Wish to have an online presence but not sure how to do it? Before you begin your hosting business venture, you need to have a plan of action. With this article, we will go through some fundamental steps on getting your first foot out of the door and give some tips along the way!
What Is Reseller Hosting?
In reseller hosting, you purchase the reseller hosting package on a wholesale basis. Parts of your server and domain resources are then allocated or re-sold to clients on your own. You basically act as the middleman by connecting your new audience with the infrastructure of your web hosting provider. Moreover, you can set the features and prices and resell them to a particular niche of clients who need your services.
As per reports from the Market Research Future, the web hosting industry has seen a growth of 16% every year. By 2020, it’s estimated that it will attain a net worth of around $154 billion. This offers resellers an excellent opportunity to carve a profitable and successful hosting venture.
Tip 1: Partnering with a Web Host that fulfills your needs
The best possible practice is to use a web hosting provider that fulfills your business criteria and niche. Does it offer plans that are Whitelabel? What are the Terms of Service? Can I offer my own plans? These are the questions you should ask yourself when choosing the right reseller hosting provider for your newly created hosting business.
Irrespective of your hosting goals, here are some of the most important aspects you should look for
- Automated backups.
- Full WHMCS / Billing program support
- Sturdy security platforms
- Dedicated IP address
- 100% White Label
- High-performance solid-state drives (SSD)
- Customized name servers
- Free cPanel or website migrations
- Softaculous auto- installer
- Variable email configurations
Here at Asura Hosting, all our Reseller Hosting plans include these features by default. Since we have thousands of resellers and almost a decade of Reseller Hosting experience, we crafted our plans to best suit most hosting niches and know exactly which features are most important.
Tip 2: Understand your business and organize the billing aspect
Keep in mind that you should never start your reseller venture on a spur. Research thoroughly to find out about the industry and your specific goals, the web hosting market is extremely competitive and can be taunting. Come into your new business with a mindset of carving out your own niche and offer something the bigger companies cannot – Customer Service & Quality are just a few aspects that bigger brands seem to struggle most within the Web Hosting industry.
There are also plenty of ways to utilize a Reseller Hosting account without the need to create a full-fledged hosting company. For instance, web designers/developers can use a Reseller Hosting account to offer their clients their own web hosting accounts as an extra product alongside their website development service.
Tip 3: Find a suitable niche and capitalize on specific sectors
Web hosting businesses tend to specialize in specific sectors. This includes Site builders, Scalability, Ease of Use or Speed. Select a hosting provider who has goals that go along with your service and niche.
As for your business plan and research, it should resonate with the type of features and services you wish to offer to your potential clients. This will help you to distinguish yourself from your counterparts. Want to know how to create a Business Plan? Heres an awesome guide.
Tip 4: Supporting your clients is essential
No one prefers to stick with a web hosting provider if they have to wait for hours to solve even the most fundamental problems. This concept remains the same for your clients. Customer service is capable of either breaking or making your web reseller hosting venture.
A Review from Harvard found that clients with positive experiences in the past invested 140% more than the ones with negative experiences. Unsatisfied clients tend to leave within a period of a Year, while happy customers tend to stick around for almost 6 years or more.
To keep your clients happy, remain responsive, and address their issues as soon as possible. This is because clients tend to respect companies that have staff that can provide prompt replies for their email queries especially in the web hosting industry where customer service plays a major factor.
Tip 5: Try effective branding by using Leverage Keyword Research & SEO.
For tech-savvy people like yourself, networking with fresh clients can be quite a daunting task. This is because it involves marketing your business, which can be quite lackluster if you’re not used to doing it. This is because you have to get prospective clients to trust you with your e-commerce business or online presence. Though your hosting expertise, support, and services are capable of speaking for themselves, you won’t find lots of users paying attention to it. Do not hesitate to reach out to your family members, friends, and relatives concerning your new hosting venture. Ask them to spread the word about your newly created company. They would be happy to spread the news and will work as great brand ambassadors prompting users to try your service.
Perhaps you find it hard to do one on one marketing techniques in your local network and community? If so, as a reseller, you can find benefits by understanding the art of search engine optimization (SEO). Clients usually tend to rely on the Google search engine results when researching their options or purchasing online. Hence the more frequent and higher your reseller web hosting venture appears on the list, you have a higher option of gaining more clients.
Keyword research and SEO might appear to be a difficult task at the start. However, with the help of multiple guides and tools, you can enhance your SEO results with simple technical habits and research. Be it SEO or any other features of your venture, remember to start on a small scale. Then you can gradually upscale your efforts based on your business profits.