So last we met, we were talking about getting your niche figured out and your domain names registered. Next is hosting — after all, it doesn’t matter if you have the greatest domain name in the history of the world (and don’t worry — everyone else on the planet thinks they have the greatest domain name in the history of the world as well), if you don’t have it hosted somewhere it isn’t going to make a lick of difference.
I would recommend getting a dedicated server if you’re contemplating doing a bunch of content. If you’re only looking to do a pic site, with no video, you might be ok with a cheaper hosting company and not worry about dedicated hosting. But if you intend to have a lot of traffic from a lot of members (and that is what you’re hopefully going for), then a dedicated server is just going to do you a whole world of good and prevent headaches of all kinds.
DIfferent hosting companies also have different criteria when it comes to adult content. Anything related to Google is probably going to get shut down pretty quickly, much like any of the social networking sites on Ning.com recently found out. You don’t want to spend all your time setting up a gorgeous site only to find out that it got shut down (and you’ve lost your content along with it).
Personally, I like HostGator, but as you can tell this blog is pretty safe-for-work (SFW). My online store, PrivateXXXStudio, is also hosted there – but it’s relatively tame if you compare it to most other XXX sites. My XXX site, part of BBWPornPass, is on a dedicated server that is managed by the webmasters for the network.
What you want is a solid host that has great customer service, that probably has experience working with adult paysites. If you’re starting out, you should be able to get away with a minimum cost package through any of those hosting companies — upgrades should be easy to do once you have more content, or more members, or more traffic — or all three. These companies have good reputations in the industry for handling hosting:
Website Hosting by PhatServers
Be careful shopping for hosting companies – a few of them are simply resellers for GoDaddy hosting. Those are pretty simple to see since the look just like the GoDaddy hosting page, with a few minor changes. You want a company that is set up to handle your issues – with a GoDaddy reseller, if you have any problems, you’re going to have to go through them rather than the company that you thought you signed up with. So keep that in mind — you would probably do a whole lot better dealing with a company that has its own customer service that you can reach yourself. 24-hr support is great – online chat is even better.
Next we’ll talk about content – where you can get it, how you can get it, and how much it can cost.
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Good advice – I don’t have a pay site nor the demands which come with it but I’ve had experienced with several different hosts and just had a horrible debacle with one which resulted on my having to shop for hosts after 7 years of being with the same host.
I definitely recommend chatting up the sales rep if you can. You recommend good customer service and I think that is important for any domain owner. I specifically refused to work with any company who outsourced their customer service – scripted replies never do anyone a damned good and if I run into troubles, I expect that I should get my money’s worth from my host.
It was also important for me to work with a company rather than an individual masquerading as a company or an individual with a reseller which you touched on. I might edit this post to define a reseller (a person or a group of persons who have purchased a larger hosting plan from a company and resell it to someone else) because someone who is not familiar with hosting might not realize this. I always prefer to skip the middle man, anyway.
One thing I also keep in mind is that no company has unlimited resources and if they offer that, be wary (this is known as overselling). You might find unfare restrictions placed on you if the company thinks you’re using too many resources or experience a lot of downtime and slowness because so many customers are using so many resources (a dedicated server won’t have this issue, of course). Some companies will charge an arm and a leg if you use over X amount of space or bandwidth, even if the plan is “unlimited.” On a related note, it is easy to upgrade plans and starting smaller might be smarter but make sure you know what the cost will be if you do go over your plan.
Enough spiel from me, good article!
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I completely agree with the “start small” philosophy, especially if anyone is new to the paysite game. Start small, with purchased content – you can teach yourself and learn from the little (or big) mistakes that way with a minimum of financial commitment.
I would eventually suggest moving to a dedicated server, but going through a smaller hosting company that specializes in adult content paysites is a great starting point