Web Hosting Business

[imaginethis]

Hi,

I've just started a web hosting business on a pretty tight budget, using a resller package from openmind.

Does any one have any hints or tips for this type of business?

Also, could you take a look at my site (www.imaginethishosting.co.uk) and see what you think. It's only a template that I've customised until I can afford a 'real' website. Also, the hosting sign up form doesnt look to good at the moment.

Regards

Chris

[Martin]

Hi Chris

My first tip if you had posted before would have been to put off the purchase of an Reseller Account until which time your setup with a website, billing systems and the rest of the backend required.

You now have a resellers account costing £** a month and no (?) customers. And you already say your on a tight budget

You need to quickly look at your price plans.

You have *****GB of space
You have ***** of bandwidth

Now think of your target market, small sites? ..E-Commerce sites?

And maximise the value of that space / bandwidth to allure your market to purchase from you.

If you target personal sites.. Then you can offer (for example) 50mb space / 1GB Bandwidth...

Then, will you offer plans on a monthly / yearly basis? ... (i'd try for lock-in at this early stage).

But more importantly you need to get the face and shopfront of your company online!


Martin

[imaginethis]

Hi,

Thanks for you comments Martin.

First of all, I have all of the billing systems in place - they are intergrated into the HELM control panel. I've also got a website online.

I am aiming more towards getting mainly personal sites and less business sites, so I will take your advice into consideration.

Cheers

Chris

[1nzvestor]

Hi Chris

You mention that you cannot yet 'afford a real website'

Template sites are okay to use and if customised well it is hard to tell the difference (to the average user).

Do you have a product or service that you may be able to Barter in exchange for this work to be undertaken ?

This might be one way of taking your business forward.

[BEN]

Hi Chris,

Good luck with the business. I like the tempalte, its a nice design.......just get those images compressed as they are quite big!

Also, when you hover over a link the background colour turns black & the text is black, which means you can see the link....just a tad annoying.

Amend this code:

a:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
font-family: verdana;
font-size: 10px;
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
line-height: normal;
font-variant: normal;
text-transform: none;
background-color: #000000;

Good luck,
Ben.

[defuzz]

something I couldn't see from your site is WHERE the servers are actually located, when I was shopping around for hosting I wanted to know where they were based, what sort of backup systems were available (generators etc) and security etc.


I've never looked into reselling, how does it work in terms of support etc. Presumably if the server goes down, your customers are going to want you to do something about it, do you just refer them to the parent company or do you have access to their server to reboot etc

[Martin]

I can't even view your site ! ...

Timeout.

Problem your end or mine? ... As it was there the other day (atleast the default host page)

Anyways, it's something you may want to ask others to see if they get the same.

(ISP Pipex - Broadbean)