What generally comes to mind when thinking of backups is likely your computer and maybe emails. There are many other things to consider backing up than just those basics. Here is a list of things that may not have occurred to you that need to be backup up.

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've spend countless hours crafting up the right emails to send out to your subscribers to catch their attention. 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

Often, I'm asked why someone should bother to back up their site when their web host keeps a backup. There is a simple answer, sometimes things happen to even the best hosts. Recently, I witnessed a previously reliable host lose a lot of it's customers because their up-time suddenly became unreliable. Also, I've seen what appeared to be stable hosts go out of business with short notice.

In this case, you'll want to be able to get your site back as soon as you can. 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.

You likely have the bulk of these completely backed up already and stored safely in case disaster strikes. If you haven't overlooked anything on this list, kudos. If you are like the majority and have a few things that you haven't finished then don't wait until it's too late, back up everything while things are still going well. If you can't do it yourself then hire someone to do it for you, just get everything backed up now.

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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