Web Hosting

Every now and then, a few times a month, clients ask me about hosting. I am thinking this may be an opportunity to create some extra income every month. Anyone got any recommendations on getting started or resources?

 

The money you will make from hosting for you clients will be minimal (without an additional maintenance contract or something). Take a look at how cheap web hosting is these days. Do you want a call from an angry client because their website is down at midnight? When you are hosting for your customers you will be their contact point. And you might make how much money? $5, $10 a month? Maybe $20? I don't think that small amount of money is worth it alone.

I think the benefit for hosting for your customers is you keep them close to you and keep an ongoing relationship so if they need more work in the future they are more likely to call you to do it. If you make a website and that's the end of the transaction, are they going to call on you 2 years from now if they need more work done (will they even remember your name)? But if you are hosting for them, you have an ongoing relationship so that may result in more repeat business. Just my thoughts.

 

I still want to do it. Is all hosting on Dedis now, the cloud? Think I could start off with some sort of reseller package from another reliable source? Starting off with a dedi would more or less loose money till I have enough people hosted. Is it possible to generate any % of revenue from domain registers as well? An API or something?

 

Go with a Reseller package (shared hosting) or a VPS with WHM/cPanel (as it will also have Reseller functionality, and some non WHM/cPanel control panels may as well, I am not sure as I have never used them). If you go with a VPS, get at least a 2 core. I would lean to a VPS myself, but you might save a bit if you went with a shared Reseller package. (Maybe save $10 or $15 a month depending on what you need.)

You would never go with a dedicated box until after your business grows enough to justify the expense. As far as domain registrations go, that is a low margin business. I know some domain registrars have affiliate programs where you can earn a small amount of money with each domain registration. I am not aware of any turnkey or white label domain registrar programs (though there may be some). As far as doing a Reseller using something like Amazon Web Services or cloud something, I have no idea. Unless you are an expert at managing a web server, go with a managed provider. If you have no web server management skills at all, then go with a WHM/cPanel VPS or, even more simply, a Reseller shared package. If you go with a Reseller shared package you will not have to worry about any server management at all.

 

Got any Reseller & VPS recommendations so I can compare?

 

Some great information provided to you already so pointless me repeating what`s already been mentioned but I`ll paste a few links that maybe useful to you:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6

http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/2s8due/starting_a_web_designhosting_business/

 

Thank you for those resources, I will check them out !

 

Indeed, check the WHT link that's been given above, there are a lot of people that were in that position and a lot of useful advice shared in the forums. I will try to pitch in a few ideas too.

As with any business idea, in order to turn it into a reality you have to have a solid business plan. I am talking about a full scale plan starting from the market you want to exist in, the niche, the competition, budget, expenses, marketing strategy etc. etc. You will soon realized that this is an extremely saturated business so you would need to find something truly unique that can set you up from the rest. Even if you plan to go local, there are still a lot of things to consider and your market might not be so open to it.

As mentioned the best advice for most startups would be to go for Reseller or VPS. Which of the two though? Generally, if you are not that tech savvy the Reseller plan is the way to go. Especially if you want your support to cover more hours, you can go with a company that provides end-user support and never worry that something might go wrong when you're sleeping as your host will be there to address your clients. VPS will give you more freedom and flexibility and a good Managed VPS provider can and probably will be a great help at times too.

Then you can turn your attention to marketing what you have and making your product appealing to the masses. Most often a good tech is not so good at selling and great sellers might not be so good with the techy-stuff so you might consider bringing another member or partner on board to help you with where you lack.

Know one thing for sure. Hosting is not a get-rick-quick business and you have to be prepared working at a loss for quite some time, especially if you want to tackle competition price-wise. You have to expect that as this is what made many fly-by-night hosts to disappear and leave their clients in the nothingness. If you are really passionate about hosting - by all means, give it a go. If it would be something you plan to do "on the side" you are better off hosting a small number of clients on a Reseller/VPS and not turning that into an official business.

Hope that helps

 

Why not try a hands off approach? Instead of adding another source of problems for your business, just add the revenue stream. Advise your clients where to host their websites and provide affiliate links of hosts that you recommend. This will give you another source of revenue that is extremely low maintenance. You won't have to hear complaints from customers when the server is down or fix an issue for free if they feel entitled to it, because you are now their webhost. In short you will save time being an affiliate of a web hosting company, while reaping some of the rewards of offering it.

 

If you want a way to stand out in terms of hosting, or want to offer more than just simply hosting to potential clients, consider this:

Generally, web hosts provide space and bandwidth, but practically none of them can help someone build a successful online business. If you/your clients want more than just web hosting, as in having hosting as a means and stepping stone to make money online, it also requires using an easy-to-follow, all-in-one, proven, ethical ebusiness-building system (not a get rich quick scheme) to get (1) a significant amount of traffic and get (2) targeted traffic (example of such a system: WhyNotThis dot com). You/your clients might end up with more than just having webHOSTING - you/your clients will have a webBUSINESS.