How to Become a Profitable Web Host with No Prior Experience

• February 2, 2011 09:46
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Web hosting is one of the hottest businesses on the web that generate a lot of steady stream of income for the operators. In contrast to the popular myth, one doesn’t need to be tech-savvy, in order to manage a profitable hosting service.

Matter-of-factly, hosting other people’s sites doesn’t require any programming or specialized training, though that can be a plus to your credentials. The beauty of it is not only that you can operate a profitable web hosting company without prior experience, but also you need not have your own server. That notwithstanding, you have to come up with a small upfront investment of capital and also embark on serious marking campaign for your new company. This article is aimed at educating you on how to become a successful web hosting reseller.

• Domain name research and registration: Like you must have known, every online business needs to operate under a unique name. Typically web hosting websites have names that relate to their type of business services; most of them start or end with the word “host”. So, research for a catchy domain name that contains either of the keywords, “host”, “hosting”, web hosting” or “server”. Be aware that generic domain names can’t be easily associated with web hosting business, and hence, aren’t good enough. Coin out a short and descriptive keyword-rich hosting name that will help to brand your new business. When you’ve come up with a name, register it and proceed to designing your website.
• Designing your web hosting site: Study some popular web hosting sites’ designs and structures, to get a good impression of how you want your own site to be. Design a professionally-looking site, if you have HTML skill or hire a web designer to accomplish it for you. Fill the site with unique and relevant content, just as established web hosts do. You will come back to it later to add the hosting packages you will be offering your clients.
• Choose a reliable web hosting provider: Use Google to search for top web hosts that provide reseller services, or use BBCwebhosting.com to find best web hosting reseller companies. Then find out what their real clients are saying about them and their services through web hosting review sites. Compare their reseller hosting plans, laying more emphasis on cost, monthly bandwidth transfer limit, available disk space, type of control panel and their terms of service. Bear in mind that there are reseller hosting providers that stipulate in their TOS that they reserve the right to ban resellers whose clients commit offenses that are against their terms of service. So, do not create an account with such firm, but instead sign up with a company that will only ban the account of the defaulting client. That’s how your business will remain safe! Make your choice of a web host, after critical comparisons of affordable and reliable services. I suggest choosing a host that offers billing software for automating receiving payments from your clients and also offers resellers a way to automate domain registration.
• Configure your site’s DNS: Login to your reseller control panel, after signing up with a web host, and go to the Domain Manager to configure your site’s DNS (domain name server). Providers like Hostgator allow resellers to use customized names as their DNSs. That way no one will know you’re just reselling another person’s service. If your site is BBCwebhosting.com, your domain name servers will most likely be named as DNS1: BBCwebhosting.com, DNS2: BBCwebhosting.com.
• Create your hosting packages: While still logged in, create the hosting packages you’ll be offering your future clients. For example, if you bought a reseller plan with 500GB available bandwidth and 50GB disk space, you can split that into equal quotas to host up to fifty (50) or more accounts comfortably. Monthly bandwidth transfer limit, available disk space, type of control panel, maximum number of email accounts and pricing should be included while creating your web hosting plans.
• Input the packages on your site: Now go back to your site’s files and enter the packages you’ve just created, so that prospective clients can start purchasing from you.
• Marketing your web hosting company: The success of every reseller depends on how well his/her business is promoted to the target audience. Prospective clients need to locate your site, so they can purchase your packages. Promote your site through popular web hosting forums like Web Hosting Search, web hosting (BST) section of DigitalPoint Forum and Web Hosting Talk, and subtly through social networking sites, such as FaceBook and Twitter. If your budget permits, place ads on these communities and consider paid search advertising services, to attract substantial traffic to your site. The key to gaining top ranking in organic search for your chosen keywords is by building quality inbound links from related sources. So, embark on targeted link building and other SEO.
• Providing technical support for your clients: This is not complicated as it seems to a less knowledgeable individual. The actual web hosting company provides support even for your own clients. Your only task is to relay your clients concerns and issues to the company’s support team, and then forward the reply back to your clients. It is as simple as that, though you have to shape the replies to your clients as if you’re the actual technical support provider. Over a period of time you will gain an unbelievable amount of technical knowledge acquired by just relaying your clients’ complaint to your web host and vice versa. That’s the best way to learn web hosting technical support, without paying for it.

Another good thing about a web hosting reseller account is that it’s upgradable. Always monitor your account’s resource usage and quotas, and upgrade to a higher package on either a shared environment, VPS or even dedicated server, when you’re about to hit your limit of available resources.

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