WEBHOSTING PROFITS Part 01
Friend,
welcome to Webhosting Profits.
Since 2003, I have profited from
webhosting as a business offering webhosting and domain name registration
services to countless number of corporate and individuals and making good
income on a regular monthly basis doing it.
Unfortunately however most of the people
I have taught website hosting to as a business are always afraid of getting
started because they feel they must be a “guru” to offer such a service.
Nothing is however farther from the truth. Even a “bum” straight off the street
can run a successful webhosting business without breaking a sweat and the truth
is:
You don’t need to know a line of
technical code nor even understand how Linux Servers work before you can become
a webhost. In this short report, all the salient points will be covered and in
a few minutes from now, you will be totally ready to start offering webhosting
services to customers. J
Here are the topics covered to get you started fast:
š How
To Choose A Good Webhost
š What
To Buy As A Starter
š How
To Setup Hosting Packages
š How
To Create Webhosting Accounts for Customers
š How
To Manage Customers
š Getting
Help When Stuck
š Creating
Sales Pitches That Attract Customers
š How
To Add Domain Name Registration Services
HOW TO CHOOSE A GOOD WEBHOST
In truth, the challenges of being a
webhosting are just too great that it will be crazy if you decide to start a
full-blown website hosting business immediately – install your own servers, get
staff, sort technical details, marketing EXCEPT of course you know what you are
doing and have the funds to pull it off.
For me that’s just too much of an effort. I want
something I can setup today and start taking customers before this week ends?
Friend, the key is to approach existing website hosting
companies and buy a portion of their web-server (hosting space) or hard disk.
Once the purchase is made, you can then sit down to analyze how to make the
most profit from it. It is extremely easy and if a zombie.. like myself could
do it, why can’t you?
The first decision you will take however is perhaps
the most important decision and it goes a long way to determine the success or
failure of your new business. For the record, your business is only as strong
as the webhost you choose and this is why you need to choose a good webhost
from day one.
To help you make this decision, here are a few
questions you should ask:
WHAT KIND OF HOSTING DO I WANT TO OFFER?
There are two main types of
hosting servers (there are others but these two are the main ones) – Windows
and Linux. While windows as an operating system is very common on PCs, I choose
to believe that Linux based servers are far more popular than the Window
servers (my opinion).
So, first, decide if you
want a Window based reseller webhosting or a Linux based reseller hosting. To
tell the truth, I did not know any distinguishing factors existed when I
started BUT I started out with Linux hosting.
True, I’ve had some clients
go away because I offer a Linux based hosting, more have stayed and maybe I’ll
get a windows based hosting sometimes in the future.
So decide – do you want a
Windows based server or a Linux based Server? Or better still do you want both?
When you go searching, your
decision will help out.
SERVER UPTIME GUARANTEE
What is the up-time
guarantee of the webhosting provider you choose to use for your business? By
uptime, we mean how often will they mess you up by not being available for you
and your clients and how well will they be available to meet your needs?
In my opinion, if they
promise anything less than 99.9% uptime guarantee, walk away and find another
webhost.
Friend, a very helpful tip would be
to track how often the site goes down. Use the tool available at http://internetseer.com to track this 24/7 to help
you reach a logical conclusion.
CUSTOMER SUPPORT
What is their support like?
Do they reply emails? If
yes, how fast?
You won’t understand how
valuable this piece of advice is until you need help with something and your
webhost can’t be reached or won’t reply your emails!
What to do is before you
use their service, start sending emails to them. Ask them a lot of questions.
Ask stupid questions. Try to make them angry. Shout at them. Insult them.
Just do a lot of things to
turn them off and make them neglect your emails. If they pass the test, they
are probably good enough for you.
Another thing to watch out
for is that they have a 24/7 support team. You want to make sure you can reach
them on holidays and even on week-ends. In the last 3years, I have had to
maintain accounts with 3 different webhosts and I have come to realize what
support can mean.
One webhost takes between
2hours to 24hours to get me a response. This is actually the first webhost I
ever used and I used to think it was ok but I realized later that when there is
a crisis, they just keep quiet and refuse to respond to emails/support tickets.
I have had to wait for over 48hours with my site being down and customers
yelling and even recently, they’ve given a heck of troubles and even as I write
this, I am screaming and wondering why I chose them in the first place.
The second webhost has a
15minutes response time even on holidays. Quite good I thought until I got the
webhost I now use for all our enterprise online services.
With this service, there is
24/7 online support and non of my enquiries has ever gone beyond 5minutes.
PACKAGES AND PRICING
Webhosting has become
competitive. If you look well enough, you will get an affordable and excellent
service that suits your pocket.
For example, it is not
uncommon to get $99 per year for a 3Gig (or more of reseller hosting) space or
a $5 per month hosting that can get you started conveniently.
Friend, one thing I am wary of
however is that the cheaper the pricing and package offered, the more the crowd
the hosting service provider will have to eventually deal with. While some
companied might be able to deal with this effectively, a most will compensate
with decreased support quality and the more efficient the support, the better
your business.
To be continued….
Friend, next issue we'll continue with Company Policy & Service
Terms.
See you there…