In today’s day and age almost every single online business (and nearly all Internet entrepreneurs) understand the value of a quality website monitoring service. The problem is that oftentimes these professionals fail to see the big picture when it comes to the utilization of such a service. Some tend to be stuck in the mindset that a website monitoring service is nothing more than a means to measure a website’s uptime. The reality is that the benefits of such a service go far beyond this single feature.

If you operate or own an online business your website is at risk of being hacked, regardless of how large or small your website may be. Smaller businesses may think they are not a big enough “fish” for a hacker to focus on. The fact is that almost every single website online has something of value to be gleaned. Even if it’s just personal information or a mailing list, there is information that a hacker can use if you leave it open for the taking. Even if your business is a small craft shop, you’re at risk of being hacked.

You’ve come to realize just how much of a threat website downtime poses to your online business. You fully acknowledge the value and necessity of a website monitoring service to minimize your website’s downtime. The question is, how do you know which provider to partner with? How do you go about making apples-to-apples comparisons when so many different plans and promotions are being thrown at you left and right?

Contrary to what many believe, getting ahead in the eCommerce world isn’t a matter of who you know (as it often is in the brick and mortar world), but rather the success so many strive to achieve really comes down to what you know. There are a number of “secrets” or “keys” to succeeding online. If you know these secrets and follow the advice they offer, your chances of online success significantly increase. Ignore the secret strategies that successful online businesses employ, and your chances of eCommerce success are reduced quite drastically.

Anyone who owns or manages a website is familiar with the fact that there is an overwhelming array of website services to choose from. These services can help ensure the success of your website, enabling you to manage your site as efficiently and effectively as possible. The range of services, however, can be mind-boggling in itself, the price difference between the various services only adds to the confusion when trying to determine which website services will best meet your needs. Services range from free, to affordable, to costly. How do you know which service to choose?

Websites going through downtime is not uncommon, as sometimes the hosting provider schedules a regular maintenance for couple of hours and warns you ahead about the temporary disruption. In such situations, you will have some time to take precautionary measures like scheduling the downtime at non-peak hours or letting the visitors know the website will be up and running in a while.

Recently we interviewed a hacker for the purpose of finding out how our readers can better protect their websites against threats, and what hackers really think about website monitoring services. While he preferred to remain anonymous, and referred to himself as a “hacktivist” rather than the average run-of-the-mill hacker, he did give us a wealth of information for our readers. If you thought your website was safe from the threat of a DDoS attack or other hacking activities, you may be thinking twice after reading this.

About 20 years ago Pokémon was a raging phenomenon. Parents waited in line for hours hoping to get their hands on the coveted Pokémon cards, praying that this time their child would get the oh-so-rare Charizard or some other card that was missing from their beloved collection. The most advanced the game got in terms of technology were the little cartridges players would put into their Gameboys, some of those Gameboys even being “special edition” models created just for Pokémon players. Anything and everything having to do with Pikachu and his friends was bound to be a smashing success.

It is an unfortunate fact that every single website in existence is vulnerable to website downtime. Because at least some downtime is inevitable, the question is not whether or not your site will go down, but rather how much downtime is too much? Is there a magic number that we should be aware of? Is there a line that, once your website has crossed it, you are suddenly in “too much downtime” territory? The fact of the matter is that there is no magic number to guide us.

It is the hope and dream of every website owner that someday your site will go viral and amass you the fame and fortune you have worked so hard to achieve. Take a moment, however, to picture this… Your site does indeed go viral. You suddenly have more traffic than you ever anticipated. Yet while you should be reaping the rewarding profit of this phenomena, your site suddenly goes down and isn’t available to the people trying to access it. You’re losing sales, and face, by the second. What happened?