Many online entrepreneurs these days are faced with the problem of running several websites and having to maintain several web hosting accounts for the various sites. Actually there is a very simple and effective solution to this problem. The answer is to run sub domains. Although sub domains are very similar to having a site within a site, they are not simply additional web pages of an existing website. Each sub domain can have a website of its own and completely separate from the main website.

What is a sub domain?

A sub domain in technical terms will be a folder or subdirectory located within one domains root directory. Usually by looking at the addresses you will be able to tell that the two websites are really offshoots from the same thing. Sub domains have helped many companies prosper on a large scale online as smart entrepreneurs have established sub domains for various other businesses that are offshoots of their parent company.

What are the advantages of having sub domains?

There are many advantages of doing this, the first being that a business can experiment with dozens of other new businesses at minimal expense, since they will still be paying only one hosting bill all the time. This means that any new business started that does not quite work out can quietly be shut down with minimal trouble or effect. Imagine the pain of having to shut down a business after only few months when you have taken the trouble to register a separate domain name and probably even negotiated a separate web hosting account for a year.

Many times a new online business becomes much easier to establish and customers get to trust it much quicker if it is associated to an existing successful business. Sub domain addresses will usually clearly show a relation to the main parent company.

What are the disadvantages of having sub domains?

One of the very few downsides of using a sub domain is in the cases where a new business does not want to be associated with the parent website for one reason or another. For example the business could be very different and targeted at a completely different market such that an association with a parent company will only bring about confusion in the market.

Still this does not apply to many online entrepreneurs starting out and even many others who are already established. And therefore sub domains can be a neat and effective solution to many problems.