keywords that can help form your list. You can see keyword suggestions, current ranking websites, and all the metrics on the keyword itself.
   Cost: Create a free account to get you started.
2. Ahrefs ‘Keyword Explorer’ or ‘Keyword Generator’ → these tools are amazing for finding new keywords to target, variations, seeing their search volume, generating keyword ideas, and more. Cost: They offer a 7 day trial for $7.
3. Google Trends → is a platform that lets you look at the search trend for a select group of keywords. You can compare the keywords to each other, and look into the monthly search trends around the topic. Looking at these trends can also help you avoid targeting the wrong keywords. Sometimes, some keywords have a higher average monthly search volume when compared to another, however, the other keyword might suddenly receive a high search interest due to an emerging trend.
   Cost: It’s free!
4. Answer The Public → will let you view questions that are commonly searched for around your keyword. This can help with generating content ideas, as well as provide insight into the types of things people are searching for around your important keywords.
   Cost: It’s free!
5. Google Search Console → this tool helps you track the performance of your website in the organic search results, and is an excellent resource when it comes to SEO. It can be used to discover what keywords your website is currently ranking for, and what keywords are performing better/worse over a period of time. (If you haven’t already set this up for your site, please do so now!)
   Cost: It’s free!

After all this, you combine your keywords, de-dupe and filter them out accordingly, to keep relevant keywords that you want to target in a list.

What do I do once I have my list of keywords?

Optimize your website to include them! This can involve:

1. Updating your on-page metadata. 

• Page titles = should be unique to the page, clear and relevant, and under 60 characters (so it doesn’t get cut off in the search results). 
• Meta Descriptions = include important keywords, without “keyword stuffing” (which is when you cram a lot of keywords in together and it doesn’t read well). This should be up to 150-160 characters to avoid it being cut off. 
• H1s = these are the on-page headings, typically displayed at the top of the page, These should be relevant to the page, as they provide structure to the article and context to Google and the user.

2. Create content around the keywords. Tools like Answer The Public will provide you with some ideas of questions/topics asked around important keywords. Make a blog post out of those! Make sure you have a title for it that includes those keywords, and is easily understandable. Internal linking is also an important factor in pages ranking well. Link important pages (these are usually the pages that are most linked to on your site, such as those included in your main navigation), to those that you want to rank well. Passing link equity between these pages signals to Google that these pages are worth showing to the user.

For more information on keyword research and implementation, be sure to read through The Keyword Research Master Guide from Moz.

Scenario 2: Your rankings have dropped

You’ve noticed that your website has dropped from the search results for a few key terms, however, you’re unsure of the reason. To be honest, this is a bit of a black hole as there could be numerous reasons. If you’d like to read further into this issue, a few articles I recommend are Tom Capper’s article “Organic traffic down YoY? It’s not what you think…”, as well as “Using the Flowchart Method for Diagnosing Ranking Drops — Best of Whiteboard Friday”. However, to keep things simple, I’ll detail a few options that can be checked and are fundamental to rankings.

How to identify this issue:

• Spot check → the keywords that you know your website ranks well for suddenly aren’t ranking your site in the same position.
• “Average position” in Google Search Console → this metric shows the average position ranking of your website as a whole, as well as having a table that displays various keyword ranks.
• Rank trackers → A tool called STAT lets you enter in a list of keywords, which you then “run” to track over a few days. Once it’s finished tracking, you get access to up to date information on how keywords are ranking, for what pages and access to multiple reports surrounding the performance. This is a great tool to see what keywords are dropping in ranks, or increasing.

Ways to fix it:

1. Check robots.txt and sitemaps → to make sure Google is able to access them, and all pages that are included should be. (This is also included in a tech audit).
2. Technical SEO audit → will show you any technical issues that might be occurring on the site that have affected rankings. This can be done by running a crawl of your website (could use Screaming Frog or Deepcrawl, for example). Things that can arise are a group of 404 pages, noindex,nofollow directives, incorrect canonical tags, lack of internal linking, etc.
3. Errors and warnings → Google Search Console displays all the errors and warnings that are occurring on the site. These should be looked into, as they could affect the performance of pages.
4. Recent changes to your site → Changes such as redirects or rebranding can affect how your site performs in the search results. Depending on the scale of the change, organic performance can be expected to change, but if the pages are optimized and free of technical errors, no long term effect should occur.
5. Algorithm updates → As ranking algorithms determine how pages are ranked in the search engine result pages (SERPs), algorithm updates change the way your site adheres to their ranking guidelines and, as a result, how your pages rank. Keeping up to date with any algorithm announcements or glitches can help you keep track of your organic performance. Twitter is a good channel to get up-to-date industry news, and you can follow notable figures in the industry like Marie Haynes or Barry Shwartz (to name just a couple) for their commentary. In addition, tools like MozCast (free!) will show you the current level of volatility in the SERPs.
6. Make sure your key pages are being crawled and indexed → use the “Coverage” report in Google Search Console to check what pages are being indexed and what pages have warnings. You can also do a manual check on Google, by typing into the URL bar: site:yourwebsite.com/web-page-slug operator. No results will show up if your page isn’t indexed.

Scenario 3: Your user experience is poor

User experience has become more important than ever. Regardless of whether your website is ranking first for all important keywords (we’re talking in an ideal world), it won’t make a difference if users don’t know how to interact with your site once they’ve landed on it. They’ll drop off and go to your competitor. Ensuring you have a well developed user journey and usability on your website is critical to successful SEO.

How to identify this as an issue:

This is something that involves your judgement, as unfortunately there isn’t a tool that will tell you if your site is delivering a poor user experience. Generally, if you get frustrated when using your own site or there are some things that annoy you when you’re navigating other websites, that’s what we call a poor user experience. Some practices that can help highlight if this is an issue are:

• Run a survey to ask users about their experience on the site. For example, a common question to include would be, “Did you find what you were looking for?” This short but direct approach can facilitate a relevant and direct response from customers, which can be easily acted on. Some tools you can use for this include Google Forms, SurveyMonkey and WuFoo.

• Compare site speed with competitors. This can be done using a tool such as Crux, which can give you an indication of how fast/slow your site is in comparison.
• HotJar can show you how people navigate a page. This can highlight what areas they spend more time on, where they’re attracted to click, and what they’re missing.
• Google Tag Manager can record click tracking. This is helpful to see if people are acting on your calls to action, such as filling out a form or pressing a certain button.

Ways to fix it:

1. Optimize your on-page content. This involves updating any content on your website to ensure it’s relevant to your audience and up-to-date. Content should be easily read by someone who has no context to the product/services offered on the website. You can also:
   1. Optimise your content layout. For example, include a numbered list to show your content in a different form, which can help target featured snippets.
   2. Update any old blog posts with new, relevant information and optimize the meta data to include keywords.
   3. Make sure all metadata is relevant to the page and optimized.
2. Include CTAs. A clear call-to-action should be present on all pages. These could be included in the main navigation, so it appears on all pages, or placed near the top of each page. CTAs give direction and a point of action to the customer, ensuring that if they want to engage further, it’s easy to do so. For example, common CTAs include “Contact us”, “Sign up here”, or “Book Now”.
3. Is it easy to convert? When you land on the homepage, is the CTA clear? Are there any barriers that might stop a customer to complete that action (such as requiring a customer to login or register before a purchase)? Making the journey easy and clear from entering the site to converting is crucial, as obstacles can easily deter a potential customer.

Summary:

This guide discussed 3 common scenarios that digital marketers experience. Not knowing what keywords to target, or how to go about it can be difficult to navigate. By using the suggested tools and collecting relevant keywords to target your pages will help improve your rankings. The guide by Cyrus Shephard elaborates further on this. Similarly, being able to identify when your rankings have dropped is important to ensure you stay up to date with any issues that could be causing this fluctuation. If you’d like to read more about this, I recommend “SEO Rankings Drop: A Step-By-Step Guide to Recovery”. Lastly, serving a good user experience has become an important element in digital marketing. If you want to expand your knowledge on this, Rand Fishkin has more to share on this area. Hope this article was helpful and can provide some direction of areas that you can check when you’re faced with an issue and don’t know where to start!

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Heads Up Gamers! We’ve been researching both the ways to make passive $GTA income from GTA Online such as using “bunker business” (in-game income) plus other passive legit methods of making real money! We’ve put them all together in this article.

How to Make Real Money from GTA Online

Different passive money-making options are available, but one which we saw highlighted was making money passively using the Honeygain app. To explain, let’s define what this app is all about. Honeygain is one way we have seen reported that provides options to make money online without putting much effort in. It’s one of the passive income apps that helps to get additional income by sharing the unused internet traffic. You install the app, leave it running in the background of your laptop or smartphone when you’re spending time online, even we presume when playing GTA, and that’s all. Our informant says that he browses the internet, uses Google, and plays GTA Online. In a typical day, he might also watch a popular film on Netflix, and watch videos on YouTube. Possibly, he will even seek out and watch training videos such as some he likes which instruct him on using Photoshop. he has found that by simply following his usual daily routine online he tends to get paid by Honeygain.

GTA Online is featured in a Reddit Mega Guide for its money-making potential. We understand that this guide is a great resource for those who want to make the absolute most out of their moneymaking and time with the game. For example, GTA series videos and “Time Trials Guides” can show the way to beat each time trial in GTA online for easy money each week. Reddit also has guides to completing premium races fast. The best Passive Income from GTA Online vehicles to use for racing is described as well, to help readers get those premium race wins which will gain you a following. Reportedly, making money is perfectly possible with this method, as a solo player.

Grand Theft Auto Online seems to have never-ending updates, adding new content like vehicles, businesses and more. All the new stuff to play around with is great, if you can afford it! With the ever-increasing price tags on new content, keeping up without paying real money can take forever.

GTA Online: Making Millions in GTA Money Guide

How to make millions with the nightclub in GTA V online! this GTA v online guide outlines how to make GTA money fast using the nightclub. GTA v nightclub is a passive income source we understand,  for GTA v online players. Hopefully, it helps Grand Theft Auto v players make millions in GTA 5. This guide includes:

1. How to buy nightclub GTA v online
2. How to make money with the nightclub
3. How to make money with the nightclub warehouse
4. How to maximize profits with the night club.

Before you worry about making GTA money, some good news: just logging into GTA online in May might have earned you a free GTA $500,000. But when it comes to earning your own millions in GTA online, a good guide on how to make money in GTA Online is the place to start. That guide covers everything you need to know about big money opportunities, like double money events, heists, hauling cargo, and more. Some of these can be more time-consuming than others. For instance, the GTA casino heist payout is GTA $2. 1 million. Thorough prep can take a few hours, and then another 20 minutes for the actual job itself. On the plus side, it’s a big, fun project to take on.

Buy in GTA online has never been unanimous and although we can all agree, the air fried business is the least favourable in this video I’ll show you why the bunker business is the most worthy business to buy amongst many others. I’ll do that even if you’re a relatively new player or season one looking to invest. The bunker is what everyone should own before anything else. We know that there are many businesses to invest in when playing Passive Income from GTA Online including the most popular special vehicle warehouse. by your businesses special warehouse and so on but the bunker trumps all these businesses in priority. It does this with good reason. Firstly, the bunker business is passive income capable of meaning that the bunker can generate income without you needing to run errands. You can leave the game, not play the game, and the bunker will still generate income! Most importantly the cell missions can be done solo for the most part.

In real life find the links that explain how not to get kicked. And, learn how to order bunker supplies using your smartphone. In the video description “without a bunker” you are essentially wasting the opportunity for an extra 650,000 bucks, costs included any time you’re driving around the city running other missions or even just being an FK. If you like to grind the motorcycle club businesses or sell high-end vehicles in your vehicle warehouse do so by all means for Passive Income from GTA Online. But be sure to have that “bump your business” running in the background and watch your bank account grow even faster even if you’re just starting to invest in the bunker. This is a reliable source of income if you don’t have much time to play the game. Each resupply costs 75 k and you will need a total of five resupplied for full stock, amounting to a cost of 370.

Passive Income from GTA Online Through The Nightclub

Make passive GTA money with Independence Day clothing, masks and outfits, and independence day haircuts, and in addition to these discounts, all smugglers sell missions will dish out triple GTA$. While gunrunning sells missions and special cargo. Sell missions while paying out double gta$. All biker sell missions will also see double gta$. Players can also get double rewards by playing client jobs and in the missile base series, or can take advantage of passive benefits like gunrunning research and nightclub income at double speed. Players can also support ‘Merica by getting themselves the Canis USA tee and patriot beer hat, by simply logging.

Your nightclub can be of use beyond generating meagre passive income. By the time after hours was released, GTA online was so full of various business types that keep track of them all was a challenge in and of itself. For enterprising GTA online players who set up several businesses, the nightclub is a godsend. Basically, from your nightclub warehouse, you can manage all businesses, store all types of product and even generate product for free. This is a massive game-changer for several reasons. Firstly, the nightclub warehouse isn’t just a united platform to manage your warehouses, but a separate warehouse in and of itself. This means you can conduct business as usual while adding the capacity of the nightclub warehouse to it all.

Grand theft auto online is switching on the neon and turning up the volume with this week’s after-hours bonuses, focusing on Los Santos’ nightlife. Club owners can benefit from increased income and take advantage of extra opportunities, while discounts on these establishments help new players get in on the fun. Being a nightclub owner this week has some extra benefits. Your venue’s passive income is doubled all week, so make sure to empty that safe whenever it gets full otherwise you’ll miss out on easy cash. Club popularity is easy to keep at maximum with a few quick and simple missions. For more on making the most of the after-hours bonuses, check out our guide.

Business Battle Bonuses In GTA Online This Week

GTA v free money from today help yourself. GTA 5 money hack 2020 around the web. Team up with your associates and bodyguards to increase those profit margins and strong-arm your competitors off the market – Business Battles are the big theme of this week’s Grand Theft Auto Online bonus event. There are also freebies up for grabs and discounts to exploit.With the Los Santos Summer Special DLC overhauling Business Battles with new locales and mechanics, now is the perfect time to take a tour of the new content – since all Business Battles are paying out double rewards. Not only are Business Battles a fun way to engage in some PvP action while earning a bit of GTA$, but winning will also earn your product for your various businesses. Filling up your warehouse shouldn’t be an expense, and this way those sell missions will be even more lucrative. Prime Gaming subscribers that link their accounts with GTA Online’s Social Club can earn the latest $200,000 in-game bonus. In addition to the money, players can also get a free Vespucci Canals Nightclub Property, and 80% discounts on the Progen T20 and the Överflöd Tyrant. For the uninitiated, Prime Gaming is a free service available to all Amazon Prime subscribers, formerly known as Twitch Prime.

Earn Big With The Diamond Adversary Series In GTA Online This Week

Make a killing in the Diamond Adversary Series this week Rockstar is running a promotion in GTA Online called the Diamond Adversary Series, offering double rewards for winning and a bonus cash payout. Anyone looking to play GTA Online over the next few days is in for a treat, with Rockstar Games confirming that the game will have a special promotion that doubles cash and RP rewards this week. “Make a killing in the Diamond Adversary Series this week with Double Payouts and a special one-time GTA$250K bonus for being on the winning team”. Adversary modes are a type of game mode or job in GTA online. They are PVP battles assigned by Martin Madrazo, so if you get a call from Martin this week, don’t hang upon him. The Diamond Adversary Series has been designed to provide the player with double the amount of money on a number of game modes in the Casino.

GTA Online Diamonds are back as Casino Loot GTA Online Diamonds are back as Casino Loot. We’ve already received the official list of changes in this week’s GTA Online update, but data miners thankfully filled in some details, like Diamonds in Casino loot. Players will also receive a special one time bonus of a quarter of a million dollars for being in the winning team. Unfortunately for Rockstar, it’s unclear how many GTA Online players will actually want to participate in an event focused on gambling beyond it being something to do. The developers have offered players so much free in-game currency over the last few months that some have started complaining about having trouble counting their money due to how the systems in place enumerate higher amounts.

GTA 5 And Crossplay – Does GTA Online Support Crossplay?

If getting into gunfights and/or racing around at breakneck speeds in fast cars sounds a smidge too intense for your liking (or if you just need a break from the aforementioned gunfights and racing), there are more laid back options to consider. GTA online also plays host to a surprisingly robust pair of mini-games which recreate the sports of golf and tennis respectively. For the tennis mini-game, you’ll need to recruit a friend or see if any online strangers want to play since the activity sadly doesn’t support ai opponents. The same goes for the golf mini-game, though you can at least play that latter activity by yourself. Mastering GTA online’s 9-hole golf course can be a great way to spend an afternoon, not only because it’s genuinely funny but also because it awards a decent chunk of RP and is a great way to improve your character’s strength stat (more on that later).

Rockstar Games is giving Grand Theft Auto Online players a bit of stimulus support during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. The team behind GTA online announced that it would be gifting cold hard in-game currency to all players logging into the game during the month of April. It’s a gta$500,000 one-time boost sent directly to players maze bank accounts, though it may take up to seven days to show up. It’s just one small thing rockstar can do to keep GTA online players having fun during this challenging time.

What is GTA BOOM?

Making money in GTA can be tough if you don’t know what you’re doing. Luckily, we’re here to help! GTA BOOM delivers daily news, guides and cheat codes for all Grand Theft Auto video games, including Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA Online. GTA BOOM delivers daily news, guides and cheat codes for all Grand Theft Auto video games, including Grand Theft Auto 5 and GTA Online. Step by step instructions on both methods, or you can skip those and go directly to the cheat codes. We also have a video showcasing the cheats and how to use them embedded below, as well as a printable PDF version.

When he isn’t tweaking the content on GTA boom, you’ll find him working on the server or making other improvements to hopefully make the site better. Not really “worth it” as they take a long time to make back the initial investment. Despite the name which implies you should steal cars, there is a limited market for stolen cars, so those are more just something to get you from place to place. The fastest way to make easy fast money GTA 5 online.

Passive Income from GTA Online: How Much Money Can You Make?

It’s been seven years since grand theft auto online was released and it’s still going strong. There is an active player community, tons of content, and a stream of updates that makes now a better time than ever to dive into this great game. If you’re trying out multiplayer for the first time or you’re new to the GTA scene you can be at a loss of what to spend your time and money on to get the most out of the game. According to the fans here are the things they wish they knew when starting out to get you on the right track. In GTA Online players can purchase a retro arcade property and in fact, this purchase from maze bank foreclosures is downright essential if you want to host diamond casino heists. However, whilst players will be required to use the arcade property to plan their next casino heist, it’s not worth forgetting that the business can be fairly profitable too. After deciding which arcade is best for you, you’ll be given the keys to a derelict building in need to renovating. And after splashing a bit of extra cash you’ll have a fairly easy to manage and self-sustaining business. Albeit as a front for your more devious activities in the basement.

The diamond casino and resort has been added to GTA Online. The diamond casino & resort is a shared location for players to enjoy together. The casino offers a wide range of activities and provides multiple guest services for players to use. The casino penthouse has been added to GTA Online. Players can purchase a casino penthouse from the diamond casino & resort website and can be customized with a choice of optional extras such as a media room, a spa, a private dealer, garage space, and much more. The penthouse also provides owners with a vip membership that gives access features including with new casino story missions, free mode missions, and two new arcade games.

GTA Online: How to make money fast

AFK farming is the best method of making money in the end game of GTA. Once you have most businesses you can link them to your nightclub. The nightclub warehouse workers will accrue goods from your linked businesses as long as you are in a session in GTA Online. The idea here is to go AFK while in a session so the nightclub can accrue product, then you do an easy sell mission and profit over $1 million in a matter of minutes. The best way to AFK is to go to your apartment and hop on the security cameras by going to your tv and switching two channels to the right. This way you can leave your PS4 overnight and come back in the morning to an easy million.

Outside of going on a mindless rampage, you can’t do much in GTA online without money. You need cash to buy houses, cars, and weapons — everything that the doctor ordered for a friendly GTA online session. So how do you make money fast in GTA online in order to buy all these nice things? You can always use real money to buy GTA online shark cards, but there are a lot of ways to avoid that and get money through in-game antics. Now be aware, GTA online is a grind. So expect to drop a good amount of hours robbing banks and running heists if you want that high rise apartment.

Need to earn money faster in GTA online? Here are a few missions you can undertake online to get a decent amount of cash. Alternatively, here’s how you can make $1. 8 billion from the Lester assassination missions in the single-player. GTA online missions. violent duct ~ 2-3 minutes ~ 9k payout. Fastest money making method right now. Run-on easy for the fastest run. Don’t immediately gun at the start, instead sneak in from the left entrance and you can do a sweep in like 20 seconds.

Passive Income Building a GTA Affiliate Website

Setting up and personalizing your new GTA affiliate website today you will breathe life into your new affiliate website and make it your own. I think you’ll really like how easy it is to create your own site. WordPress makes it simple to create something wonderful from nothing. I’ve uploaded a ten-part video on everything you need to know about WordPress. The videos loop one after another or you can skip forward or backwards if you would like. You could also opt to use existing websites for making money. These include both active income and passive income methods. For example, you could sell some used items or invest in creating some digital designs that then can be sold on merchandise. Again, devote a sizable portion of your time to passive income so that you can slowly build up earnings that will arrive on autopilot without any extra added effort.

With this current event week with 2x on bunker again you all yell about this “passive income”. But is it really passive income? You do have to put in some manual work with the sales to get any income. Can we please quit calling it “passive income“? How about “passive production”? If any of you Gordon Gekkos out there can tell us a bit more about true capitalism and truly passive income that would make my day.

Ultimately, you can pick a combination of these passive income ideas or try them all. The right path for you will depend on your short and long-term goals, how much time you have, how much money you want to earn, and how many hours of work you’re willing to put in. Real estate is a path that many experts recommend. Investor Louis Glickman said: “the best investment on earth is earth. ” and, of course, there are stats touting that 90% of all millionaires gained that status by owning real estate.

GTA Online Money Making Guide – The 5 Best Ways to Fill Your Bank Account

In the world of grand theft auto cash is king. The entire point of the game is to making money, so it goes without saying the faster you earn it, the better. But just like real life, if you want to make money in grand theft auto online quickly, you have to work for it. Of course, you can always go and buy a GTA Online shark card for real money to add more green to your bank account, but where’s the fun in that? Completing jobs earns the player money, which can be spent any number of ways, from purchasing buildings, land, and weapons to customizing their character’s appearance, weapons and vehicles. More options become accessible as higher ranks and cash are acquired. Players can also spend money customizing their apartment for their character, and a garage in which they can store and customize up to 10 vehicles. As of the release of the high life update, players are able to own two properties. Banks and stores throughout the world can be robbed by the player. Teaming up with others makes pulling off the heists easier; however, there is a chance that a member of the team may run off with the take, making trust a vital part in planning. During a heist, grand theft auto online uses a voice recognition system. If one or more players yell commands at the bank staff such as “faster!”, the moneybag will be filled faster than usual, allowing for a quicker getaway.

Buy Shark Cards – GTA Online

Like any respectable live-service game, GTA Online features microtransactions. You can buy various bundles of GTA dollars in the form of shark cards. They come in the following tiers:

• red shark cash card – $100,000 for $2. 99 USD
• tiger shark cash card – $200,000 for $4. 99 USD
• bull shark cash card – $500,000 for $9. 99 USD
• great white shark cash card – $1,250,000 for $19. 99 USD

The bull shark and great white shark cards boast the best bang-for-your-buck. Most of the best high-end cars and properties cost far too much GTA bucks for the red and tiger shark cards to be worth the cost, as you’d have to buy multiples of each to get anything worthwhile.

A lot of the cool missions and weapons in GTA online aren’t available until you reach a certain rank, which you increase by earning reputation (RP) for completing tasks in the game. If you want to know how to level up fast in GTA Online then check out our separate guide to learn about adversary modes, cargo drops, working for organisations, and more. Likewise, there’s very little available for free in GTA Online, so you’re going to need to keep your virtual bank account topped up with gta$ if you want to keep your criminal enterprises up and running. Of course, you could just buy a GTA Online shark card for an instant cash injection, but that costs real money so shouldn’t be at the top of your priority list. We’ve got plenty of advice about how to make money fast in GTA online in our other guide, so take a look for help with pulling off daring heists, cargo missions, VIP work, and other lucrative pastimes.

The diamond casino has many games to play inside, and with the purchase of the penthouse, you have access to high stakes gambling tables. While playing these games can be risky, a skilled (and lucky!) player can earn millions of GTA dollars every hour. The high stakes roulette table typically has the best odds. Casino gambling rewards. Bet on horses, try the slot machines and play cards for cash spin a prize wheel daily, win cash prizes and expensive cars these are widely accepted as the most efficient ways to make money in GTA Online, the missions on this list will help you buy flying motorcycles, tanks, and all the other crazy things that give rich players an advantage!.

Heists – GTA Online

There are plenty of ways to go about making money in GTA: online. The most fun way to do so is by doing heists. However, doing heists isn’t the only way to make the most out of the game. For instance, you need to have a bunker to host the doomsday heist, which is one of the highest paying heists in the game. A bunker is an essential business to own that also gives you returns on your investment. On that note, let us have a look at three great businesses to own in GTA.

With the executives and other criminals DLC was released, it came with a new VIP and bodyguard system that rivalled the potential money-making possibilities of heists. This can be a really fun method of making money with friends. Get all your buddies together and hire them as bodyguards, then go to town! while this isn’t the most “immediate” money-making method, it’s definitely one of the most enjoyable. While this guide is about making money in GTA Online, you have to at least try and have fun while doing it. Grinding can be extremely boring and tedious, and you will most likely find its much better to make money while enjoying the game itself, even if the method isn’t the fastest.

In GTA v, you may not need to buy weapons since you can easily grab them from dead enemies. But in this online version, safety is extremely important. And therefore, you will want to at least get a gun for self-protection. There is no rule of what you must buy, just choose what you feel most reliable. Besides self-protection, you will also need guns for various missions and heists. More reason to build up your arsenal isn’t it?.

Rockstar launches weekly updates and events for GTA Online, introducing new modes or featuring old ones and doubling, or even tripling, both their RP and gta$ rewards. Races, stunt races, and adversary modes are all contenders for these bonuses, and can often earn players some serious cash for just a few matches. Heists are the best way to earn a lot of money, but they aren’t a quick or easy solution to an empty wallet, and they require you to provide cash upfront, just to get started. Because of this, and the requirement to coordinate with multiple other players on your team, heists should be considered “endgame” content for players who already have a relatively serious amount of cash on hand.

Grand Theft Auto Online, or more commonly known to fans as GTA Online, allows players to experience the open-world maps from grand theft auto v with others online. As you explore Los Santos and Blaine County, players have the option to play alone in free mode PvE, choose who to play with by inviting their friends, or even play completely PVP as you coexist with other players online. Players have a wide range of activities to complete in this open-world environment like assaults on local gangs, robbing armoured trucks, and challenging other players to impromptu races to name a few. Available on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, players can experience Los Santos and Blaine County in up to 4k resolution and 60 fps. However, just like the real world, GTA Online runs on money, so using your time to make the most money possible is a top priority for many players. Combining these methods along with specially offered double GTA$ and double reputation activities is by far the best way of maximizing profits.

The post How to Make Passive Income from GTA Online – Heads Up Gamers! appeared first on GQ Central.

Our Title “Shared Hosting or WordPress Hosting” is one we have chosen because it keeps being asked. It is capable of being interpreted in two ways. Either you are considering starting your blog on the WordPress.com service, and wish to compare the WordPress.com service with the many shared hosting services, or, are you wondering whether you should use shared hosting or managed WordPress hosting from any other provider, not including WordPress.com, for your website? This is a somewhat confusing question that keeps cropping up every now and then. So we decided to provide this article to clarify the “Shared Hosting or WordPress.Com Hosting”/ “Shared vs Managed WordPress hosting” issues involved. We explain them, now that the recently issued WordPress 5 core now provides built-in auto-updating options and improved security.

Shared vs WordPress.Com Hosting

Everyone knows what the user-facing side, or the front-end, of a website, looks like and how it functions. This is where all the images, text, backgrounds, menus, and colour scheme come together to create the user experience. Whether you host your website on:

• Shared hosting (such as offered by such as Siteground, GoDaddy or Bluehost) or
• Services described as WordPress Hosting, or
• WordPress.Com hosting,

it will make not a jot of difference. The differences between the options discussed here are all “below the hood” and while important they don’t have any effect on the look and feel of your website.

WordPress is the world’s most popular web publishing platform, is generally thought to be powering more than 35% of all sites on the internet. We even understand that sites for “The Walt Disney Company” and “Mercedes-Benz are produced using the platform. As a web publishing platform, it is actually just an online software application like any other. It’s free to everyone, being open-source, and can be run on any internet server and very often is. That’s clear from the huge number of shared hosting services which almost without exception encourage their account-holders to use WordPress (WP). You don’t have to buy WordPress hosting to use it to build a WP site, you can do it on almost any good hosting.

It’s a little confusing, but the company which works with the open-source coding community which often give their time for free to keep improving the WordPress software WordPress.Org also offers a shared web hosting service. This is provided on the WordPress.com domain. Here it provides a hosted website building service built on WordPress, and that’s what you can sign-up to as your hosting provider. Many people look no further because for them it has to be the place for them to base their website. They reason that, if anyone knows how to run and maintain your hosting service, it must be the people most involved with writing the software and updating it. Without a doubt that organisation is Automattic and for them that’s good enough reason to sign up with them for their website hosting. We don’t argue with their philosophy. Automattic is a very good company and their hosting is top quality and dependable.

It’s not the cheapest though by a long way! Their hosting plans and prices are available at wordpress.com/pricing. All do include SSL certification which is good. But, when we looked at their pricing structure and features list we found that the most telling omissions from all the plans offered, appear as features offered for their business plans upward. Below a Business Plan you cannot install any of the huge numbers of custom plugins most WP users use, nor is automated backup or an easy restore option available (One-Click Rewind). SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and Database Access is only available, starting at £20/ month with their Business, and Commerce Plans, (paid annually as a lump sum). Such features as these are available on other shared hosting and WordPress hosting platforms in even their entry-level (cheapest) offers, although many don’t offer automated backup in their lowest priced hosting plans. But, there are custom plugins which automate backups, and some of those are free.

Another limitation of WordPress.com hosting accounts is that it is unclear whether more than one website may be hosted on each plan. It is certainly true that every WordPress.com plan includes hassle-free updates, reliable hosting, and spam protection. Our conclusion is that if you want value for money there are many far cheaper hosting providers available than WordPress.Org, which give much greater flexibility in their hosting plans and yet are very reliable. Our recommendations are our own hosting at EZi Hosting, and SiteGround.

It is perhaps ironic that until the recent upgrade of WordPress to WordPress 5 (in the summer of 2020) one big advantage of using WordPress.Com hosting would have been one important aspect of security. That aspect of security would have been that when users are allowed to use any custom plugin, inevitably someone will fail to update their plugin creating a security hole, or indeed a plugin may slip through which has been designed intentionally for hacking WordPress sites. On a shared server, the hacker may then in theory attack multiple websites on that server. However, WP5 introduced a number of new security features to the WP core to prevent this, and in addition, a new plugin updating system was also introduced. Needless to say, only the users of the cheaper plans are prevented from using custom plugins, and business and commercial plan users that neglected their updates would still have presented a risk of those types of a security breach, in any event. Therefore, that’s yet another reason for saving your cash and choosing an alternative, such as Ezi Hosting or Siteground. Now let’s cease considering WordPress.Com hosting and look at the choice of “Shared Hosting” or “WordPress Hosting” from other hosting companies.

What is WordPress VPS Hosting?

WordPress Managed VPS hosting plans are one level up from shared hosting and usually significantly cheaper than a fully managed WordPress Hosting Dedicated Server. VPS hosting, or virtual private server hosting, is like shared hosting because your site shares a server with other sites. However, there are fewer sites on the same server compared to the shared hosting option. The server is also partitioned into different virtualized server environments. Unlike shared hosting, WordPress VPS hosting usually provides baseline guaranteed resources eliminating the “noisy neighbours” problem (i.e. if they do something which simply overloads the server). You may see VPS hosting offered. Without the work, that any hosting company needs to do to update and maintain (manage) WordPress VPS only can be cheaper than managed WordPress VPS. VPS only plans are admittedly a huge step up from shared hosting but VPS only plans have a major disadvantage for many people. Managing a VPS requires technical skills most businesses don’t possess.

Understanding Key Differences Between Dedicated Hosting Vs. Shared

Support may not be as responsive – one of the key differences between shared hosting and the other types described below is the level of dedicated support you can expect to receive. With shared hosting, it can take longer to get support or answers from your host.

Now you know the key differences between dedicated hosting and shared hosting. Typically larger enterprise organizations and high traffic sites use dedicated servers. Smaller businesses and startups usually start with a shared hosting plan. But ultimately, the choice is yours. Wp farm provides hosting for all sized businesses: small business, growing, and enterprise companies.

To understand the differences between shared hosting and managed WordPress hosting solutions, you need a basic understanding of hosting terminology. All website files are hosted on dedicated servers which are stored in secure buildings called data centres. You can think of dedicated servers as desktop computers without monitors attached to them.

Shared Hosts as a Starting Point

Without some form of web hosting, only you will be able to view it. There are free hosting options available (including at WordPress.Com) but, in the majority of cases, these are not appropriate for a business website. Nevertheless, for many of those just starting out a shared hosting plan may make the most sense.

For most people shared hosting provides the best, and most flexible, starting point to deciding what type of hosting you need. It is really important to learn more about the different types of hosting before you buy. Smaller sites are going to work fine with any shared hosting companies like SiteGround, Bluehost, or Hostgator. For popular larger highly-trafficked sites you most likely will want to grab a dedicated server from one of those same hosts, quite soon – but you can still start with these providers and move up to a more expensive server type as time goes by and when you can easily afford the higher costs.

So, for a startup site with no busy traffic, shared hosts are fine. With the option to upgrade, this is a perfect starting point for your website. Additional advantages of WordPress shared hosting normally includes, a built-in Cpanel which is provided to ensure that you can manage your site with ease.

That’s an attractive price point for people just starting a blog as you don’t know how you’re going to get on with blogging. But it’s not just beginners who can use shared hosting. A shared server can also work fine for personal sites, hobby sites, local trade services sites, and small businesses.

Managed WordPress Hosting and Regular Maintenance

Whether you have tens of millions of monthly visitors, just starting out, or somewhere in between, whether you are coming from a premium WordPress provider such as WPengine, Kinsta, or Flywheel, or a shared host such as Siteground, GoDaddy or Bluehost – managed WordPress plans will guarantee you the fast WordPress hosting.

Managed WordPress hosting will ensure your website is optimized for speed, performance, and security. Plus, since managed WordPress hosting services handle the maintenance of your website for you, you can focus on other areas of your business.

It costs more than shared hosting but will suit you if you want to own a server it is a much more affordable solution than a dedicated server. Customizable packages: VPS plans are customizable, so you pay for what you need. For example, at Digital ocean you can configure the processing power you need, ram and HDD space when choosing your server specification.

What Is Shared Hosting?

Managed WordPress VPS hosting is a hassle and management free web hosting solution for WordPress. It is more expensive than shared and VPS hosting, but many businesses choose it because you do not have to deal with maintaining the WordPress core, updates etc. They only thing you have to take care of is the content and the look-and-feel of the website.

Shared and bare VPS hosts may offer more affordable services than Managed WordPress VPS Hosting, but when you run into an issue such as an attack on your WordPress site or uptime issues, it could take several days of emailing back and forth just to get your support request escalated. Once escalated you may then have to wait to chat with someone with the WordPress familiarity and expertise to address the issue if you are not specifically provided the support from your hosting service to do so.

For further information, you will be able to contact support team members after joining. Questions asked are “How much of DB size is offered with your shared hosting packages?” Our clients have never faced any restriction on the size of the database offered. We provide 2gb on our lowest priced hosting plan, and for higher plans up to 5gb to 10gb of a database, which is up to 10,000 mb in the capacity.

What Is Managed WordPress Hosting?

Managed WordPress web hosts are renowned for providing specialized WordPress support. That way they can assist you with WordPress issues even when the issue is not specifically a web hosting problem. Since WordPress managed-hosting is a specialized service for WordPress users, the web host takes care of keeping your WordPress version installed, up to date. In most setups, up to WP5, you had to update your own plugins and theme. But both are now available as options to be done automatically without needing Managed WordPress hosting providers such as WP Engine. However, the paid accounts do now have fraud checks in place and will optionally alert you if a plugin or theme installed on your website is outdated or no longer supported.

Managed WordPress hosting is designed specifically to handle WordPress. It provides optimal technology and resources to support WordPress websites. Partnering with a managed WordPress hosting company takes care of all the technical aspects of hosting for you – including security, performance, and other factors. Managed WordPress hosting is particularly well-suited to large and enterprise-level businesses due to its superior security, reliability, and high performance. Any company that relies on their WordPress site is going to want a host that specializes in that cms. Managed WordPress hosting prices vary, with plans ranging from $25 to $2,000 per month depending on the resources and level of support they offer.

For an established business website, we recommend a Managed WordPress Hosting provider. what is managed WordPress hosting – see our definition above, and why do you need it? Since WordPress is one of the preferred platforms for building websites many hosting providers offer Managed WordPress hosting. This is essentially a one-stop-shop when it comes to hosting your website and is dedicated specifically to WordPress. This lets the pros handle the technical aspects of running a website and allows you to focus on running your business, managed hosting takes the guesswork out of creating a home for your website. Benefits of managed hosting are, Superfast: Managed Hosting which is optimized specifically for WordPress so that it ensures your website is always quick, even if you have high traffic. Look out for the need at any time for rapid support. Rapid Results: means that you get access to teams of highly experienced staff who are WordPress experts and are ready to help. No need for thumbing through the manual to figure it out yourself. Easy backups: messed up and wish you had a save point? well, with many Managed Hosting providers it’s as easy as one-click. Kaptiv8 offer managed WordPress hosting through the WP engine.

Pros and Cons of Shared Hosting

Further, to help you decide which of these two web hosting option is best suited for your business here is an infographic that has listed down the pros and cons of each type. We hope that after checking out this shared vs managed WordPress hosting infographic, you’ll be able to make the right decision on which of these two can help you unleash the full potential of your WordPress website.

When choosing between dedicated hosting and shared hosting, it comes down to understanding the needs of your company. You’ll have to assess your operation’s budget and understand how much control you need to maintain. There are pros and cons to both hosting options: dedicated or shared, the decision depends on your company’s needs, requirements, and priorities.

It’s not a problem as every customer has a limit on the total amount of resource s/he can use. Advantages & disadvantages (pros and cons). Like everything, shared hosting has some advantages and disadvantages. Advantages. Cheap: shared hosting is cheap than other web hosting services.

Pros and Cons of Managed WP Hosting

As we have seen there are many different WordPress hosting options and all of them have their pros and cons. There is no perfect and fit-all solution. It all depends on your budget and your requirements. Do remember though that your decision about which WordPress web host to use should not be based just on the specifications, that is just one part of the story.

And any unexpected downtime could lead to lost sales and damage to your brand reputation. Choosing the right managed WordPress hosting plan can help safeguard your business against this kind of catastrophe. Strongly consider choosing a market leader in providing scalable solutions for WordPress.

Cons of shared hosting can be slow response times. Your website may load slowly due to slow server response time when compared to a managed WordPress host. Downtime may be extensive, as you may face frequent downtimes with some shared hosting companies. Not suitable for high-traffic sites and shared hosts are mostly suitable for startups, small businesses, personal sites, or anyone that doesn’t receive tons of traffic.

Best Shared Hosting Providers

Affordable: shared hosting plans are available at a much cheaper price, so you can get started with less money. Good support: this may not be the case with 100% of shared hosting providers but most companies have highly skilled professionals to provide you support.

Once their website has started generating more traffic, they can then review their hosting requirements. I’ve used 5 or 6 web hosting service providers over the last 7 years, including many of the popular shared hosting providers.

There are many other popular wordpress hosting platforms, with many of them focusing on the shared and VPS segment. Here are a few of the popular hosting providers not mentioned above: Cloudways (great pricing and speed). Arvixe. Liquid web. Mediatemple. When I get more time to test them we’ll add more info about these and move them into their proper sections above.

Best Managed WordPress Hosting Providers

However, for a business website, we recommend managed WordPress hosting. But wait… What is managed WordPress hosting, and why do you need it? since WordPress is one of the preferred platforms for building websites many hosting providers offer managed WordPress hosting. This is essentially a one-stop-shop when it comes to hosting your website and is dedicated specifically to WordPress.

Some WordPress and later hosting platforms make a copy of your site and tests plugin updates for you every night automatically, so you don’t have to worry about manually doing so. Shared hosting providers are unlikely to include automatic update features for WordPress or its plugins. But, that is now covered as from WP v5 because the WP core now has facilities for auto-updating your files built-in.

Managed WordPress hosting may well include turbo optimized servers for up to 10x faster page loads compared to competing WordPress hosting providers.

Shared or Managed WordPress Hosting – Which One is Suitable For You?

For a new website, you cannot go wrong with Siteground shared hosting. Their support is unbeatable, and they use top-notch speed technology on all of their servers. They offer managed WordPress hosting on all plans, have a 1-click installer built-in and will even move your entire website from your old host for free.

Shared hosting packages typically don’t offer any assistance if your site falls victim to a cyber-attack or if you encounter malware problems. Secure WordPress hosting is perhaps the biggest incentive for moving to managed WordPress hosting. When you partner with a managed WordPress host, routine software updates and a specialized hosting environment mean your site is better guarded against hackers, bots, and other security concerns.

So when someone types your site url in the address bar of their web browser, your website files are fetched from the web hosting account. And then, people can see your live website in their browser. Now, there are different types of hosting services available in the market including shared, managed WordPress hosting, and even dedicated hosting service.

Shared Hosting vs WordPress Hosting: Which One Should You Use?

I hope this site ground shared WordPress hosting review will provide you with all the information you need to make an educated decision when choosing a host for your site. Please know that I only recommend quality products, and completely stand behind any company I am affiliated with.

When you’ve invested so much in your site, you don’t ever want your domain names to go offline. This is why investing in a premium DNS provider is considered a must by many It experts. But typical shared or VPS hosting packages, and even most managed WordPress hosts, don’t offer Premium DNS.

5 seconds to load. 74% of users will leave after waiting five seconds for a mobile site to load. Another interesting fact is that most blogs using WordPress are hosted on shared hosting plans. Shared hosting simply means that many websites are hosted on a single web server and that the server’s resources (CPU and ram) are shared among every customer account on the machine.

An Introduction to Shared Hosting

A web host is a company where you can buy server space to store your website (i.e. hosting). This is how your site becomes publicly available.

Shared hosting is a type of website hosting where a single server (and its resources) is shared among several websites at once. This is in contrast to dedicated hosting, where one server hosts a single site, and Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting, which is similar to shared but with fewer sites per server.

You may feel as if you don’t have the technical know-how to run a website. This is where the convenience of shared hosting becomes a factor, as the web host will handle all the technical aspects of running the server. This differs from other types of hosting, such as dedicated and un-managed VPS, both of which generally requires you to maintain the server.

The shared hosting environment is like sharing a highway with other cars. Hundreds or even thousands of users can share the same server, which means they also divide the costs.

The Differences Between Shared Hosting and WP Hosting

If you’ve chosen to utilize WordPress for your website, and you’ve begun your search for the right type of hosting plan, you may be encountering the choice between a managed WordPress hosting vs a shared hosting plan. Let’s look at the differences between the two and often they are minimal. In the worst cases, the two can be the same server set-up and the only difference may be the price and the jargon used in order to entice you into buying shared hosting, with little more than a fancy name and a higher price tag.

Shared and WordPress (managed) hosting are two of the most popular options for WordPress sites and deciding between them is one aspect that determines your site’s success.

As the name suggests, WordPress hosting is web hosting that has been optimized for the needs of a WordPress website. It’s important to understand that this isn’t a type of plan in the same way that shared hosting is. WordPress hosting can be shared, dedicated, or something else entirely. The shared vs managed WordPress hosting debate comes down to the added WordPress-specific services and performance tweaks you get with managed WordPress hosting.

Read the hosting company’s lists of features and decide on which one suits you best. Make a decision and get started!

Shared hosting plans are pretty cheap but this does not mean they are not good. The major word that causes problems for shared hosting users is the word “unlimited“. Most WordPress installs are hosted on shared hosting plans and the majority of these installs are by people new to blogging. The explanation for the most common causes of site crashes on shared hosting plans is the inappropriate use of plugins, by inexperienced users. Every plugin you activate makes WordPress a little slower. Some plugins are highly resource-intensive and do not play well with shared hosting.

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