Web Hosting for Profit

If you are looking for a great business opportunity that doesn’t require lots of time and a large outlay of resources, take a look at reselling web hosting. The web hosting business is a simple business to enter and offers a great product to its customers. Here are some tips on running a web hosting service for profit.

Years ago it would cost someone thousands upon thousands to start a web hosting business, because of the need to purchase servers, man the servers, perform customer service and create advertising and technical materials. It was a full time job to say the least, but times have changed.

Now anyone with $50 bucks or less can start his or her own web hosting service complete with great reliable servers, 24 hour, seven day a week customer support, advertising materials and technical materials. Today many web hosting services offer these services not for thousands of dollars but for pennies on the dollar, some web hosting plans that offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage are offering a reseller plan for less then $20 a month. It’s incredible but true.

If you are interested in reselling plans, do a little research and take a look at what web hosts are offering, you might find that a web hosting reselling business is a great opportunity.

About the Author

Jay is the web owner of http://www.dsl-in.com DSL , a website that provides information and resources on DSL, DSL Service, and DSL Service Providers. You can also visit his website at: http://www.dsl-service.us DSL Service

Over the last seven years, I’ve bought website hosting from several different companies. I noticed that the majority of webhosts make the mistake of thinking they are in the webhosting business. They only offer website hosting and, maybe domain name registration. As a marketer, I see huge missed opportunities to make more profits.

Over the last seven years, I’ve bought website hosting from several different companies. I noticed that the majority of webhosts make the mistake of thinking they are in the webhosting business. They only offer website hosting and, maybe domain name registration. As a marketer, I see huge missed opportunities to make more profits.

Some website hosts see these opportunities. They realize that they have gold. They have a group of clients who crave something more than hosting. What do hosting clients want? To make sales from their websites.

Knowing this, these webhosts create backend Profit Centers so they can make more money with their clients. A Profit Center is an area of your business that brings more cash to your bank account. Webhosts who bring in lots of profits offer their clients useful information, tools, software, audios and more to help their clients become successful. It doesnt have to be difficult or labor intensive. First

ASSESS YOUR CURRENT PROFIT CENTERS

In your website hosting business, you may have these current Profit Centers:

Website hosting, of course

Domain name registration, an easy tie-in

Website design

Higher level programming services

Search Engine Optimization services

Search Engine submission services

If you don’t have all of these Profit Centers, remember you don’t have to provide these with in-house talent. You can joint venture with other quality businesses and get referral fees. This is a wise way to go because you dont have the up-front investment and risk if it doesnt sell. If a service DOES sell, you may decide to later offer it in-house.

And this is just a beginning. There are more Profit Centers your business and your clients can benefit from.

NEW PROFIT CENTER IDEAS

You can add new Profit Centers to your webhosting business. Some of them require a few hours up front, then they run automatically for months or years with minor updating. You decide how much time you want to put in. The key is to ask yourself – Does this help my clients make more sales?

Three new Profit Center Ideas are:

• An upsell on your check out page. This works because it catches them when they are already buying.
• A mini-marketing course sent by sequential autoresponder, offering solid information and products to help them achieve their website marketing and sales goals.
• A Resource Center webpage that’s available only to your clients.

Remember, each Profit Center needs to be more than just a pitch. I must warn you…

you can do all of the above and STILL fail at creating Profit Centers that go ka-ching. How?

Imagine, a man wants to get married. A friend tells him to start on the road to marriage by simply finding a nice woman and asking her for a date.

Will this work? It CAN, but you and I both know there are many factors that make a difference…

WHO he asks, WHEN he asks, HOW he asks, WHERE he asks, and WHAT he says

All this makes a difference to him (and her) and it makes a difference to you when you’re building Profit Centers. Profit Centers need marketing finesse. You may remember Beta videotapes. It was a superior video format, but it failed because it wasnt marketed as well as VHS.

CONSIDER THIS WHEN BUILDING NEW PROFIT CENTERS

WHO you make the offer to – are they a good match for the product or service? If they are not in the market for what you offer, it’s very unlikely they will buy.

WHAT offer you make – will this offer make a difference for your clients or do they feel like you’re pitching them for your own benefit?

WHEN you make your offer to them. Before they buy hosting? After they buy hosting? Once their site is live?

WHERE will you make the offer – on your website or in an email? Either can be successful.

WHAT will you say? This is crucial. You can have a useful product or service and still may not make sales.

What you say makes a huge difference. Use poor copywriting and people will click away from your offer like water jumping off a hot skillet. Great copywriting can inspire people to GO FIND THEIR WALLETS. That’s the level of copywriting you want – compelling.

To start building your Profit Centers, test your offer on a group of clients. See if it sells, and if not, analyze why not. Edit your Profit Center until it consistently helps your clients and brings your website hosting business more money.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author and Marketing Specialist Raynay Valles produces New Profit Centers for website hosting businesses – upsells, mini-courses and resource pages, customized for your business and complete with proven copywriting. Just plug in and start profiting. For more information email her at webhostingprofits@jawdrop.com

Unlimited Wealth Creation through Reseller Hosting

by: Ninad Gupte

Web hosting can be an exciting business start up for aspiring entrepreneurs. All you have to do to set up your business is become a hosting reseller, i.e., provide hosting facilities to website owners. Here as a business owner, you are buying space from a big hosting company, and redistributing the hosting space to other website owners.

Resellers are nothing but entrepreneurs acting as middlemen, offering you hosting services by leasing time and space from another Web host’s server rather than owning their own. Most of the times, the quality of services offered by resellers are so good that consumers do not even have the idea that they are dealing with resellers who do not have servers of their own. Resellers, since they can pick and choose their servers, are basically in a position to provide the customers with the best of services.

Reseller hosting business can be quite a profit making venture once you understand the figures and profit margins involved. Let us go through them. One can buy around 1000 MB space from a major web host at a cost of $25 per month. This 1000 MB space that you now own can in turn be redistributed to site owners who need space for uploading their site. Here you can give about 25 MB space for around $5 per month. Which means your monthly income comes to around $200 when you sell 40 hosting packages Want more… some hosts allow you to oversell the space and do not charge you extra unless the actual usage of your account exceeds 1000MB. It is seen that a typical user uses less than half of the allotted web space… which means you can double or even triple sell your quota and make unlimited wealth.

And mind well, this income is residual income. It will keep coming to you month after month, year after year. You do the work once… and get paid for it over and over. All you are doing is buying space from a major web hosting company and becoming a reseller host. Your efforts are focused towards selling hosting space and the rest is handled by your web host. Some of them even handle customer service to your customers for a nominal fee… which makes it even easier for you.

If this is not enough… you can earn additional residual incomes by adding recruiting more resellers through you. By doing this you will earn regular commissions on their monthly sales… isn’t this smart business.

The profit margins in the business of reseller hosting is quite good and you can start on this exciting business venture even if you do not have the required expertise and access to funds for setting up the required infrastructure. Strange as it might sound, there are also times where a reseller can also be more scalable than a typical hosting firm. A true Web host is limited by its hardware; if a client suddenly requires an upgrade the host is not prepared for, the only way the host will be able to satisfy the customer is by upgrading its hardware – expensive and time consuming for both sides. The reseller host, however, can simply choose to locate with a different Web host that will better suit the customer’s needs.

Happy Wealth Creation !!!

Ninad Gupte,

Founder, CEO of www.linuxresellerhosting.com

About The Author

Ninad Gupteis the Founder, CEO of www.linuxresellerhosting.com

He has trained as an Electronics Engineer from Mumbai University, and has a Diploma in Advanced Computing from CDAC. He has served as the Director — Technologies in Webmoney India Pvt. Ltd. He has executed several turnkey B2B Web application projects like House layouts, Maharashtra State Electricity Board and portals & sites like McDonalds India, Air France and RPG Raychem. To take his dreams forward of forming a technology oriented diversified company, Interpole Solutions was formed in March 2001. The company was setup with a strong base of skills and a deep understanding of technologies mastered by Ninad. He can contacted at ninad@linuxresellerhosting.com or at 91-22-2522 2505 and at 91-22-2524 4874.

Running a hosting business

Any business planning on selling web hosting to their clients should consider a lot of important aspects of how to run a successful web hosting company. Many hosts lose clients daily due to lack of support, long periods of downtime, not providing enough service, the list is endless. In this short article I am going to outline ways you can become a successful host.

1 – Reliability

In my opinion I think that the most important part of a successful web host is the uptime of their servers. For clients and this is from experience if you try and access your emails, or web site and both are constantly down because the server is offline, it can be the most annoying thing in the world.

Downtime can be a major factor for a web host to lose clients, for the simple fact that they are paying for a service that they are not receiving. Many hosts offer an uptime guarantee of around 99%, which is acceptable because servers will go down from time tot time.

A good way to maintain a reliable server, if is monitor every server and this can be done easily using one of the number monitoring services available, More information about server uptime monitoring can be found in this forum.

2 – Customer Service

Again this is an important factor of a host that potential clients look for, a good host will offer a variety of ways for their clients to get in contact with them. Some of the popular support options that hosts offer are live support, email, phone and fax.

In the event that a client’s web site goes down for whatever reason, they want to know that they will be able to contact their host and get the problem resolved. If a client finds it hard to contact their host, they can become frustrated.

I would recommend if you are going to open a web hosting business, ensure that you do offer good customer support. If you are interested in reading about the customer service options available, you can read this article on ]]> http://www.affordablehostingcom.com/general/how-to-run-a-successful-hosting-business.htm/feed 0 http://www.affordablehostingcom.com/general/how-to-effectively-market-a-web-hosting-reselling-business.htm http://www.affordablehostingcom.com/general/how-to-effectively-market-a-web-hosting-reselling-business.htm#comments Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:30:02 +0000 Affordable Hosting http://www.affordablehostingcom.com/general/how-to-effectively-market-a-web-hosting-reselling-business.htm

The web hosting reselling business is a simple business to enter and offers a great product to its customers. Years ago, it would cost tens of thousands to start a web hosting business, because of the need to purchase servers, manage the servers, perform customer Support etc.. Now anyone with $50 bucks or less can start his or her own web hosting service complete with great reliable servers, 24 hour, seven day a week customer support, advertising materials and technical materials. The truth is that you don’t have to have your own servers at all. All you need is a web hosting account with reselling option. You can create new hosting accounts with easy in control panel. Today, some web hosting plans offer unlimited bandwidth and unlimited storage with reseller option for less then $20 a month.

While Web hosting cost is almost neglectable, marketing makes or breaks a web hosting reselling business. Many have tried to make money from Web hosting reselling without success. Believe me not, they’ve been targeting totally wrong audience. Many of those who have failed have exclusively promoted the reselling business online – running pay-per-click (PPC), posting in the forums etc. However, many of those who frequent the Internet may know as much about reselling as you do and they won’t bother to go through a middle-man for Web hosting. If you want to be successful in Web hosting reselling business, it’s more effective and more profitable to target those who are less net-savy.

Distributing business cards, old-fashioned yes, is still one of the most popular and inexpensive ways to market or advertise your web hosting service. You’re likely to get more clients in your local market than from the Net. Though you can do business card printing yourself using special printing software and many different business card templates available online, it’s wise to spend a little money to order professional designed business cards. And the printing software can easily cost you a hundred bucks. For as little as $10, on the other hand, you can order 200 business cards. Color business cards will cost a little bit more. Needless to say, your business should be listed on local phone directory too. Ads on local or community newspaper may will bring you business from your local community.

You’ll need a professional Web site for your hosting service so that the prospects can obtain information about your business 365 days a year and 24 hours a day even though you want to target the local market.

Web hosting reselling offers a great opportunity to make money if you market your service in the right market in right direction with right punch.

Copyright @2005, 4th Media Corporation

You have permission to publish this article electronically free of charge, as long as the bylines and links in the body of the article and the bylines are included.

About the Author

Natalie Aranda writes about business and technology.

As nearly every web host provides the option to purchase reseller accounts, the Internet has seen a significant increase in 3rd party hosting companies looking to develop a stable recurring income. With a market filled with competition you have probably asked yourself, “Should I become a reseller?”

Points to think about before deciding

Before taking the plunge and signing up for a reseller account maybe you should ponder these points:

Do I have the time to market my services? – To stand out among the many webhosts you will be required to market your services. Be prepared to spend time every day marketing your new hosting company or learning of various techniques to market your services.

Am I prepared to offer support to my clients? – To effectively support your clients when they have a question about web hosting or if something is not working you should either have experience with web hosting or the company that is providing reseller services should provide this support. For instance 561Hosting provides free support to resellers thus eliminating the need to be an expert to provide services to your customers.

Am I in this for the long haul? – As you advertise your services and become more visible to the Internet community you will no doubt start to land customers. Be sure that you are committed to providing these services indefinitely because your customers have put their trust in you and are counting on you to be around.

Is it worth it?

Selling hosting services can be a very rewarding business that you can run from the comfort of your home. Please be patient and market your services everyday and before long you will have several clients and may consider upgrading to a dedicated server account. But that’s another article….

About the Author

Bueford Copeland has been managing Computer Networks and providing consulting services for the last 10 years. He is currently a Systems Administrator for 561Hosting. Please visit http://www.561hosting.com to learn about our reseller hosting packages.

A web host is much like a giant convention center. You know, those places that host trade shows where people come and rent stalls in order to sell their wares? The people who rent those stalls are the individual website owners. They can’t afford to build their own convention center so they pay a rental fee for the time that they use the stall. They are the ones who must decorate the stall and open it up for business but the convention center is responsible for keeping everything running smoothly and making sure that people can get in and out of the place without problems. Learn more about how you can get started as a web host.

Essential Equipment

A web host must be able to accommodate a lot of surfers and store tons of information. To do this, a server is required. A server is basically like 10, 20, or even 50 personal computers combined together into one machine. It can process a lot of information very quickly. And, they can be expensive. To realistically think about opening a web hosting business, you will a serious server. You can purchase these servers on a monthly plan with reliable servers starting around $150 per month. You will also need a great personal computer as well for bookkeeping and data processing functions.

Skills and Experience

In all honesty, web site hosting is not for computer novices. There will naturally be a number of issues that website owners may have with maintaining their sites so at the very least you will need website creation experience before considering web hosting as a viable business option. People with technical backgrounds and degrees in computer programming or IT should have no problems starting their own web hosting business. Many owners of multiple websites decide to start their own web hosting company in order to avoid continuing to pay the fees charged by other hosting companies and to add some additional income to their business.

Charges

Depending upon the amount of bandwidth you give your website owners, you can charge anywhere from $20-50 per month to the website owners for hosting their sites. Obviously, the bigger your server, the more potential income there is to be made from web hosting.

Marketing

As with any business that operates via the Internet, having a website of your own is definitely the best way to market your new web hosting venture. Again, it is very common for owners of multiple websites to begin web hosting as a means of increasing revenues and avoiding the fees they formerly paid to web hosting sites. Therefore, many people entering into the web hosting game have no problem marketing their new services to potential customers.

About the Author

I am a true freelance internet advertiser who dabbles in website design. You can check out resources for having a profitable mail business at my website

http://www.getpaid2workfromhome.com/

Also check out the 10 best places to advertise online that are completely FREE at:

http://www.advertisesmallbusiness.com/free-online-ads

Web hosts, who are supposed to be your close business partners, and whom you expect to be prepared to do virtually anything to help lift your business to success, can also be the biggest stumbling block and the worst enemy in your search for high traffic and web site success. Here’s how.

Web hosts, who are supposed to be your close business partners, and whom you expect to be prepared to do virtually anything to help lift your business to success, can also be the biggest stumbling block and the worst enemy in your search for high traffic and web site success. Here’s how.

a)The old game of now your site is available and now it is not, greatly affects traffic to your web site. This unreliability can be caused by many factors. It can be the web host using sub standard low quality servers. It could even be the web host overselling their services and signing up many more accounts than their available resources can support.

b)Some sites are pretty basic and should load quickly and yet they still take ages. Most browsers (and your potential clients) will not wait but will close the slow window and move on somewhere else. These slow speeds may in some cases be caused by the same reasons as I’ve listed in b above.

c)Lack of proper support services means that web sites can often go through long downtime periods where a lot of traffic can be lost, literally forever. Some web hosts are nothing more than a part-time basement setup with no proper customer service arrangements. It is not uncommon to call your web host and get an answering machine. Some web hosting services have even outsourced the technical and customer service functions. One entrepreneur even complained recently that when they called the technical support department of a certain host company, the phone was answered alright but by a non-English speaking technician.

Do look out for these 3 deadly traffic killers, courtesy of your host.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Luis Perez is the president and CEO for MDS-Host, a web hosting company. He can be reached at info at mds-host.com. Send for your free report on the checklist you should use when selecting a hosting service.

Web hosting has grown to be the biggest it has ever been. Web hosting companies are appearing every day, and the growth rate is phenominal. Every day there are new web hosting companies trying to compete in an ultra competitive industry. The good news for consumers is that this provides plenty of choices. The quality hosting companies will rise to the top and the companies that don’t treat their customers right will quickly wither away. Customer support is vital to the success of a web hosting comapny because most of the time, people do not see the facility and the people who run the company first hand. Look in 2008-2009 to see more and more quality companies rise to the top in the hosting industry.

The web hosting industry is one of the most competitive industries on the Internet today. Web hosts are constantly thinking of new advertising campaigns in the hope of attracting more interest to their company; and, hence to attract more customers. While this is an important goal for any web host it is just as important to recognize and value the customers you already have.

Put your customer needs first acknowledge your customers feedback and then do something about it; make sure there is a place on your web site or in your control panel for customers to make remarks or offer suggestions about your services or products. Use these suggestions to improve your company. Even if you receive negative feedback, use this feedback positively; it’s better to fix customer concerns as soon as possible to benefit your company’s success in the long run.

Provide staff management training Web hosts can say they have reliable staff and offer support around the clock. Though behind the scenes the story is very different; try to accomplish what you preach, it is no use to anyone having staff with bad organizational skills and poor communication skills? Having a clear vision of your company’s goals, providing regular training and being involved with your staff, will contribute greatly to efficiently managing your business.

Offer fast and reliable support If there is something going critically wrong with a web site, customers cant be sitting around for days waiting to get their problems solved. Any critical support requests should be answered in just a matter of an hour or two; and, any other requests should be responded to in no more than 24 hours. Hosts should be offering around the clock support, especially if their market is global.

Reliable support is also crucial. The most common complaint that people have with their web hosting companies is that, sure they get their support requests answered fast but, their host has either not fixed their problem properly or they have no idea what the support team are talking about, too technical. Many people dont understand all the terminology of website hosting, support staff need to be trained in good communication skills too.

When receiving a support request it is much better to make sure the clients problem has been fixed properly, make sure your support staff test everything they fix! Not only will you find that you will be receiving less support requests, but your clients will be a lot happier also. One advantage to happy clients is, more referrals!

Give your customers freedom Many people tend to sign up with a web host who will offer a discount if you sign a yearly contract with them. However most people who do this get stuck; if they are unhappy with their web host they will lose a large proportion of their fee if they cancel their contract. One way to keep your clients happy is to give them the option of paying monthly, this way your customers will have the freedom to change their account packages at any time.

Your clients should be given freedom to administer their own accounts. A good way to provide this is to ensure your clients have their own customizable control panel. This is true freedom, where a client can administer every key aspect of their account from: viewing their account details and billing details; to, for example, interactively adding a new web site, ftp logins, mail accounts, and new users.

Keep your customers well informed Let your customers know about any thing that could possibly affect their websites. Keep your customers informed on issues such as general maintenance, for example: when, and how often, backups are done on the servers; these are a crucial necessity to keeping servers running well, but clients have to be told this. If there is a customer issue that may take a while to fix, it is much better to inform them of the issue and let them know you will get back to them as soon as possible. Customers shouldnt feel like they are left out in the cold, wondering why it is taking so long to fix their problem.

A web host who doesnt recognize the importance of providing good service to their customers will quickly loose their customers and will fade out very quickly. Customers need to feel as though they can trust their web hosts. They need to know that the hard work they put into developing their web site will be complemented by having a great web host; one that is concerned with providing the best service for ALL their customers.

Remember the more happy customers you have the more successful your web hosting company will be, and the more growth you will see.

Written by Candice Humbley

http://m6.net

M6.net, fast, reliable and affordable Windows 2000 web farm hosting.

M6.net

http://www.m6.net

M6.net. Best provider of multiple website web hosting for Windows 2000 designers & developers. M6.net web hosting and multiple web site accounts are unbeatable value for your web hosting needs.