Quick: How many websites do you think are on the internet right now? The answer: Nearly 2 billion. And all these websites need to be stored somewhere. That’s where you come in – if you want to make money by starting your very own web hosting company, that is.
If you’re reading this article, we want to assume you already know all about web hosting (and if you do, you can skip the next paragraph), but just in case, let’s start with the basics:
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What a web hosting company does
Remember before, when we said that every website needs to be stored somewhere? Surprisingly enough, most people don’t know that. They probably know in theory that websites can’t just be floating around in cyberspace, but they don’t really know the details of how it all works.
If you want to make money from web hosting, though, it’s your job to know how it works. The good news is that it’s not that complicated.
Every website needs to be stored on a server. Think of it like a kind of house for a website. Now, you can store a website on your own server, but just like actual houses, servers are expensive to buy and maintain. That’s why most people rent server space by storing their website on servers that are owned and operated by a web hosting company.
What’s a reseller hosting site?
Now that you know what web hosting is, you’ve probably already figured out what reselling hosting means. It means you rent server space from a web hosting company, but not because you want to host your own website on the server. You do it so you can rent that server space to other people, for a profit.
Make money by reselling hosting
To make money doing this, you only need to do these six things:
1. Find a good reseller hosting site
2. Set up a reseller hosting account
3. Find your niche
4. Stand out from the crowd
5. Get a customer support team
6. Promote your business
1. Find a good reseller hosting site
This probably goes without saying, but if you’re renting server space to other people, your product can only ever be as good as your host company’s product. That’s why the very first thing you need to do is find a reseller hosting site with a good product. Here are five things you can look for:
White label hosting:
White label hosting means that instead of having their logo all over your product, your hosting company will allow you to brand your product with your own
Customer support:
If something goes wrong with your customers’ website, they’ll want some customer support. Which means you’ll need customer support. Because the thing that goes wrong might not be something you can fix. That’s why you need a web hosting company with great customer service. (We offer 24/7 customer support.)
Great uptime:
Because the fate of your brand is tied up with the reliability of your hosting company, you need to choose a company that offers great uptime. We offer 99.9% uptime, and we don’t see why you should settle for anything less, especially when your brand’s reputation is on the line.
Variety of hosting packages:
Choose a company with a variety of packages, so that when you’re ready to scale your business, you’ll have enough packages to choose from.
WHMCS platform:
This is a web hosting automation product that helps you keep track of your clients’ accounts and their payments. It makes managing your business stress-free, even if you’re a complete beginner. A great reseller hosting site will offer this as part of their package, like we do.
Okay, let’s stop beating around the bush here. You know you’d love our product, and we know you’d love our product. So, how do you get it already?
This brings us to the second step of your journey to becoming a web hosting company to be reckoned with:
2. Set up a reseller hosting account
Just follow these steps to set up your account:
- Choose one of our reseller hosting packages
- Register your domain
And that’s it! Now for the third step:
3. Find your nicheRese
Web hosting is a huge market (billions of customers), but, like most industries, newcomers can be crowded out by industry giants. This means that if you offer a generic product that appeals to everybody, you’re not likely to get many customers – they’ll just go to the bigger companies.
What you need to do is attract a particular type of customer whose needs you could cater to specifically. And because you’re only focusing on that type of customer, you can server their needs better than a bigger company ever could.
4. Stand out from the crowd
Because you’re just starting out, you need to do some pretty aggressive branding if you want to set your company apart. This doesn’t necessarily mean you need an aggressive brand (although, that might actually work, depending on the type of customer you’re trying to attract), but it does mean that you’ll need to make sure every aspect of your brand – from your colours to your logo to the words on your website – speaks directly to your ideal customer.
5. Get a customer support team
One of the benefits of being a small company is that you can give individual attention to the few customers you’ll have in the beginning. By the time you get more customers, you’ll likely have the money to hire people to help out with customer support, but even now, it helps to rope in a few people you trust to handle your customers’ concerns.
And if you chose a hosting company with good customer support, you can always just set up an email address where customers can contact you – make sure you respond quickly – and then you’ll be able to pass on your customers’ queries to your hosting company!
6. Promote your business
It goes without saying that if you’re starting a hosting company, you’ll need a great website. But you’ll also need to make sure you promote your business on social media. YouTube and Facebook are good places to start.
Reselling web hosting is a brilliant way to make money online. The market is huge, and if you provide a good service in a niche area, you can get customers in droves.
Put the odds in your favor by working on your branding, choosing a good hosting company with white label hosting, and promoting your brand on social media, and soon you’ll join a group of people who are happily making money online by reselling web hosting.
