Hosting Resellers

When you buy a reseller’s account, you usually express your consent to your host’s TOS (Terms of Service). Some people just check the box at the bottom and hit “Submit”, but if you’re serious about this business, you may want to carefull read through the TOS provided by your host prior to signing up with them.

The TOS covers a multitude of subjects and outlines your rights and more importantly, your host’s rights, in the deal. The TOS will tell you what happens when you, or one of your clietns, exceeds the bandwidth allocated to them or runs an application that hogs the server’s resources. It will also tell you what happens if there is unexpected downtime (will you get compensated?). Another aspect covered is what type of sites can you host on your reseller’s account (porn or links to porn, gaming, gambling).

There are many many aspects covered in the TOS and it is a legally binding contract. You can’t afford to just check that box, because someday one of your clients could get upset over something you didn’t know about but was mentioned in the TOS you had signed to… You need to know what the TOS says, and you need to make sure that both you and your customers abide by it. If you’re not sure about something, ask your host prior to signing the deal.

Many web hosting companies, aka hosts, offer reseller plans. Why do they do that? why not just sell directly to the end customer and keep the profit? The reason is simple. The host expects you, the reseller, to help them advertise and expand their business. You are working as a salesperson for them, thinking up new and imaginative ways to bring in more customers. You can sell to people you know, people in your region or your professional niche; maybe you can run some sophisticated advertising campaign; or perhaps web hosting complements a service you are already offering, such as web design, hence giving you access to more clients.

Essentially, they want to increase the number of customers that they have. But there’s more, and this is something you should keep in mind. Hosting reselles pay for the hosting space upfront. Whether or not they actually manage to sell that space and make a profit isn’t the host’s business. Sure, they will do what they can to help you succeed, but the bottom line is you are buying hosting space from them, money in their pocket right away.

As a hosting reseller, you may want to offer your customers an option to buy domain names from you. As a reseller you wil usually get the domain names at around $5-6 each and will be able to resell them for anything as high as $35 per domain. And remember, domains are paid for annually, so a year later, the customer may be paying you again…

Domain registering can be a tricky business. If your customer is sending you the desired domain name by email and wants you to register it for them, you will be responsible for getting the exact domain name requested. If you make a typo, you end up with a useless domain name that you will have to pay for.

However, many hosting companies that offer domain registration services, also offer their resellers an option to resell domain names for them at a certain profit. The profit may be lower, but as a reseller you simply have to copy and paste some code into your site, where your customers can search for the domain names and carry out the registration for themselves. You, as the domain reseller, are out of the loop. Less of a profit maybe, but less of a headache as well.

Hosting is a huge business. Everyone needs hosting, and if they don’t need it now, they will need it in the future. In theory, you could have hundreds of clients for your reseller business.

It’s always prudent to start small, and with reseller hosting, there should be no problem starting out small… In fact, there are hosting reseller plans where you can start out with as low as a budget as under $20… However, if you’re already having several dozens customers, it may be time to look into the future of your hosting business.

Once you accumulate enough customers and learn the ropes, it may be worth your while to go dedicated. You could rent a dedicated server either from your existing host, or from a different host. Shop around, dedicated servers plans vary greatly. You may continue with the existing support system provided by your current host, or you may look into hiring your own admin to run your server. With a dedicated server, your profit margin becomes significantly higher and you have more control over the kind of services and features you can offer your customers.

Becoming a hosting reseller is a great business opportunity that is available to most people. $100 for the first two months will get you a long way. That’s a very small investment to start running a business…

You can get your own website for cheap. A domain is under $10 these days, and you don’t need to pay for hosting fees, as you’ll be using your own reseller account for that. If you want to keep expenses down, you do need to know how to put together your site, though turnkey sites are available for a few dozens of $$. Check out ebay to find some good deals on turnkey hosting sites. If you know how to put together a site and just need a template, look for free templates, there are plenty that have computers themes on them.

Once you have your website going, it’s a matter of finding good cheap ways to bring in traffic and attract potential customers. Definitely a topic for a different post here

With most hosting reseller plans, your host provides you with a WHM panel, that’s where you can create hosting accounts for your clients. The mother hosting company is basically out of the loop. You pay them for the hosting and your clients pay you.

When you see a polished website offering hosting plans, you can’t tell if they are a big host or maybe just a reseller. And neither can your clients when they look at your websites. These days, professional looking templates are easy to come by, and anyone can have a decent looking front for their reseller business. The decision whether to tell your clients that you are the “middle man” or pretend to be a major hosting company is up to you, and depends on one major factor.

What kind of support do you wish to offer your customers and at what time frames. If you provide your customers with email support and promise to reply within 1-2 business days, then you may be able to let them contact you only and provide the solution within time. If, on the other hand, you wish to offer customers 24/7 support, you will probably have to refer them to the host’s customare care, in which case they will know they are receiving their support from someone other than you.

As a hosting reseller you are not an affiliate. This is important to remember.

An affiliate is someone who puts a banner or a link to the hosting company on their site. If someone clicks that and purchases hosting, the affiliate is given money. It’s as simple as that, the hosting affiliate doesn’t know who bought hosting. All they know is they are getting the credit in their affiliate account.

Hosting reselling is totally different. As a hosting reseller you buy your own hosting space, and then sell it to someone else. You know who your clients are, and you manage your own business. With most reseller plans, you can set your own prices and sell the hosting in whichever way you want, they don’t care. All the host knows is that they gave you hosting space and the ability to create new accounts. What you do with that, is entirely up to you.

If you are serious about becoming a hosting reseller, you should treat this as a business opportunity. Keep in mind that this isn’t a franchise. You are not acting on behalf of your host, and they won’t furnish you with the know-how of how to sell.

Whenever you can, visit sites you are hosting. Even if your host guarantees 99.9% uptime, it never hurts to check on them every once in a while. Speed is another thing you want to check. See if the sites are slow or fast to load.

Keep in mind that the speed, or lack of it, isn’t solely up to your host. Loading times, as seen from your computer, vary according to your connection speed, your isp, and the loading speed of the hosted site itself (depending on how large the files that need to be loaded are). So, if a site seems slow, don’t rush in to blame your host. Check again at different times of the day. When you finally contact your host, ask them to help you ascertain where the problem is.

If you do note slow loading times on all of the sites hosted by your reseller account, do let the host know that there’s a problem. Sometimes a single account, maybe even on your own reseller program, or on anothe rone on the shared server, can bring down or slow down, websites across that server. Your host needs to know that there’s a problem so that they can tend to it.

As with any business, it’s imperative to network, network, network. Don’t be shy and don’t be afraid of sharing information with others. Yes, they are your competition, but this is a huge market and if you exchange ideas with a few fellow resellers, you and them will have the edge over the hosting resellers that shy away from peer contact.

Join several webmasters forums. Almost all of them have hosting sections. This is a great way to be in the loop, learn of industry news, of what others are doing and much more. Don’t just lurk, post as well. Let people know you and approach you when they have questions or comments. Make yourself visible. Keep your posts friendly and polite. Remember, it’s your business image that you are projecting. Even if these people are not your potential customers (and they certainly are not), you still want to present your company in the best possible way.

If your host runs webmasters forums, certainly do join them. Remember though, that you want to be part of the major forums, not just your hosts. When deciding which forums to join, check to see how many registered members they have and how recent are the postings. If there are 3 registered members and the latest post is six months old, don’t waste your time and move on…

We don’t mean your personal homepage, or your hobby related site. We’re talking about your online shop front, the site where your hosting reseller business is running.

Make sure your site looks professional. This means your own domain name of course. Don’t use something like geocities.com/yourname as your web address. Nothing would be more unprofessional than that… After all, if you are in the web hosting business and can’t get your own hosting… what does that tell your customer?

Use a professional looking temptlate for your site design. Hiring a designer is probably too expensive to start out with, but you can use a template by a free templates site. Just query Google for “free templates” and look for something with a clean and professional look.

Make sure your site is written in clear English (or whatever language your site is in). Ask someone to proofread for you, so you won’t miss out on any grammar or spelling mistakes.

Keep your website up to date. If you want to offer specials, make sure you don’t leave them on the site after their end date went by.