Be Your Own Boss

It seems I created a little anger/frustration towards my business attitude this morning over at Darren the ProBlogger’s site in the comments of an article titled Idol Blogger Crashes Server and Teaches us a Lesson about Hosting. Darren is a professional blogger that I highly respect, but I don’t always agree with his positions and opinions on many blog topics (such as copyright enforcement and general business conduct). The topic he wrote about today is what to do when your host performs an action that is counter to your income.

For those who are familiar with my history in blogging, I started writing a blog in November 2005. I joined up with Blogger.com as I was new to the idea, but I have spent years writing print and e-mail newsletters. I quickly learned that the Blogger.com platform was VERY unreliable (crashed often) and VERY limited. I quickly registered my own domain name to host some blogs (at the Global Unanimocracy Network), but bought a shared hosting plan with my host — HostingDude.com (a shill for GoDaddy.com). For less than $7 a month I was running my own site, but it was on a shared server.

Darren’s article talks about a user who runs a blog dedicated to the TV show American Idol. After a new show aired, the website host shut access to the website down because of the traffic surge. The website now says that the blogger is leaving the business because of the hosting problem, because he refuses to pay for a service plan that offers the stability and bandwidth his site requires. Here we see one of the worst problems with running a business — amateur hobbyists who expect professional service from their suppliers. The hobbyists of the world are a big burden on many businesses who have to sell at hobby prices but provide professional service. It can’t be done (note how many sales flyers explicitly deny resellers from taking advantage of the sale).

This hobbyist ran a website he was really focused on — the American Idol blog. I have no proof, but I am assuming he was monetizing his site with advertisements, offering him some sort of an income. The host he used offered him a set service along with a list of rules that he would have to agree to in order to use that service. I took at look at his host, (Surpasshosting.com) and saw that their highest level of shared hosting service is $25 per month for 1000 GB bandwidth. Now most people will think this means they can use up that bandwidth whenever they want, but that is not the case with shared hosting plans. It is wiser to consider your “ceiling” to be three times as much as the per-minute average of the allotted bandwidth. In this case, 1000 GB bandwidth per month comes to an average of 20 MB per minute. Multiply that by 3 and you get 60 MB per minute that you shouldn’t exceed. For a blog like his (with photos and a ton of information), you could easily surpass that number during a surge of visitors. Even my mostly text blogs can hit those numbers quite easily if I get a link from a popular message forum.

Here’s a copy of Surpasshosting.com’s terms of service:

BANDWIDTH USAGE POLICY
All server plans include an allocated continuous data transfer rate of 3.75 Mbps in a 30-day calendar month, which is an approximate quantity of 1,200 GB of data transfer. If your monthly average usage exceeds the bandwidth transfer rate of 4.0 Mbps within your 30 day billing cycle, you will be billed for total average usage based on 95th percentile metering and will be liable for overages exceeding your monthly allocation. In accordance to these terms of service, you agree to pay such overages at the rate of $75.00 per 1 Mbps.

Note: 1 Mbps of continuous transfer in a 30 day period ~ 320 GB of data transfer.

They also have the following in their VERY quick to read TOS:

In all fairness, we cannot allow one or two clients to use all of the system resources on a shared machine and have all other clients suffer because of it. Excessive CPU & memory usage by one or more clients causes extreme slowness in all areas: MySQL, Email, HTTP and more. If the CPU & memory usage by a few clients gets out of hand, all sites hosted on the machine will return errors and not be accessible in any way.

AVERAGE SERVER RESOURCE LIMITS
Memory usage may not exceed 10% per domain/file/application
CPU usage may not exceed 20% per domain/file/application
Apache connections may not exceed 30 connections
15 MySQL maximum user connections allowed
350 emails per hour, per domain

How could ANY business owner even bother with the cheap hosting of this provider? I looked at 4 other big hosting providers and they all had similar restrictions. The comments on Darren’s blog post are vitriolic and see to lay the blame on the host, not the website owner. He accepted these restrictions, and now he’s moaning about not taking the proper course of action. If he really does stop blogging, it will only be good for the industry that is already plagued with enough moaners and complainers who react emotionally rather than logically.

If you’re planning on making money online, be logical about each step you take. When you sign a contract, even electronically, READ IT. If you don’t agree with the contract, e-mail the sales department. I’ve signed 4 agreements in the past year online that I have had modified to fit my needs — the sales departments are more than happy to help acquire the business of a serious entrepreneur.

The worst thing you can do is to sell yourself short. I look at the first few years of business as similar to a college education. You’re learning every step of the way, and you’re investing your time into learning. Don’t except huge profits, but do expect bumps along the way. If you’re going to buy cheap quality products, your customers will eventually be hurt by your lack of investment, and you’ll lose everything you built. I’ve been to stores that refuse to install quality carpeting and lighting and their sales are lacking because of it. If you’re planning on being in business for the long haul, invest in the right infrastructure for the future.

Here’s a look at some of the comments on Darren’s blog post:

1 James Says: Yeh, I had a brief flirtation with Surpass… they were absolutely rubbish.

And yet they have many customers who are absolutely satisfied with their services provided. I don’t know of many people who are ever happy with shared host services. Would YOU run a business for $7 a month and be happy to provide any level of service other than “most basic possible?” If this was your business, would you even have time to deal with business owners who are using a hobby level service?

6 Hatem Says:Oh ! This is so bad, I got 1001 stories about hosting but never seen this ! this should be at least mentionned in the Terms and Conditions of Surpass Hosting, but unfortunately I can’t find if they have a link.

It is listed, and I found the link in about 30 seconds of looking. Almost every shared hosting company warns their customers not to abuse resources.

8 Sammy from TrepNetwork Says:This really pisses me off, as well to hear this. Especially after just going off on two GoDaddy representatives yesterday for the crappy customer service they provide and the sarcasm that seems to plague Bob’s employees.

I deal with GoDaddy about twice a month and they’re top notch. I called today because I screwed up my MySQL database that holds all my BIND DNS information. In 6 minutes on the phone they fixed it all without charging me one dime. 6 minutes of my time for any of my customers would be a US$200 charge (minimum service charge). Not only did the tech assist me, he even followed up with an e-mail an hour later. If you pay for a basic service, expect basic support.

He also said:

Why not contact the customer as a courtesy about the excess bandwidth usage. If the customer was unable to cover the cost, I would have negotiated a deal for ad space on the blog or better yet… SPONSOR THE BLOG! Now that’s good PR, but hey… that’s just me.

Because that is not what a basic level of service provides. They’re giving the customer an opportunity to test the waters. If the waters get rough, upgrade to a better support and bandwidth package. You’re paying for people’s time, but at US$7 per month, what can you expect? If the host company said they’d e-mail you about an outage, what difference would have been made? “We’re going to terminate your hosting service unless you upgrade to a non-shared plan.” Isn’t that basically what the outcome was?

It wasn’t until the 13th comment or so that someone brought up a good point — why did the blogger not have backups of his blogs? My blogs get backed up 12 times a day automatically — 6 times a day to my work PC, and 6 times a day to another host that I can fall over to in case my provider fails. There is no one to blame but yourself if the company providing you service sticks with their terms of service and disconnects your access. You broke the contract and took up too many resources. You were shut down. Move to a different host with your backups and forget the error in judgement.

And that is what this article is about — being serious. Just having a great idea or product to sell is useless if you don’t think of the actual process of running a business. Creating a to-do list of things to watch over is very important, but so is reading every contract you sign, and planning for future growth. If you’re going to just be a hobbyist, don’t have expectations beyond what a hobbyist is willing to pay for.

Discuss this article at the Be Your Own Boss forum.