I love the conspiracy theories. So many marketers that I speak to think that all these server crashes with product launches are all planned so that they can send out the obligatory email saying, “Sorry, my server crashed so I am extending this offer for another hour.” Do you want to know why these servers go down like this? No, it’s not planned, in spite of what many think. Actually, it’s poor planning. That’s the problem. Don’t know what I am talking about? Keep reading.

The first thing you need to understand is that you can’t squeeze 10 pounds of bologna into a 5 pound bag. Something has to give…usually the bag. The problem with these product launches is all the hype. Everybody and their grandmother is perched at their computer with their finger on the refresh key just waiting for that moment when the actual launch beings. Know what happens when that time comes? Well, if you guessed that it’s similar to when there’s a hot summer night and everybody in the neighborhood cranks up their air conditioning at the same time…you’re right. It’s called a brownout.

The reason this happens is not so much the power of the server, though that can come into play, but the bandwidth. You have a mass surge of traffic happening all at one time and these servers just can’t handle all that bandwidth at once. As a result, the server goes down and everybody screams foul. No wonder these crashes seem planned.

Okay, so what’s the solution and what’s the main culprit? Well, let’s start with the main culprit, which is usually video. Video takes up a lot of bandwidth and when you have thousands of people viewing these videos all at once, you’re going to have problems. So, one solution is to move the video to another server. But that’s only going to prevent part of the problem. You still need to spread the overall traffic over a number of servers. How many depends on how much traffic you’re expecting. But one or two is not going to cut it.

So the next time you’re doing a launch, keep this in mind. It just might save your launch from blowing up in your face.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

If you want to discover the REAL truth about Internet marketing and get some solid tips to take your business to the next level…get my free report at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/realtruth.html and subscribe to my REAL Truth newsletter where you’ll discover more than from all those high priced ebooks combined.