Does any one have any good resources, tutorials, or insight on how to start a web hosting site? I have designed one, but I want to do some research to see if it's worth it to put the time and effort into starting one. I searched around but I didn't see much. I know there is tons of these sites so it must be a good niche...
The thing with starting a web hosting site is, there is so much of them around you need to be extra special in what you offer, which means spending alot of money at the begining and expect a loss for a few months
this is a very saturated market....so you will need to offer something or stand out from the others...
If you are only doing an online hosting business, you will likely not see much profit. I would highly recommend that you market your services in your city. You can charge them a lot more money and give them less at the same time. Working in a web design/development service into the business would be a good idea if you go this route. In fact, this is the only way I would ever start a web hosting business.
I would also recommend this and you should also provide other web services such as web design, web development, seo, promotion...etc; those will attract a wider audience. It isn't easy or hard to attract offline clients, you just have to have the connections to spread the word
Actually,you no need to do lot research since what the customer want is reliable server and good support. If you meet those 2 thing,i'm sure your biz will flourish in no time. Well take a look at those references http://www.webhostingratings.com/quick.html http://a-web-biz.com/starting-a-web-hosting-company.htm
That's a good point. I sold one of my hosting related domains 2 years ago. For good money. And just out of curiousity I kept checking it since I had own plans on starting a webhosting company long ago. Well, the domain name is still unused, the owner is probably struggling to get started. I do believe it's well worth giving it a second thought before getting into the web hosting business these days.
Web Hosting Explainedis a good place to go also.. but you can ask people here anything about webhosting.. I myself is running a small web hosting..
yeah, thanks. i think that if he maybe targeted local businesses he would have a better chance at succeeding since it would be a less saturated market. if he is strictly trying to compete online, it will be alot tougher to succeed. if he is successful locally, he can always try expanding to compete with the big boys later on
There can be alot of money in it. Trust me! like others say you need to really go out and offer a amazing service. If you can do that then you will be good.
Starting a new web hosting company is not easy, I started my first web hosting business about 6 years ago, and I have designed and developed many since that time. It has been a very rough road, but with the right business plan I know it can be done right. I wish you the best, if you have any questions about starting a web hosting company feel free to ask me, I have been there and done that, more than once. Kind Regards, Brett Topovski - SEO Expert
Hello my friend, I am glad to help you, there are various resources and tutorials are available for this. About the business I am telling you some fact that are as follows: The business plan - a maybe or a have to? Lets start with a little bit of math - hypothetical of course. Let's say we setup 300 accounts on that server that we've been talking about. Revenues (300*$5 less credit card fees) = $1280 Cost of Server = $100 Added Control Panel = $100 Cost of Advertising to get those clients = $300 Cost of support = $350 or if you are going to provide it all, take your current salary and put it here. Total Costs = $850 Profit = $430 Profit per customer = $1.43 But! We have not taken into account the fact that when you're just starting the web hosting business the server is empty - you host no sites on it. That means in the beginning you'll have costs (server+control panel) that you'll have to cover somehow. Guess how! From your own pocket! Can you spot another mistake in our assumptions? The advertising cost! It cannot be estimated the way we did. It really depends on a lot of factors (such as ad effectiveness, your ability to close the sales). Usually you will not be able to estimate this cost with accuracy before you actually start advertising your web hosting business. On the bright side, the advertising costs are not recurring every month like we assumed. Once you close those sales, you basically have them secured as long as you provide a good service. So, if you want to get into the business, do your market research and do your business plan. Find out how much it costs you to get a new customer. Probably the best thing is to start small. Get a reseller account, something you can justify as a "waste" in your budget, because, as we've seen, it's probably going to be a long while before you turn a profit of any kind Don't jump right in with a managed/ un-managed dedicated server as it's liable to ruin you. Save all your income from the "business" and reinvest it if you can. And do some more research on the market before diving into this. Read some books on server administration and hang around the forums. If you still have to ask a lot of basic questions, it only means that you shouldn't be starting that web hosting business yet. Wait until your questions get very specific. That's the moment when you're ready for starting a web hosting business. Advertising your web hosting business Remember, a web hosting business website is like any other website. The simple fact that you're a business is not enough to get you traffic. A majority of the cost would be to advertise, advertise and advertise. If you're just starting a web hosting business you have to compete with the more established web hosting companies and in order to be attractive, your offer and business plan need to be 'better' than the rest. Technical skills and the server are the foundation of your business, but, as strange as it might sound, they're a minor part of the business. It requires a lot of "people skills" to deal with sales and support. And because it's going to be a 24/7 business, you would probably need to have a technical team to provide support to your clients as and when needed. There are so many hosting companies out there that it's impossible for all of them to make huge profits, but, generally, it all comes down to how you market your web hosting business and how you treat your customers. Get a few ad campaigns running. But be warned, it works for some, but not for others. Also, do some SEO (search engine optimization) on your web pages in order to rank high in the search engines. Considering how many web hosting companies are out there, I haven't seen that many optimizing their website's pages to rank high in the search engines. Don't concentrate on optimizing the homepage only. Try instead to write a few good articles, useful to anyone who owns a website. Write each article around a certain keyphrase(s). Use www.wordtracker.com to find what people are searching for in the search engines. And don't forget to get your site listed in DMOZ. It shouldn't be very hard if you follow the submission guidelines and it will do you a lot of good because it will greatly influence the link popularity (especially PageRank) of your homepage and thus of your other website pages. Another way to increase link popularity and advertise your web hosting business is to submit it to directories. There are lots of web hosting directories out there. Try to get your website listed in as many as you can. The web hosting forums might seem like good places to advertise your business for free, but there is a problem. The web hosting companies advertising there tend to offer way to much and ask for way to little. Try it if you want, but expect to find some outrageous prices, prices at which you'd go broke in less than two days. Offer from your website a free piece of software. Although not offered from a web hosting business's website, the HostingEvaluator program (www.hostevaluator.com) actually advertises www.boutiquehost.com. With that piece of software they are not only sending traffic to the hosting business, but they also prove that they offer good service. Try it. It's free and very useful! Another way to advertise your web hosting business is to host for free a few (or many) hosting, business or webmaster related websites, especially those offering valuable information, in exchange for a "hosted by yourcompanyname" banner on every page of that website. Don't expect them to accept a large banner at the top of the pages. That's much too obtrusive for almost any webmaster to accept. There's another place that usually gets a good amount of attention from the visitors: the navigational zone of the page (navigational links; e.g. the right part of every page on my website). Try to secure position for your banner in a similar position on their websites. Many new hosters started by spreading the word locally to get the word of mouth to start. It simply proved that satisfied customers breed others customers. Word of mouth spreads like fire... when the service is good, and when it's bad! Treat all your customers as if they were your first and your last customers. Build up a solid reputation of having quality support and customer care. You build this well, and the rest should follow. And remember... one disgruntled customer will shout a hundred times louder than any happy customer (in most cases) so make sure you don't put yourself in a bad position on purpose. Getting customers is hard if you are expecting them to walk in and make you rich simply by submitting to a few search engines. It takes time, effort and money for most people in order to make their business popular. There are hosts who have excellent reputations, and word of mouth is their best advertising avenue. You need to position your company differently. You need an idea to be different from the rest. Think about it, why should a customer come to you and not someone else? Yeah, I know, you'd like me to give you such ideas, but I don't have any. Why? Because I'm not thinking, like you are, about starting a web hosting business. I'm simply trying to get some things straight with this article. Besides, if I had a special idea, I would not simply give it away. I would be starting a web hosting business... My own... Back to advertising: offer free trials. You can offer one at your website, or you might want to go a place such as a restaurant and speak with the manager. Make an offer to give away FREE web hosting accounts to their customers. Of course not free for life. Free for a few months. Print some business cards and leave them by the register. Let the people test drive the web hosting. You have plenty of time to recuperate those money after they're "hooked"! As I explained earlier, try not to position your web hosting business as yet another cheap hosting solution. Instead, prove people that there really is a difference between your service and the service provided elsewhere... I read on forums what a guy who owned a web hosting business used to tell his customers when asked why he charged more than they've seen in other places. He replied people with something like this: Why do people pay more to buy Nike shoes when they can pick up any cheap pair of shoes? Why would someone buy a Porsche, when a Geo will get them from point A to B just as well? And he kept on explaining until the customer was convinced. There will always be a place for the really cheap hosts and a place for the quality hosts. You just have to know your market. And you can explain that to your potential clients too. I told you once, but I'll tell you again. A lot of people who are starting a web hosting business provide the customer service/support by themselves. Considering the fact that they also are in charge of advertising, maintaining the website, etc. it's only normal that they report working 14+ hour per day. Few if any are getting rich, but many earn a living. Having to respond to customers in a timely fashion to answer the same simple questions over and over for different customers really ties them down. Plus, when the server goes down, everyone on that server starts calling or e-mailing, swamping them. And they cannot reply to the emails sent by customers. That's when they lose a lot of good customers. Take care of your customers, and they will take care of you! Nowadays, people expect 24 hour support. Will you be able to be on call 24 hours a day to handle all requests that will be coming in once you start your business? Prompt support is a really one of the most important aspects for the success of a hosting business, so you should ask yourself how much time you can put into this business. Since in the beginning, most likely you'll do everything by yourself, you will not be able to offer true 24/7 support. However, I recommend you to monitor your support email(s) and help desk every waking moment. You might be able to impress most people with your timely responses. Perhaps the most important thing that you have to do right is actually very simple: you have to listen to what your customers want and then give them what they need.