A large number of new blogs go online everyday. This explosive growth raises the question: Should you start a blog for your business? I believe you should as this becomes an effective marketing tool. Like any other marketing tool, blogs are most effective when used properly. What you are reading now - Nairahost Blog - is an example of a blog.

Aside from generating new sales leads, blogging also offers the following potential benefits.

1. A blog creates a platform for you to engage with both existing and potential customers in a direct, informal, no-pressure way. You can use blog to communicate the strengths of your product or service, the expertise of your top executives and the breadth of your company’s experience in ways that traditional marketing and advertising won’t allow. This can inspire customer loyalty.
2. Blog is collaborative nature. As such, it can can help you gain insight into customers’ needs and interests. This information can be used to develop new products or services or fine-tune existing ones.
3. A blog can make your company appear more “alive” and approachable. A website promoting your products or services is an essential marketing tool. But a blog, in effect, gives your company a personal voice, which also can help boost customer loyalty.
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Wordpress after six months of hard-work by the WordPress community, has finally released the Wordpress version 2.5 stable edition. In a post by Matt titled 2.5 Sneak Peek, Matt says…

The improvements in 2.5 are numerous, and almost entirely a result of your feedback: multi-file uploading, one-click plugin upgrades, built-in galleries, customizable dashboard, salted passwords and cookie encryption, media library, a WYSIWYG that doesn’t mess with your code, concurrent post editing protection, full-screen writing, and search that covers posts and pages. Read More

All Nairahost customers are encouraged to update their wordpress or request for a free update through our support channels.

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Michael Jensen in his post “Google Indexing Sites in 1 Day Again” explained how he successfully listed his site in Google within 24 hours.

1) I created 5 pages of content (Home, FAQ, About Us, etc.).

2) I put them in a simple template with site-wide links. I also linked to it from one of my other sites (it’s very relevant so it makes sense).

3) I added tagged the site on only 2 social bookmarking sites.

4) Commented in 1 forum, put the URL in one directory (niche specific), and submitted it to Digg.

5) Installed Google Analytics

6) Created a sitemap, pinged Google, and put the sitemap in my Robots.txt. Logged into Google Webmaster Central and submitted my sitemap there.

Read more his post….

This is a great contribution.

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Over our three years in the web hosting and domain registration industry in Nigeria, we have been asked then and again with questions like this, “Why are you not giving out free domain names with your hosting packages?”, or “Why do you charge [x]Naira for a domain name when I can get one from [one of our competitors] for [ less than X ]Naira?”.

I am pretty sure that more of this relative question would be asked in the future, even after this post. To begin with, free domain names, are not free, they come with conditions or “strings”. No Registry gets domains for free, For example, a .com domain name, costs the Registrar $6.00 approx 750Naira per year (one .com domain name for one year).

Nairahost even though it uses dedicated servers, resells domain names through a registry. Nairahost, obtains the domains from the registrar at a far more higher price, because the registrars have to make profit from their products. Nairahost is considering becoming a registrar in the future. So perhaps then, it could further reduce its domain costs overhead.

Some Registrars sell directly to the public (GoDaddy, Network Solutions, Register.com, etc.) and some sell through resellers such as ISPs and web hosts (Tucows, eNom, etc.). Registrars provide WHOIS services for their domains, handle abuse reports, and provide the management tools to their customers.

People should not accept any offers for free domain names because they are usually tied to a package which you must be paying for otherwise you would lose the domain name, because that would entail breaching the contract, you agreed to, when you received the free domain name.

It is advisable to pay for a domain name, even if it is just N1.00 than to get a free one. When you pay as little as N1.00 there is a monetary commitment between you and the provider, so the provider cannot withdraw or seize the domain name, should you decide to move away from the provider for whatever reasons, you might have.

Furthermore, paying as low as N1.00 for a domain name should not be done, as services provided under such low cost, are very questionable and often are pre-packaged with hidden contractual agreements that would cost you your domain name, when you breach it.

Some registrars ensure that you can only renew with them at a higher price, some only enable the ability to transfer the domain after a 2 year contract, and others have even more ridiculous terms. So its very imperative, that the customer reads the providers term of service before he or she signs up for a free domain name.

Why does Nairahost charge for Domain names?

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Google does not run a web hosting business, but according to Lew Moornan at Racklabs in his blog entry, Google’s Dangerous Trade, Google actually makes more profit on your hosting product through their Adwords business.

In his post, he asserts that Google has the ultimate model, which I agree too.

“Web hosting” as a keyword on Google gets searched 2 million times a month.

The top spot right now goes for about $15 per click.

Let’s say the average hoster converts 10% of those clicks to customers (a pretty aggressive assumption).

That means for every $10/month hosting account converted, Google is getting $150 ($15 per click x 10 clicks needed for a sale).

Without any marginal cost (ok, serving that search page probably costs .00001 cents or something tiny) that is almost ALL profit.

Now, let’s compare that to the hoster: let’s assume a 30% profit margin for a 30 month life (which is high in both profit and customer life). That is only $90 of profits ($10/month * .30 margin *30 months) over the life of the customer.

Read more…..

We don’t currently advertise on Google Adwords, but nevertheless this is an intriguing fact.

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Installing Microsoft web data administration(MSWDA) on IIS as a Service is as straightforward as the manual instructs, if you need to install it on a Hosting Server as a Service.

Nairahost Administrators wanted the following.

1. MSWDA as a Service

2. MSWDA runned on a dedicated ip

3. Hosting accounts access to MSWDA using an A entry

This is what we did after installing MSWDA using the msi setup file.

1. We did not enable the IIS Service it came with as we wanted it to run under our ISS Server

2. We added a website and added all the Internet User permissions. This we did by pointing the Website to the Web Folder and leaving the Header variables Empty.

3. We modified the web.config file with the following while leaving the

The rest of the modifications are a simply straightforward and default.

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This has been a great month, and on behalf of Nairahost Nigeria, We would like to thank you all, for your interest in our services. This month, we decided to giveaway 2 positions instead of the modeled one, because we missed out on January. The turnaround of applicants this month has been phenomenal. This means a lot to us, we are glad that you trust our services, even when they are presented free.

The winners of the February free hosting are:
1. Olubisi Akintunde
2. Ikenna Okonkwo

Congratulation. You would be contacted personally both via email. We do hope you would enjoy your time with Nairahost Nigeria.

As we all congratulate the winners of this month, we would like to remind others that we still have ten more positions available. As the months unfold, your chance of winning increases. So, if you did not win this month, you have the chance to win in the coming months.

Thank you all once again for joining our monthly free hosting competition.

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Yes its free absolutely free, except its a lottery !!

Nigerians have been great customers, and hence we have decided to return back the favor, by introducing a Domain and Hosting Lottery. Every month we have decided to give out one free hosting and domain account for a year . This means we are giving out 12 free accounts and 12 free domain names yearly. Considering we did not give out on January, we have two slots for February. This means 2 people from Nigeria would win 1 hosting account and 1 domain name for 1 year.

The 1 free domain can be (.com,.net and .org) and a you also get a 500MB web hosting account !!

You can view winners at the end of each month HERE

You can sign up for a chance to win HERE

Privacy Policy
We would not share your information with anyone nor spam you; as we hate spammers too.

Things to know

* The monthly winner is chosen by random using a computer algorithm
* Only one entry per person is allowed
* Multiple entries would lead to termination of service or disqualification upon detection
* The winning hosting package and domain account would be valid for one year
* There is no need to re-enter the contest, as your entry is valid for 12 months
* The domain and web hosting account belongs to you
* You would get full access to the account
* The hosting package and domain registration you win would expire after one year of activation
* You can choose to downgrade the package after the 1 year duration or contract
* You can choose to renew your hosting or transfer your domain after the duration or the contract
*You must abide by our terms of service
* You would get a full web hosting and domain registration support just like any of our paid customers

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Nairahost currently sells the cheapest domain in Nigeria. Domains start at the price of 1,100 Naira a year, and renewable at that rate. To view the rates visit Nairahost Nigeria Domain Prices .

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