Tips to reduce your website's running costs
In this article we've compiled some helpful tips on how you can reduce the costs of running your website.
Combine your Web hosting plans
If you host more than one website, consider either combining them into one hosting plan, run each site as a sub-domain on your main site, or find out if your Web hosting provider offers discounts if you host multiple sites with them.
For those of you who host your website through Multimedia Australia, you can add unlimited sub-domains and unlimited add-on domains to your site via your website's control panel login.
Downgrade your Web hosing plans
If your Web hosting plan includes a high monthly bandwidth and disk space allocation, but your site does not actually require that much, downgrade to a lower plan so that you pay less.
Use shared Web hosting plans
Shared Web hosting plans, where many websites are hosted on the same Web server, are cheaper than hosting a website on a dedicated server. If you are prepared to compromise on some of the advantages that dedicated servers offer, moving to a high-end shared Web hosting plan instead can amount to significant savings over time.
Take advantage of special domain name registration offers and discounts
Keep a lookout for special offers and discounts on domain name registrations from the various domain name registrars on the Web, and consider renewing your domain name(s) for several years in advance when a good offer becomes available.
Promote your site without paying for advertising
Consider if reducing your advertising expenditure is feasible and, instead, focus on lower-cost promotional opportunities such as writing and distributing press releases, search engine optimisation initiatives, and building mutually-beneficial relationships with others who supply complimentary services in your field. For details on writing press releases, see the article 'Making your website more popular using press releases' .
Try to boost your site's advertising revenue
Try to boost the revenue you receive from displaying advertising on your site by trialling and evaluating the performance of different ad formats and placements. Some ad formats produce higher click-through rates and therefore greater profits than others.
Save with free software included with Web hosting plans
If you host your website with Multimedia Australia, over US$110 worth of Web development software is included free with all Web hosting plans. With plans starting from as little as US$5.95 per month, this can result in a significant saving for you. See http://www.mmau.com/services/hosting/freesoftware.php for details.
Use free online tutorials and articles
Instead of buying expensive books on website creation, use the Web instead. For example, our www.WebsiteBytes.com site has a large selection of free articles about Web design and development plus a free 14-chapter tutorial on HTML coding.
