How to Start a Web Hosting Business?
Starting the Business of Web Site Hosting Made Easy
Nov 16, 2008
Starting a web hosting business and successfully running it calls for a lot of hard work, patience and perseverance and it certainly is not walking up the garden path strewn with roses as many would believe. After hearing about the innovation of Control Panels, most people have begun to think that starting a web hosting business is now a lot more simple, little realizing Control Panel still has limitations.
That apart, one needs thorough knowledge of computers and technical expertise to successfully run a profitable web hosting business. When anyone is starting off a web hosting business, it is expected that they will try to run it all by themselves, to keep the operational expenses low. This may demand one work sometimes more than 14 hours per day and one must have a certain kind of passion to dedicate that much time to it.
Basic Information about Web Hosting Business for Beginners
Before starting a web hosting business, it will be worthwhile to find a job or serve as an apprentice with a web hosting company before venturing out. As an employee, without the risks of being the investor, anyone will be able to assess the positive and negative sides of running a web hosting business. Please bear in mind that the web hosting market is very competitive and already saturated with too many players.
There are so many new web hosting companies offering cheap packages and it is becoming very hard even for the established web hosting companies to counter. It then really becomes essential to gain an in-depth knowledge about servers and control panels which are the building blocks of a web hosting set up.
Impact of Control Panels and Servers on Web Hosting
The use of control panels allows almost anyone who is willing to learn the skill to get into the business of starting a web hosting company. Although the Control Panels provide most of the basic features, they don't help in doing everything that needs to be done. Linux or Windows skills are still important to secure, configure and troubleshoot the servers.
One has to consider the load on the server. Putting too many sites on a single machine is inadvisable as they will over-stress it. That will lead in turn to increased level of downtime and support tickets. Please know the server comes with a limited amount of bandwidth. If it comes with 400GB of bandwidth and you offer 1GB bandwidth per account, that would, in theory, limit you to 300 to 350 accounts.
Starting One's Own Web Site Hosting Business:
Before starting a web site hosting business, go through the pros and cons carefully and in doing so, few of these points can get anyone off to a good start:
- The initial investment will be the cost of the server, cost of added control panel, cost of advertisement and sales promotion activities and cost of support services. But one has to take into account the fact that when they are just starting the web hosting business the server will be empty. That means in the beginning one will have to personally bear the costs for server plus control panel.
- If anyone plans to resell someone else's services, then customer service and technical support are far more important than the price. The performance of the company resold will however be directly reflected on the judgements that govern it. Reselling others’ services is fine for some time, but they have their downtime and other problems as they operate on thin margins as well.
- If one decides to lease a dedicated server then they can seek quotes from companies such as Rackshack.net, Eservers.biz, Rackspace.com, Cyberworldservers.com and few others. Each of these companies will allow the would be owner to lease a server on their connection, allot a specified amount of bandwidth, and permit them to host their clients' websites on that server.
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