Web hosting forms the core of all kinds of e-business opportunities today. The reason is simple; every website needs a web server to function, and hosting space to secure the files required for its functioning. Web hosting is a big business opportunity in itself, though not too many succeed in deciphering this simple secret!
By making use of reseller hosting plans, you can literally start a brand new web hosting business without investing a fortune and without having any prior expertise. Needless to mention, no matter how simple it sounds, it is hard work to kick off any business in the world and not everyone's attempts pay off; having said that, if you go by the simple steps described here, you have all the chances in the world to succeed in this field.
Choose the Right Reseller Hosting Plan
To start a web hosting business, one of the easiest options is to purchase reseller hosting packages offered by the top web hosting providers. One of the biggest advantages of buying a reseller hosting package is the sheer fact that you don't need to spend on infrastructure, technical/customer support, billing, as well as maintenance costs.
We offer 3 different reseller webhosting packages, starting at just $5.00 per month. Visit our Reseller Hosting page for more information.
Once your reseller plan order is received, we begin work on setting up your new reseller plan. We start by creating a web hosting account for you. This account will be your main account. This account is what most resellers use for their company website, where they offer their web hosting plans for sale (but you don't have to, you can create a new hosting account for that if you wish).
Your main account will have it's own Control Panel (CPanel), just like all of the other web hosting accounts you'll create for your customers, however, the difference between your main account and all the other accounts, is that your main account will be given Reseller Privileges.
We'll then create a custom WebHost Manager (WHM) interface for you, which is what you'll use to manage your web hosting business. You will use this to create hosting accounts, set storage space and bandwidth limits, suspend/unsuspend accounts, and much more. Once all this is done (usually within a few minutes), we'll send you a welcome email that will contain all the information you'll need to get started; username, password, etc. The following steps detail exactly what you should do once you receive your welcome email.
Register Private Label Name Servers
If you've chosen to have private nameservers for your reseller plan, you should immediately register these new nameservers with their corresponding IP addresses with your domain name registrar. The IP addresses will have been assigned to your new nameservers in your welcome e-mail, and set up on our server. You still have to register them with your registrar becasue we won't have the access to do that. Once the nameserver IPs are registered, it will take 24-72 hours for them to propagate (just like domain names), after which time you'll be able to update domain name registrations with your new nameservers.
NOTE: At this time you can also update your main account's DNS settings so that it points to your private nameservers. Your domain name will work the same whether you use our nameservers, or your new custom nameservers.
Set Up Your Main Account
Your main account will have already been added to WebHost Manager. You'll want to log in to your main account's control panel to set up your email addresses, etc. For more information on setting up your main account, follow the information in your welcome e=mail. Your main account is actually no different than any other account you'll setup in your WebHost Manager except for two things:
1. We've setup private nameservers for your main account's domain name.
2. The username and password for your main account are the same as for your WebHost Manager.
Login to your WebHost Manager (WHM)
You can actually log in to your WebHost Manager prior to setting up your domain name and nameservers, but it's good to get your domains set up properly right away because of the 24-72 hours it takes for those changes to take effect.
To access your WebHost Manager interface, enter:
http://yourcompany.com:2086
or prior to domain (DNS) propagation, enter:
http://x.x.x.x:2086
(where x.x.x.x would be for example, 12.123.12.123; see your welcome email for the IP address you should use).
Enter your username and password (which are given to you in your welcome email, and are the same username and password as for logging into your main account's CPanel).
Once logged in, take a look around and start getting used to all the different functions available to you.
Setup your Packages
Packages are the pre-configured hosting plans that you will sell to your customers. The key here is to be able to make your web hosting package different from most of the other offerings in the market. You need to step into the customer's shoes and think realistically what would suit you. The best way is to include more and more services as freebies in your hosting package early on, which are otherwise offered at extra cost by even the top web hosting service providers. For example, you can offer site creation and SEO in the same package as web hosting, at no extra cost.
To create your packages, you'll have to decide things like:
How much storage space and bandwidth to allow each account.
How many email accounts to allow each account.
How many FTP accounts, Parked domains, Subdomains, Addon domains, and Databases to allow each account.
How much you're going to sell your web hosting accounts for.
Once you've decided all these factors, you should log in to your WebHost Manager and set up Packages. Packages make it easier and faster to create new web hosting accounts.
After completing the above steps, you will have set up your custom nameservers, setup your main account, and created your web hosting packages that you are going to sell in your new web hosting business.
Branding and Promoting Your Business
It's always a good idea to start a web hosting company keeping website design, and search engine optimization a part of your services. It allows you to offer just the perfect package that most clients need - website design, web hosting, and SEO; all that one needs to create an online identity.
Basically, you're more likely going to find clients that need websites for their businesses, and are ready to pay for website design, hosting, promotion, and maintenance; this model will always give you recurring business, and in turn fetch greater profits in the longer run.
Final Steps
Last, but definitely not the least, make sure that you do your homework of setting up customer support, and technical support team, a professional looking web-site, and all the payment options integrated into it.
The key to starting and running a successful web hosting company is not just to grab lot of customers, but to retain the majority of them in the longer run. Be sure to talk to one of the industry experts to analyze the major challenges, and current level of competition in that market before really stepping into it.
Remember, first impression is always the last impression - if you mess it up early on, you'll really have a hard time gaining credibility in the market.
Giving out freebies, and running promotional offers during the launch phase helps a lot - so do it without really worrying about your profit margin early on.
Of course, these are just the basics of starting a web hosting business through reseller plans. Using reseller hosting will make starting your business easier, however it is still an uphill task to say the least. Running a successful web hosting business demands hard work, patience, dedication and careful market study. If you get the basics right, with strong determination and some nice tactics, you can definitely go a long way in the web hosting arena.
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Reseller Freebies:
Billing Software:
Whmbill provides complete support for managing clients and hosting accounts. This completly automates the process of invoicing and hosting account creation, Suspendtion and Termination. Whmbill is a perfect client and invoice management automagted tool.
www.whmbill.com
SSL Reseller Account:
With a gogetssl reseller account, you can resell domain validation, business validation and extended validation certificates as well as SGC certificates, secure email certificates, SAN SSL certificates, code signing certificates and wildcard SSL certificates using an API, WHMCS module, Hostbill module and other modules.
www.gogetssl.com
Domain Reseller Account
Register, renew and transfer your domain names for just $9.45 each or sell domain names with your own FREE customizable e-commerce domain name registration web page through eNom reseller account.
www.enom.com
Website Templates
Open Designs is a gallery of free web templates submitted by a community of talented designers for you to download and use in your own projects.
www.opendesigns.org
Merchant Account
Easily accept credit cards on your website or mobile device with Intuit Quickbooks Gopayments. Integrates with WHMCS and other billing software.
payments.intuit.com
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