June 6th and 7th will mark a new era in Hosting Industry events. The premier event, HostingCon 2005, will take place at the Hyatt Regency Event Center. Over fifty of the largest dedicated server providers, industry media outlets, software and hardware vendors, and other industry specific vendors will be represented at their booths. As I’ve watched FastServers’ growth over the past two years I’ve seen what started as an average size company quickly become one of the industry leaders. As an industry leader, we felt an intrinsic responsibility to contribute to the success of this event and we’ve done so by signing on as one of three platinum sponsors, as well as throwing the official HostingCon 2005 after-hours party.

I strongly encourage anyone who utilizes FastServers.Net for their dedicated server hosting needs to consider attending this event. Unlike Comdex and other tech based shows, this is the only event exclusively geared towards the Hosting Industry. In addition to industry vendors, there will be keynote speakers from companies such as Microsoft and Ensim, and a variety of conferences aimed at helping you improve your hosting business. The events alone are a great reason to attend, but as an added bonus you will get a chance to meet the entire upper management team of FastServers.Net in person and acquire some great FastServers.Net gear. We’ll be providing free convention passes to any existing customers that request them. If you’re attending make sure to contact our Vice President (Aaron Phillips, ap@fastservers.net) to request your complimentary convention pass at least 20 days prior to the event. Passes to the event are $200.00 if purchased online and as a gift from our team to yours we want to provide you a complimentary pass.

We are extremely excited about our own booth for this show which is so much more than just a booth – it’s a full service casino! We’re provisioning a live casino complete with waitresses serving drinks, black jack tables, and a Texas Hold’em table. We are currently working on celeb tournaments featuring CEOs of various industry companies. Following day two of the convention on Tuesday, FastServers.Net has rented out Club Level in downtown Chicago for the convention’s official after party. We will be providing bus transportation between the Hyatt and the night club between the hours of 7 pm and 11:30 pm. The best part of attending this event is that FastServers is picking up the tab for the entire party!

I’m personally very excited to see this event unfold within our industry. It will be an excellent way to network with numerous others in our related fields and environments, including virtually all major companies within our sector. We’ve invested a lot of time and money on this event and couldn’t be happier with the results. Our industry is truly enjoying increased recognition and success and this convention will only further help to push us all forward. I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible in Chicago this June and as always… Go Twins!

For the full event details please visit http://www.fastservers.net/hostingcon/ - be sure while you are there to get your “After Hours” passes, and if you’re interested in being a “Guest Dealer” we’ve provided an online form for you to fill out at your earliest convenience.

On March 25th, 2005 (Good Friday), FastServers.Net launched its Dedicated Server Affiliate Program. Working together with our billing software vendor Ubersmith (guest dealers at HostingCon 2005) and our in house developers, we integrated an affiliate application to work in tandem with our billing software. For over a year we have been fielding requests for an affiliate program and made it one of our top goals in 2005!

The Dedicated Server Affiliate program boasts a 10% recurring commission to participants, allowing shared web hosting providers, advertisers, marketing firms, and other IT-based companies to leverage them while referring clients for a recurring based commission. Referral fees are paid for the life time of the customer and for ALL future services they purchase. Many clients at FastServers.Net start out with one server and grow into many or a higher end solution, and as this takes place Affiliates will receive a full 10% of their total paid invoices.

One of the primary reasons FastServers.Net is so excited about the Affiliate Program is that after our initial launch of the Reseller Program, we found many small to mid-size organizations did not have the infrastructure (support, billing, service controls) to become a full-fledged reseller. Being the primary point of contact just was not an option for these clients and it was not a profitable venture for selling a couple servers per month.

Shared hosting providers should take particular interest in this program-it provides a value added service to their growing client base, and it is very safe to say that a good percentage of resellers and shared hosting clients will outgrow their current plans at some point and require a dedicated server. Why allow them to migrate to another provider and sustain a total loss, when a referral and well-positioned upgrade can be made available to them, with a recurring commission of 10% taking place each month!

FastServers.Net is also targeting advertisers that currently utilize banners, text links, or vendor graphics to receive income. While PPC-based advertising and fixed links pay the immediate bills, the conversion rate from click through to customers at FastServers.Net is very high making a recurring revenue model a solid asset on any site.

The Affiliate Program was designed to be easy to use: it’s minimally restricted and available to customers world-wide. The copy-and-paste code to add to your site is made available in as little as five minutes from the time you sign up. Payouts have no restrictions and are available either via PayPal or company check with no minimum balance! Unlike the Reseller Program, this is open to any webmasters and site owners world-wide. To view the full details of our Affiliate Program, please visit http://www.fastservers.net/partnerships/affiliate-program.html

It has been quite sometime since I have had had the pleasure of writing an article for the monthly newsletter and I am very excited to write this article and share the good news with everyone. First off, as some of you may know we are now exclusively using all Dell PowerEdge hardware for all new server orders. As an added bonus to this we have also waived ALL setup fees on ALL servers. Yes I did say NO SETUP FEES!!! This goes for both the base setup fee of all of our servers models and also on server upgrades such as additional RAM and Hard Drives… we have wiped them all away!

We have also expanded our server selection to conform with Dell’s offerings. All of our standard servers now come with SATA drives with option of a 160GB (standard) drive, or an upgrade to a 250GB drive. Also new to the lineup on our standard servers is the option to have hardware-based RAID installed on your server utilizing the Dell CERC SATA RAID Controller. We have also expanded the RAM options on our Velocity DX servers from a max of 2GB to a max of 4GB of RAM. Additionally, we’ve added in many new options to our Enterprise level servers with the addition of the Velocity EX, FX, and GX, with the GX sporting Dual Xeon 3.6GHz processors. All of our enterprise level servers now have the ability to support up to 8GB of RAM, and up to six (6) hot-swappable 146GB SCSI drives with RAID technology as well.

The biggest addition to our server fleet is the introduction of our very affordable Infinite Velocity Quad server. Let me be the first to tell you that this baby is a screamer (very FAST)… and by starting off at only $698.00 a month with NO SETUP FEES, it is worth every penny. The Dell PowerEdge 6650 is one of the most expandable servers that we offer with processor options ranging from Quad 2.0Ghz to Quad 3.0Ghz. RAM options ranging from 4GB all the way up to 32GB. Hard drive options range from a single 146GB SCSI to (6) 300GB SCSI drives using multiple RAID controllers for ultra-redundancy. This is the mother of all servers and we feel we have the best price and options on this bad boy compared to any other company in the industry!

As always we love to hear your feedback when changes are introduced to our existing customer base. Please feel free to send me an email directly to shane@fastservers.net with any feedback on the new server configurations and/or the new no-setup fee structure.

Until next time, good luck with all your business ventures as we move along in the spring season of 2005.