(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Earlier this month, cloud and web hosting provider Rackspace Hosting appointed Suaad Sait in the company’s newly created position of chief marketing office r. Suaad is a technology marketing veteran of more than 20 years, serving in various marketing roles at Reachforce, Pervasive, Ventix, Liaison Technology and DAZEL. He will oversee Rackspace’s global marketing efforts as the company continues to offer its wide range of managed hosting and cloud computing solutions, backed by its “Fanatical Support” customer service. In an email interview with the WHIR, Suaad discussed what he will bring to his new role, as well as Rackspace’s overall marketing strategy. WHIR: I understand that this is a newly created role for Rackspace; what is it about the current position of the company that has led to the decision to create a chief marketing officer role? Suaad Sait: Rackspace is a leading provider of Cloud Hosting, the hottest growth market in the industry. Our Fanatical Support is a highly defensible competitive differentiator. In fact, it is the key ingredient for businesses to really trust cloud technology. Our Open approach enables explosive innovation in the Cloud market. It is now time to get out and tell the story to a broader audience. WHIR: What, in your opinion, are some of the strengths and weaknesses of Rackspace’s marketing strategy? SS: One of Rackspace’s key strengths is that our focused and targeted marketing at very specific segments of the market, tight aperture. One of our challenges that few directly outside the focused targets know of Rackspace.  The addressable Cloud market is much broader and growing every day. WHIR: Can you discuss the details of some of Rackspace’s key strategic moves you have planned for 2012? SS: We will have more information in the coming weeks and months. WHIR: Are there any specific experiences and skills that you’ve gained in your past positions that you feel will help in this new role? SS: My experiences range from Xerox where I was part of the invention of the digital printing press industry, it was a revolution. I have startup experiences helping creating new market categories and will leverage both of those along with Rackspace’s incredible proof points of 160,000 plus customers. Those customer proof points provide Rackspace with an incredible story to tell the world in the words of our customers. WHIR: While cloud computing is certainly on the rise, the average consumer is still relatively unknowledgeable about what it is and how it works. What are the biggest challenges for Rackspace in terms of marketing cloud infrastructure solutions to these consumers? SS: Our target market is not the consumer. We are focused on software developers, IT departments, marketing teams — all the people on the planet designing, building and deploying cloud applications. Rackspace is the power behind their successes. We do what we do so companies like Crocs, Mazda, Six Flags and Under Armor can do what they do best for their own industry.

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — For many resellers, the domain aftermarket is a surprisingly untapped market from which they could earn additional revenue. Perhaps one of the leading reasons why some resellers do not include listings for premium domains among their standard domain search results is because they have doubts that any customer would be willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to register a single domain. A few months ago, Michael Goldstein, VP of marketing for Tucows reseller services provider OpenSRS , was among the many non-believers — that was until OpenSRS decided to integrate premium domains in the search results of its domain registrar division, Hover. What he found was that not only were customers more than willing to purchase premium domains, they would do so without any pressure from a human sales representative. Using the OpenSRS API, it was able to successfully sell 29 premium domains in a 4-month period at an average price of $1,530. And while that might not sound like a lot to some readers, another way of looking at it is selling 1 premium domain for every 853 regular domains registered, or $1.79 in gross premium domains revenue. In an exclusive phone interview, Goldstein gave an introductory look at how integrating premium domains into a regular domain search can help resellers boost their revenue, along with his own pointers on reselling premium domains. Premium Domains Are More than a Value-Add; They’re a Dependable Revenue Source Domain names are real estate. For someone who is really thinking about this as a business, it’s a very reasonable thing to spend a few thousand dollars on it. That’s what came to us; even though we we’re so stuck in our way that a domain name shouldn’t cost a lot. But not if the domain name is going to be a real asset for your business — it’s just not that big a deal for a lot of people. There’s a whole different category of people who look at the $2,000 or $3,000 domains and they’ll say, “That’s no big deal at all. I spend way more on things that aren’t as important to my business.” Resellers Will Need to Do Some Legwork Before Using the OpenSRS API The backend is taken care of by OpenSRS. When someone does a domain search, those results are generated, but you have to do the front end work to reveal those results to your customers, so that means design. A lot of people generate results that come in different categories: here’s the exact domain name you’ve searched for and different TLDs, here are suggested names that are similar to the domain you searched for, here are some premium names. Each business or hosting company has to decide for themselves what’s appropriate for them in terms of the page layout and how much to reveal. Don’t Worry About What Everyone Else is Doing, Design Your Domain Search Results Interface the Way You Want A lot of resellers will put their domains in various categories as part of a separate section of results, and while that makes sense to us in the industry but that’s not how real human beings think about. So instead of putting these domains in categories, we just offered them in one long list. That just seemed more consistent with the way we all tend to shop for products and services. Resellers Will Receive a Generous Commission on Premium Domain Purchases You’ve got a buyer on one end, a seller on the other end, and a bunch of agencies in between. BuyDomains.com and Fabulous.com are two of the largest agencies representing buyers of secondary domains. Resellers get a piece of the sold price. With [OpenSRS] resellers, our standard rate is 10 percent commission on any premium domain name sold. I don’t want to reveal our specific financials, what we get fairig portion to the reseller. For us, if a reseller is doing well with this and they’re happy, they’re going to continue working with us and we’re going to do well selling a lot of regular priced domains. Convince Your Customers on the Value of Premium Domains This one is a name that’s not easy to remember and not as intuitive and you can buy it for $15 or so, compared to one that costs $2,000 or $3,000 that you’ll be really excited to put on your business card. That’s what every business that is selling premium domains needs to learn how to do: how to serve these up, how to explain to customers why does this thing cost so much, is it going to cost that much every year, is it a name that people will get confused about?

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Friday the 13th may be a bad omen for some, but those looking for deals on domain names and web hosting packages may actually find some luck as Nicline launches its 45-day free trial promotion of its registry service provider tools and 34SP.com offers domain names for half off. HostGee offers six months free of VPS contracts and The Blu Group offers free transfers and three months free of web hosting. Wholesale Domain Registrar Nicline Offers Free Trial on Tools for Domain Name Resellers ICANN accredited registrar Nicline announced on Thursday that it has launched its 45-day free trial promotion. The trial gives access to its fully automated tools including the registry service provider control panel, the wholesaler’s Extranet, and the end user Extranet. The RSP control panel allows the creation of sub-accounts for clients (distributors) and the wholesaler’s extranet allows clients to manage their domains and API for automating processes. To sign up for the promotion, go here to fill out the form . The offer is valid until February 29, 2012. Web Host 34SP.com Offers 50 Percent Off Domains Web host and domain registrar 34SP.com announced this week that it has discounted all new domain name prices by 50 percent during January. Some of the domains included in the deal are .co.uk, .com, .biz, .eu, and .co. For the full list of discounted domains, visit its website . Every domain is backed by its in-house support team and there is no limit to the number of domains that can be registered during this promotion. Web Host HostGee Offers Six Months Free on Virtual Private Server Contracts Web hosting provider HostGee is offering six months free with year contracts of any of its managed virtual private servers. Customers will also be automatically entered into a draw for $5000 if they purchase a 12 or 24 month contract. HostGee says its servers come with 100 percent power and network uptime, service level guarantees, 24/7 support, unlimited bandwidth with 100Mb connectivity and unlimited free SSL certificates. Web Host The Blu Group Offers Three Months Free Hosting Web host and ad agency The Blu Group is offering to transfer companies’ websites for free as well as provide three months of free web hosting with the purchase of a full year. The Blu Group says companies can expect to save up to $280 per year by switching to its hosting solution. Companies that wish to redesign their website with BLU will be offered twelve months of free hosting. Some restrictions apply and the offers expire on February 29, 2012.

Are you looking to add competitive and highly desirable services to your business without increasing your out of pocket expenses? Maybe you are looking for the perfect startup opportunity that will give you an edge in today’s market and will grow right along with technology. Whatever your needs are seo outsourcing can be the solution you have been looking for. Seo outsourcing is not new, but the ways that it is being done and the ease of getting into such a system are. Nowadays it is easier than ever before to start your own seo outsourcing company or add seo outsourcing services to your existing business. Best of all because of the nature of seo outsourcing you end up doing little of the actual work. That is not to say that you can just sit back and watch the money roll in, but it is far less intensive in terms of material and time cost than many other start up ideas.

To get into the world of seo outsourcing you will first need to find the right company to work with. Lucky for you there are literally thousands of companies that do seo outsourcing out there. However, this does mean that a bit of research is required on your end in order to pick the best one. Look for a seo outsourcing company (sometimes called an seo reseller) the same way you would look for any business partner. You want to company that is going to give you a competitive rate, a full range of services, and maybe most importantly, good service after the sale. If you are getting a fantastic rate but there is never anyone there to take your questions you might not be getting such a great deal after all.

January 5, 2012 — Cloud security provider Gazzang has joined Amazon Web Services service provider partner program, according to an announcement made by the company on Thursday. This announcement comes less than a month after Gazzang named Dustin Kirkland its chief architect.

December 28, 2011 — Security research firm McAfee predicts that cyberattacks involving political motivation or notoriety will become major threats in 2012, according to a report released Wednesday.

December 20, 2011 — Cloud services firm GlobalOne announced on Monday that it has launched GlobalOne Mobility, a new practice that offers professional services for building, deploying and maintaining mobile cloud apps for both consumer and enterprise environments.