The Media started during the Renaissance in Europe. Right when the mechanical typeset was discovered. An information can be passed on to huge masses of people. People like Charles Dickens and Jane Austin capitalized on that by writing great books. Without the media they would have been nowhere.

The Radio was discovered in the mid 1800s and people didn’t have to read anymore. And in the early 1900s, there was TV. In the 1990s we got the internet, which we could use to search for anything we want. Free flow of information on demand, when you want it where you want it. It was texts initially, now we have got podcasts. Well, thats what podworks is about.

Now the size of the computer has been reduced to fit in your hand. And now its most popularly called a Phone. And, the Iphone is the best among all that. And I own one of those. An 8GB iPhone 3G that transfers data faster than my broadband connection used to do 4 years ago.

There are so many things that you can do with the iPhone. Its not just for talking. The apps that are available for the iPhone are simply great, and are not available on the regular PDAs or smart phones. I am a windows hater, and though iPhone doesn’t run linux, it is atleast unix based.

And just like in linux, you get an app for anything you need for iphone. I can’t list them out, the list is infinite. For example, I have been looking for an apartment at Texas to run my new home cum office for my friend who is there to handle our new venture for some time now. Something bigger and better than our current place, but in the same locality. I googled, yahooed and MSNed. Nothing happened. But I found this one result buried deep down in one of the searches. It was iphone apartment app.

I decided to give it a try, as it said it uses GPS to find you apartments. Wow. I downloaded the app, and asked my friend to do it too. He started off the app, and located a very decent place in the map, thanks to the GPS satellites, called the owner, went over, took some photos and sent it to me, which I approved instantly, and we have that place now. It was that simple. I am surprised how technology is evolving. A tiny app for iPhone is now doing what google isn’t being able to do.

What a waste of time. I had an old 40 GB hard disk that I had bought ages ago lying around in my desk for some time now. I didn’t even know if it has been working or not, or if it contains any good data. Well, when I connected it to my antiquated single core computer at home, I found that it still had a good collection of music, images and porn. Well, Not a waste of time. I just copied the contents to my new 500 GB drive that I had bought recently and decided to install Solaris on this drive to test and find out how it works on my computer. Well, solaris is not for me. I am better with Ubuntu. I should try BSD soon enough and find out how it is for me.

Well. Then I decided to Install Windows on this drive to install some games in it so that I could play when I find time and dont have to bother wine and get into trouble. Installation of Windows was quick enough. Not as quick as ubuntu, but still, was quick. No drivers come with it you see. Everything has to be installed seperately. When the computer booted the first time, did the registration and stuff, it didn’t detect display, audio and the network. I couldnt find the dirvers, and hunting for these drivers on the internt for about 3 hours, I found no luck, and found that my complete evening was wasted, and with that time I could have done so many things creatively.

Commercial software always come with a bug, and though open source comes with bugs too, people are free to fix it themselves and use it, and those fixes can be used free of charge by everyone else as well. People just go after the promotional products that they get from commercial stuff, such as free updates for some time and other stuff, or a free T shirt displaying the product’s commercial logo.

How to sell hosting? There are millions and millions of websites along the Whispering Corridor out there that are offering web hosting. How do you get yourself into the business and move on to a bigger scale rather than providing hosting only for the small network of people whom you know? How do you make sure that people ignore all other providers and come to you? How do you sit back and relax and get everything automated? How to spot illegal purchases?

There are so many things like these that should be thought about when trying to sell web hosting. And providing web hosting and domain names is not an easy job.

What are you offering?

It is Web Hosting. You are playing host to your clients websites. And as clients are your guests, you need to give them the best of services. It is just like running a hotel, or providing a house on a rent or a lease. It shouldnt be termed as a sale. It is renting out of space. You get a server, and you install a control panel on it with which you can allot any amount of available space on the server to any number of clients as long as the server is not crowded and overloaded.

What all should come in the offer?

You should offer competing solutions at good prices. Ultra secure Red Hat servers and Windows 2003 servers installed with any and every feature that is available in the market, and make sure that you price them correctly. Exceptional round the clock chat and email support, and if possible, phone support as well.

How to start off?

Build a good looking site. A static site with paypal buttons sounds simple, but it is better to go for some web hosting automation script like phpcoin which is an excellent freeware, of you could think about using a licensed software that comes with good support, go for AWBS which is a smaller company than modernbill, and therefore the attention that you get from them is a lot higher, and effecient. Also, AWBS comes with built in SEO system that would optimize your site automatically. Also, it collects payments, processes the order and creates the hosting and domain names, reminds the clients at the time of their renewals, and suspends domains or hosting if the renewal fee is not paid.

With the site in place, you are ready for advertising.

Contd….

How to advertise and promote your site,

How to make sure that a visitor is converted into a client

How to collect payment.