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Webhosting reselling - is it profitable?
| Posted by dantol, 01-08-2005, 07:31 PM |
| Can a beginner in this business make a decent living?
I would appreciate your answer.
Thank you.
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| Posted by AFMichael, 01-08-2005, 07:48 PM |
| Don't expect to make a living anytime soon when you start a company. It can take a year, or two or even ten before you can comfortably live off of it. It can be done, but there will be a lot of hard work that has to be put into it.
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| Posted by Lordo, 01-08-2005, 07:50 PM |
| Sure.. But not soon, just like Michael said. It is good when you are able to:
1. advertise your business and get customers
2. stand there and offer good support.
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| Posted by patrick24601, 01-08-2005, 08:02 PM |
| I am curious - how many times a day/week/month is this same thread started over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
again?
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| Posted by AFMichael, 01-08-2005, 08:21 PM |
| Not EVERYONE filters through the threads. Deal with it and move on.
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| Posted by patrick24601, 01-08-2005, 08:29 PM |
| Nice and pleasant.
That is why threads are RETAINED so they can be FILTERED. But I was just making a comment on how they were not being FILTERED.
Moving on per your orders.
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| Posted by ldcdc, 01-08-2005, 09:07 PM |
| Heh... Such is the nature of forums. The same things are discussed multiple times. You can either enjoy it, ignore it or hate it.
To answer the OP's question: expect to be losing money for a while. If you have the money you can buy company, but I wouldn't advise it if you don't have the necessary experience to run a hosting business.
Generally, a beginner in this business will not make a decent living. Now, where I live $200/month means a decent living by local standards, but I doubt this is your goal.
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| Posted by grace5, 01-09-2005, 01:31 AM |
| Yep.... a hoster or a musician both pays equally
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| Posted by Sayouly, 01-09-2005, 10:43 AM |
| I have been at this game for almost three years and still can't say I make a living. Like the others have said, be prepared to put in your time -- and money.
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| Posted by Marble, 01-09-2005, 11:44 AM |
| I never thought of reselling as "making a living" but what I do get out of it is free hosting for myself, my company, and a few friends. The dozen or so accounts I resell pays my hosting bills plus a little extra. But by no means enough to pay the bills. Maybe a few pints at the local pub on the weekends =)
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| Posted by ticky, 01-09-2005, 01:33 PM |
| Couldn't have said it better!!
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| Posted by Marble, 01-09-2005, 01:50 PM |
| Lol... I also forgot to mention its a nice service to offer for people I build or work with for design / dev... I give them the option to either host with me (at a resonable price - so I make less on each hoster) but I give them free stuff, like uploading their site, setting up the emails, etc... as an incentive. Otherwise they are on their own or I charge per hour to set up this stuff on their own hosts...
Same with domain names. I register them, charge a small fee, but they don't have to worry about a thing. I change the DNS, etc...
But this is how I do it and never really focused on hosting as a means to an end. But if you plan on making hosting your business then start with a reseller, get a small client base, get a great reputation for customer service. Once you can get to a dedicated server (which can happen fast enough if you put the time and effort into getting a good base of clients - word of mouth is the best resource for starting out) ... then you can start thinking about advertising, etc... This is maybe how I would suggest approaching it. If you have the mad skills as an admin, then you can go with a cheaper (un managed) ded. server or otherwise find a reputable company and go with a managed server until you learn enough to feel comfortable with running a server remotely.
Good luck!
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| Posted by mrzippy, 01-09-2005, 03:27 PM |
| No, it's impossible to make a living with hosting. You should do something else.
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| Posted by HostORB.Co.Uk, 01-09-2005, 04:55 PM |
| It would be a very hard job to make a living from web hosting although it certainly can be done, but for the majority of web hosts they make no where near enough profit to sustain a living from web hosting alone....
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| Posted by hostingvince, 01-09-2005, 08:23 PM |
| Wow!
You must have the cheapest hosting costs on the Net today.
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| Posted by snickn, 01-09-2005, 08:25 PM |
| I would actually agree with this to a point. The majority of hosts do not have a sound enough business plan to make a living off of their webhosting company. However there are plenty of hosts who not only make a living, but provide employment to others who also make a living...so the webhosting industry is by no means a 'part time' industry, or a modern day 'lawnmowing business'
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| Posted by joephill, 01-09-2005, 09:52 PM |
| You can make a living on anything you just need to be good on what you do..
For example you can be a juggler at the street for penys or work at Cirque du Soleil in Vegas.
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| Posted by niyogi, 01-10-2005, 04:22 AM |
| The best resellers, in my opinion, happen to be the web designers/developers that tackle the local market. They have face-time with the clients which is so valuable that their clients are willing to pay upwards of $30/month for a just a sliver of space and a working website. No overselling necessary for these folks. ;-)
Roj
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| Posted by reanncw, 01-10-2005, 04:59 AM |
| A company is as profitable as you make it to be.
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| Posted by kelvinklay, 01-10-2005, 09:06 AM |
| you need to advertise on popular channels or websites.
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| Posted by IHSL, 01-10-2005, 09:12 AM |
| If a business has a true business backbone, web hosting is an extremely profitable sector, and sustainable.
I do agree, a lot of hosting companies won't be able to power a company, and pay wages that that give their staff a good living, but that's only because a lot of companies have a business plan/business model that would make my two year old son cringe.
A good businessman can start with $2000-$5000, and turn it in to a $70k per month business, within two years, but business know-how and common (or uncommon ) sense are required.
Simon
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| Posted by NexDog, 01-10-2005, 09:19 AM |
| The reseller can make more than the boss of the hosting company they resell for. We have some resellers with a 100-200 domains and they make a living. One guy I know provides a very personal service and spends all day driving door-to-door visiting his clients and having sessions on the computer. He is a web designer too but this kind of service has given him a great reputation and charges a pretty penny for his design/hosting business. He might get a new customer every month but he gets a few grand off them up front for site design and then charges 10 times as much as us monthly for hosting and site maintenance.
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| Posted by truelysam, 01-10-2005, 12:30 PM |
| IMHO
its profitable
But expect competition to be very keen
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| Posted by olajideolaolorun, 01-10-2005, 01:15 PM |
| I do not see how people make money out of this.. I mean, a reseller has to pay about $100 per month for like a 40+GB serverm and if he gets $40 because nowadays 1000MB = $5 is the normal thing so how does he keep up with the $60 deficit he has....?
I mean it is like almost unreasonable unless you have your own server... I have searched and searched for a good reseller host with good and reasonable costs but none fits me and the cheap ones.. i do not know if they are good....
so please shed more light on this....
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| Posted by Marble, 01-10-2005, 01:30 PM |
| I pay $50 a month for a well managed reseller account with enough space for me to host about 16 domains. I charge around $8-$12 a month per domain. So I only need to charge $8 to 1/2 those people and I am already making a profit. Not much by any means, but you see the point. I don't offer 20GB BW and 1GB space type of hosting.
I offer secure hosting, my services provided (uploading, create email accounts, etc...), and flexible space and bandwidth. I start the accounts smaller - 2GB BW and 100-200 MB space and adjust if necessary. In most cases its enough. Sometimes I have to push their bandwidth to 3 or 4 GB... But I am not trying to compete with other hosting companies. I offer a service to host their site and they don't have to do a thing. Most of my clients don't want to bother with learning how to set their DNS in the domain, upload their site, install a script, etc...
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| Posted by niyogi, 01-10-2005, 01:34 PM |
| I say once again, that web developers make the best resellers. Oh, I guess I'll add web hosting companies that target local companies with a complete design/hosting package. THAT works as well.
Roj
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| Posted by olajideolaolorun, 01-10-2005, 01:35 PM |
| Thats a good one...
and i am a web developer..... and the reason why i would want to start this would be for my clients
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| Posted by Rha7.com, 01-11-2005, 02:44 AM |
| I'm a reseller, but my main business is Web Design, as someone saide on a previous reply, I get a few bucks from hosting, and actually host mostly web design customers, but I can tell you, a single Web Design contract is worth 10 or 20 hosting accounts, the reason I resell hosting is that it makes my company look bigger and reliable, as I offer them an integral service, from on-line business concept to going live, without the customer move a single finger to make it happen... so the answer would be yes, if you decide to diversify your business, and resell hosting as one of your services. No if you are thinking of making a living out of hosting alone (i think I read this in another reply too).
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| Posted by mdrussell, 01-11-2005, 04:27 AM |
| It can be possible, thankfully, because some people still appreciate you get what you pay for and that massive overselling is not the way to get good service.
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| Posted by The3bl, 01-11-2005, 05:49 AM |
| I have resellers that make very little and do it mainly because they are designers and want to host their customers sites. Then I have clients that started reselling and today run some very nice hosting companies that rival mine.
I have one reseller that started with me about 2 years ago with a small reseller account today he has 11 servers with me. I have another reseller that started off less than a year ago with a very small account and just bought their 3rd server and are growing everday.
To answer your question yes you can make a living web hosting. Is it easy? No but the rewards are good if you are willing to put together a decent business plan and stick to it, not play the how low can I go selling game and build your business on solid long term plans.
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| Posted by niyogi, 01-11-2005, 01:01 PM |
| I guess the lesson learned here is "Selling hosting is what you make of it."
Roj
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| Posted by olajideolaolorun, 01-11-2005, 01:17 PM |
| true, i agree
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