Welcome back to Adult Affiliate Marketing for Newbies. Hopefully I caught your attention with the first article in this series, which really was nothing more than an introductory pep talk designed to help get you excited about the potential of adult website affiliate marketing. Enthusiasm will go a long way towards success. Now it’s time to dive right into some of the basics of making money as an adult website affiliate. Our topic today will be website hosting services, which make it possible for you to put your website on the internet for others to see. Getting a hosting account is a mandatory step in preparing to make money with adult websites and affiliate programs. Even if you don’t know much about HTML design, it’s still not a bad idea to get set up with a hosting service right from the start. The information in this article will help you make that happen.BEFORE WE GET STARTED, A FEW NOTES

But before I get into the topic at hand, I should call your attention to another resource that is available to newbies. Recently, some of the good folks here at YNOT put together a CD-ROM packed with valuable information about how to make money with adult websites. This CD is packed with far more information than you will get from reading articles; it puts all of the information you need in one place, and it includes instructive visuals, audio narration, and other goodies that will speed up the process of getting into adult websites for profit. If you have the means, I highly recommend that you consider this CD, which can be found at the Mastering the Adult Web website.

Additionally, I’d like to remind everyone that the chat forums here at YNOT are always available for your use. If you have any questions about basic adult webmaster skills, or you just want to share some of the work you have done with other webmasters, then don’t hesitate to visit our chat boards and participate. We have a friendly community here at YNOT, and you will find that YNOT members are generally very happy to talk with you and share tips and ideas.

One final note before we get into hosting. At this stage you probably do not have your own domain name. In a future article I’ll show you how to register your own domain name, which is optional but highly recommended for adult affiliate marketers. You can still get your own hosting account without your own domain name. Later, when you do register a domain name, you can instruct your host to make the necessary adjustments so that it will work with your hosting account. Right now, one step at a time.

IT’S WORTH PAYING FOR IT

While “free hosting” is an option, I’m not going to get into that subject with any detail in this article. There are legitimate uses for free hosts, but I believe that your needs are best served at this stage of the game with a paid hosting account. And while there are a variety of different paid hosting experiences, I’m going to ignore all but the most basic of hosting options.

Who you choose to host with, meaning which company, is entirely your call. Obviously you’ll need to find a host that accepts adult websites, and you probably should ask around to find a host that is well respected by other webmasters. There are a lot of considerations when choosing a host, many that will fall beyond the scope of this simple article. You can find a list of adult-friendly hosting companies in the YNOT Service Directory. The process of signing up for a host will vary from company to company, so in the interest of providing you with precise and detailed information, I will use the company Webair for our example. You are not obligated to use this company, obviously, yet the information in this article should still be pretty useful even if you select a different company for your web hosting service provider.

Start by clicking the following link to open up the Webair home page. Remember when I said there were a variety of paid hosting options? You want the option that is called Virtual Plan Hosting. If you click on the button labeled “Virtual Plan Hosting” you will see that you have a variety of options to choose from, and the prices and perks will vary depending on which package you choose. You will also notice, happily I think, that the most basic Virtual Plan Hosting option is relatively inexpensive. It’s far less expansive than “Dedicated” hosting plans. The prices at Webair are pretty much standard for website hosting companies. Some companies might be a little more, others a little less, but the prices you see here are about what you want to pay for hosting plans like these. You can shop around if you want to get a good idea of the range of prices available to webmasters.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

A few things to call to your attention.

Notice that these plans offer you “unlimited domains.” That’s a very important feature if you plan to get into the adult website marketing business. Recall I said we’d get into domain name registration later on in a future article, right? You will find, in time, that unique domain names are an invaluable tool in making money with adult website affiliate programs. Even though you won’t have a domain name just yet, having the ability to use an unlimited number of domain names with your hosting account will come in quite handy in the future.

You’ll also note that various plans offer varying numbers of IP addresses. There are certain reasons why an adult webmaster might need more than 1 IP address, however you’re not likely to encounter any of these reasons right off the bat. 1 IP address is more than enough for starters, and if this becomes a problem later on you can always upgrade to more IP addresses in the future.

You should also make note of how much storage space you will get. Again, you can start with a small number and work your way up as necessity dictates. How much storage space you have will dictate how large your website(s) can be, and how many images or videos you can offer surfers who visit your sites. Common sense stuff.

Now here’s something that you really need to understand – bandwidth. You know how most cell phones limit you to a certain number of minutes at your base monthly fee before they charge you extra for additional minutes over your plan’s allotment? Well, the same is true for hosting accounts; you have a limited amount of bandwidth, and if you use too much you get charged more. How does bandwidth get used? Well, let’s say that you have a web page that consists of an HTML document (a text file) and accompanying images (likely jpegs or gifs). Let’s say that altogether, this web page contains about 550K worth of files. Every time someone visits this page, 550K worth of files is transferred to their computer browser. Now I’m simplifying things a bit, but you get the idea. The amount transferred goes towards your monthly bandwidth limit, just like the minutes you use on your cell phone go towards your monthly minutes limit. The good news? If you’re transferring a lot of files, and thus using a lot of bandwidth, there’s a really good chance that your website is popular and you can make a lot of money off of it. So generally, with a few exceptions, if your bandwidth bill goes up so too does your earning potential.

On the Webair site, all Virtual Plan Hosting account options say “Unrestricted Bandwidth.” That doesn’t mean you have unlimited bandwidth, however – it merely means your website will not be taken offline if it reaches a certain transfer limit, and it will not be restricted to only a certain number of visitors at any one time. Instead, you will incur additional fees if your site goes beyond your monthly transfer limit. You will note that each account option also lists a “Transfer Limit” number, which is how many GBs you can transfer from your site each month before additional charges will be incurred. Make sure to look into how much you will have to pay for each GB you go over the Transfer Limit. Any good host will provide you will tools to monitor your bandwidth usage, which you should do on a daily basis at least. That way you won’t have any surprises if your website suddenly gets popular, or if your account is somehow being used in ways that you did not intend.

GET YOUR ACCOUNT

After you have selected a Virtual Hosting Plan that fits your needs and budget, you can go ahead and sign up for your account and get started. Select the plan that you want then click the “Sign Up” button. You will then be shown a list of “optional add-on” features, some free and some not. If you don’t know what these are, just leave the settings as they are and click the button to move on to the next step. You’ll next find a form that is pretty self explanatory… it asks for basic information like your name, billing address, billing method (such as your credit card number), etc. There is only one tricky part; since you do not yet have a domain name, just enter “IP ADDRESS ONLY” into one of the spots for “websites” and set the number of websites to “1” only. You can explain in the comments field that you do not yet have a unique domain name and you will add it later. When you have all the required fields filled out, click the “Submit” button.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Webair will set up your account and provide you with the details you need to use it. For most hosting accounts you will need to know how to use an FTP client, which we will cover in our next article. An FTP client allows you to transfer files back and forth between your personal computer and your website hosting account. Make note of any FTP related information that you are sent, including your account username, password, and server name. You will need this information later. While you are waiting for our upcoming discussion on FTP clients, you should spend some time looking over any information you were sent by Webair (or the host you chose), and familiarizing yourself with any web-based tools that you now have access to, such as your control panel for your hosting account. Next time out we’ll discuss FTP clients, and I’ll show you how to transfer some images over to your brand new hosting account and then view them on the internet with your web browser.

Stay tuned!