Staying Connected: Your Business Depends on It

My internet connection was out all last evening and I became astonished at just how much I rely on it day to day. I mean, I'm plenty old enough to have lived in a world where people didn't even have computers in their home, let alone 24 hour broadband connections. Now it seems that practically everything I do involves the need for some level of connection to the net. Even passive entertainment, like movies and TV, i tend to download from iTunes, so I couldn't even pull new content to watch while I waited for the problem to be fixed by my service provider. Thanks to my iPhone and the AT&T Edge network, it is unlikely I'll ever be completely disconnected. My email and web browsing can be done just as well, albeit slowly, on my iPhone, lacking nothing. That is, of course, if you don't count the need to download anything.

So there I sat feeling totally lost. I was in the middle of updating my primary website and pages were not properly uploaded to the server. Now, even if others could continue to visit my page, while I was offline, they may have found blank pages and error codes instead of useful content. To a new visitor, this type of thing could completely erode any potential trust in your site or service. It could mean lost revenue.

I remember when I first got broadband back in Vegas in the late 1990's, it seemed there was still plenty to do without the need of it. Of course, in that day, I had yet to start my website or the others I am now building. Today we live in an age where a business in its entirety can be run on the web. How dangerous is that when the fate of your enterprise could be in the hands of your service provider? Worse still, what if your fate is in the hands of cables and technology laid down over a decade ago?

I've read that some internet entrepreneurs will choose to have both DSL and cable as a contingency against just this sort of thing. I have also read that many will use multiple web hosting services for their different sites so that they all don't end up on one server. Should it crash, so too would any income they might be generating. With multiple hosting services, there may be a slightly greater expense, but if one income generating sight goes down, others may still be bringing in the bacon.

I've only recently started branching out into using more than one web hosting service. I already see the value in it. In the absence of a reliable cable connection, and with the convenience of still being connected via my iPhone when it is out, I am also starting to see the value of having more than one way to access the net and my business. As you grow you internet enterprises, it might be better to consider implementing these strategies sooner rather than later. The alternative is that a simple outage could leave you cut off from potential revenue sources.