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Seven Things Forgotten When Doing Business Backups
By Lynette Chandler
What usually comes to mind when we talk about backups is
backing up the computer and possibly your emails. As small
business owners, we have many more things to consider than just
those basics. Here are some things to backup that you probably
haven't even thought of.
Backup your mailing list - What would you do if you lost all the
leads and prospects you have worked so hard and paid good
money to backup? Many marketers agree, a mailing list is
invaluable; So, treat it as such. Save a copy of it every day.
Affiliate list - I shouldn't need to tell you just how important this is.
Affiliates help you make money. Don't lose them. No matter what
system you use to manage your affiliates, get a backup list of them
now.
Autoresponder emails - You spend a lot of time and energy
creating emails that capture your subscribers attention and read
your message. Once lost, you'll never quite get it right again.
Make sure you keep a 2nd copy of those emails.
Sales data - This is another thing few remember, especially when
you use a web-based order management system and all your
sales data is kept online, available to your instantly 24/7.
Download your reports at least once a month if not every day.
There's a lot you can learn from your sales data.
Websites - You may be wondering why you should bother to back
up your web site especially since your web host keeps a back up.
It's simple: bad things can and do happen to good hosts.
Recently I've seen a popular host lose quite a few customers
because their once reliable service and uptime sudden became
unreliable. I've also seen hosts who appear to be reliable go out
of business with little warning.
If this happens, you need your site back online as quickly as
possible. If you have a backup, you could order new web hosting,
upload and transfer your site quickly.
Website databases - This one is often overlooked by inexperienced
web masters. If your site is dynamic, has a blog, forum or anything
like that, chances are you're using a database. Copying just the
files of the blog application or the forum itself is useless because
all your posts and messages are kept inside the database. If
you're unsure, download the database backup anyway. You can
never be too safe.
Purchased software - This one should be part of your regular hard
drive backup. Some companies will let you download purchased
software all over again, some do not and will only allow you a
small window to download after which, you're pretty much on your
own. Don't forget to save copies of the registration emails with the
license keys. I usually keep a paper copy in addition to electronic
backups.
Likely you already have the majority of these things backed up and
stored away safely in case of trouble, if so good for you! If there
are things on this list that you may have overlooked then don't
wait, get them backed up or hire someone who can do it for you.
It's not too late to get everything properly backed up now, while
everything is still good, and avoid big headaches if and when
something goes wrong.
About the Author
Lynette Chandler helps small business owners discover and apply technology to better their marketing. She's created a free e-course so you can get started right away. Visit http://www.TechBasedMarketing.com to enroll.
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