Make no mistake about it.  Our world is plugged into technology.  The more that technology plays a role in your overall marketing strategy, the greater the exposure you’ll have to your potential market.  One absolute essential that your marketing strategy must include is a Website IF you are doing business in the 21st century.  A Website is not just an option, but a requirement in your marketing strategy, because it is now such a huge part of building a personal or business brand.

I have said this often – that the question that most prospective customers ask a business owner is no longer, “Do you have a Website,’ but ‘What is the address of your Website?”  From a marketing strategy perspective, it’s becoming more and more UN-acceptable to a prospective customer OR CLIENT to hand them a business card and it not have a Website address on it for your business.  It’s just a given that if you are in business  and want to compete, even in a local market, that your customers need to be able to find you online.  No one that becomes a client of S. D. Ward & Associates will be without a Website for more than the time it takes us to build it for them.  It is an absolute requirement that every client of ours has a Website as a prerequisite to receiving our help in building their personal and/or business brand.

With more and more people turning to Google or Bing to search for local businesses over that of picking up a phone book and looking for a number in it, if you do not have a Website you are losing not only new customers to your competition, but you will ultimately begin to lose your existing customers to your competition as they are drawn away from you by interesting, content rich Websites that are owned by your competitors.

Here are some very important considerations for you to look at if you are wanting to have a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes the basic technology of having a Website to aid you in your success.

1. A Website is a necessity for bolstering credibility.
2. A Website is an extension of your staff and good will.
3. A Website is an extension of your knowledge as a professional.
4. A Website is a reference source for your prospects and customers.
5. A Website is a place where your customers can come for answers.

When you weigh the benefits of having a Website against the cost of having one built or the time it would take you to build it yourself, there is no comparison to the far reaching affects of having a Website versus not having one.  Without including a Website (or even multiple Websites) into your marketing strategy, you will become less and less viable as a reputable business, and be seen in many cases as having something to hide by not having one.

If you are serious about being successful in the things you are doing or in your profession, ask yourself this question:  How will I compete in the twenty-first century amid both local and worldwide competition for the products or services that I have to offer unless I have a store front on the information highway where both prospects and customers can find me?

GVO (Global Virtual Opportunities), formerly Kiosk, is a company owned by Joel Therien who has a 12 year track of experience in providing the network marketing industry online marketing tools. He has experience in success in MLM as well having earned a six figure a month income as a minimum for the last seven years in network marketing, and now one of the few in the industry who earns a seven figure monthly income in his business.

GVO has created a lot of  buzz in the internet marketing and the network marketing industry over the last year. Whether someone is just getting started in marketing themselves or their products online, or are a seasoned online marketing professional, the powerful marketing tools, hosting services and free coaching that they provide are with out a doubt the very best and most powerful combination of services and opportunity that has come along in the Internet marketing and as a business opportunity that even an average individual with no online marketing or business experience can be successful at. What makes GVO a company worth investigating?

The choice to use GVO for our firm was three-fold.

1. Unlimited domain hosting under one hosting account. The first reason GVO is so worth looking at is that when you join GVO, you get a hosting account that allows you to host as many domains as you want to under a single inexpensive hosting account. Whether you have one Website or you have thirty Websites, you can host them all under one hosting account. Think about that for a moment – one hosting account that allows you to host as many of your own domain names (Websites) on it as you want.

2. The right to resell hosting and keep 100% of the profits. Not only can you host your own Websites through your hosting account, but you are given the right to offer hosting as a reseller through your hosting account. This allows you to host other Websites for people and keep 100% of the profits, whether you sell your hosting for $2.00, $5.00, $10.00, or even $50.00 a month. You keep one-hundred percent (100%) of the profits from it. How many of your friends would like to have their own Website, and be willing to host through you over someone they don’t know? Is there anyone that needs hosting that you know of that would not want to host with you if you could offer them the same service as any other company, but provide them with personalize friendly service on a first name basis? That’s a no brainer. If you only had five friends who needed Web hosting, you could offer them hosting under your Titanium Hosting Plan for $9.00 a month, and your personal hosting with GVO would be absolutely free!

3. Free online marketing tools to promote your business. You get a whole suite of online marketing tools and Website enhancement tools. Each of these tools are free, and if you had to go out and purchase any of these tools, each one of them would be more expensive to buy or rent than your monthly hosting account. If you are already an online marketer, you will appreciate this list of tools as you already know their value as being between $300.00 and $450.00 a month depending on who you buy them from and how much you use them. If you are just starting out, you will definitely come to appreciate them, and get spoiled using them. Which of these tool do you NOT need?

• Unlimited autoresponder email system. This is an email marketing and auto responder suite of tools that allow you to fully automate your marketing and sale process if you want to put it in auto pilot. Just set it up, turn it on, and go surfing (or whatever else you like to do)! Similar systems cost you as much as $200.00 a month. It’s free with the Titanium hosting package.
• Easy video producer and integrated video hosting. This is an all-in-one complete video production tool that allows you to make, edit, and publish integrated video right into your Website. If you are in the business of setting up Websites for people, you can make huge profits using this tool.  The importance of having an integrated video tool is that it keeps your visitor on your Website. Inexperienced online marketers use YouTube video integration on their Websites. They have no clue that if they have something to sell and the visitor is in the market for what they are selling, that the visitor can just as easily click on all of their competition who have YouTube Videos in the line-up right next to theirs on the YouTube page where their video originated. Why send your prospect away from your Website to YouTube or another video posting Website when you can keep them on your Website longer? It is a foundational principle of effective online marketing that the longer you keep a visitor on your Website, the greater opportunity you have for lead and sales conversions. The goal is to not ONLY get people TO your Website, but also to KEEP them there as long as possible. The longer they are there, the greater the connection you build with them. This is worth all of the cost of all of the other tools combined, to be able to publish video directly to your Website without having it connected with any other Website.
• Complete video marketing system. Video marketing is becoming the new standard for for online promotions, marketing, and sales. It is almost mandatory if you want to reach and engage your market niche, and to reach new markets with what you have to share, offer, or promote. If email marketing has been considered King of online marketing tools, it just got dethroned, and the price of this integrated video marketing system is free with the Titanium hosting package.
• Full audio and video Webinar and Conferencing system. These tools allow you to conduct training, teach, collaborate, promote, and sell.  One of the fastest growing, hottest money making businesses on the Internet is that of doing Webinars. Whether you just want to use it to get your friends or family together that are scattered around the world, or you want to promote what you have to offer in the way of valuable tools, information, products or services, the GVO conferencing system is the perfect and cutting edge tool to do it with. Similar systems cost as much as $100.00 a month.
• Downtime and Website Change Monitoring and Spying Software. Ever wondered what your competitors were up to on their Websites? Or maybe you have some clients whose trust in you to help them keep their Websites up and running is a part of your agreement with them, i.e. Website Administrative Services (a hot little business in and of itself), you can do this with the Website Monitoring Software provided to you for free. You also get the reseller rights to this software to sell it or give it a way. Software like this rents for $20.00 a month, and is sold for as much as $200.00. Its yours to give away as a promotional item, or sell and keep 100% of the price you sell it for.

4. You are automatically enrolled into the GVO affiliate reseller program. This affiliate program alone positions you in a marketing matrix with other aggressive online marketers who are actively promoting their own network marketing companies to others, but are able to also provide a subsequent income stream to their top producers who are needing online marketing tools like those that are given for free to those who host with GVO. GVO’s CEO, Joel Therien developed a 2 by 10 hybrid matrix compensation plan that allows you to generate multiple $4,000 a month income streams for every 14 people that become affiliates in your downline, whether you introduced them to GVO’s hosting or not. The links below can take you to where you can learn about the compensation if that interests you, but as great as all the free tools are, most do not join with the intention of marketing the GVO ‘business opportunity’ – it just happens naturally because of the success of offering the hosting and tools to those who are serious about online marketing.

Still not sure if GVO is a good fit for you or if you are ready to take you online marketing efforts seriously? We offer everyone the ability to try out everything that we have shared with you here for only $1.00US for a fourteen (14) day test drive. Please feel free to visit our hosting and online marketing tools Website to learn more at www.FamilyDot.com or www.PrimoMLM.com. We will be excited to work with you towards your success as a part of our rapidly growing online marketing team. Come join us!

If you would like to discuss any of the information shared here with you today, please write us at ‘opportunity (at) sdward.com’ and someone will be back in touch with you momentarily.

Affordable hosting decisions include more than just hosting. When you host with someone – anyone – there are a whole range of things you need to be aware of and to know about before you make a final decision. It has not always been like this though. It used to be that making affordable hosting decisions  about where you wanted to host your Website was a simple choice. There were only a few companies around to choose from when you had to make your Web hosting decision. There were not too many good deals either when it came to who you had to make your web hosting decision either.

Those were the good old days. Even though you paid tons of money for Web hosting, you were one of the few, the proud and the trying to get rich online, you were just happy to be online even if the hosting decisions you were making for your Websites was costing you an arm and a leg! It’s a whole new game now.  Today, almost anyone with a power PC and a broadband Internet connection in their bedroom can offer hosting and make money off of unsuspecting Internet users who want to have a Website of their own.

I knew of one 15 year old in Colorado years ago that had something like 150 hosting clients. He was running his little enterprise out of his bedroom using his dad’s Internet connection that the company he worked for had installed for him so that he could work from home. I do not fault the young man for being so industrious, but when you think about having a 15 year old who is receiving your personal and financial information from you in order to bill you each month, well, for me at least, that just seemed a bit of a stretch to want to help out a young entrepreneur. His dad no doubt works for him now, and he is probably a millionaire. I mean, how many teenagers think like that!

Unfortunately, most people who are needing to make Web hosting decisions do not understand what hosting a Website really means and how their decision for Web hosting can affect their success in promoting their business. And, the majority of all newcomers to the Internet make the very same mistake in choosing a hosting company that offers really cheap web hosting, and that cheap web hosting ultimately will cost them far more in lost business let alone extra bandwidth fees or data transfer fees when they experience higher amounts of traffic than the web hosting company will allow [Hint: READ THE SMALL PRINT!] 

Meanwhile, back to that 15 year old and his little web hosting enterprise. In defense of some of these ‘bedroom hosting enterprises’ I can say that some have grown into respectable hosting companies. The vast majority of these small upstarts however have taken the path of what is personified in the automobile industry as the ‘used car salesman’ (nothing personal to you who may have been or are used car sales professions – the founder of our organization did a stent in a cell block of a used car lot himself – and said we could mention it here). The dividing line between those companies that are respectable and those that feed on the ignorance of the naive and simple-minded of the Internet age is simply this. Hosting alone does not a Website make.

A good hosting company offers you more than just the tools you need to build and maintain your Website, and quality customer service. The web hosting companies where someone has made their hosting decisions based on what the company provides in order to help them be financially successful are few and far between. Those ‘great’ companies are the ones that provide the marketing tools that are a requirement for marketing your Website successfully to the world. There are only a hand full of reputable hosting companies we know of that offer comprehensive hosting services for an affordable price. Of this hand full, only a few really stand out for the type of customer service commitment that we feel comfortable in trusting our clients to.

In the 16 years of being in the business of planning, building, launching, and maintaining Websites for our clients we have found only three companies that meet our high standards for hosting, customer service, and online marketing tools. One of these companies was a sister company of SD Ward & Associates that was sold this past year. Another, while having great hosting, online marketing products, and customer service, the character and integrity of its owners prohibited us from doing business with them (I have a real affinity to buying hosting from a guy who uses sexual innuendo to sell something like domain names and hosting (yeah, you guessed it. That would be GoDaddy…). The third hosting company that I have been so impressed with is the company that we have personally hosted over 25 of our own Websites with within a month after they rolled out their full service hosting and marketing tools hosting plan. The name of that company is Global Virtual Opportunities (GVO), formerly known as Kiosk.

Because of its owner’s strong commitment to not only providing quality hosting, but also actively helping every hosting customer become successful in their online marketing efforts, we continually refer our clients to this hosting company. Most of the clients we consult with about online marketing and brand development realize their need for online marketing tools. While we do offer limited hosting services for new online marketers as they are getting their feet wet in the online marketing industry, we feel that one of the absolute best investments a person or company can make into their immediate and long-term success is to take advantage of the Titanium hosting package that GVO offers. They give, i.e give for FREE, all the tools and services that every web hosting customer needs in order to be successful online.

If you had to go out and purchase or lease them, you would pay between $250 and $400 per month or more (depending on how gullible you were or are) for the marketing tools needed to promote your Website. Since we try to keep our blog posts here short, let us get to the good stuff. We would like to introduce you to the hosting service that we are using for our clients and ourselves here at SD Ward & Associates. Take a moment and watch this short video introduction, and if it makes sense to you to have a hosting service that can offer you all that they do, take another moment and visit the FamilyDot-GVO Hosting Website to learn more.

If you have any questions at all about it or would like to learn how you can get your hosting from us for free, write us at coachme (at) sdward.com. One of our coaching advisors will be back in touch with you momentarily. And as always, please share this article with anyone that you feel would find it helpful by using the social media and repost options below. AND, I would like to personally ask you to leave a comment about this article if it was helpful. Thanks.