You have decided to start an online business. Whether it is to sell products and services or to provide information on topics such as education or even payday loans, you will need to create a strong and memorable website.

Among the most important steps in creating your website are choosing a domain name and a website host. A good web host will offer numerous plans from which to choose. The host service should also provide reliable services as well as good customer support. You’ll need to do a bit of research to find the best host for your needs as well as your budget.

Many companies out there provide hosting services. Often, these hosting services come bundled, not only with domain registration, but design services as well. These one-stop options might be a good choice for some, but realize that these bundles are often more expensive than purchasing the services separately. You can even get different services from different companies. You are not required to purchase all the necessary services from a single source.

Different service plans and associated costs are based on the type of website that is to be hosted. This can include the content and size of the site, as well as the anticipated traffic. Smaller sites that will only have a few static graphics can choose plans with less space (approximately 50 megabytes). If your site will contain larger media files, such as video, you may need a plan that comes with more space, a gigabyte or more.

Some plans will charge the customer based on how much data is being transferred, the number of visitors, content and so on. Many companies charge a flat fee until a certain transfer amount is exceeded.

Examine what you want on your website and research several companies to ensure a good fit. These decisions will impact how successful your online business will be.

I have been very busy online and offline. Since Howell arrived from his three-week stint in Kolonya, we are always out every weekend that I don’t have much time to blog. But just to have a reminder of the things that I need to blog about, I am making a list here (otherwise I might just forget to blog all about it)

• Our weekend at Makati Shangri-La
• Our Family Outing at Aliwan Private Paradise Resort
• Bela’s first week at Summer Class
• Bela’s first day at Aqualogic Swim Company
• Our new nanny
• Review of Makati Shangri-La
• Bela's Vacation Bag

I also have hundreds of pictures to organize and resize so I can upload it to Flickr. Hubby downloaded all of it on my laptop already so hope I can find the time to sort and upload it.

I have tons of work to do so I hope that I can find the time to sit and finish all of them.

I have not been updating my blogs for weeks now and it is only this month that I was able to find time again to blog. That is why I am looking for seo tools as I am sure that my Alexa ranking has dropped due to no recent activities on my site.

One of the reasons why I was not able to update my site was hubby and I were away on vacation for three weeks and so I really tried not to go online and just spend some quality time with hubby while we are away.

And so I wish to start my comeback to blogging by creating a post about our recent vacation, my dream vacation, our Euro tour.

~~~

August 6, 2009: Frankfurt, Germany

My dad drove me to the airport to catch my 4:45 PM flight via Gulf Air. Good thing I was at the airport early as the flight was full and there was a really a long line for the Gulf Air booth. My flight IT is Manila – Bahrain – Frankfurt. I had a 2 hours stop over at Bahrain and it is already 5 AM Manila time so I was really feeling tired and dizzy already because of the long flight.

I arrived at Frankfurt airport the next day (Aug 7) and Howell picked me up around 7 AM. We went straight to the hotel. Howell still has training so I just chatted with Bela while I was alone in the hotel. Howell went back to the hotel during lunch time and we ate at the nearest Mc Donald’s restaurant.

After lunch, Howell went back to the office and I just slept when I reached the hotel. Howell was back around 3 PM. He was trying to wake me up because he wanted to take me downtown while the weather is nice but I was too tired to get up so I ended sleeping the whole day. I did not even get up to eat dinner. LOL.

My dad loves to write and ever since he discovered the world of blogging, he got inspired to write more and document his life. My father has lived a good life. He also has a lot of adventures when he was still working abroad as he was able to travel to different places, experience new cultures and he never fails to have a very funny and memorable story every time he visits a foreign land. He worked abroad for more than 15 years and I think he was able to visit at least one country per continent so you can just imagine how much stories he has to share.

This made me think to create a new blog for him where he can document and share stories about his previous and future travel. I told him about my idea and he is really excited for this project. Unfortunately, it’s been months already since I promised my dad that I will help him create a new blog but up to now, I haven’t started on anything yet.

That is why I am so glad when I discovered BlueVoda, a site where anyone can create website even if they have no web programming experience. This is really the perfect site for my dad since the site offers drag and drop features so my dad can easily setup his blog even without my help. He can even use the hundreds of pictures on the site for his website and he can easily publish all of this because the site has a “One click publishing” feature.

I showed the site to my dad and I just gave him a brief tutorial on how he can create his own site and a miracle as it may seem for my dad, he was able to build his own home page right away. I am sure in just a few days; his site will be flooded with his posts about his Travel Chronicles.

You Are a Banana

You are mellow, easy going, and a total softie on the inside. People find it really easy to get along with you. You suit most tastes. And while you're very sweet, you're not boring or ordinary. You have an attraction to the exotic, and you could show up anywhere... doing almost anything! You are spirited, energetic, and a total kick to be around. You're also quite funny. Your sense of humor is on the goofy side, and it fits you well.

What Type of Fruit Are You?

A lot of my friends in my blog roll have been convincing me to create an Entrecard account for all my blogs. Last Friday, I was able to find the time to read the FAQ page on the Entrecard website and I did an account for all my blogs.

I started receiving adverts already and I have started to drop cards to my friends who have Entrecard also. I am still learning my way and thanks to Ems for always being there to answer all my Entrecard concerns.

I am really enjoying visiting all your blogs and just finished my second round of EC dropping this morning. I will see you all again tomorrow.

I don’t get to visit twitter these past few weeks as we are really busy in the office. I miss my twitter mates and all the stories that they share there. I get all the latest gossips, intrigues and tips about blogging from them that my day won’t be complete without a visit to the twitter site.

This morning I was able to get a chance to log in to twitter and read some of the updates from my twitter mates. It got my adrenalin going as their topic when I logged in was one of my favorite things in the whole world. Of course, what else but shopping.

They shared a lot of sites of multiply sellers where they usually order stuffs from diapers, to accessories, to shoes, to clothes, to unique baby gifts or just anything you can think of. I have bookmarked each one of them and I can’t wait to finally have the time and the budget to just sit down and do online shopping.

Oh well, hopefully I can save this month so I can get my hands on the computer and order a lot of things for me, hubby and Bela.

I was checking my archives for this blog when I suddenly realized that I have been blogging since 2004. That means it is almost four years since I discovered the wonderful world of blogging.

My blog has kept my friends and relatives updated with what’s going on with my life. When I started my first blog, it is about our wedding preparations up to the day when I said I do to my husband. Then I gave birth to my beautiful daughter and I started another blog dedicated for her. I enjoyed blogging so much that I started a third blog which is all about me – my passion, my hobbies, my shopping addictions, my favorite TV series and the like.

Ever since, I have used the free web hosting service of blogspot. I am one happy client and I can say I already learned my ways with blogspot. But I have been reading some web hosting tutorials and I learned the many benefits of getting a web host for my blog.

So should I take the next step and move my free blogspot to a web host? So what are the benefits of having your domain hosted? I read a lot about web hosting awards for different web host providers and all of them offer the same benefits. One is I will get my own domain name instead of using a blogspot address. Then I will also get e-mailboxes that matched my domain name. Then I can easily publish my web content by using the tools provided by the web host provider. And since web host provider uses state of the art data canters, I will be sure that my data such as the photos and videos and my web content are safe since they have a backup and restore system in place.

But of course, getting all of these benefits has a price tag so I still have to weigh if the price that I have to pay to get my blog hosted will really outweigh the benefits that I will get. But if ever I made a decision to get a web host, I will definitely check out web hosting rating so I will be able to assess the best web host providers for my blogs based on my needs.

Monday

• I will post an entry for the weekend snapshot.
• Blog hop and leave comments to all the weekend snapshot participants.
• I will blog about anything that I can think of.

Tuesday

• I will blog about anything that happened to me during the day, be it something trivial, something sad, something exciting, or just about anything that I fancy.

Wednesday

• I will post an entry for Wordless Wednesday.
• Blog hop and leave comments to all the Wordless Wednesday participants.
• I will blog about my everyday musings.

Thursday

• Still Blogging about anything under the sun.

Friday

• I will post an entry for the Friday’s Feast.
• Blog hop and leave comments to all the participants of Friday’s Feast.
• Blog about anything that I fancy.

Saturday and Sunday

• Still blogging about our weekend happenings.

So do you guys think that I’m already addicted to blogging?

Howell and Bela are already past asleep. I’m feeling sleepy too and the bed is really inviting for one good night sleep. But I sleep have some opps to finish, add to that some two to three filler posts and some tags too. I hope I can get through this since I want to finish all my opps before I go to bed. Any suggestions on how to keep me awake? Online window shopping perhaps? LOL.

I gave in. I joined the band wagon and finally accepted that I have to shed $10 to buy my own domain. LOL.

http://www.myplanetpurple.com/

I purchased it yesterday morning and I never thought thinking of a domain name would be a challenge as most of the names I listed is already taken. It’s still a work in progress. I’m still working on my blog roll and I have to add a few widgets and a chat box. But I’m starting to post entries to it now and I’ve already used it to post tags and awards.

When I’m finally done with it, I will visit all of you guys to ask all of you to add me to your blog roll.

Thanks again sisters for all your suggestions, tips, and help in setting up my own domain. I owe all of this to all of you guys.

So hope you will visit my new site as much as you do on my other 2 blogs.

I used to love the color pink. But now, every time I see pink, it really makes me feel sad. You want to know why?

Every time I click the refresh button, I see the number of available opps increasing but all of them are in pink (and you guys know what pink means). So it’s really frustrating to see a lot of opps and there’s not even one for me. Oh well, sometimes not all nice colors are for me.

I made a withdrawal from PayPal to my BPI account last February 18, 2008. The status of the transfer was changed from Pending to Completed the next day. And when I checked my BPI saving account, the amount transferred was reflected to my account on February 21, 2008. So it just took PayPal 3 banking days to transfer the funds to my local bank account.

I was not charged with any processing fee as the amount I transferred is more than P7, 000. Although the exchange rate (P39.28 = $1) is a little lower than the prevailing exchange rate.

So for those who are planning to withdraw to their local bank account, I can attest that this new service of paypal really works.

Thank you very much to all those who read my post and gave their suggestions and comments. You really helped me decide on what to do.

You’re all right; it’s really difficult to maintain 3 blogs. I just realized that since I only have 2 blogs now and I can barely catch up with all the messages in my chat box, with the tags and awards and I can barely blog hop (this, I really miss doing since I really enjoy reading all the stories that you share in your blog).

So what’s my decision? Since my dad enjoyed writing posts on Bela’s blog, I will turn over Bela’s blog to him. He is now a retiree and he is really bored at home since he is not used to being idle. So I gave him a crash course on blogging 101. He is still learning the tricks but for sure, in time, he will get used to the system of blogspot. I already enrolled Bela’s blog to Sponsored Review and my dad did the first 3 opps approved for Bela’s blog.

So eventually, I would just have 2 blogs to maintain after I fully turned over Bela’s blog to my dad. I will buy my own domain tomorrow, so while I’m still handling Bela’s blog, my new domain will soon be crawled by Google so it can be indexed in Google soon. So when I’m ready to fully maintain it, it will already be indexed in Google. I still can’t think what domain name to use as the one that I like (journeytolife.com) is no longer available.

Thanks again for all your suggestions sisters and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

I waited for Howell at Chowking Buendia since he came from their Pasay office, so I don’t have to commute going home. And guess what I was doing while waiting for him. I was composing filler posts for my blog. LOL. (I was able to make 4 fillers.) Thanks to my reliable (but outdated), Palm m515. I just beamed the file to my laptop, & voila, I have fillers for my 3 Blogitive opps.

A lot of my blogging friends have been convincing me already to get my own domain since it really has a lot of advantages over my free blogspot account. I have been thinking about it and right now I have two options:

* I can get my own domain name for my original blog (howellabie.blogspot.com). I have inquired to all the paid blogging sites where my original blog is already approved. And so far, only Smorty requires that I re-apply again my new domain name. The rest of the sites only requires me to send them an email and they will update my account with the new domain name.

* I can get a domain name as my new blog. This is les complicated since I just have to wait for 3 months until it gets indexed in Google and as soon as I have 10 posts per month within 3 months, then I can just apply for it’s approval from all the paid blogging sites. But the disadvantage of this is that, I now have 3 blogs (howellabie.blogspot.com, princessbela16.blogspot.com and my new domain) to maintain which I think would really take a lot of my time.

Hmm, what do you think guys? I plan to buy my own domain this weekend (Cut off for my credit card). Please help me decide.

I tried searching for the URL of Bela’s blog from Google to check if it is already indexed in Google but it didn’t return any search results. So after 3 months of actively posting, I was really disappointed to found out that it still hasn’t been indexed in Google.

I was researching about Sitemap this afternoon after learning from Thea that submitting my blog’s sitemap can help speed up the indexing of my blog and is a good search engine placement tool. I will try to do more research about it and hopefully it can really help in indexing my other blog in Google. I already tried applying for four paid blogging sites but I only got approved from one of the sites since my blog is not indexed yet in Google.

After having no opps this past few days, I’m so happy that I was able to make a rebound today and was able to grab 6 opps from Blogitive. I’m so happy. I only have two weeks left and I hope I can meet my target earning for this month. And no, it is not for shopping (well, we still have to see about that…LOL), but I plan to save my earnings for this month so we can have pocket money for our planned SG trip. (I really have to start saving so this trip will push through).

Hoping for more opps to come in the coming days.

After doing more than 7 posts, my head is already aching from composing write-ups and paid ads. I need a break!!

But hey, just thinking of the extra money that I can get from doing this and just thinking of the stuffs that I can buy online, makes me want to continue writing and just ignore my head ache

I made a withdrawal today from paypal to my BPI account. It will take 5-7 days for the transfer to be completed. I’m just hoping that I will not have the same problem as Aggie when she tried transferring to her EON card. I’ll know next week. I’ll update you guys if the transfer will be successful.