I confess, I was watching Modern Marvels on the History Channel the other night and it was all about cereal. Sometimes it amazes me what I find fascinating these days, but there was an interesting segment of the program about the innovative marketing tactics of cereal companies.

Now, before you laugh too hard, ask yourself this. Have you ever been in the cereal aisle of the local grocery store when you saw a kid (the human type, not the goat) running for a particular box of cereal because of the “toy” inside? This kid might have a $200 Xbox at home, but he’s just got to have that little plastic trinket. Half the time he doesn’t even like the cereal. One cereal company sold millions of boxes in the seventies by offering a deed to one square inch of the Yukon Territory in each box.

When radios were first invented, Wheaties came up with the first advertising jingle on the radio. When TV’s became a fixure in every American living room, children starting watching cartoons and cereal companies quickly developed cartoon mascots. We still have Tony the Tiger, “Lucky”, the Trix rabbit and many more.

What’s my point? I’m not sure I have one, except that I’ve never really thought about marketing by cereal companies before. Maybe that’s what makes it so good. We’re so noticeably bombarded by cellular phone companies and credit card companies that we find comfort in our old cereal box friends with their secret decoder rings. Maybe we can all learn a lesson or two from Tony the Tiger. Perhaps we should offer a square inch the Yukon Territory with every graphic design project we complete - haha. Seriously, though, the best ways to reach a target market are often non-traditional.

You’ve probably heard people talk about web hosting, but what exactly is it? Have you ever wondered exactly how people access your beautiful website? A website is simply a collection of files stored on a computer somewhere on the internet. If you’ve seen my discussion of servers, you’ll know that the computer that contains a website’s files is called a web server. The service of providing space on a web server is known as “hosting”.

Hosting plans are varied and are commonly paid on a monthly basis. In most plans, you’ll share a web server with several other websites, reducing your costs to as little as $7.95/month. If you have a large website that requires a whole lot of space on the web server’s hard drive, and a lot of people access it every day, you may require your own dedicated server. Dedicated servers are much more expensive.

Shared hosting has some pitfalls, however. Since you are sharing the server with other websites, you can occassionally be penalized for their bad behavior. For instance, if someone is sending spam emails from that server, all of the email addresses from that server may be blocked. So, your email may never reach it’s intended recipients, even if no one from your company ever sent a single spam email.

Despite a few downfalls, however, shared hosting is typically a good fit for small businesses that can’t afford the monthly expense of a dedicated server.