There are plenty of local business owners and internet entrepreneurs who are asking as to whether going with a local hosting company in their city is a good idea. One of the principal reasons as to why they are interested in using a local web host is to support the local economy and to support local small businesses like theirs. Certainly enough, no one could ever say that supporting a local business is a bad idea. But are web hosting solutions which are provided by small local companies really adequate for everyone’s needs?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Here are some possible drawbacks of using a small local hosting company for your website:

• They haven’t established their reputation yet

Large, international hosting companies which do business with everyone and are not aimed at a particular city have usually been thoroughly reviewed and talked about on the internet. You will find reviews made both by webmasters who have simply hosted a website with them, to experts in the field of web hosting. This can be very helpful in making a determination as to whether a certain web host provides quality service or not. If you can’t find many reviews on the host you intend to use, it can be quite hard to make this decision.

• Their support could be limited

Small companies often cannot afford to have staff members that are available 24 hours a day who can answer all of your questions and resolve problems, just like the bigger hosting companies. Remember, your website is not like a store, it never closes. Therefore, it needs to be up 24 hours a day and help should also be available 24 hours a day should it be needed to resolve any technical problems that cause your site to not function properly. This staff should also be truly able to fix problems, rather than just note down information and say that someone will get back to you the next day.

• They may have limited resources

Smaller companies usually cannot afford to make large investments in order to have an entire data center filled with servers. Furthermore, they may not have the facilities to make daily backups, as well as have a contingency plan in place should there be a problem, such as a fire, natural disaster, or power failure.

So, who are local web hosting companies actually good for?

If you run a small website for your business and you don’t mainly depend on the site to conduct your operations, then you could go with a local hosting company if you believe that it is a better idea in your opinion. However, if you are running an e-commerce site that is the main source of revenue for your company, you are much better off using the services of a larger web hosting company which has shown that they have a good reputation in the marketplace and have a perfect record when it comes to reliability and support.

Whatever you are doing to make money online, chances are that you could benefit from having some people help you out with your projects. The thing is, while many of us would love to have our own office and have some staff members working for us, this is not always within the means of all of us. After all, if you hire workers, you will need to pay them an hourly wage, plus have to worry about things such as taxes, vacation pay, etc.

But, there is a way to make this possible. Instead of actually hiring people who will work in a physical office location, you would recruit a few virtual staff members who will be available to help you out with your projects. The main advantage of online outsourcing is that you won’t need to pay them a salary, you will just pay them to do specific projects when you need them. For example, you could pay an outsourcer $10 to design a logo or $50 to write the content for an entire website.

Of course, the question remains: where do you find people to be part of your virtual staff? There are 3 options.

Classified ads sites (Craigslist, Gumtree, Backpage, etc)

If you want to give local people the opportunity to earn money from home, then you can post an ad one one of these sites. Be sure to describe what the worker will need to do and what skills they will need to have (writing, web design, graphic design, etc.) Even though the economy is recovering, there are still many people who are unemployed and unable to find work in their field. This means you will probably get a few people who will respond to your ad.

The only downside is that you will have to pay them a bit more than if you found people on a forum or a freelancing site. But it will still be cost effective, as there are many people would be willing to work from home, even for $10 an hour.

Freelancing websites (GetAFreelancer, Freelancer.com, Fiverr, Microworkers, Odesk, etc)

These sites are basically marketplaces where service providers meet clients. You will post a description of the project and your requirements. Workers will then bid on the project and you can select one or more people to do the job (except on Fiverr, where all jobs are $5 and you contact people directly to see if they are interested in doing the work).

IM forums (Warrior Forum, Digital Point, etc)

IM forums have a section where service providers can make a thread detailing the services that they offer and clients can post threads detailing services that they need. IM forums are a great place to find people who will do some work for you on a regular basis.

Tomorrow, we will explore some ways to ensure that you are only recruiting the best people and how to manage the whole operation.

It’s extremely important for every business to have an internet presence in today’s economy, and that means having a website up and running. If you don’t have a big budget, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, it just means you have to know how to spend the money you do have.

There are a few expenses you’re going to have to drop money on regardless of your budget, and your skill set. You’re going to need a domain name for your new website. Registering a domain name is a quick and easy process, and it will only cost you around $10 per year. Once you have a domain name, you’re going to need to invest in a web hosting package. Web hosting can cost anywhere between five dollars a month, to several hundred a month. When you’re first starting out, even if you’re anticipating a lot of attention for your website, it’s best to go with one of the cheaper packages. Chances are you won’t need the features and benefits provided with the more expensive packages in the beginning, so don’t spend money on them.

Once you have a domain name, and a place to host your site, it’s time to worry about actually getting your site up and running. There are three routes you can go here. You can either build the site yourself, pay a freelancer to build it, or pay a firm to build it. There are a lot of great options for building your own site. Blogging platforms like WordPress can be installed directly to your hosting account for free, and they make set up a snap. There are also a lot of software options available to make designing a site easy. If you already have Microsoft Office, you probably already have Microsoft Publisher. Publisher makes it fairly simple to create a nice looking website in a fairly short amount of time.

If you really feel like you can’t handle setting up the website yourself, then you’re going to have to pay someone. If you’re on a budget, you’re going to want to avoid design firms. Their prices reflect all  of the costs involved in running a large company. Freelancers, on the other hand, will generally be able to product a high quality site for you for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Just be careful about who you hire. Either use a site like Elance to find a designer, or get references from them before hiring them to do the job.

Don’t be fooled into paying exorbitant amounts of money for a website. By being careful with your money, you can get your site up and running quickly no mater what your budget is.