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!

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 [...]

Would you pay over $1,000 to get to the front page of Digg? Well, you’d actually need to pay more than that. According to TechCrunch, a “power Digger” charges $1,200 to get your story to the front page. With no guarantees, you put in a four figure investment and hope that your story fares well. Many have been using and abusing the giant social bookmark in an attempt to tap into some of its enormous potential. Being one of the biggest 200 websites in the world according to Alexa, Digg is one of the only ways that most webmasters have into making mainstream.

Digg however isn’t easy to conquer by yourself. The ability to get a story popular on Digg has turned into a market in itself. A story must have around 200 Diggs (no, this number is not exact and Digg does change its algorithm often) to become “popular.” Becoming a popular gives your submission endless benefits. A term called the Digg Effect has even been coined to express the aftermath of a popular story.

Automated systems such as UserSubmitter and Subvert and Profit have decided to take a tactical approach to the problem. Their system is simple: Diggers Digg stories while webmasters get their stories Dugg. Diggers get paid for Digging, webmasters pay to get Dugg, and the system gets a piece of the pie. Everyone is happy, right? Wrong.

Digg is left in the crossfire of all this exchange. A system that is made and run by people is being abused and spammed by stories that would otherwise never make it. Digg isn’t happy and neither are their investors. Having only a small portion of the users control a majority of the content poses a problem. In fact, Digg has recently banned dozens of its most active users. Their goal was to find people abusing their system – specifically with scripts and programs. However, they ended up deleting many users that have testified to never using an automated system in their life. These once loyal and active Digg members have been punished for doing nothing wrong.

So as webmaster, marketers, and bloggers alike – how should we go about to tapping into Digg’s potential? We can use automated systems and risk having ourselves and our websites banned from Digg forever. Website giants such as DigitalPoint have been banned and despite their best efforts, are still banned. We could always hire the expert from TechCrunch, but $1200 is a steep investment to make with no promises made.

There is one more service we found: SocialElves. Social Elves has connections with many power Diggers and promises to get your submission popular. At a cost of only $300, it seems like the most practical solution. Any catches? Well, there are a few. Since they do not directly pay anyone to Digg or use any automated systems, they cannot make just any submission popular. In fact, they admit to refuse most submissions. So you must have an interesting and “diggable” story before coming to them. That means no “get rich fast” schemes guys! They do have a money back guarantee – giving you $1.50 for any Diggs under 200.

Digg is a great resource and definitely something that most webmasters should try to tap into. If you have the time and energy, you can become an active Digg user and try to push your own stuff. However, this can waste hundreds of hours and take months. Alternatively, you can try your luck with SocialElves or another service. In any case, make sure to let us know how you do!

Have you had experience with Digg, SocialElves, or anything else I mentioned above? Let me know! Comment below.

Would you pay over $1,000 to get to the front page of Digg? Well, you’d actually need to pay more than that. According to TechCrunch, a “power Digger” charges $1,200 to get your story to the front page. With no guarantees, you put in a four figure investment and hope that your story fares well. [...]

This is going to be a very quick & short post. I just wanted to tell all the webmasters to go and join our new directory! Registration is free of charge and you can instantly start receiving traffic and PR benefits. All sites are welcome: http://directory.t35.com.

This is going to be a very quick & short post. I just wanted to tell all the webmasters to go and join our new directory! Registration is free of charge and you can instantly start receiving traffic and PR benefits. All sites are welcome: http://directory.t35.com.