How to Start a Web Hosting Business
The basis of all web sites is web hosting. It displays the message across to users and attracts visitors as well.
Fortunately, you can now learn about starting a web hosting business. In reality, there are a lot of user-friendly control panels nowadays that would make it easy for you to get started.
Before starting a web hosting business, ask yourself if you can handle 24 hours support expected by the users. Technical and sales requests will definitely be coming your way once you start operations. Therefore, you need to have a systemized way of offering support to the needs of your customers.
Many software sold on the market are expensive. Therefore, you need to do a lot of research in purchasing the right one for your business. For example, learn about IIS if you’re hosting sites on Windows Server and study SSH if you’re going to use Linux as a base operating system. Also, many are expecting their sites to be on Dual Pentium servers – these are reliable and sturdy, preventing frequent server crashes or network outages.
If you have money constraints, however, you can go into reseller hosting which means purchasing one or more web hosting packages and then reselling it for a higher price. Once you acquire a large bandwidth and server, you can divide it among your customers and you can easily service them as long as they pay for their monthly fee.
Reseller hosting doesn’t cost much. For example, you can purchase an average of $30 per month of space and distribute it to users. This strategy would avoid the purchase of a dedicated server all on your own.
Steps in Starting a Web Hosting Business
When your web hosting business is up and running, it would be easier for you to manage it. Here are the steps to help you get started:
- Registration of Company Name – you can find a list of trade name registration in the internet for your particular state. Go ahead and register a DBA (Doing Business as Name) to establish a name for your business. If you want to start a corporation instead of a DBA, just use a site like MyCorporation.com to start one.
- Office or Data Center Name – you would need a spacious office space or data center to house your servers. You need to look around for a safe and convenient location.
- Leasing or Purchasing of Servers – it’s time to buy your own servers and you have several options. You can acquire a custom built server or lease it from companies such as Gateway or Dell. These types of companies will let you host the websites of your clients on their server as long as you pay a monthly leasing fee and set a specific amount of bandwidth.
- Bandwidth Providers – if you’re purchasing your own servers, you would need a provider that can feed the bandwidth by running a line through a router straight to the server. Some companies offering bandwidth include Cogentco.com, Verio.com, Twtelecom.com, and Level3.com.
Marketing your Web Hosting Business
Just like any other endeavor, you need to advertise and market your web hosting business. Remember that you’re competing with established businesses here that have been trusted by hundreds of people – that’s why you need to create a marketing plan that’s better than the rest.
As strange as it seems, technical skills are just a minor part of your business. It really requires a great deal of people skills to be able to operate this business successfully. You can run a few ads, do search engine optimization (SEO), or write several articles. Take note, however, that the bottom-line is how you treat customers and provide excellent service.
Submitting your business name and website to directories could be another way to increase its popularity. Also, web hosting forums are good places where you can advertise for free. Many new hosters spread their business by word of mouth so make sure that you always have happy customers.
Starting a web hosting business may be daunting at first, but with dedication and hard work, all these things are possible. There is a lot of room to grow once you offer reliability and support that your customers need. New hosting firms rely heavily on referral and when you take the necessary steps, this business can be very rewarding and profitable.
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