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Home » The Famous Blog » How Server Downtime Nearly Ruined my Blogging Business

How Server Downtime Nearly Ruined my Blogging Business

March 2, 2012 - Last Modified: March 29, 2014 by Mitz Pantic

Server Downtime

Server downtime is the biggest nightmare for bloggers and they try to avoid this by any means. Visitors can not access your blog on the downtime and worst of all this is going to create a very bad impression among first time visitors.

Chances are that most of the first-time visitors will never come back to your blog and this is why bloggers take server downtime very seriously.

Recently I was faced with this disastrous problem on a blog that steadily makes over $200 a day. I had people emailing me and telling me my website had problems and when I investigated, I found out that my account had been shut down for CPU throttling. I probably would have preferred some server maintenance or server downtime because it took me  hours to convince the company to put me back online.

This was a nightmare and what was even worse, was that this occurred every day for the next week. The company assured me that the problem had been fixed but kept shutting me down.

I cannot tell you what this can do to an online business. Having server downtime, for any reason, actually just wipes your business off the face of the earth. I lost potential customers, loads of sales, and confused the regulars. This is definitely one of the downsides of an online business.

What Does Server Downtime do to Your Business?

Chinese restaurant

Issue No1: You Are Creating A Very Bad First Impression

If you are new to blogging, the first thing you need to understand about server downtime is that it’s not a onetime thing, but its impact can last forever among most first comers. Chances of your first time visitor making a comeback are really low or you must be a famous blogger with huge online popularity and the visitor is looking for some unique information on your site. In such cases, they may give it a shot again.

Issue No2: Downtime Means No Productivity

This is another way that downtime can ruin your blogging business. If your blog is not online, you can’t publish fresh content to it and this will affect your traffic in many ways. Visitors who are coming for constant updates will be disappointed and if downtime happens more often, they may look for other sources. Regular updates are also essential for maintaining your search engine ranking and without proper search engine rankings; you’re losing money this way as well.

You probably have invested a significant amount of money on search engine optimization and all your other SEO efforts will be in vain with a blog that has regular downtimes. Once search engines get a bad impression about your blog, it’s very difficult for you to push it back to the front pages of leading search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Issue No3: Loss Of Data

Several backups may not always work, especially when you’re trying to reach the website after downtime and things can get much worse if your downtime coincides with your server’s backup time. As a matter of fact, nothing is impossible in the online world, so be prepared for the worst. If you do not have proper backup of your data, you will lose your recent upgrades and other important information.

This can be even more frustrating if you paid someone to create the content.

Issue No4: Liabilities and Money Factor

Advertising on your blog is a great way to make money but at the same time, when it is going through a downtime most of the day, you’re not going to please your advertisers and some of them may even ask for their money back. This not only results in a lot of stress and possible financial loss, it can also affect your credibility as a blogger and the issue should be rectified at any cost.

Issue No5: Search Engine Rankings

If server downtime occurs too often you will lose rankings. I lost all my traffic on a few top pages and had to work frantically to get them back. Some are still not back to where they should be because so many people tried to access them and could not.

This ruins your reputation in the search engines and sees all of your visitors bouncing from your website.

This situation was a lot like Google Panda hitting my website, which did happen, and thankfully I recovered from that also.

What Did I Do?

I desperately wanted to move my website to another server, however I was at the mercy of the company because I could not access my website to move it. I was frantically looking for a solution to my problem and scoured through many of the top web hosting companies to find one that would help me quickly.

Eventually I bought dedicated hosting with Hostgator and they moved my entire blog for me. I mean an exact replica of the blog and also even the e-mail accounts. All I did was walk in and start running my blog again. This was such a relief after going through a week of this awful server downtime and loss of earnings. I would not wish this upon anyone and when your business can support itself, I suggest you buy the best hosting you can afford.

Now you know how server downtime can affect your blogging business, so if you’re serious about building a successful blogging career it’s important to choose a web hosting company that has at least 99% uptime. You also need to move your successful moneymaking blogs to safe hosting where you have plenty of room to expand. I neglected the fact that my hosting needed upgrading and caused myself some unnecessary stress.

Hosting is the absolute most important part of your blogging business, because without it, you have nothing.

Image © Eimantas Buzas – Fotolia.com

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Filed Under: Business, Hosting

About Mitz Pantic

Follow @buildwebsites1

My name is Milica Pantic (aka Mitz) and I am a serial full-time blogger. I started out with one website many years ago and it went so well, I sold my businesses and began living the internet dream. Since then I have been perfecting the art of building websites to earn money online and I will never stop learning. This is an ever changing business and I love the challenge. Please feel free to download my favorite FREE REPORTS if you are interested in improving your blogging business or starting one from scratch.

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{ 40 Responses }

  1. Robert says:
    Failing to deliver your website is a very dangerous thing. People come to your site, they get an error message and they think "well, this blog isn't trust-worthy at all" I always hostes my blog on Hostgator, which is a reliable resource :)
  2. Pubudu Kodikara says:
    I also faced this problem... I even exchanged nasty emails with my hosts because of this problem.... What I say is, you need to put you money into the server... you need to make sure that it have enough space to expand. Most of the time down times occur during traffic spikes. Also bad hosts can cause it... Pick a good host and put your money into it! After departing from shared hosting, i spent almost an year searching for a good VPS... Had worked with a lot of them and finally settled with Media Temple... I didn't exuberance any down times from their side until now! By the way, nice post.. you have written about a very big problems which we bloggers face :)
  3. Reggie says:
    Server downtime can dent ones reputation online and it is never a good thing when people come to you site and the next thing they discover is that they will never return due to the situation of the server. nice article Mitz
  4. Suhanesh Madav says:
    Those who take blogging seriously must host their site on any VPS or Dedicated server.Most of the hosts using unlimited word as their marketing jargon only to attract customers. be wise and go for a VPS or dedicated server if you are planning to start a business online
  5. Nick Stamoulis says:
    This is why it's so important to invest in good hosting. There are cheap hosting companies out there, but you get what you pay for. It's worth the extra money to have peace of mind and know that something like this won't happen.
  6. Nishadha says:
    Wow that is really bad. As a web based service provided server downtime is a very critical issue for us and as you said even a relatively small shortage can lead to massive losses and recurring problems like ranking losses.
  7. suraj says:
    Server down time is one biggest problem in cheap hosting so we should avoid such a hosting company. If someone visit your blog and found your blog is down then visitor move to another website and never come back.
  8. Isaac Sarayiah says:
    Hi My blog - theSarayiahpost.com is about Unlocking the Mysteries of Life, Love and Relationships to help others. I launched it late August 2011 and today it is ranked in the top 600k sites worldwide by Alexa (up from 27m!). However, I had some downtime with my host recently. It went down intermittently 3 days on the trot and the on the third day about 4 hours continuous. This cost me lots of traffic but after I complained they were great and switched me to another server and it seems my traffic has more than recovered. We all just hope it never happens, but dedicated servers are very expensive so let's hope that if you are unfortunate enough to have some downtime that it is minimal and no or very little damage is done. Have a wonderful day. Love Isaac Sarayiah
  9. Ricardus says:
    Good to hear that now everything has been resolved for you now.
  10. Pawel Reszka says:
    Downtime is definitely a pain. One way to deal with something like that is to have a second hosting account with a clone of your blog. If one goes down all you have to do is change nameservers for the time being.
    • mitz says:
      I do have another hosting but didn't have a clone ready!!! That sucked! :)
  11. Jamie Northrup says:
    I haven't run into this issue yet, but as my blogs keep growing i will have to get dedicated hosting, I've heard so many great things about HostGator, I will definitely consider them.
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes Hostgator is really doing a great job and you can see this by other comments around the internet. As for getting a dedicated server, it is expensive, but well worth the peace of mind. :)
  12. Kimberly Gauthier says:
    I've been very fortunate with FatCow, but I know what you mean about server down time. They shut one site down with barely any notice (a mistake on their end) and got me up and running in no time. Another time, servers on the east coast went down - this was on a day when I was expecting HUGE amounts of traffic. I was only down for 5 minutes, but my heart beat only 7 times. Yikes. Glad you got your problem fixed and thanks for the Hostgator recommendation.
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Hey Kimberly I know what you mean when you say Your heat beat only 7 times! I thought I might have a heart attack from the stress when my blog was down. Of course it was not like that but I was very upset!
  13. Ben Norman says:
    Down time has got to be everyone who makes money on the internet's worst nightmare. I've been fortunate in that I've never had any of my sites go down completely for a long period of time but I have had issues in the past which has made them load extremely slowly which is almost as bad. I spent a good few years hopping hosts trying to find a decent one and I'm finally happy, no issues at all for a long time. The moral of the story for me is that you don't get 'owt for nowt (apologies, I'm from Yorkshire!), cheap hosts tend to give a pretty poor service, I'm now paying a little bit more per month and the service is hugely better than anything I've had before.
  14. James says:
    Great post, it's very bad when the server is down and you need to work even harder to fix every single detail that maybe went wrong. thanks for sharing
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes I am happy now that if my website has a problem I know I cannot get shut down as my website is the only one on the server. (unless I crash the server) :)
  15. shenoyjoseph says:
    yeah yesterday night i visited your website in home there is no posts i though someone will hacked your blog. Now by reading the post i have know that this is server side problem. We need to move some high quality servers in order to avoid this kind of incidents. :)
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      You are right... I haven't moved Wordpress-websitebuilder.com yet though... This is my next job, to secure good hosting for this site..
  16. Blazing Minds says:
    I had downtime for my blog over Christmas of all times, my blog has become so popular over the last 3-4 years that it exceeded its bandwidth, but luckily for me I have a great service provider and it was back up and running in no time, since then I've upgraded.. But I certainly noticed a slump in earnings from the downtime even though it was only a couple of days!
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes the few days down can make a real difference. I am lucky I didn't see too much drop in earnings. And now I am on a dedicated server I think my earnings are just getting better!
  17. Alexfrom Fatcow says:
    The most important is to not make a drama when the server is down. I usually make bake ups of all my data and use the most reliable hosting.
  18. Kharim Tomlinson says:
    Hey Mitz, sorry to hear about your server downtime. Server down time can be a real pain in the ass. It make your visitors think that your blog has been shut down, first time visitors may think your site doesn't exist, etc. Thanks for the post and hope this doesn't happen again
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Thats right! People automatically think the worst as so many websites disappear from existence on the internet. :)
  19. Harriet says:
    I totally understand this! For my uni course I have to do some tests online in a certain time period and my university house internet is so rubbish during the day I often find myself having to do the test several times so that I can get it sent off!
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Well that sucks! I hate a bad internet connection. :)
  20. Anne-Sophie says:
    Sounds like you have been facing a lot of unnecessary stress. I have been lucky so far and haven't experienced any major server downtime. I do hope it'll stay that way.
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes I have had a good run until now.. but all is sorted now. Just wanted to write this to let others know not to take their hosting packages for granted. Upgrade before this happens.
  21. Abhi Balani says:
    Sorry to hear that you had a bad time. But $200 a day? Amazing... I'd love to know how you do that over my blog in a GP. :)
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Hi Abhi Yes it was a bad time but sorted out now. :)
  22. Nitin says:
    This is the reason why I make use of Hostgator only. I once tried another hosting service and that provider kept shutting down my website for overuse of resources. From that time all I have been using is Hotgator and nothing else for all of my websites.
  23. Jeet says:
    Ahh, that would have hurt like anything. Server down and you are unnoticed about it. Your profit and your hard work went unnoticed by few of your intimate visitors. I always keep up to date and backed up everything. But if the server is down, you can not do anything.
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes I am also a big fan of backup but was stuck in limbo!
  24. Ty Neal says:
    Great post Mitz, Last year my buddy and I were launching our product and experience a server downtime. I knew nothing about server downtime and it hurt bad. but it good that you learn from things like that :0) Great post
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes that is a nightmare when you are having a launch! :)
  25. Dave Lucas says:
    This is why I constantly harp about avoiding 3rd party hosting services! Blog*spot and WordPress rarely go down, and if they do it is systemwide, and netizens understand.
  26. Mark says:
    The worst problem that server downtime causes is definitely loss of ranking. You could work months to rank higher is search engines to lost it overnight because of a bad hosting company. As you said, if someone is serious about blogging, they need to buy themselves the most reliable hosting their money can buy. Thanks Mitz M mark
    • Mitz Pantic says:
      Yes I was getting away with a cheap package for too long! :) I really should have upgraded a few years ago.
  27. Kevin says:
    Thanks for the share.It will open the eyes of we new bloggers from making thesame mistake falling into such

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