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 put an aweful large amount of time and effort into creating the kind of emails that get attention and get people reading. 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.

You need to get your site up and running again as soon as possible if this does happen. 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.

I'm sure you already have the majority of these things already completed and backed up in a safe place in case the worst happens. If that is true then good for you! If there are things you hadn't thought of on the list or haven't gotten to then do them now, while you still can. If you don't want to or aren't able to do it yourself then hire someone to back everything else up for you. It's not too late now while things are still going well, but if something goes very wrong tomorrow it will be.