Change of Scenery: New Kyvon Office
Kyvon has moved! As of March, our office has relocated to our data center space at 710 Tucker Boulevard in downtown St. Louis. Our new location puts us in the heart of the city, just a few blocks from the Arch and the amazing Citygarden.
What does this mean to our hosting customers? Our technicians now sit only a few feet from our data center space, increasing response time to customer support requests.
*Customers should also note our change in payment address earlier this month and update their records accordingly.
7 Extra Service Ideas for Web Hosts
There comes a time with every web host, when they feel they have outgrown their current services they provide, and they want to do more than just web hosting. When a web host diversifies into other things, they often branch out internally or with the help of a third party into other services. If you are a web host out there looking for a way to branch out, I have a few suggestions that you might want to look into.
Domain Name Registration – This one is the most obvious additional service a web host can provide. Who doesn’t want to give customers the ability to register a domain and buy the hosting in one place? By doing so, you keep you customers from looking elsewhere for one of the most important add-ons you could branch out into.
Backup Hosting – Many web hosts move into backup hosting too. You could provide off site personal backup as a secondary service, or you could offer a subscription based service for the customer’s web site backup and the process of restoring that backup.
SEO or Marketing Services – When it comes to selling search engine optimization or any sort of marking packages, make sure you have the support team to back you up. This sort of service has a bad reputation, because many people see it as selling snake oil. It is a tricky one to show real results from, so if you do move into the SEO and marketing business, just make sure you provide your customers with the goods.
Gift Cards – Providing gift cards can be an excellent way to make yourself look more compassionate about the customer’s needs. It might not make loads of money, but providing a way to give your services as a present is never a bad thing. It could help out beginning web hosting gurus, and help young webmasters in getting their first works on the Web.
Affiliate Programs – Why sell your web hosting plans yourself when you can get somebody else to do it for you? By giving people a “finder’s fee” when they bring you a new customer, you give your community a reward, just for sharing their opinion. Now it might be hard to lure affiliate professionals, when some companies pay 95% of their profit to affiliates, but start out low and work your way up.
Web Site Design – Like domain name registration, offering a web site design service or an internally built WYSIWYG editor is another nice extra service to add. It is one of those web hosting necessities that everybody needs, and not everybody has the time to do themselves.
Other Flavors of Web Hosting – When it comes to adding extra services, do not just look at things outside web hosting. You could offer more web hosting plans. For example, if you only provide shared web hosting right now, you could move into VPS or dedicated web hosting services. You could even make shared hosting plans that are a little cheaper (with less extras) or a shared hosting plan that is a little more expensive (with more extras).
There are many ways a web hosting company can diversify. The important thing to remember is to keep your quality of the service as high as possible for each new service you provide. I have seen web hosts launch a new product, then forget about it the next month, too many times. Make sure you give yourself ample time to build up each new service you decide to provide.
Get the Podcast! Listen to this article and more on Web Hosting Show, podcast #204!
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© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my firefox help site and my tech blog too!
Web Hosting Power-up Ideas – Podcast 204
Are you a webmaster looking for power-up ideas to turn your mediocre web site into a powerhouse of the Web? Are you a web host looking for ideas on how you can diversify your web hosting services, to make a little more money on related services you can provide? Today’s podcast is all about web hosting power-ups. Little ideas that you can bring into your web hosting companies or your web sites to take them to the next level.
Download the Web Hosting Show, Episode 204!
Running Time: 9 minutes | File Size: 4.00 MB
If I had to pick one, I would say “diversify” would be the word of the week for this edition of the Web Hosting Show. Here is a summary of this week’s show.
7 Extra Service Ideas for Web Hosts
There comes a time with every web host, when they feel they have outgrown their current services they provide, and they want to do more than just web hosting. When a web host diversifies into other things, they often branch out internally or with the help of a third party into other services. If you are a web host out there looking for a way to branch out, I have a few suggestions that you might want to look into.
4 Ways to Branch Out Your Web Site
With any web site or online business, it is important to change things up a ‘bit every so often. You don’t want to be seen as becoming stale, or yesterday’s news, so bringing new web site concepts or ideas could be the perfect diversification tool you need to keep people interested in what you do and what you have to offer. There is not a web site out there today that could not be helped by adding one of these four web site service ideas.
Now it is your turn. Do you have any extra tips or something to say about diversifying a web hosting business or any personal web site out there on the Web? Leave you comments or feel free to pass your thoughts to me at mitch@mitchkeeler.com.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my firefox help site and my tech blog too!
Google Apps for Business Now Available at Kyvon
Kyvon now offers Google Apps for Business– web-based office tools by Google used to streamline setup, minimize maintenance, and reduce IT costs.
Google’s web-based messaging and collaboration apps require no hardware or software and need minimal administration, creating tremendous time and cost savings for businesses.
Included Google Applications:
Gmail for business
25GB storage, less spam, and a 99.9% uptime SLA, and enhanced email security.
Google Calendar
Agenda management, scheduling, shared online calendars and mobile calendar sync.
Google Docs
Documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Work online without attachments.
Google Groups
User-created groups providing mailing lists, easy content sharing, searchable archives.
Google Sites
Secure, coding-free web pages for intranets and team managed sites.
Google Video
Private, secure, hosted video sharing.
For more information, please contact us today.
Unlimited Hosting, Fact or Myth?
When you walk into an all you can eat buffet, nobody expects you to eat all the food in the restaurant. You might fill up your plate three or four times, but you can not eat everything in sight. The same could be said for unlimited services you might see when it comes to web hosting.
What Does Unlimited Really Mean in Web Hosting?
While they say you have unlimited disk space and unlimited bandwidth – the average web site out there will never reach the real limits of the account. If you are running a web site for your local football team, your not going to get a world wide audience, people digging your web site, and surges of other traffic sources at you fingertips. You’ll serve your local niche.
Now over the long term, things could change. For an example, your web site might not have many pages the first month or even the first year. However, year after year you might notice your web site growing by leaps and bounds. At that point, if you are with a shared web hosting company, you might outgrow your web hosting space – but even then it is unlikely.
The real thing you have to pay attention to, or at least be aware of is spikes in usage or usage of system resources – such as RAM or CPU power. This often happens when you get a spike of traffic from a few sources, or your web site’s security is at risk. For most people though, that is still as likely as lightening striking you down as you listen to this podcast. It isn’t likely to happen.
So unlimited this, that or the other in web hosting is like the all you can eat buffet at your favorite restaurant. You can eat and eat all you want, but the human body (and web sites too) can only eat so much at one time.
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!
© Mitch Keeler 2010 | Check out my firefox help site and my tech blog too!
New Payment Address for Kyvon Customers
Please note: as of February 22nd, our billing address has changed. If you choose to send payment for your account via check, please mail them to the following address:
Kyvon
PO BOX 1348
St. Louis, MO 63188-1348
For billing inquiries, please email billing@kyvon.com.
New Year, New Look at Kyvon.com
Here at Kyvon, we’re kicking off 2010 with a fresh, new look. Our website has undergone quite a makeover in order to provide easier access to customer tools such as our Client Portal and Remote Support in addition to streamlining our service and Hosting package information to better educate future and existing customers. Stay tuned for 2010 updates to our other spots around the web such as Twitter, Facebook, and our blog.
What do you think about our redesign? Let us know in the comments, below.
Resolutions & Recommendations for Your Small Business in 2010
The new year is upon us, bringing a wave of resolutions for people and businesses as they strive to move forward into the next decade. As we creep closer to 2010, I find a surprising number of businesses still utilize free email and website accounts versus hosting their web presence via their own domain name. Even more surprising, eMarketer quoted an Ad-ology survey that found that 46 percent of small business owners do not have a Web site in 2009.
Between pint-sized laptops and smart phones, consumers are connecting faster and easier every day. Without a professional web presence, your company is missing out on connecting with those consumers. Our recommendation is that every business resolve to exit the dark ages and acquire (at bare minimum) the following services:
Domain Name
Protect your brand online and reserve your spot on the web by registering your domain name today. Registering a domain doesn’t automatically make your website appear when visitors enter your domain into a Web browser, so we’ll move on to item #2.
Hosting
Shared hosting allows multiple Web sites to reside on a single server that is connected to our high-speed Internet backbone. Shared hosting is the easiest and most affordable way to bring your website to the Internet. Your site is located on our servers – the equivalent of leasing office space. A certain portion of the building is yours, with your name on the door, and you can rely on the building manager (Kyvon) for security, maintenance and facilities management.
For companies requiring additional options, check out our co-location and dedicated services. Kyvon also offers discounts for your non-profit.
Once you have acquired your domain name(s) of choice, your company can create professional email accounts (such as name@CompanyName.com) by utilizing either Qmail or Exchange hosting. These accounts are compatible with third party email clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail and can be set up on your smart phone for on-the-go access. What would you trust more: CompanyName@yahoo.com or name@CompanyName.com?
Happy Holidays From Kyvon
Kyvon wishes our customers & their families Happy Holidays! To celebrate the season, we thought it would be a treat to provide a wee bit of entertainment for you while you sit at your desk counting down the minutes until your holiday weekend.
Kyvon Voted One of the Best IT Firms in St. Louis
Kyvon was recently named one of the top IT Firms in St. Louis by Small Business Monthly. Each month Small Business Monthly polls their readers and asks them to help identify the best in the St. Louis area in a particular industry. Kyvon is included in SBM’s Best in Business list in the December edition, released December 1st. We are honored to be recognized for our service, and would like to congratulate our fellow St. Louis IT firms that accompany us on the Best in Business list.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our customers for choosing Kyvon for their IT solutions for more than a decade.
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