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Alex Melen Interview at Retireat21.com

I just finished an interview with Michael Dunlop from Retireat21.com, go check it out: http://www.retireat21.com/interview/interview-with-alex-melen-founder-of-t35-free-web-hosting

Some of the questions I cover in the interview include:

– Tell us about your main project, T35 Hosting ? Why did you launch T35 Hosting ? Where are you at now with T35 Hosting ?
– I understand that you have over 600,000 free hosting customers and a few thousand paid hosting customers, what advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to build a membership of any kind?
– Your website has an incredible today’s alexa ranking of 7000! How have you been able to achieve such a high rate of traffic? What advice would you give a young entrepreneur trying to market their website?
– Why should people use T35 over any other FREE host? What do you offer that makes your service better than your competition?
– Do you think that entrepreneurialism is something that is in your blood? Or is it something that can be learned?
– What advice would you give to a Young Entrepreneur setting up their first business?

Tripod Free Hosting Closes Down

An email I received from tripod this morning:

Dear User,
As announced on the 26th of November 2008 the portal and webhosting activities of the Lycos Europe GmbH will be discontinued. Unfortunately, the free hosting service Tripod is effected. For this reason we are hereby terminating your Tripod Account as of 15th February 2009. Until the 15th February you can use your Tripod account and your Homepage as usual. After this date we will close your account and delete all your content which was stored on Tripod in accordance with legal requirements. After this date it will be ímpossible to view your Homepage in the internet or to do a Backup using FTP from your page because the content will be unrecoverably deleted. That is why we advise you to to backup all necessary data in the near future from your Tripod Account on your hard drive and if wanted to upload it to another homepage provider. Please keep in mind that we do not offer any support for the free homepages neither by phone nor by email for upcoming questions. Because of this reason we created a short description how to backup your data. We regret having to take this step and we want to thank you for your confidence in the past. Currently, we are still working on finding a solution to provide you the service through another provider. If we should succeed in doing so, we will inform you within the next 4 weeks. But as this is currently doubtful, we would like to ask you to assume the end of the service. Despite the sad news we wish you and your family a successful 2009.
Best wishes,
Your Lycos Tripod Team

For those who read my “What happened to free web hosting?” post from last year, Tripod was one of the few that was actually still around and operating. I guess I spoke too soon though. Although I haven’t used my tripod account in half a decade, it’s still sad to see another iconic 90′s free web host close it’s doors.

*UPDATE* I am still trying confirm if this applies to all of tripod, or only the European operations (tripod.co.uk). If anyone knows, please feel free to chime in.

4 Things Your Web Host Doesn’t Want You To Know

Looking for a web host for your website? Ever feel like some of the things being promised are far fetched? Check this list to see if your host has done this to you! And if they have: run, don’t walk.. get far far away! There are plenty of web hosts in the market to not waste your time and money with the bad ones.

1. WE OFFER TERABYTES OF SPACE.. ALL FOR $1.. WE PROMISE!

You’ve seen all the offers.. tens of thousands of gigabytes.. thousands of terabytes.. all for just a few dollars. Think it’s too good to be true? Well, it is. How do you think the hosts afford all that space? It’s a simple trick that is known as “overselling” in the web hosting world. Hosts sell 100x-1000x more space then they actually have hoping you don’t use it. And what happens if you start using it? Well if you read their terms of service, most of these hosts control your account based on cpu usage. At the same time, “file storage” isn’t allowed. So as soon as you upload more than 1gb, or get more then a few thousand visitors on your site, you will find your site gone. Of course none of the hosts want you to know this, so they hide it in confusing fine print and terms of service aggreements. I hate to say it, but mom & pop might have been right… if it’s too good to be true, it probably is a scam.

2. WE HAVE BEEN IN BUSINESS FOR DECADES.

I find it funny how several well known hosts claim to have been around for “decades”. Another one boldly states “In Business since 1988″. I hate to break it to you guys, but there wasn’t really such a thing as web hosting back then. I’ve been involved in the hosting industry almost since the beginning, and I know for a fact there weren’t any $5/mo hosts around in the 1980′s. Before believing a hosts claim, check the whois on the domain and see when they registered it. The funny part is that most hosts that claim to be more than 10 years old haven’t been around more than a 1 year! Obviously they don’t want you to know this, so do your due diligence and make sure you don’t get scammed by a fly-by-night host.

3. WE HAVE OUR OWN DATACENTER – THOUSANDS OF SQ FEET

Face it, no matter what web host you go to, their site has pictures of huge datacenters, thousands of servers! Unfortunatly, most web hosts are just “re-sellers”. Just people with some spare time that rent some space on someones server for $20/mo and try to re-sell the space to a 100+ people. Best way to check? Ask for the address and other information on their datacenter. The trick here is that many hosts will give you the information of their providers datacenter (who they are renting from!), but if you are persistent enough and dig around you should be able to dig up the truth.

4. OUR HOSTING IS ONLY $5/MO – BUT YOU HAVE TO SIGN UP UNTIL 2050.

I don’t know what it is these days, but web hosting used to follow the logic of “what you see is what you get”. Now you have everyone advertising plans for $5/mo, but when you get to their website you find out it’s $20/month! What’s the deal?? Well it turns out that you need to sign up for 2 years, 3 years or even 5 years to get the “$5/mo”. Is it just me, or is that not $5/mo? That would be $300/5years, not $5/mo! The worst part is that you usually don’t realize a host is doing this until you get to the final part in the check out. Do your research! Make sure when they say $5/mo, they mean $5/mo! Not $300 for 5 years divided by 60!

Using HostSEO.org to Dominate Search Engine Results

SEO hosting is the most important tool for a webmaster who wants to improve search engine rankings through link building. Typically, when webmasters link up their own websites to each other, they do so through a single IP address. This can prove to be very problematic for link building due to the nature of the search engine spiders. These spiders will often times either ignore or assign lower value to inbound links from domains located on the same IP address. As such, webmasters who own multiple domains are constantly seeking new ways to link up their websites without running into the issue of devalued links. One method of doing that is through SEO hosting services such as HostSEO.org.

HostSEO.org allows you to host your domain on one server with different unique c-class IP’s, making the search engines identify those domains as owned by different people. Having the search engines think your websites are unique and different means you get all the SEO benefits of link building without compromising any link juice. While this does not necessarily provide you with more links from your websites, this does ensure that the links between your websites are considered inbound links from outside sources. If you have several PR5 websites all linking to each other, hosting them on separate c-class IP addresses will allow them to pass their full link juice to your other websites. This will provide you with an array of high quality backlinks, elevating your website to higher search engine positions and increasing both visibility and traffic.

HostSEO.org additionally ranks as one of the best SEO hosting services. As one of the fastest growing hosting companies with over 5,000 people currently using their services, HostSEO.org offers 99.9% uptime with a 30 day money back guarantee. HostSEO.org’s reliable service is backed by a 24/7 help desk and 8 hour live chat service manned by a helpful and knowledgeable staff. In fact, HostSEO reviews from ReviewGuru.com stand at an impressive 97% Excellent score.

What makes HostSEO exceptional is the fact that not only do they provide superior hosting services, but their prices are also incredibly competitive with hosting services of lower quality. Starting at prices as low as $13/month, HostSEO allows you to experience the results of SEO hosting without the financial burden. Testimonial from a satisfied customer said HostSEO was far superior to HostGator, a claim that many other web hosting services can only dream of. As a subdivision of T35 Hosting, one of the largest web hosts in the world, HostSEO provides reliable servers that allow your site to load faster without any downtime.

Creating back links is the most effective way to improve search engine ratings. HostSEO.org lets you mount a very effective link building campaign for your websites from unique c-class IP addresses without being hindered by major search engines.

Top 5 Features to look for in Free Web Hosting

Looking for a free web host today is a lot different then it was just a few years back. Make sure to look at all of your choices and to compare the web hosting plans. Below are the top 5 features to look for when choosing the perfect free web host.

Unlimited Space & Bandwidth
In most cases you are getting a free web hosting account to avoid paying for hosting. The last thing you want to happen is for you to have a free page up for a few days and then be hit with an “out of space – please pay to upgrade”. Free web hosts usually place ads on your pages and make more money the more space and bandwidth you use. Thus, they shouldn’t have a problem with offering unlimited space & bandwidth for free (without using that to force you to upgrade).

Limited Non-Intrusive Ads
These days most free web hosts can get by from very limited ads either on the 404 pages or on the footers of your pages. You shouldn’t need to have your entire site covered by your hosts banner ads and pop-ups to get a decent hosting account. You should also stay away from hosts that have absolutely no ads. These hosts are obviously not generating any revenue and won’t be able to stay in business and pay for their expenses for long.

An Established Company
It’s become so easy to start a free web host that companies can easily seem great one day and then disappear the next. This is especially the case since the service being offered is “free” and requires very limited expertise to get started. Make sure your web host is well established and has been around offering free web hosting for a while. Several companies like, T35 Hosting, have been offering free web hosting services for over 12 years.

Uploading Your Site
The most important feature you will use from any free web host is the uploading feature. This is how you will upload your initial site and make any future changes. Make sure your host has several options to upload and edit your files like FTP and an online file manager (when you are away from home and don’t have an ftp application installed).

Reliable Support
The last thing you expect from your new web host is for things to break or not work, but unfortunately that is sometimes the case. When this happens, the only one there to help you is the host’s support team. Compare web hosts and make sure you use one that offers a comprehensive support system. Features to look for include a helpdesk, support forum, and a live chat. If the host has a forum make sure to visit it to see how active it is and how quickly requests are answered.

Web Page Builder Wizard: WebPageWizard.org

Have you ever wanted to easily build your site without worrying about the designs, scripts, web hosting, etc..? Well good news!! Today we launch our new web page building wizard: http://WebPageWizard.org. Our new service allows you to build your entire site in just a few minutes. We have included hundreds of design styles, dozens of scripts and appls, and much more! Plans start at $10/mo and include unlimited bandwidth and an unlimited number of pages. Plans that start at $20/mo feature support for multiple web sites and $25 of facebook ad credit. What are you waiting for? Head over to the web page builder and check out the live demo! You can also try it out for 15 days with no obligations or commitments! Coupon code “t35″ will take another 10% off.

Back Link Build Partners with T35 Web Hosting to Promote SEO Services, Launches Revolutionary HostSEO.org

Backlink Build has partnered with T35 Hosting, to create HostSEO.org, a new revolutionary service that allows you to host multiple domains each on separate class C-IP addresses. The SEO company hopes that this new hosting plans will help webmasters who want to take advantage using SEO service to increase the popularity of their website.

New Jersey – June 9, 2011 – HostSEO.org gives webmasters the ability to assign unique class C-IP’s to each domain. Each Class C-IP address costs $5, which great considering you receive 20GB of space and 2000 GB of bandwidth as well as an instant backup service. There is no limit to the amount of unique class C-IP’s one could buy and the amount of domains one could have on each class C-IP. However, in order to get the full value of SEO hosting each domain should have its own IP. Another benefit to using the SEO web hosting service is that you could manage all your domains under one WHM account. In addition, just like Backlink Build, HostSEO.org has a live chat feature to help users who are new to SEO and SEO web hosting.

Hosting on Unique IP’s determines how well a webmaster can increase his search engine rankings. It’s no secret that all major search engines, including Google, partially determine your website ranking based on the sites that link to you; and webmasters typically have multiple sites linked together to improve their backlink hits. The more times web users hit the backlinks the more the higher the website ranking; however, the ingenuity of search engines allowed them to determine if your sites are all hosted under the same server. Therefore, search engines will not rank increase your website ranking if they find out all of your sites under the same server. Nevertheless, HostSEO.org allows you to host all of your websites from one server but on unique class C-IP’s. Search engines cannot determine whether your sites are on the same server, thereby allowing you to pass link juice when linking your sites.

Additional Services offered by all HostSEO.org Plans:

cPanel and WHM Control Panel
Private Name Server Support
Unlimited MySQL Databases, Domains, Email Accounts, and cPanel Accounts
PHP, MySQL, CGI/Perl & Python Support
One-Click Script Installer
Advanced Stats / Logs
CRON Job Support
24x7x365 Support
Premium Network
No Contract and money Back Guarantee
99.9% Uptime Guarantee

Backlink Build, a web development and SEO expert company, was founded in 2009 and has since developed relationships with over 400 clients engaging in numerous niches. The company’s website offers unique and highly integrated SEO packages with a combination of backlinks, blogging, social bookmarking, and directory submissions. T35 Hosting was founded in 1997 as a free web hosting company. Currently, it boasts a total of 1.8 million customers and it continues to grow every day. It also offers paid web hosting services with unlimited domain hosting.

T35 Hosting in Business Week’s 101 Best Web Freebies

It hasn’t been more than a few weeks since our last mention in business week, but it seems we’ve made it on there again! I actually completely missed it and want to thank blackhawk5193 and chickenmeister from our webmaster forum for pointing out the article. T35 Hosting is prominently mentioned in the “best tech tools” section of the list. Although the article itself is short, it does mention our unlimited space and bandwidth which is something no competitor has been able to match for over a decade! I also want to point out that we are the only web hosting company (free or otherwise) mentioned in the entire best web freebies listing.

You can check it out for yourself by following the following link and clicking the 4th icon on the bottom left (the pink keyboard).

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/07/11/1121_freestuff/index_01.htm

T35 Hosting at HostingCon 2009

For those of you attending HostingCon in Washginton D.C. this year, I will be there for all three days and will be presenting on the morning of the first day.

For those interested in going, please let me know – I was issued a discount code for being a presenter. I’m looking forward to connecting with all the other industry experts out there so if anyone is going please let me know! For those that can’t attend, I’ll be posting the slides to my presentation right after the event.

T35 & Web Hosting Interview with Alex Melen

Earlier in this week I was invited by G Allan Roberts to do a phone interview about t35, web hosting, entrepreneurship, and internet marketing. The entire interview is almost an hour, but some of it is definitely worth listening to. I’m including the file in the mp3 format for those that want to check it out.

Some of the highlights include:
– Information about the founding of T35 Hosting
– The ups and downs throughout the last decade
– Reasoning behind unlimited space/bandwidth
– Future trends in the industry

Post some feedback and let me know what you think!