Once I decided to set up  http:\\windows2008.informedcio.com one of the first decisions I had to make was that of finding a hosting partner. I spent about four hours going through various offerings that were out there and decided upon using the GoDaddy's quickblogcast product.

The main reason I went with a commerical product I had to pay for versus a free blogging option was that I am planning to heavily monetize my site and want to keep my options open concerning the future.  If I went with one of free options, the provider owns the domain name and I just did a subdomain. That means I'm always stuck with that provider (and their rules) and if they go out of business, there goes my site, and there goes the brand that I've spent hundreds of hours building.

Okay, that explains why I'm paying a hosting provider. The following, in order of importance, are the reasons I selected GoDaddy's QuickBlogcast product.

https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/blogcast/landing.asp?app%5Fhdr=

 1.) It was cheap! Okay, I admit it, I am cheap but consider that unless a lot people start clicking on the ads on the site all of these costs are coming out of my own pocket.   I wanted something with a very low cost startup cost and a very low monthly re-occurring fee. GoDaddies Basic Plan gives you 300 MB of storage and 15GB of usable bandwidth per month for ony $3 per month.   Even in my most optimistic dreams I couldn't see even coming close to using up all that storage or bandwidth.

2.) It was easy! I had the site up and running in less than an hour of initially placing my order. It required almost no knowledge of HTML whatever to setup.

3.) The support is unbelievable! Everyone I spoke with had great English skills and I was never on hold for more than a few minutes. When I was having problems setting up meta tags on my site so that Google could index my site the girl I was speaking with was on the phone with me for over an hour. Considering I only pay three dollars a month I'm not sure it makes good business sense for her to have spent that much time with me but I was totally impressed.

There are other hosting providers out there and I'm sure many of them have their positive points but I, without reservation, would recommend you go with GoDaddy. In the spirit of the site I'm going to check with them and find out if they have a referral program. <grin>

Please comment and let me know which provider you are using and why.

Over the December holidays I decided to create a technical blog detailing new technologies that were of interest to me. I did this for two reasons: the first being that I needed to keep up to speed on all of this and it would give me a good excuse to become a subject matter expert (or at least have a cursory understanding) of the technology; the second reason is that I enjoy presenting information to people. Mom always did say that I have a tendency to talk way too much.

As I was discussing this idea with a colleague of mine he suggested a third reason I might want to try blogging.  The reason was to generate additional income. I was a little dubious concerning the whole idea however after he repeatedly sent me ebooks on the subject and links to other blogs of people doing the same thing he convinced me to at least take a shot of it. Thus on December 26, 2007 began The Informed CIO technical blog. You can see that site by going to:  http://windows2008.informedcio.com

So when I got my first entry completed and published I happily sent him the URL to the site. Instead of complimenting me on the content he replied back telling me I should set up a second blog detailing everything I was attempting to do with monetizing the first blog.

Thus here I am.