Everyone wants the biggest bang for their buck. Im as frugal as I possibly can be, and find ways to be more frugal each year.

On a pretty regular basis, we find customers who refuse to pay real money for hosting. Sure they just spent thousands on a nice website, but $3 a month hosting is in their sights.

We have a customer, who I wont name, who uses one of the “best rated” hosts for cheap. Unlimited storage for $6 a month. Guess what. in 2 years we have had to fix their site at least 2 times because of massive server failures. Most recently, because the entire server security was compromised, and a hacker fiddled with almost every account and file they could. Nothing too terrible, but hours of work to undo.

On top of the issues and time needed to fix the issue, this client spent hours on hold trying to have tech support reset the password, and a request to secure the server.

Lets do the math. In this clients case, they save about $10 a month in hosting vs what we would charge for dedicated server space. one year =$120. Our bill for fixing this latest issue. $350. their 1 – 2 hours of time on the phone with their host support: $100 – $200 (guessing what their time is worth). Ohh and the site was down for 3 days. Lost sales: $500 – $1000.

So to save $120, they spent $450 – $1550.

Cheap hosts fail. its not if, but when.

Cheap cars, shoes, couches, plumbing, brochures, laptops, cell phones, etc. they all fail. And the bigger picture here, those failures all come at a price.

Suck it up, and buy the best service level you can afford. It may cost you a bit more each month, but when your site runs smoothly you wont regret it.

yes, factor1 hosting has rock solid dedicated servers with great support, backups and uptime. But we wont host just anyone. Interested in hosting with us. Call or email, and we’ll think about letting you in. We have strict rules about what you can do, for the sake of our other customers.

A great article from Small biz trends on the 5 fatal mistakes that will hold back your business from its true potential. Have a great idea, product, or service? This article is for you.

5 Fatal Mistakes That Hold Back Start-up Business Owners

The 5 key things:

1. Not Appreciating Social Intelligence
2. Have a Professional Business Website
3. Make Sure Your Email Address is Branded With Your Company Name and That the Email Address Works
4. Not Investing in Your Brand
5. Have a Real Phone Number for Your Business

Do go read the article. its a short, yet vital read.

Did you know factor1 can help help you navigate all 5 of these? We’ll we dont sell or manage number 5, we do have some links we can share to sweet services to make getting a real phone easier.

There are a lot of things that we never try for lack of courage, extra finances or motivation. However, we all know that some of the best discoveries are made through relentless trials and successive errors. Our businesses and organizations are very much our labs for experimentation. Don’t let our slick websites fool you… we are still learning a lot and trying a lot. We have so much more to learn even though there are a few things we do very well.

But how about you? What are you experimenting with? What new idea do you need to just try? What service have you been afraid to implement or eliminate?

Keep experimenting. Keep trying. Keep enjoying what you have begun.

Grumpy, scared people miss out on the best marketing opportunities.

Down the street from my house is a delicious little bakery; fresh doughnuts, pastries and breads every morning. Across the street from this bustling little place are two nameless businesses and a therapeutic massage clinic. During the busy mornings you can’t find parking in front of the bakery. The clinic and nameless business are not yet hitting their stride so they have ample parking. BUT these 3 businesses have a huge NO PARKING sign in their lot for any patrons of businesses other than theirs. If you dare park there as I do, you risk a tongue lashing and a possible tow. The only thing I every remember about their businesses is their hostility towards the parking space thieves. If I needed the service I would easily drive 30 minutes or more before getting my clinical massages at that business. We have all experienced this before. Hopefully, we are not those kinds of organizational leaders.

Think creatively with me for a moment —
What if those 3 businesses saw their parking spaces as a potential audience?

What if they put kind notes on my car? Placed a coupon my windshield? (I can’t prevent them, I am in their spaces after all.) What if they invited me in to look around as part of a parking space trade? What if they had a doughnut morning in their lot in cooperation with the bakery? What if they did advertising over at the bakery in cooperation for opening up morning parking spaces? The ideas could just keep flowing but you get the point. The 3 grumpy businesses are missing a positive marketing opportunity.

Unfortunately, we may also be missing these same kinds of opportunities. So, who is around you that is successful? How can you intertwine their success with yours? What positive marketing opportunities exist for you that you are missing out on that may very well be right in front of your face? Who is coming by your business but leaving with a sour impression before they even purchase? How do you reach them?

Creative questions and identifying opportunities make for thriving businesses.

There is a lot of debate about the value of Facebook & Twitter. Here are two things that can make them worth some of your time.

1. Follow people, businesses or organizations that matter to you. Identify those who are in your field or in your area of interests. People are watching who you follow.

2. Add value to the people who follow you. If you run a business or lead an organization make sure that you are adding value when you contribute something on twitter. Don’t say things here that you wouldn’t say in a relevant business meeting. Please, don’t tell everyone about your morning breakfast from your work account.

It’s really easy to lose sight of WHO your website is for. We all know it is for our customers. In fact, I would argue it is for the people who aren’t our customers yet but who we really want to be our customers. TRUTH is that we are all guilty, us included, of designing our sites (and other marketing materials) and writing our content the way we know how to. Worse yet we are all are guilty of designing and writing for our personal tastes and styles not for what would be most effective in reaching new costumers.

We all need to stop doing that and we need to start zeroing in on our target audiences.

I read this article about a business owner who has over 2 million monthly subscription customers. He spends a majority of his time writing, editing, re-writing and fine-tuning their website and marketing content. The E-myth (great classic book about small business) teaches us that we need work on our businesses not just in our businesses.

So here are some simple challenges to all of us:

• Study your front page / landing page – Is it geared for new customers?
• Look at your language – Is it clear? Is it proper? Does it have your customer in mind? Are you too wordy?
• Does your website navigate easily for the most important information?
• Do you have a clear call to action?
• Have you any idea how much traffic your site is getting and other important statistics? (Link it up with Google analytics)
• Spend 1-5 hours EVERY WEEK fine-tuning your messaging on your site – Learn how to make it the powerful tool that it can be for placing you first in your market category.

[Ryan also writes for RedBikeLeader.com - engaging & developing young leaders]

Factor1′s own Matt Adams was awarded the “Marketing Superhero of the Year” award from the Maricopa Chamber of Commerce at their Annual awards dinner, on January 14th.

This Award is to recognize all of Matt’s volunteer work and role on the Chamber’s marketing committee.

http://copanews.com/Article.aspx?ID=775

So I have seen companies who hire and shoot their clients video testimonials. Our clients are all over the country, so going to them would be a pricey endeavor. So we just stick to asking for a referal via email to share with our friends and potential clients. I was excited to see this from our client.

Over the summer we built a large site for Get College funding. It was actually our first real expression Engine site, and it went really well.

This video testimonial actually is pretty cool. It shows a great use of technology. Get College Funding is really embracing video rather well into their organization. Its a nice touch, and they find creating these videos a breeze.

Often we are contacted by potential clients that have little to no money. Just yesterday we had an up and coming actress inquire about a site, and only had $300 to spend.

This is hard on me. I love to help people, and I really love the web and marketing. In fact its why I love my job. I really wish I didn’t have bills, I would probably sit around, and help people for free or cheap all day long, and still love my job.

So back to my story. I thought to myself, I wish I could help this actress out, but for $300, there was little we could do. So I had an idea that would get her started on a site, help her out, and not use her entire budget.

WordPress!

WordPress is a blog. but it has pages. and you can flip wordpress around to be pages first, blog secondary. Thus turning it into a sweet little CMS anyone can use. Here are the steps.

1. get hosting set up that doesnt have any advertising headers.

Personally I love Liquid web, and we use LW for our dedicated servers.
or wordpress.com works. If you go this route, skip step 2.

2. Install wordpress.

Most big hosts can do this for you, or give you a simple install button in their control panel.

3. Pick a classy theme

there are great free themes and paid for themes.

free:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/18/100-amazing-free-wordpress-themes-for-2009/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/08/100-excellent-free-high-quality-wordpress-themes/

Or there are paid themes: woothemes.com

4. Add in your pages as needed.

wordpress is traditionally a blog, but with a few tweeks, it can look more like a website, with a news page, than a blog.

Learn more about using wordpress here

Now while this is a good cheap and dirty set up, its no substitution to a great designer building something custom.

Dont forget – your organization, product and services are unique, and so are your customers, so you still need to custom tailor the site experience to fit those factors. This is merely a quick patch for a no money situation. A real website will do 10x for you that a free template can.