Web Hosting 101 / Part 2
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Ok so we have covered the basics of a web hosting business in part one. We have a way to set up accounts and take in mooney. Now I will continue dispensing my knowledge on the subject.
Decorate Your Barn
So while you were wandering around checking out your competition did you notice anything? The websites look very similar don’t they? Why do you suppose this is? Well when all start out in this business we probably don’t have the resources or the time to design our own websites. The answer? Buy a website template from somewhere like Template Monster! Here you will find all sorts of website templates, I’m sure you’ll find just the one you’re looking for. If you have any design skills and know how to use Photoshop, I suggest that you change a few element of your theme to make it your own. I would stay away from themes that include any annoying flash banners, they are just tacky. In fact if I had my way all gratuitous uses of Flash would be severely punished! I digress.
What Now Obi Wan Kenobi?
Well now you need to figure out what you want to charge for you shiny new web hosting service. Again we turn to the cowmpetition for guidance. You will find hosting plans with a very wide range of prices. I’ve seen shared web hosting plans for as little as $1.99 USD up to $99 USD. Paying $100 for a shared web hosting plan is just crazy. If you’re one of the sassy web hosting providers that thinks it’s ok to charge such a huge fee well, you’re out of the herd. As we have already covered, the web hosting business is flooded and very competitive. Don’t be a dumb cow, price your plans to sell. I could go on and on about this subject but let’s moove on.
Where Do I Find Suckers Customers?
The first thing you should do (albeit perhaps futile) is submit your domain name to Google. I know this sounds obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people don’t submit their website to Google. Next prey on your friends and family. You know that there’s got to be a few people that you know that would love to have their own space on the information highway. You have to sell it ” Dad just imagine you can bitch all you want on your own little slice of the World Wide Web!” Play on a person’s vanity, heck I would even give the plans away to my friends and family. This of course would come with the understanding that they will inject your domain name in every conversation that they have from now on. Next, become a member of your local chamber of commerce. The chamber of commerce is a great place to meet new customers. A chamber of commerce will have meetings and get-togethers through out the month. These meetings are chock full of new business owners that need a website! Again you may want to give away these first few sites. You should bargain with your new business friends to place your banner on their site somewhere.
Don’t Drop The Ball.
I can’t emphasize enough how important customer service is in this business. Customer service is what separates you from the other Web Hosting businesses that are angling for your customers. The thing that many small web hosting companies fail to remember is that the customer is relying on you as an important partner in their business. Give your customers a money back guarantee for the first 30 days or longer. Let them kick the tires so they can make sure that you will be a good addition to their business plans.
Summing Up.
The Web Hosting business is a difficult business to make money at. But with some careful planning and attention to your customer you can be a success. Start small and grow as needed. You should be able to run a web hosting business for $200 a month or less in overhead. Good Luck!
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Very informative but I have a question about “submit your domain name”:
Do you really mean submit to Google? It can takes weeks and time is money in business.
Read this:
and with 1coolfile.com(few days ago). I’m already indexed.
How to get your new site index by Google in a few days
I did it with one of my blog
Thanks for the comment Steve-O. Unfortunately submission and indexing by search engines is never an exact science. There are however a few cool tools you should look at…….wouldn’t you know it Google has the cool tools. Check these out; Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics.
That’s what I had done/wrote in the post above.
Google Analytics also help very much.
I agree that submission on any Search Engine could take time unless you pay the big bucks.
Crawling will also help to be included in them but that may take times.
I agree, the webmaster tools is of great help
I have to agree with this. Use Webmaster Tools and submit your Sitemap.xml to them and then you will see your site being crawled.
Yes, there are better ways than submitting to Google. I hope you guys don’t mind if I share my article about getting indexed faster (I am not trying to spam, it just has to do with this topic 100%): http://www.webd360.com/blog/get-indexed-by-google-faster/
It also helps to host a few non profits for free in exchange for links on their site. Gets you some inbound links, and non-profits like to talk and all have board members that may need hosting and appreciate your generosity.
Also, at the beginning you can ask for testimonials or reviews in exchange for free hosting.
Pretty good info, I personally find that web hosting choice is a very big trial and error thing as everyeone will view a certain web host differently.
I think decorating your barn is probably the most important considering the fact that your blog needs to look good. I recently had a post on my blog about how I have seen people use blue, orange and red all together to make their website stand out. It just makes it an eye sore!
While that may be true to some extent, in some cases ugly sometimes work really well for some people too. It all depends on what you consider good and what you consider bad. I’ve seen ugly sites succeed where decent and good looking sites fail. This area is always very subjective
i agree keeping readers also visually interested is key too!
It is, and essentially thats what makes long posts work. But most of the time, readers in general have a short attention span and will be less incline to read long posts. It all depends on the subject, how well its written, but at the end of the day, its still subjective.
Man, I love these posts. I was wondering though, anyone think they could write an article about how to actually make a server. I mean like how to take a computer and turn it into a server; you know, hosting stuff on the web?
Anyone think they could do that?
-Michael
Hi Michael
There are a couple of solutions you can use for your own server.
I recently featured a nifty gadget on my site that takes care of most of the technical stuff for you, have a look on my site under the Linux category ( I wont post a link) or do a google search for ‘Square One Personal Internet Server’
Hey Fat (lol), go ahead and post your links man, they really help and I don’t think anyone would consider it spam when your link is on topic and helpful.
haha he just called you fat!
Hey Michael, I’d be glad to write an article about building a server from scratch for web hosting. The recommendations that I made in Part one of this series was to find a company to rent a dedicated server from. When you rent a server from one of those folks, you get everything you need already on the box. So in that circumstance there is no “building” to be done. But if what your looking for is a simple tutorial on how to make a spare PC into a web server, I would be happy to oblige in a future article.
Thats exactly what I am looking for. Would you mind making one?
-Michael
Sure……coming soon to a pasture near you.
Windows or Linux?
LOL, another Cow has joined the herd
We need more MILK for “John” !
LOL I wonder if he likes chocolate milk haha
I ‘m thinking linux. It’s free plus I have herd linux is much better than windows for web hosting. Do you agree?
By the way, coming to a pasture near you was actually very clever. Kudos to you
While you can do this, it is not recommended as you will need a pretty fast internet connection (although cable and dsl works, it won’t be up to par if you site grows), and unlike web hosts which have backup servers and internet lines in case something should fail, if your internet dies at home or your computer needs a reboot, thats down time you can’t afford in some cases. But it definitely is possible.
I think reselling hosting is pretty much crap, and agreed with your strike out on the “suckers” part of that title.
I would agree that with the multitude of small hosting companies, there is less quality.
I once had a friend of mine (he was a car salesman)tell me to remember “there’s an ass for every seat”. Kind of the same thing as “There’s a sucker born every minute” said by PT Barnum.
These days it seems like it is a lot of work for not much return, so I wouldn’t touch it or recommend it for anyone unless they were just bored or something. But they have some wonderful free themes and pre-fabricated templates if anyone wants to get up and running quickly!
I’ll stick with free wordpress themes ^_^
While I am not a fan of hosting sites any more, there is another benefit. IF your main business is creating web sites or those sort of services than having hosting is a great way to feed into your existing client base. They will often call their web host for maintenance and other work.
Customer service is truly invaluable. It can make or break all the work you have spent trying to get the user to your site.
Definitely, customer service is important because you want to keep your customers happy or else they won’t remain your customers.
One of the things I look for in a web host is 24 hour live chat for convenience and not every web host will offer this. Also how fast they respond to your queue the moment you are waiting for someone to get on to help you. I remember before I was on my current web host, I had considered another web host because it kept coming up as one of top 10 on Google whenever I typed in a search for top web hosts. Unfortunately its 24 hour live chat took over 50 minutes and never actually connected. This happened in the middle of the night too at like 3am so I doubt there was that many people trying to connect to someone.
It was long time ago and first hosting with live 24\7 support i saw ever was Host Gator!
It also depends on the level of service their live chat is. I’ve been talking a some really dumb people lately who doesn’t seem to know anything about their job and yet they’re there to help support you with your account. This of course isn’t just limited to live chat or web hosting but still, people should at least know what they’re doing.
Without good customer suport i don’t want to look their offer! I search boards for info about hosting if i whant to setup new account somewhere…
I just Google it for consumer reviews.
May I suggest a small orangeAll of my sites are hosted under a shared plan and I have to say I’m very happy. MY site loads almost all the time and downtime and server load is easily found and displayed. Plus, the customer service is off the hook. All question answered fast. The longest I had to wait was 5 hours for a response.
They currently offer Shared Web Hosting and VPS.
i just have a question, how did you get your hosting service to support your contest!
If it’s anything like the big beef, the sponsors contact them and then offer a promotion.
Submitting to Google is a thing of the past. It’s much faster to get your site indexed by building backlinks.
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Heyy boss great article, but i dont think that you should manually submit your web site to search engine’s, that was the trend some time back but the world wide web has change and nowaday’s you should let the search engine’s come to you rather than going to them, and for this you must get few back links to your site form some good web sites. And your all done
Mr Cow
Your comment section has No-Flow enabled isnt it..? hmmmmmmmm