Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Now you can subscribe for web and email hosting for RM 0.00 (US$ 0.00) per year.

What? It’s free of charge! No string attached!

Grab your Free Web & Email Hosting Plan now. More details below:

• Linux server
• cPanel control panel
• 10MB web and email space
• 1GB data transfer (bandwidth) per month

And listen up. More goodies below!

• Unlimited email accounts (POP, IMAP, webmail)
• Unlimited FTP accounts
• Unlimited subdomains
• Unlimited parked domains
• Unlimited MySQL databases

If you own a domain name (whether registered with us or not), you can subscribe for the Free Plan. You can also register a a new domain name and subscribe for the Free Plan.

10MB may be too little for some domains. But if you don’t have a web site, or have a very simple one, and you plan only a few email accounts, Free Plan maybe enough for you.

If it is not enough, you can always upgrade to other plans later. But hosting under Free Plan will give you a taste of what cPanel-based Linux hosting is like.

To grab it, please fill in the form here, put in your domain name, and choose Free Plan under Web & Email Hosting Plan.  If you need to pay for the domain name, proceed to the payment page.  Change your domain name servers to our ns1.vesselbiz.com and ns2.vesselbiz.com when ready.  You will receive your hosting plan details by email on the same working day!

The most popular email software our customers are using are Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express and Mozilla Thunderbird. Outlook Express is by far the most popular as it comes with Windows free of charge.

But the way Outlook Express stores its emails may not be the best way. Unfortunately things can happen that the emails can get corrupted. For example, if you suddenly power off your computer when it is downloading emails, the downloading is interrupted and your emails in Inbox and some folders can be gone.

So if you are using Outlook Express, or any email software for that matter, it’s prudent that you back up your emails regularly, especially when you have important company emails. One customer of mine opens and saves every email as a file in the hard drive. But this is just too tedious

Worry no more. Just grab a copy of the free Outlook Express Quick Backup. With a click of the “Complete Backup” button, it backs up all your emails in all folders. Not only your emails, but your folder structure, address book, email accounts and settings are backed up as well. Great tool!

In case your emails are lost, you can always restore back your previous backup. Just click the “Complete Restore” button, your Outlook Express will be back as previous. Thumb up!

I’ve been working these days to improve the domain name search service on BizPartner web site.

A domain name search service, or WHOIS service, lets you query the availability of a domain name. If it is available, you can register it. If it is not available, the search shows you who registered it.

It took me one whole day on Monday to revamp the previous WHOIS service. The service is now more robust, accurate and useful. It took me another one whole day on Tuesday to make the search available for bloggers and site owners to monetize their web sites.

Being a site owner and blogger myself, I understand the dilemma on how to monetize (make money from) a blog or web site. A business web site can sell products and services. But how about a non-commercial one, such as many personal blogs out there? How do they make money?

One common way is to make money from pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements such as those of Google Adsense. You just put up some snippet of HTML code on your blog, and it turns into advertisements relevant to your content. When your visitors click on any ad, you get paid by Google.

Another way is to sell other people’s products or services. This is “affiliate marketing”. You become their “affiliate”, and put up a link from your blog to their web site. When your visitors click on the link, and buy from the supplier, you get a cut of the profit.

This is what I’m trying to do with my domain name registration service. But instead of putting up just a link, you are given a domain name search box to be placed on your blog. When your visitors search for any domain name, and buy any domain name within 3 months, you get a commission.

This way, it’s win-win-win for you, your visitors and me. You provide an extra feature or service to your providers and earn money from it. Your visitors can search for their desired domain names on your site, without going to a domain name provider’s web site. And I can get more customers referred from you.

I also think that if domain name search is ubiquitous, more people will be encouraged to have their own domain names. Getting own domain name is also what I strongly recommend to those who want to blog. No more using free blog address!

Look at the search box I put up on the left of this blog. It may not look nice here, but you can change its appearance. Find out more here on how to put up a domain name (WHOIS) search box on your blog or web site.