After waiting a long time for other adverts I selected Kash Dash to be Matched, and within a few days this has been done. You can see the matched advert on the right sidebar. All I need to do now is leave it there for a month and I get £3, simple as that.

If you want to get your site matched, click here.

Everyone has different needs when looking for shared web hosting. You will need a certain amount of space and bandwidth for your website. You may also need databases, add-on domains, sub-domains and e-mail accounts. You should check with the host that the package will meet your needs.

Over Selling Resources

A small website will not need many resources, however people are caught in the headlights by large numbers. A large majority of web hosts on the Internet oversell their services. You may have come across plans that include 500GB Space and 2TB of bandwidth, this is overselling. If you were to actually use all these resources I’m sure the host would soon close your account on the grounds of “high CPU usage”. There is no need to get lots of space and bandwidth, simply get what you need at a moderate price.

Resource Limits

Most shared hosting will have resource limitations such as CPU etc. This means that you can only use X% resources for your site for X amount of time. If you are running scripts, check that they can run in the time limits set by the host. You should also check database size limits, and outgoing e-mail limits that may be in place.

You may only be able to have a database up to so many MB. If you have a forum then this is likely to grow and you may need to upgrade so you might want to plan ahead and see how easy upgrades are going to be. E-mail limits may be set hourly which means you can only send for example 200 e-mails an hour.

Reseller Hosts

Reseller hosting makes it easy for anyone to setup a web host. This means you need to check to see how reliable the host is. The last thing you want is a weeks hosting before the person running it ditches their hosting site leaving you with no money and no hosting. To avoid this look for a host that has good reviews from others and is well established. If you are insistent on going for a certain host check how long they have been operating for, if they are a registered business and you may also check there Paypal transaction rating if this is available.

More on Reviews

There are many review sites that you can take a look at, however it is likely that the host themselves have added their website to allow reviews. This also implies that they have the ability to edit and remove reviews that have been left. The best place to get reviews is from existing customers - how obvious was that. Do this by running reverse IP on the hosts IP address. This will allow you to get some of the web addresses on that hosts server.

Hopefully you will not get other sites run by the host so check the WHOIS info to different details and send an e-mail to the site owner asking about the service. You may also want to Google terms such as “hosts name reviews” or “hosts name scam” to see what comes up. Forums are another good place to ask, however if someone simply keeps saying the host is great, check the website URL that they have hosted with the host to ensure they are not just self promoting.

Up time

Up time is very important in hosting and now many hosts have a service level agreement that ensure you receive X% of up time. You may want to use external monitors to see what the up time for a web host is like. The only real way to find the truth is to ask previous customers due to some monitoring sites allowing hosts to remove outages from statistics.

Support

This is one of the most important things in hosting. Check what types of support are available. Do they have Phone, E-mail, Instant Messenger, REAL Live Chat or Ticket Support. If there is a problem with your website you want it sorted asap so ensure that the facilities are there for you to receive help when you need it. Ensure their after sales support is as good as their before sales.

Summary

Always go with a host that has a good reputation for up time, pricing and customer service. New hosts with great deals might to be around for too long due to lack of experience. It only takes one thing to go wrong with a small host that removes their budget for servers so ensure that your host is there to stay.

Those are a few basic things to look out for, more advanced users may wish to check that the server IP is not black listed and that they have a good server infrastructure etc.

I have been registered with Pipeline Card for some time now and didn’t really think about posting about it here until I received an e-mail today.

Pipeline Card has been set up by a long time fuel protester Ben Scammell (I know, worrying isn’t it) to try and get us all cheaper fuel. It’s totally free to join and they are trying to get a discount on petrol & diesel. Besides the doubt that the name may bring, put it to one side you have nothing to lose by signing up infact you can benefit from it in more ways than one.

It seems like a good idea, and has some impressive support… Join Here

Oh and if you register, then recommend someone you get £25 discount off a case of wine from Virgin Wines.

You can find information that may save you money in other area’s such as Gas and Electricity.

After my payment, Matched.co.uk has gone rather quiet. Plently of affiliate clicks, however no signups so no money for me :(. A step to help increase the money coming my way has been to add this website to my account. Unfortunatly they were unable to match two of my other websites with advertisers so I am now waiting to see if they can match KashDash.com.

If you want to make me some money then please join here!

You get paid £3 a month no matter how many clicks you send to a website. You simply place the code on your website and leave it there :). This is great for smaller websites with a lower number of visitors that are unlikely to receive clicks. On the other hand its not so good for sites with many clicks due to them not making as much as they could if they were publishing the advertisers content directly.

If you join as a publisher now, you receive a £5 signup bonus!

Learn More about Matched.co.uk here.

View the confirmed payment here.