If you want financial independence then there’s no better way to do that than creating a recurring revenue business online. One of the most popular (and profitable) business ventures you can start is web hosting.
Web hosting is kind of like a power grid for the internet. It’s a necessary utility. And if you want to be online you have to have it.
The only problem is that it’s super expensive to setup a hosting company and also needs specialised skills that most online entrepreneurs don’t have. There is a solution though, and it’s called reselling.
Here are 5 tips to help you get off the ground with reseller hosting:
Never take the generalist approach – always choose a niche’
Choosing a generalist approach to reseller hosting is going to be a waste of your time. You need to find a unique orientation for your reseller hosting brand that defines your specialty as a provider. Follow a general approach, and you will fail badly. The competition is just way to strong.
Generalist hosting follows these characteristics:
- Main keyword is “web hosting” or “cpanel hosting”
- No differentiation except for different design and lower pricing
- Focusing on all geographic regions
- No “X” Factor
Examples of Hosting Niche’s:
- Regional: “best hosting in Berlin Germany”
- CMS: “best hosting for Typo3 hosting”
- Charity: “best hosting for xyz charity groups because we support abc” (get creative)
- Industry: “best hosting for churches”
The more specific, the better. To learn more about why specificity is important in a crowded marketplace I recommend that you learn more about long tail keywords and use keyword research in your business planning.
Choose an enterprise grade hosting provider
Enterprise grade hosting is catered towards customers with higher demands in terms of uptime, performance, and support. The difference between enterprise hosting and non-enterprise hosting starts from the choice of server hardware and networking equipment used.
The most reliable cPanel WHM reseller hosting providers use server hardware from manufacturers like Dell, HP, and IBM. They shy away from using servers build using desktop server components. Would you want to resell hosting to you valued high paying customers if you knew that the disks were built for desktop PC’s?
It’s a disconcerting feeling knock off canada goose coats https://www.geeseparka.com Canada Goose victoria parka online discounts, and for good reason. Server components that are not enterprise grade have a much higher failure rate. This means that you can offer a lower uptime SLA to your end customers, ultimately resulting in a lower price that you can sell your product at.
Decide on a control panel and stick with it
Most reseller hosting providers offer a single option. And that is cPanel. But remember the first tip above about choosing your specific niche’? Another niche’ idea is to choose one of the less popular control panels like ISPConfig or Virtualmin.
It’s a bit more difficult to manage than cPanel but one of the added benefits is that you can use NGiNX. Also, there’s zero licensing cost which is great. Savings that you can then pass on to your end customers.
Hire a Virtual Assistant
If you are starting off, you most probably don’t have a staff. On the contrary, you might not even be a system administrator. Thankfully though most reseller hosting providers will be able to provide 24/7 support for your end customers.
But there’s still work that needs to be done on a daily basis. Invoicing, social media promotion, email marketing, etc. There’s plenty of grunt work involved in maintaining a reseller hosting business online.
Hiring a decent VA will be able to help you save loads of time in dealing with all of this. Virtual assistants from the Phillipines are great but you have to be be professional in your hiring approach from the get go. You can hire one for under $4 per hour on a platform like Upworks and Odesk. Hire and fire fast as a rule of thumb.
Don’t try and beat the competition on price
There will always be someone that will offer cheaper rates than you. Instead of competing on price alone, try and compete on quality, service, and differentiation. Be the best in your specific niche’ and don’t pay attention to the price wars. Learn more about differentiation by reading up on the blue ocean strategy.
Final Thoughts
Being able to create steady recurring income online by reselling web hosting is not easy. But with proper planning, hard work, and a little bit of luck, it’s completely possible. There are many large hosting providers that initially started as resellers.
Once you get your first 50 customers, you can upgrade to a VPS, then upgrade to a Dedicated Server after your 200th customer.
The rest as they say is history.
Colocation contracts with data centers, hiring of full time staff, renting of offices, and then flotations on the NASDAQ.
Ok lets just try and get that 1st customer first shall we ?