I was just wondering and wanted advice from people who have experience in this area. Fortunately for me, all my clients had already purchased hosting before I came to them. I didn't have to worry about setting any of it up. However, it is inevitable that someday I will have a client who won't have web hosting setup when I meet them. Here is my question: How do I go about setting up web hosting for them if I don't sell out my own server space? Is this where I say it costs $20 per month or whatever and put the hosting on my own credit card? Or are there other ways to do it? Do I give them detailed instructions of how to do it themselves? Advice in this area would rock! Thanks in advance, Thomas
You have 2 choices - get yourself a reseller account or let them arrange it themselves. If you go down the reseller route you will get some additional income from them paying you for the hosting which could turn into a lucrative business providing a guaranteed monthly income. The downside is that you will be responsible for providing your clients support for their hosting. You also need to make sure you choose a good reliable hosting company because your clients will not appreciate you saving a few bucks with a cheap host who causes problems, has servers that are down regularly, or who disappears one night with their files and data. Getting them to arrange it themselves is less stress but provides no additional income. I'm sure there are lots of other positive/negatives and other people will come along and give their opinion. At the end of the day, make it YOUR decision, not someone elses.
Thank you for clarifying reseller hosting. That's what I need! I can see it being very lucrative, provided that I have a sufficient number of clients. I love HostGator, so I will be going with them. They are reliable and their support is impeccable. Thanks again for your help!
Let him start with a reseller account also if it's hostgator because you can buy a super cheap reseller account from a company that in a night can disappear with all your websites. Sometimes to start is better to start with something "sure". No VPS because managing a VPS without knowing a single word of server can be just an expensive source of troubles. Configuring a VPS to be safe it's not easy and there are too many VPS company that yes will sell a VPS but no management or applying fees that are too much high. My two cents.