Let's start off with this WPEngine Review by saying…
- I personally use WPEngine Personal account
- I personally have (past tense) used Hostgator Dedicated Baby Linux Plan
- I personally use Hostgator shared plan for my small websites (with low traffic)
If you are building a website to eventually grow.. have room for growth. Let me share with you my experience since blogging from 2007.
My journey might have been like yours or could be …
I tinkered with frontpage and DreamWeaver in college back in 1998 – 2000 and most of those sites played music… no kidding.
why? I was inspired by this (do you remember the hampster dance?)
So I built some family websites (hosting images) but never really understood marketing, traffic, and how the internet could pay my way online so eventually those got shut down. (remember
GeoCities?)
*Update Speed Test 12/20/14
– updated to basic wordpress theme
– added some 2 security plugins other plugins I'm testing
Marketing Years (my start to building a business from home)
2007 – started with blogger.com and wasted a ton of time there due to not understanding optimization and proper affiliate marketing (they don't like it cause you don't own the hosting). Got my first international MLM Rep signup through a blog post (had no clue how I did this)
2008 – started writing on forums, marketing sites, articles sites to get some traction
2009 – I opened my first wordpress.org self hosted site (was horrible) and started tinkering with Amazon selling.
2010 – I got some education under my belt (
here) and learned Blogging and Marketing with SEO and this site was born (www.LawrenceTam.net) you are here:)
I've been using Hostgator Hosting for the longest time and still recommend them for beginners .. I was using iPage for hosting initially and they were straight horrible (I repeat.. horrible) and have been happy with Hostgator shared servers for years.
2011 – Sold thousands on Amazon with niche sites. At one time had over 20+ sites ranging from cat water fountains to clickbank products.
2012 – Started to get too big on a couple sites and wanted to look for better hosting than just “shared” hosting… by this time I was doing $30k/month income from blog sales and information marketing (affiliate marketing). A mentor of mine told me to get a dedicated host. So …. (more…)