How to Sell Hosting

[Jason]

What are some good strategies? What has worked for you, personally? Who has considered selling hosting?

 

[Aussie]

Saturated market in my opinion, I'm not sure how anyone would make any money doing that nowdays..

 

[Tracy]

Unless you can roll out a fairly large infrastructure.. it's hard to compete.
I know one person that started into some basic hosting a few years (probably around 8 from the top of my head) ago and he's doing pretty good and is well known in the XF community for his shared hosting and management offerings.
But he also had extensive server knowledge and a drive to excel.... in fact, I'm pretty sure he started out with doing server management/setup before he got into the hosting gig.
It was something I looked at once when I had to dedicated servers I was playing with years ago... but decided I really didn't want the headaches as I was reaching retirement age and my first career really wore me down mentally and decided I simply wanted more time for me.

 

[Jason]

Unless you can roll out a fairly large infrastructure.. it's hard to compete.
I know one person that started into some basic hosting a few years (probably around 8 from the top of my head) ago and he's doing pretty good and is well known in the XF community for his shared hosting and management offerings.
But he also had extensive server knowledge and a drive to excel.... in fact, I'm pretty sure he started out with doing server management/setup before he got into the hosting gig.
It was something I looked at once when I had to dedicated servers I was playing with years ago... but decided I really didn't want the headaches as I was reaching retirement age and my first career really wore me down mentally and decided I simply wanted more time for me.

My thing is only an affiliate link but I get recurring commissions, so I'm looking on YouTube for strategy blueprints.

 

[Arantor]

You can get away with being expensive if you can find a niche. Company I used to work for, their cheapest package for hosting was for £3k/month for an open source platform.

But that was for full 24/7 availability of staff, and was aimed at enterprise tier clients. It helped that they were one of the largest contributors to that open source package in its history and they were regarded by their niche as experts.

I swear at times, we knew more about the platform than its official dev team based on some of the debates we had.

 

[Tracy]

My thing is only an affiliate link but I get recurring commissions, so I'm looking on YouTube for strategy blueprints.

The thing with affiliate links... many sites require you to specifically highlight that it is such (and many prohibit them)... and most sites down't have that native ability for that level of specificity.
Yes, I (in my years) could have made some good income on affiliate "links"... but I preferred not to tie myself to a company, preferring to refer someone to what would work best for them (and it frequently was not the same "place"). I'm simply not a (not to offend anyone, but if the shoe fits) money whore. One size does not fit all.

 

[kolakube]

I inadvertently got into the web hosting business by taking on website redesigns and finding out my client needed hosting, or would be better off hosting with me. It was a nice way to discover a recurring side income for little effort and it also made working on their sites way easier by going into a known server environment.

 

[Jason]

Giving up is a big problem. However, you also have a balance that with a justified assessment of whether it's worth the struggle.

 

[MrChris]

What are some good strategies? What has worked for you, personally? Who has considered selling hosting?

To be honest its a dog-eat-dog area but it's possible web hosting can be very hard for new and upcoming web hosting. I'm speaking from the past experience

Good Strategies
- figure out your budget for all the costs involved in a web hosting business and for the first 3 years may not make an actual profit.
- Starting I would suggest 2 virtual servers or a dedicated server then virtualize it. you want to separate your hosting site from your customers.
- Make sure your site looks professional and check for spelling mistakes.
- Billing system - figure out what you going to sell. shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and what billing system may fit your needs.
- Name of the company creative. short, memorable
- Webhosting packages - check out what your competitors offer and see if you're able to compete with them.
- Advertising wise: word of mouth, advertising on web hosting forums,
- do black Friday, cyber Monday deals look at what your competitors offer

What worked
- Advertising on web hosting forums
- Making crazy cyber Monday deals. had to spend some money to get post-sticky (It takes money to make money)
- used whmcs when I first started back in the day. but would choose blesta if I was still doing it.

thats all I got

 

[Jason]

To be honest its a dog-eat-dog area but it's possible web hosting can be very hard for new and upcoming web hosting. I'm speaking from the past experience

Good Strategies
- figure out your budget for all the costs involved in a web hosting business and for the first 3 years may not make an actual profit.
- Starting I would suggest 2 virtual servers or a dedicated server then virtualize it. you want to separate your hosting site from your customers.
- Make sure your site looks professional and check for spelling mistakes.
- Billing system - figure out what you going to sell. shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and what billing system may fit your needs.
- Name of the company creative. short, memorable
- Webhosting packages - check out what your competitors offer and see if you're able to compete with them.
- Advertising wise: word of mouth, advertising on web hosting forums,
- do black Friday, cyber Monday deals look at what your competitors offer

What worked
- Advertising on web hosting forums
- Making crazy cyber Monday deals. had to spend some money to get post-sticky (It takes money to make money)
- used whmcs when I first started back in the day. but would choose blesta if I was still doing it.

thats all I got

I didn't think of webhosting forums. That's a no-brainer. However, my thing is an affiliate situation, though, and would need banner advertising, not a listing which I can't do.

 

[MrChris]

I didn't think of webhosting forums. That's a no-brainer. However, my thing is an affiliate situation, though, and would need banner advertising, not a listing which I can't do.

I had banner site that was my go to. they made some great banners but it's no longer a float. I'll keep looking around though