WebDiggin.com: An Adventure to Make Money Online

We recently signed up with BlueHost and are in the process of moving our websites to their servers. It all started with examining how much money I made in 2007, and a resolution to re-consider the potential money you can make from websites through dynamic content-based ads (like AdSense or Etology). Coming up with a decent name took time, and then we found out a way to protect your privacy when registering a domain name… so that took some more time. We never intended to switch from our old website hosting provider, but after researching so many good reviews about BlueHost, we decided to take the plunge and switch.

Up until the very end, we were going to stay with webserve.ca which is where we were originally sitting. (After all, staying where you are is the path of least resistance, and I won’t deny that there was some Canadian patriotism hiding in there.) Some internet research for coupon codes lead to some unflattering reviews about webserve.ca. People felt their domain control pages took forever to load, the sites were down a few too many times, and the customer service was slow to respond. I thought it was just us. To be honest, I thought all web hosts were like that.

What really made us look for another webhost, however, was the challenge in finding domain registration companies that offered privacy options for the WHOIS listing. When you register a domain name, all of the contact information is publicly listed… which is good to build trust if you are an e-commerce site (as pointed out in a comment), but bad if you are using your personal information and want to retain some privacy. Many Canadian domain registration companies didn’t offer privacy options, and the ones that did were considerably more expensive than their .com counterparts. Some more research on the internet and we finally decided to switch.

5 reasons why we switched our websites to BlueHost.

1. The cost of running our website with BlueHost was comparable to what we were paying with our old company.

BlueHost charges $6.95 per month, which I’ll admit is slightly more expensive than what we were paying before ($5.95 per month for 12 months of service). But with BlueHost, we got free set up, no hidden fees, and the domain registration was included in the cost. (Our old host charged us $30 for the (Canadian) domain name registration). In fact, the main domain name associated with the account is free forever as long as you continue to pay for the plan. (They offer a slightly more expensive rate of $7.95 per month if you only sign up for 12 months instead of 24 months – which isn’t necessarily a bad option as you’ll see in point #5).

By the way, BlueHost has a 30 day satisfaction guarantee. You can get your money back if you cancel within the month. (You won’t get refunded $10 which goes towards paying for the domain name registration. As far as we could tell, no one refunds a domain name registration, anyways.)

2. BlueHost offers BlueHost Domain Privacy for free.

Given that we wanted to keep our privacy, this was an important feature. Not all domain registration companies provide it, or provide it for free. (For example, GoDaddy charges $9.99 for the domain name and an additional $6.99 for the domain privacy option, unless you buy 5 domain names.)

3. BlueHost allows you to add on as many other additional domain names as you want.

With our old web hosting company, we were limited to 5 subdomains. With BlueHost, you can have unlimited subdomains. In addition, you can have an unlimited number of domains pointing to various sections of your server space.

What does this mean? Our original website was hosted by webserve.ca (at $5.95 per month). They provided 1 GB of space for us to build our website. They also allowed us to have 5 subdomains to try different things. For example, gohanyo.ca is our Japanese Canadian recipe site. Inkjet.gohanyo.ca points to our coupon site for inkjets. Webserve restricts our account to 5 subdomains. We didn’t even bother trying to buy other domain names to point to our website because the customer service was slow and there wasn’t a way for us to connect other domains to our server space ourselves. (It had to be a work-order sent to customer service.)

With BlueHost, you pay once (at $6.95 per month) to buy server space to host your online empire. They provide 600 GB of space for you to build your website. (600 times larger compared to what we had before.) You are allowed unlimited subdomain names (whereas our old web host restricted us to 5.) But here’s what we liked best. You can have unlimited add-on domains. That means once you’ve signed up for one account with Blue Host (and get your free main domain name registered to your account), you can buy as many other domain names as you want (at $10 per domain name) and point them to different directories on your server. So while people will think that mydomain.com and myaddondomain.com are different sites, they will actually be hosted in the same location. (You only had to pay once to get an account with BlueHost.) Even better, you can create multiple email accounts from any of the add on domains linked to your account. You can have admin@mydomain.com and admin@myaddondomain.com.

Q. Can I have multiple domains pointing to my site or to a directory on my site?

Solution
A. Yes you can have multiple domains point to the same site or to a directory on your site. When you sign up, just choose the main domain you want to use, and later you can login to the control panel and add the other domains through the addon domains section of the control panel. Also before adding on the extra domains, make sure that you have pointed them to the appropriate name servers with your registrar, and allow them sufficient time to propogate across the internet.

This means that you can experiment with as many websites as you want. Once you’ve signed up with BlueHost for the year, each additional website experiment will cost $10 for the domain name registration. This was the deciding factor that made us switch web hosts. 600 times more space and unlimited possibility for growth in different websites.

4. You can use WordPress on your BlueHost account with the click of a button.

The only way you’re allowed to use Google AdSense and Affiliate links to make money on a WordPress blog is if you run WordPress on your own website. Wordpress.com (where you can get a free WordPress account) has the following restrictions:

• Adsense, Yahoo, Chitika and other ads are not permitted to be added by users. Adverts that may be inserted when using an external blogging program will be blocked.
• Sponsored / paid posts including PayPerPost, ReviewMe and Smorty are not permitted.
• Sponsored / paid links are not permitted.
• Affiliate / referral links to the following domains (usercash, clickbank, clickhop, cashrocks, payingcash) are not permitted.
• Text ads are not permitted.

A discreet link to your business in the sidebar or an About page is permitted.

One discreet link to Amazon per blog is okay, but if the primary purpose of the blog is to drive traffic to affiliate programs that’s not allowed. If you’re not sure, contact support.

Clicktrackers and any promotion of the “I made a million on the internet and so can you” type of advertising are expressly forbidden.

If you are in any doubt, ask.

We have a very low tolerance for blogs created purely for search engine optimization or commercial purposes, machine-generated blogs, and will continue to nuke them, so if that’s what you’re interested in WordPress.com is not for you.

It makes you wonder what’s the point if you can’t monitize your blog? So how do you put Google AdSense and other ads on a WordPress blog? You need to download the WordPress platform from WordPress.org and install it on your own website. I’ve done it with our gohanyo.ca site when we were with webserve.ca. It’s not for the technically faint-of-heart. Make sure your site meets the following requirements: PHP 4.3 or higher, MySQL 4.0 or higher, Apache or Litespeed recommended.

If you don’t understand the requirements, or you want to save some time and just get the blog up and running then seriously consider a BlueHost account. When we decided to purchase space with BlueHost, signing up took only a few minutes. What surprised me was how quickly the site was up and running (and how lame this post is sounding.) I literally closed the window that had my transaction information, opened up a new browser window, typed in our new domain name (snitchandbitchcafe.com) and the account was already activated. When I signed in to the control panel at BlueHost (which loaded at lightspeed compared to webserve.ca), it took me about 10 minutes to go through their tutorials to set things up (like email), and a few clicks to get the WordPress installed. (It’s at the bottom under Software / Services. Click on the button called Fantastico de Luxe and you’ll see a list of software installers, including b2evolution, nucleus, and WordPress.)

My only comment is that the installer is for WordPress 2.3.1 and the current release is 2.3.2, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before the installer catches up.

5. Finally, BlueHost currently offers $100 in coupons for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

This may be a limited time offer because when I search the net, I see the promotions change here and there.

The best offer that affiliate marketers can give you is this: Yahoo! Sponsored Search connects businesses and customers online. Sign up and get a $25 credit. A $25 credit when you sign up isn’t bad. Don’t get me wrong. But, when BlueHost offers $50 for Yahoo and $50 for Google AdWords so that you can try the paid sponsored ads to promote your website, it’s like getting your website for free.

Here’s the math: A year subscription with Blue Host (12 months) at $7.95 per month is a one-time fee of $95.40. When you get $100 in credit at Google and Yahoo, you’ve entirely recovered your costs.

Here’s the catch to use the coupons. You have 15 days to use the coupons before the codes expire and they’re only for people who are starting a new account with Google and Yahoo. So I guess it’s time for your spouse to open an account.

Bottom Line:

If you’re thinking about experimenting with affiliate marketing and trying to make money with blogs and content websites, then BlueHost is the way to go. Sign up for a year at $95.40 ($7.95/month) or two years at $166.80 ($6.95/month). You get one free domain registration for as long as you maintain an account at BlueHost. You can link an unlimited number of add on domains to your account so trying out different types of websites will only cost you the price of additional domain registrations ($10.00 per domain). You can install WordPress with the click of a button and use Google AdSense and other affiliate marketing links to make money from your website. And, you get $100 of free credit and Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing to either 1. promote your new website, or 2. try your hand at search marketing.

Reliable, Affordable Business Hosting from Bluehost.com.
Check it out.

(4 votes, Rating: 3.5 out of 5)

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