Hosting is pretty cheap, affordable at least for most operating businesses, even in Zimbabwe. Hosting companies make their money by charging you as little as possible in the hope that they can get 1000 of us to give them that small reoccurring semi-passive income we’d all love to get more of. Maybe it’s so cheap, so many businesses are content to not expect much or any real results from their website.
I suspect that if hosting your website for a month in Zimbabwe cost you as much as placing an advert in the Herald newspaper or Daily News newspaper you’d give a little more thought to the whole thing.
That’s ok though, I don’t mind
The less thought you give to creating a website that actually pays the cost of your hosting and makes your business a decent profit, the easier life is for me and my clients who are serious about milking the heck out of the marketing opportunities available online.
See when you want a website hosted, you’ll be asked all kinds of questions
- How many email addresses do you want?
- How big is your site?
- What platform Is your site developed on (WordPress, Joomla etc)
But (and of course it’s not their job), hosting companies are never going to ask you if your website is actually worth hosting. In fact even most website designers won’t ask that (it should be their job). So you’ll have to do that yourself.
“It looks really nice and people will like the design when they see it”- that’s great if you’re an NGO here in Zimbabwe to promote artistic appreciation for the masses. If on the other hand you’re a business that needs to turn over a profit…then you’ll have to think much more like a strategist and a marketer.
Ask yourself all the same questions you’d ask if hosting your website was costing you 10 times more – that’s probably a good place to start.
Max Soutter 
Say something!