How Hostwell Came to Be

Hostwell started off as a way to help out local small businesses in this rough economic climate. You can read the condensed story of Hostwell on my site – here you can see a bit more of my thought process.

Basically, I started off with the idea that $99 per year hosting was a great offer. Realistically though, other hosting companies offer it even cheaper. Even though businesses can save money on hosting, they don’t reinvest it into their site to maintain it. A light came on at that point and I saw a need for “small business website management,” that is a service that updates, adds pages, creates forms, etc. for small businesses on a monthly basis.

Still being stuck on the “hosting” side of things, I built my site around the idea of web hosting for $30-$40 per month with “two free updates and one new page addition” per month.

on Oct 19 in Video Blog tagged , , , by Bob Potter

Sent Out Email Announcement for Hostwell Web Hosting

On Wednesday afternoon I finished my email announcement, imported my selected group of individuals into Mail Chimp, prayed, and clicked “send.”

Of course, it was a bit more difficult than that… I spent about 5 hours writing, re-writing, and sending a few tests to myself before my wife looked over the copy. She always has great suggestions because she is not savvy in the same areas I am. She asks questions that help me realize I need to re-write a few things. Here is how the final version read:

Howdy Chris,

Call me crazy, but I’d like to think you should get more from your website hosting company. So much so, I started a web hosting company to fix a problem many small businesses experience.

Most small business websites do not get updated frequently. Because of this, these websites do not:

  1. Get many visitors.
  2. Get many leads.
  3. Rank well in Google or other search engines.

If you experience any of these, you may be left feeling like your website is not an effective marketing tool.

Hostwell can solve this problem.

When you become a Hostwell customer, your normal web hosting needs will be met. In addition, I’ll update your website content for free. Specifically, I will:

  1. Update 2 pages of content on your site per month – free.
  2. Add 1 new page to your site per month – free.

>> View all of Hostwell’s benefits [link]

How does updating my site solve this problem?

Adding new content increases your website’s ability to rank better in the search engines. With better search engine rankings, you’ll receive more visitors and more leads.

Is Hostwell right for me?

Hostwell is right for you if you are a small business that:

  • Does not or cannot update your site frequently.
  • Does not update because of cost.
  • Wants your website to become a better marketing tool.

Get Started with Hostwell
*Type in “newsletter” into the secret code field when signing up and you can send out an email newsletter to 100 of your customers each month for free.

What is included with my Hostwell hosting plan?

  • Unlimited support (phone and email)
  • Branded email accounts (e.g. bob@hostwell.cc)
  • Email setup (I will walk you through your email setup or set it up for you – in Outlook, Apple Mail, etc.)
  • 99.9% uptime (your website will be up for your visitors)
  • Unlimited Storage
  • Unlimited Bandwidth

Host Better – Improve Your Website – Get Started Now! [link]
Host your website at Hostwell for:
$360 per year ($120 savings)
or
$40 per month

After clicking the send button and re-reading it, I noticed one sentence I would have changed. I said:

Call me crazy, but I’d like to think you should get more from your website hosting company.

I was a bit presumptious…what I should have said is:

Call me crazy, but I’d like to think small businesses should get more from their website hosting company.

I guess I took Brian’s first advice too seriously and used “you” too much in the opening statement.

Results

The results weren’t what I was really hoping for, but I did get a few people interested, which is great! One of my recipients, Jim Grammer, even Tweeted about Hostwell and said:

Bob Potter’s new Web hosting service for small business makes *total* sense. Is your Web site stagnant? http://hostwell.cc/story.php

To be honest with you, that is exactly the kind of response I am hoping to invoke with Hostwell.

on Aug 28 in General Updates tagged , , , by Bob Potter