Don't skimp on this all important topic. You will quickly learn the err of your ways in the form of lost income.

Does it matter? Well, let's do an "It matters if..." list: You want to make money from your website You have plans of someday quitting your day job You'd like to earn a part-time income without having to ask, "Would you like fries with that?" You envision someday having financial security You are serious about having an online business What do these items have to do with your website host? Actually, they have a lot to do with the hosting company. The reason is that if you don't have a high-quality company guaranteeing a high percentage of uptime you are losing sales. If you are losing sales you are losing money...money that could be helping you meet the goals from the above list. Since I moved my websites to my latest (and hopefully last!) hosting company I've had very little downtime for my sites. This is very important to me for several reasons. I work very hard to get vistitors to my website, and I value each and every one of them. Why? Because visitors to my website translates into income for me. Income that is helping me reach my goals. When my site is unavailable my goals aren't being met. And believe me, when my goals aren't being met I'm not a very happy person. When I find that my website can't be reached I become very stressed. To disect this a little, let's suppose your site is down for several hours. How many visitors attempted to visit your site from their favorite search engine or link from another site? How many of those visitors might have subscribed to your newsletter? How many of those visitors might have clicked on one of your affiliate program or advertiser's links? How many might have become loyal followers of your newsletter or bookmarked your site to eagerly return from time to time to see what's changed on your site? What is the 'lifetime value' of those potential customers? You'll never know, and maybe you don't care but think of it this way: some companies calculate the "lifetime value" of a customer as many hundred or even many thousands of dollars. That is ONE customer!

The difference in price between a *great* website hosting company and an *okay* company can be as little as $10 a month.

In my opinion $10 a month doesn't justify losing even one customer, and when your site experiences frequent downtime you risk losing much more than just one customer.

You put a lot of time and effort (and maybe even money) designing your site to dazzle your visitors. You spend hour after hour updating content and coming up with new and more interesting material to keep them coming back.

And then you get cheap on the backbone of your business?!?

Don't do it.

Go with a company that is strong, has been around for awhile, has a great reputation for customer satisfaction, and superb technical support.

The company that I host my sites with is Site Buildit!. They have exceeded my needs in every possible way. And that is very important to me. I could move to a cheaper solution and save a few bucks a month...but why sacrifice peace of mind?

It isn't worth to me, and it shouldn't be to you either.

Click here and take your business to the next level!

Chuck McCullough is the owner of http://AffiliateMatch.com offering FREE articles, tips, hints, and real-world advice on how to make money with your website. Visit his site or join his FREE newsletter, The AffiliateMatch Informer by sending a blank email to mailto:newsletter@affiliatematch.com.

Chuck McCullough is the owner of http://AffiliateMatch.com offering FREE articles, tips, hints, and real-world advice on how to make money with your website. Visit his site or join his FREE newsletter, The AffiliateMatch Informer by sending a blank email to mailto:newsletter@affiliatematch.com.