Why hosting is a good income method
One of the most common ways to make money online is web hosting. Personally I do run a hosting business and know the ins and outs of what’s required. If setup right, a hosting business can be a nice way to earn passive income, meaning money for very little effort. The problem? Everyone else on the Internet has had the exact same idea.
The amount of web hosts out there is astonishing. With reseller plans, you can provide your own hosting service pretty much with the click of a button. So what makes you stand out from the others?
Marketing. It’s all about the marketing.
Smart marketing tactics and niche targeted advertising is how you win customers. Hosting is a much needed service; people will always require web hosting so the potentional is always there. What worked for me is word of mouth. Recently I developed a website for a friend of one of my old high school teachers, (a good few years ago mind you) and from that referral I’ve had 4 development projects through 4 different people whom all choose my company as their hosting provider.
Some snarky tips;
- Don’t run a hosting business while at school or college. So many people do it and most fail; it just isn’t worth the effort and puts distrust in your customers. If something goes wrong you NEED to be there to fix the issue and get everyone back up and running. Downtime is bad for business.
- Do your research, find out the best reseller deal or dedicated server. The cheap option isn’t always the best.
- Purchase a billing/hosting management solution. You will need to keep track of sales and issue invoices. There are many relatively cheap options available with Modernbill and Clientexec being the favorites.
- Learn about the industry. An endless wealth of information can be found at the webhosting talk forums. Read up! (Aussie’s can read the Australian version)
If anyone has any questions about the web hosting industry, I’d be glad to answer them. Good luck!
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POSTED IN: Online Money
6 opinions for Why hosting is a good income method
One Stop Under
Feb 16, 2006 at 5:07 pm
Do you find that it takes a lot of time and effort to help customers that lose passwords, screw up their setup, can’t figure out how to FTP files, can’t configure their email clients, don’t know how to write HTML, etc?
I host sites for about half a dozen friends and organisations, mainly just to help them out (certainly not for profit!). I’ve found that the hours I spend helping them would never be covered by reasonable hosting fees.
Is it just a matter of being hard-nosed about helping your clients, and referring them to FAQs and how-to pages to help themselves instead of doing things for them? I always feel bad doing that, but perhaps that’s what’s needed to turn a profit?
Jamsi
Feb 16, 2006 at 10:39 pm
Actually no, most people that have chosen my company as their web host seem to be fairly computer literate. I have a few clients that have no idea how to use FTP or how to manage websites, so I charge them a fee per hour to make changes to their website.
Josue Salazar
Feb 16, 2006 at 10:43 pm
Another thing is not throw everything out the window. Charge for the quality of service the users will be getting. Smaller but smarter clients will always be better. Those who know hosting isn’t about expecting miracles from the cheapest host in town.
HART (1-800-HART)
Feb 18, 2006 at 12:48 pm
Hi Jamsi .. I would be interested in knowing what’s your average size hosting plan you are selling (space/bandwidth, etc). I’m one of those people who has a reseller account but only for personal use. I might have to upgrade to another account and thinking of splicing bits here and there to clients, friends, etc…. / tia // HART
Jamsi
Feb 18, 2006 at 8:02 pm
At the moment I rent a dedicated server with about 1.2TB of bandwidth so I have quite a lot to play with. I target the Australian market (being an Aussie) and our lowest plan is AU$7.00 per month for 200MB of space and 10GB of bandwidth.
That may seem like a lot, which it is but the market is so saturated, you have to provide a good deal.
Web Hosting Malaysia
Jun 6, 2006 at 5:19 am
I agree web hosting is all about marketing and promotion. You can get a dedicated server in a good datacenter at very low cost, but once you exceed 200 clients, you will realize it’s time to invest in some systems and infrastructure to cater for renewals and further growth.
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