Why so cheap?

By Garnet R. Chaney

From: webmill_com

Hi!

$10 in pay per click advertising credits? I run a network of search sites and I help my clients get into pay-per-click advertising so they can try it out and see if it is something that will work for their sites. If it works, I introduce them to the bigger PPC companies.

I hadn't thought about cheap == scam. You could be right. If I'd posted my standard offer of $40 a month for hosting, I would have been crucified as being the most expensive service around.... There are plenty of companies offering "Free" hosting, so I decided we didn't need another one of those, as others had already mentioned the "services without a 10-year plan".

Why is it so cheap? It's just hosting, hosting doesn't have to be so expensive. I want to offer a good sandbox for beginners who are interested in writing their own sites, at a wholesale price point. I've got too much bandwidth, and I would be happy to share it with some people who could use it.

And why is it just for Amazon Associates?

That's part of why it is so cheap, they are not likely to be local. I don't expect to have to go and have meetings with them, likely they'll be happy with email support or an occasional phone call. Most of my clients need more help than just hosting, and the local ones expect to be able to visit, have meetings, watch me come and click "refresh" on their browser, etc.. So I charge them the $40/mo. price, so I can cover the cost of those visits. But I'm trying to transition into annual payments, or prepaid service, it's a real pain doing the billing on the monthlies....

Also, I have some tools that might be of interest to Amazon associates, and I'd like to first offer them to my hosting customers. It's much less trouble to offer these tools on a server that I control, than it is to offer them for other people's servers with different environments, etc. Writing installation programs is no fun, I spent too much time doing that in a previous life....

Finally, I've had a lot of fun working with my clients who are Amazon Associates, and I get the most rave compliments from them.

I really don't care if someone wants to get this hosting for something entirely different than a book site, I love being an Associate and I'll probably eventually talk them into becoming an Associate if they are not one already. I enjoy supporting something I'm interested in like Amazon related websites. Despite all the things in the program that aggravate all of us, (I can't even drink a cup of coffee until I've looked at my morning stats, and I still haven't figured out how much Q3 tiers are going to loose me compared to Q2, but it's probably going to be a big chunk of dough), it is a great opportunity and a lot of fun.

- Garnet