Attention Resellers!

aliweb

aliweb

Perch
Hi

I am planning to purchase reseller plan but before that I have a few questions:

(1) How can I promote my hosting company using FREE means? List them all.
(2) What do you think is the average time after which I will get a client? I mean how long does it take
to get a client and more importantly how long does it take to achieve BREAKEVEN i.e. no profit no loss. Just give a guess by your experience.
(3) What should I do to avoid that even if my client's website is down for some reason (maintenance) but my website should not? You know what I mean. Suppose I purchase a reseller plan and hosts my web hosting site on it. Suppose for some reason the server goes down then it means not only client's site but my site will also go down.
(4) How many support emails you get daily from clients on average?
 
Hi

I'll answer these for you

1) Be VISIBLE on webhosting forums such as sitepoint.com, webhostingtalk.com, etc. Post regular ads on these forums in the adverts section. Use CPA programs like findmyhosting.com. Try targeting local clients by bundling services/products
2) There is no set rule on this. Some companies can get their first client after many months and break even, even later. Some companies can get their first client within 5 days and breakeven within a month :). Depends on your advertising strategy. I'd recommend some CPC programs such as hostsearch.com and ispcheck.com
3) You can host them on separate servers with us.
4) No real average. I'd say 1 ticket/day per 10 clients but it depends on too many things.
 
^Thanks for the rely Yash. Hmm...... it means the keyword here is advertising. The more the advertising the more the revenue. One more question. How do most hosting business design packages for clients. For example let's say I purchase your Lite reseller plan which comes with 1.5 GB of disk space, 30 GB Bandwidth and maximum 10 users. It means if I equally divide the resoursec among 10 then each user will get:

Disk Space
1.5 * 1024 (or may be it's 1000 not sure) = 1536 MB
1536 / 10 = 153.6 which is approx equal to 150 MB/user.

Bandwidth
30 * 1024 = 30720 MB
30720 / 10 = 3072.0 which is approx equal to 3 GB/month/user.

But as you know not all users will utilize there allocated 150 MB and 3 GB space. Some of them may not even reach the 75 MB and 2 GB mark. It means instead of giving them 150 MB and 3 GB I can offer them for example 300 MB and 5 GB. Because I know that not all users will utilize their allocated space. But there is also a possibility that all or maximum users will fully user their allocated space. In that case I will be in trouble. My questions are

1.Is this practice possible using your reseller plan?
2. Hosting companies do this practice?
 
Overselling is a sensitive question.

Yes, you can oversell both bandwidth and disk space in our packages as they are based on usage and not allocation.

My advice would be to ensure your packages are profitable with little or no overselling. If your customers don't use all the resources which will probably definately be the case, you can capitalise on the additional profits. If you come into a situation where your resources are being used up, upgrade to the next plan

Many hosting companies practise overselling. I don't recommend building this practise into your pricing model (at least not crazy overselling). We don't build overselling into our business strategy and our plans are profitable without it, but we as a hosting company do capitalise on it if a server is severaly undersold in terms of system resource usage (which is almost always the case). We sell our services to a responsible limit that doesn't inhbit performance (and I believe most customers enjoy excellent speeds from us). HSphere does give us the tremendous advantage of not having to allocate resellers to a single server but span them over multiple servers ensuring no situation that a reseller suddenly starts growing and uses up everything on the server they are on.
 
aliweb said:
...... it means the keyword here is advertising. The more the advertising the more the revenue.
Click to expand...

The keyword here in advertising is keywords themselves. Trying to break into this market is extremely difficult. You have to provide features that others in your region do not. Do a search for webhosting in your area with your preferred search engine and just see how many others come up to. Don't be narrow on your search either. What would your client search for...probably "webhosting" or "cheap webhosting", etc. See how many others appear in your search. Over 6 million for the keywords "cheap business webhosting.

Now, ask yourself how you get within the to 10-30 sites displayed, ober the 6 million others. Good luck. Takes a lot of research. Try products like Webposition and WordTracker. With luck, you can get on top.

Otherwise, you'll need to pay. I ran a targeted CPC advertising in Google for the keyword "webhosting" in my region. Cost me over $4.50 a click. Ouch. Though it was good to analyze my statistics afterwards to see what the keywords that people actually typed to get to me. Though, both the statistics programs at JodoHost are very insufficient to do any kind of analysis. They are more for free personal sites. Maybe we can talk JodoHost into getting Urchin setup. ;) Gives better stats like where did they go after leaving my site.

Don't get discouraged, follow the ideas above, see what works, find a niche, like "cheap windows 2000 webhosting with free MS SQL" and market the hell out of it.

Good luck!
 
^Yes you are right web hosting market is extremely saturated but at the same time one can generate ample revenue from it if he has time and patience. I will go for two advertising methods:

(1) Giving ads in local computer/internet magazines
(2) Putting paid banner or entry in some good technology/tutorial website like aspin.com, w2schools.com e.t.c.

Once Oracle arrives I will market the hell out of it because nobody in our country gives Oracle so that would be a plus point. But in the mean time Windows 2003 Server with SQL Server is also a very good combination.

What I have learned from Jodo and other good hosting providers it that your support should be excellant otherwise you will lose customers. Because you can lure customers by offering them some attractive packages but you cannot retain them if you don't have a sound support system.

Yeah if we can get Urchin then that would be superb!!!
 
If you are a web developer then it works out best. You start looking for complete job (web development/hosting).

This could be done by calling companies in your neighborhood. Look for various advertisements by companies in your neighborhood. Focus on companies without website.

A local company will be happy to give you a job becuase you host and develop their website.

Once you have regular income and savings start spreading out with paid advertising.
 
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