Hi there, i own Greenlush.com and im wondering.... As web hosting is such a saturated market with so many web hosts out there, what are the best ways to market a web host? My googe pagerank is currently 5 and i need to raise it to pr8/9 to have a decent chance against all the other major sites, so i am planning on spending a few thousand buying text links ect... Also paying peaple to blog about my site. Behsides all of that what else is there i could do? Thanks
Rather than spend thousands of dollars advertising, perhaps spend a little time investigating the services provided by other web hosts and trying to match if not better them. Offer discount coupons to a few forums.
Your PR really doesn't have much to do with traffic. I have some sites that are pr5 with little traffic and some with pr5 that have lots of traffic. Come up with something interesting and spend thousands marketing that instead of just getting a pile of links.
start affiliate program, submit to hosting directories, use adwords, spread it through forums, give special offer to DP members like that...
I think special deals to DP members might be a good idea I would deffantly want a special deal, and my names Jason too, does that mean i get an better special deal?
Just my $0.02, but web hosting just seems like a silly business to get into unless you can deliver something unique. The web hosting market is beyond just 'saturated'. Why not build packages that cater to niche markets, like a special package for musicians & bands, for soccer moms, for hobbyists, etc. You can include a CMS like DotNetNuke or Joomla along with templates and software to help them get things done. You could have prebuilt sites that are turn-key for people. I know the people over at LunarPages and CoffeeCup and they've got packages available to help people get started. It's working over there. But they're targting a broader audience, and probably not much fun to compete with. Then again, they don't care about smaller markets where you could clean up.
Thats quality, I'll get an email sent to the main owner of the site, me and the guy who posted this, the other Jason from new york, we work on marketing the site along with "Greenlush" on DP here too, us 3 work on developing new ways to take the company forward. This will be the main thing that i will push for an inclusion. I know that we allready offer joomla/php nuke ect.. free with every package and that we have payed sites like rockettheme ect.. For commrcial web templates for these content management systems. We also have our own custom turnkey cms that can be used. I will arrange ti so that there is better explanation of this service on the website. Thanks for the quality feedback
This is so true, I have a dead site that for 3 years now has been pagerank 5, and remains there. Try offering free hosting with minimal options and if your hosting offers cpanel, add in the news that your customers can obtain more power features by upgrading to paid packages.
I would try affiliate marketing. For more information and information on affiliate marketing check out <edited>. As an affiliate marketer in the coupon business this is where many of the top affiliates are located. I know of 1 guy that gave away free hosting accounts to all affiliates that post his affiliate link for his hosting site on there sites. Check out this link <edited> This might give you an idea on how to market your site Please pm me and i will give you the url's, I am unable to post and live links yet.
For a webhosting site's marketing you need to contact web deisgn sites asap. Ask them for home page linking or exchange. Any one who is visiting web deisgn site wants to make / re design sites. So they may be interested to get your hosting for their site, if you offer them some lucrative deal. With SEO in hosting field is tough. Now there are many big players in hosting field, so competiting with them is always pain. So I guess collboration with some companies is always better option.
I used to run a hosting service myself and found that one really good method to use is to give new members a special like $1 for the first month or completely free. Usually after 1 month people have already uploaded and modified everything the way they want they would rather pay up every month instead of having to start over. Also consider teaming up with small domain registers, offer them $2-3 per month per client they send your way. Its good for them because its extra money without having to do much and good for you becuase you get a lot of new clients.
There both really good idea, i like them both. I'm just thinking... I accually dont know any small domani registers at all, i only know of the big companys: Domainsite, namecheap, 1and1, heartinternet, webfusion, enom ect...... Can you please give me a list of a few small domain name registers as it would be very usefull. The giving 1 month free is a very good idea i will try to get that as one of the services right away Thanks
now a days pr have nothing to do with good ranking. It's just your quality content, title, meta tags, good navigation and ofcourse strong backlinks that matters and each of them have a proper way to do.
Before you spend any further money I recommend sitting down and writing a proper marketing plan. Don't let others tell you how to run your business and what you have to offer. But take the advice and mix it with what you feel comfortable with. If you offer free or low cost hosting you attract a lot of troublesome customers. Can you support them? Is your server setup hardened and secure to withstand the problems that come with these customers? Develop a marketing strategy and execute it. Don't run into one direction and then a different one because the promised results did not show up. A PR 5 is nice to have, but it does not mean traffic (as pointed out already). You want to look at two things. Long term marketing via SEO to drive natural traffic to your site and short term marketing to gain customers as you go. What is your target group of customers? Do you have special skills or hobbies? Maybe there is something to start with. Build a marketing plan around that eventually and then spend the marketing dollars wisely. Don't use "Shotgun Marketing" unless you have tons of money to spend. Spend the money as targeted as possible. Christoph
A couple points here as I also run a hosting company. The overwhelming majority of hosts run cPanel, making moving less than 30 minutes worth of work. Most control panels can also import account data from other panel types. Also, with several affiliate programs available that pay out $100+, why would anyone do an affiliate program for $2-3? The only advise I can give is you better be ready to work your ass off for a long time for little return. We've been doing this for 3 years and the SE results are just getting good: Shared Hosting - 23 out of 28.6mil Web Hosting - 47 out of 269mil Reseller Hosting - 34 out of 15.4mil Our Niches: Joomla Hosting - 1 out of 5.5mil Mambo Hosting - 1 out of 5.8mil WordPress Hosting - 100 out of 19.4mil (new page) SMF Hosting - 30 out of 2.5mil (new page) Pick a niche, you'll never get anywhere in the general market or competing on price.