Create Your Own Web Hosting Company And Get Customers

Creating your own Web Hosting Company is no simple task as Web Hosting is one of the most competitive markets in the online industry today. This “How To” article is not only going to go over how to create your own web hosting company, but it will also go over what it takes to create your own Web Hosting Company and how to generate and keep customers.

Firstly you need to take many different factors into consideration when it comes creating your Web Hosting Company. Do you expect to compete against the industry as a top web host? Will your prices be competitive? Are you financially capable to create your own Web Hosting company? Do you have the programming and server knowledge to get this up and running as well as have the time to put into this company?

These are all important questions. Of course we’ll go into this further, but if you are having any hesitation, you may want to consider taking advantage of an established Web Hosts Reseller Program. These Reseller Programs will either give you a cut of whatever hosting services you provide, or provide you a great discount which you can then charge whatever you want to your clients. Typically these Web Hosts will also allow you to make your own brand out of their services.

Getting starting with creating your own Web Hosting company

When getting started with your own Web Hosting company it’s pertinent that you have experience with server hardware, software, and programming unless you plan to hire someone to do this for you. Depending on how large your company is and how large it gets or how large you plan on having it, you may need to do some hiring regardless as you will have to many customers to manage by yourself and you will have an obligation to hire help as you need to provide your customers good quality service and support and they wont be getting it if you’re not responding to customers in a timely manner.

Something valuable and important when creating your own Web Host is the registration of your domain name. Your domain name is going to be a big part of your brand and it will need to be something people can respect and get familiar with since they will using it for their everyday webmaster tasks.

Now before you can really create or host anything for your customers, you will need servers. With those servers, you’re also going to need the proper software on them along with an Internet Service Provider and a data center or location to store these servers.

Now when referring to an “Internet Service Provider” (ISP) as you’re creating your own web host, you do not want to use just any typical ISP that you would normally use at home. It will be a necessity to provide your servers quality speed and bandwidth so you can handle the traffic going to your servers and your customers sites are running fast. It’d recommend using CogentCo as they are an affordable high quality provider.

There are also companies out there that will lease you servers so you wont need to worry about the hassles of finding an Internet Service Provider or finding a place to store your servers.

As for creating your website and installing/programming the applications for your server and customers to use, this is something you should already know unless you plan on hiring someone to do it for you. There are various applications out there prebuild for dealing with billing on your site as well as cpanels for your customers to use.

How to get customers once you’ve created your own Web Hosting company

I’m sure a lot of you are asking how to get customers to your Hosting Company. More important, how to KEEP your customers. These two factors are going to be your toughest task once you’ve established your Hosting company.

Regardless of how great of a job you’re doing with this Hosting company, you’re bound to have unsatisfied customers who will leave your hosting in search of another provider. Whether you’re trying to reason with a customer who believes that their poorly coded site not working is related to your servers somehow, or you’ve had one of those rare unforeseen occurrence where your servers are acting up or experiencing some type of power loss. It’s going to happen. All you can do is try your best to ensure that you are providing the best customer experience possible.

Now as I’ve had a lot of experience working internally within various Web Hosting companies. I know that there’s lots of competition in Web Hosting and basically everything comes down to marketing and how much you’re willing to pay in order to make money. Actually, for most top competitors out there it’s more about marketing gimmicks. Yes maybe a bit unethical, but with the internet full competitors, this is your only way to survive.

It’s definitely possible to make your Web Hosting site an instant hit with thousands of customers overnight, but at a cost. You need to think long term when creating your own Web Hosting company. So lets take a look at some expensive and inexpensive ways you can get customers running to your site in a stampede.

1. Advertise your own Web Hosting site with Google Adsense – Obviously the most simplest thing you can do. If you have a lot of money to put into it feel free to, but even if you don’t this option is great as you can set budgets.

2. Get listed on a “top 10 web hosts” site – Yes, these lists are a sham. The sites listed are either paying to be listed, or forking out money for each sale, or both. This really generates A LOT of customers and FAST. But can be extremely costly for you. I have no doubt when searching “top web hosts” on Google that every site owner on the first page is atleast a multimillionaire by having the opportunity to be that high in the ranking for such valuable keywords.

3. Create an Affiliate Program – This also applies to the last subject as most of those “top 10 web hosts” sites are affiliates. But having an Affiliate Program is much more than that. You are basically offering other Website Owners to place your banner or text links on their website. In return, they will get a set amount of money for anyone who clicks those banners or text links and actually signs up as a customer on your website. Most big competitors out there only charge their customers about $50 per year, but they actually pay about $100 to their affiliate for that customer. So yes, they are losing money by doing this. But if you’re providing a reliable quality service, and the customer stays for many years, then you’re going to make your money back and more. Not to mention that if this customer were to have a good experience they’re likely to recommend you to anyone they come across looking for a Web Host.

4. Create a Referral Program – This isn’t something you have too much work into and usually Hosting companies will just offer $10 for each referral. Basically referrals are just to provide recognition and a incentive to another Hosting customers who recommended someone to go to the site and signup. The new customer who was referred would usually put in the username of the customer who referred him or her. You wouldn’t even need to give them the money. You could just credit it to their next bill.

5. Offer Unlimited Diskspace and Bandwidth – Looks fancy doesn’t it? Well guess what, there’s no such thing. You’ll get shutdown if you’re using an excessive amount of diskspace or overloading or slowing down their servers. Especially if you’re only paying a few bucks per month. This is a marketing gimmick but it is effective especially when you have people shopping for a Web Host who don’t know what they’re looking for. Some of this is also explained in my Finding Web Hosts Without Downtime post.

6. Networking – Very vague, but then again there is so much you can do for free. Try “networking” and contributing with others on Forums relevant to Web Hosting. However, make sure you’re not spamming. With some respect and contribution you’ll be sure to get others taking consideration in trying out your hosting. You could also try out Facebook or Twitter as these sites make sharing easy. Not really relevant to hosting, but you can also check out 9 ways to increase sales for free.

So there you have it. This guide on how to create your own web hosting company and get customers should give you a general idea of how to get things started and excel your hosting company. Like I’ve mentioned before, it all comes down to how much of a budget you have and the marketing you do.