Hillary Stiff, David Snead and I organized a HostingCon panel on metrics that impact web hosting profitability. Here's my portion of the presentation.

1. 12 Uncommon Metrics for Web Hosting Profitability

3. 1. Search Volume for Favorite SEO/Search Marketing Keyword Reseller Hosting Dedicated Servers Intel Conroe Virtualization Are you optimizing your website/ad campaign for out of favor keywords?

4. 2. Search Presence for Company Ideal combination is having your own voice with support of 3 rd party opinions * Calculated based on top 20 Google search results for company name 0 0 6 1 Negative 18 0 2 ThePlanet 16 4 0 Web.com 0 8 6 GoDaddy 1 4 14 1&1 Unrelated Positive/Objective Own Sites

5. 3. Search Presence for Execs Don’t forget to do the same lookup for other execs – and all public facing employees * Calculated based on top 20 Google search results for CEO name 14 6 0 Doug Erwin 0 18 2 Jeff Stibel 3 12 5 Bob Parsons 1 6 13 Andreas Gauger Unrelated 3 rd Party Own Sites

6. 4. Effectiveness as Media Outlet Blue = TheWHIR.com; Green = 1&1.com; Red = DreamHost.com TheWHIR monetizes each website visitor multiple times. What are you getting out of website visitors who don’t sign up?

7. 5. Utilization Of On-Site Real Estate Source: GoDaddy control panel Customer control panel messages have higher conversion rates than email newsletters and off-site ads – yet so many companies keep pre- and post-login pages totally blank!

9. 7. Add-on Deployment Ratio “ What improves retention? Not newsletters. Not follow up calls. The only thing that works is convincing them to use multiple services.” - Hostway VP Marketing John Lee Service usage drives stickiness, even when customers aren’t paying extra for add-ons

10. 8. Time-to-Usefulness “ If I can’t get something up and running between my 5-year-old’s bedtime and midnight, it’s probably a lost cause.” - Wash DC Small Business Owner Most customers are more concerned about time than cost; bandwidth/webspace are even less relevant