Hosting Business

This wraps it up right here.

 

The only way to get into the hosting business now is locally. Find businesses in your area that need hosting. Many of these guys are still paying insane hosting charges. I know one local company who have a ton of customers and have not changed there hosting prices in 10 years. They still charge people $35 per month to 200MB of Space and 2GB of badwidth.

I have taken several of their customer who were very happy to pay $14.95 per month for 500MB of space. Try getting someone to pay that price on the net somewhere. Plus many of the businesses will pay you to move the site and some are good leads for some web design work as well.

 

yes problems with support are killing! there are tons of kids who want their websites up and have no idea how to do that, than they start buggin u for this - asking to help them etc. and that allot of time, u cannot really do this... and than they start spamming support system with complaints about bad service etc...

 

I explored the possibility of going into the web hosting business several years ago, I saw my potential competition, the projected profit margin and the work load ahead of me and I saw that there is no way I could do it by myself and still earn an income. I find that sitting on the couch all day watching tv is more profitable than going into web hosting.

If you are just offering the 'me-too' / similiar services than the rest then you are not going to make it. You need to look into niche markets or have something really unique to offer to be able to stand out. You need deep pockets to advertise and be prepared to slave throughout your first few years and not see a profit.

$2 customers may be more demanding that the higher paying ones because they may be looking for the best deal for their money or they just do not know what it actually cost to run a website. The price war definitely hurts the market a lot.

Too much new hosting companies just can't start the heat and bail out in the midst of it.

If you want to earn money, look into doing something else.

 

After reading this i dont think i'll be doing any kind of web hosting anytime soon...lol. Would you take image hosting over web hosting?

 

Would it be appropriate to compare the two?

 

If forced to make a choice I would do image hosting but talk about low payouts.

 

$10K in overhead, thousands of hours of time spent, a lost girlfriend and some confilicts of interests later... I will never try to start a hosting comapny again.

On the good side, it was all worth it from what I learned in the experience. The old adage is right, "Business would be much better without clients"

I suggest staying away from any business model where you "host" any type of service/content for another person. You get all the risk and overhead with limited return.

 

Online business affects most of our lives. Sad but true.. That is why I am trying to adopt a business model that would leave time for a decent living away from the computer..

 

Exactly moron moron moron, there are 10000s of people doing this business..
I'm even offering it for free... lol

 

well, there's nothing wrong with give it a try. You may lose $$ but you earn experience and that is something can't be felt if you do not try it.

After reading all these, I think going to a small niche in your country rather than going global. That may be better.