Woes of Having a High Traffic Site

March 28th, 2007 by Web Girl

OK, some of you will think I am extremely annoying for complaining about having a high-traffic website. Honestly, I am extremely thankful for having a popular site and love it. Even the problems. But it really is high-stress…

Let me tell you how much work it truly can be when you are managing everything on your own. Today, (Tuesday) the sh*t hit the fan in a bad way. I’ll start with a brief history of my web hosting situations:

When I first started my “popular” website, I was using Hostgator’s Baby hosting plan. Which meant at the time, something along the lines of $9.99 a month and 70GB of bandwidth a month. (I may be off a little with the estimates - it’s been a while. They have since increased their bandwidth in their plans). All was fine until my site started getting a few thousand people a day. I was using quite a bit of bandwidth and needed a new solution.

My next step was a bad one… I had a few different websites, so I decided to get a Site5 account - their deal was something like 5 accounts, 200GB of transfer, for $24.99 a month. After a couple of good months with them, things went downhill quick. My site was down way too often. Site5 ended up being a complete and utter nightmare. My site was down for - on average - a half hour a week. UNACCEPTABLE. I won’t even get into the whole nightmare story behind their hosting my site. (Search the internet - you can find many horror stories about their hosting reputation).

Anyway… I went back to Hostgator - to their Swamp plan, which was 100GB of bandwidth per month. Things were good - I had little to no problems. But then my web traffic increased yet again, and one month, I came up to like 97 GB of bandwidth. It was time to find yet another new solution. So I switched to Hostgator’s semi-dedicated plan at $75 a month.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Website Info : 1 Comment »

Ups and Downs of My Life

November 15th, 2006 by Web Girl

Sorry it took me so long to get around to doing another post!

This entry will be about the ups and downs of my life now.

People hear what I do for a living and they immediately start gushing: “Omg you are so lucky” and “You have to teach me how to do that” and “I hate you!”  I have to admit that I am content with what I do and yes, wouldn’t trade it for anything else right now.  I absolutely hated working for other people, hated always having bosses breathing over my shoulder, and hated having to get up early in the morning.

However, there are ups and downs to this business.   We already know the ups: being my own boss; no set hours so I’m free to do what I want, when I want to; freedom; I can update my site in my underwear if I so choose; not having to go to a day job and get yelled at.

My ex boyfriend knows it’s not all roses, however.  (I used to complain to him).  Here are the downsides of being a freelance Web Entrepreneur:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in General, Website Info : 3 Comments »

FYI to everyone…

November 10th, 2006 by Web Girl

Sorry for the lack of updates - I actually have a ton of entries to do and things I want to talk about.  I will hopefully get to updating this weekend at some point!

Check back Saturday or Sunday!

Posted in Website Info : No Comments »

Site (And Blogger) Intro

October 10th, 2006 by Web Girl

This is my first post…

Basically, I plan to use this blog to talk about my full time job as a home Web Entrepreneur (referred to as WE from here on out).  I will also cover my day to day life as a WE, both ups and downs.

I will quickly introduce myself and then get going, because it’s currently past my bedtime!  I’m Rian, 29 years old, female, live in the Northeast USA (New Hampshire for now).  I used to slog away doing date entry and boring office stuff.  Now?  I sit in front of a computer in my underwear, updating my websites for a living.  I went from making around $24,000 to currently averaging $46,000 per year… and it’s only going up.  So long as I don’t get too lazy.  (I struggled with that my first two months out of a “normal” job).

In the next post, I will talk about what led me to this place and how I did it.

Posted in General, Website Info : No Comments »