Sell Web Hosting for Fun and Profit
Sell Web Hosting for Fun and Profit
by Dan Forootan
The market is good for new Web hosting companies. According to Forrester Research, there is now “positive — if modest — growth for Web hosting and managed IT services, at both the enterprise and SMB levels.” This is an especially good business to be in if you are a web designer or IT consultant. It fits naturally with the business model of such small consulting firms. Why refer out or miss out on selling a service that most small businesses need? Hosting is an excellent source of monthly recurring revenue.
The hosting industry is one of the few profitable sectors of the Internet. As such, large corporations such Yahoo are offering Web hosting services. You, too, can join this highly profitable business and reap the financial awards — but only if you do it right. To build a successful Web hosting company, I offer the following two time-tested and proven rules: Focus on offering high-quality services in a tiered pricing schedule.
In addition, it is essential an automated infrastructure to create self-sufficient customers. For marketing, it is crucial to maximize intelligent marketing opportunities. Automation will create a self-sufficient client-base and reduce your expenses down the road. In order to provide the best-possible service, you’ll want a minimum of the following processes automated: order forms (for new customer account set up or existing customer updates), billing system, administration system, end-user control panel, and technical support interface.
Order Forms
The front end of your order form should serve an minimum of these four key functions: 1) verify domain information for registration purposes, 2) validate entered results, 3) process the customer’s credit card or create an invoice, 4) enter the customer’s information into billing database for future use.
The backend of the order form must process the domain registration (if customer needs to register one) and generate the Web hosting account.
Administration System
The administration system is necessary to manage ordered accounts. You may wish to manually add or remove new domains, change passwords, etc.
End-User Control Panel
The end-user control panel is necessary for allowing your customers to manage their accounts. At the very least, customers should be able to set up their own e-mail accounts, view Website statistics, and manage their files.
Billing System
An automated billing system is an absolute must! The billing system should e-mail invoices, charge credit cards, and suspend overdue accounts. The system should also allow the you to issue credit or discounts as needed.
Technical Support Interface
By technical support interface, I’m not referring to a system that merely generates trouble tickets. An effective tech-support interface automatically generates an FAQ-interface that customers can search before submitting trouble tickets. These interfaces can reduce technical support requests by a factor of 10!
Also, be sure that the company you go with offers the option of taking care of technical support on your behalf but branded with your brand. You can then focus your energy on your core competencies and growing your business.
Maximize Intelligent Marketing Opportunities
You know what platform you want to use, you’ve figured out what packages to offer, and set up a tiered pricing schedule and automated systems. So how do you get the word out about your new hosting service?
Pay per Click
Pay per Click can potentially allow you to reach large numbers of customers. Although you don’t pay to list your site, you do pay when a user clicks on your listing and connects to your site. How, then, do you get your site high on the results lists? You must engage in a bidding war over how much you’re willing to pay for each person who clicks through to your site. The stakes have recently grown pretty high, so be careful about bidding too high. Just because someone clicks through to your Web hosting site, doesn’t mean they’ll convert into a new account. Also be sure to select targeted keywords not competing with everyone else for the same keywords. That is a very difficult game to win. Find your niche.
Hosting Directory Sites
There are numerous Web sites known as hosting directories — that attract Web hosting customers. These hosting directories are an excellent place to advertise, but be selective in your placement. Many offer banner placement, spotlights, search enhancements, and other forms of advertisement. As a general rule keep in mind that banner ads are better for creating brand recognition than generating new accounts, so advertise based on your budget, not on your expectation of new clientele.
Leverage Your Current Client Base
If you run an established Web design firm, information portal, or domain registration service, you can immediately begin marketing to your current clients. A simple e-mail to your customer base can quickly generate a large number of accounts. There are permission-based email marketing services, such as StreamSend, that work very well for earning more revenue from your current customers and gaining additional customers. Try a free trial of one or more of these services to find one that works well for your needs.
Offer New Products and Services
Keep in mind, once you acquire a solid customer base, you can consider developing new products and services to keep your customers happy and to generate additional revenue. But always remember: Quality is key!
About the Author
Dan Forootan founded
EZ Publishing, Inc. in 1998. EZ Publishing’s Backend Hosting solution provides you with the infrastructure needed to achieve the automation of providing hosting services, including order form, billing, and the technical support interface. We can even do the technical support on your behalf.
Ecommerce Web Hosting: All you need to know
Gone are the days when the Internet was only for the geek labs and university libraries. With the emergence of accessible connectivity and affordable technology, ecommerce and online business are not futuristic concepts. Websites like Amazon and Ebay are the prime examples of successful online business ventures.
If you are planning to start your online business or an ecommerce website, you need to be careful about where you host your website. There are two things that are very important to run an ecommerce website: a well-designed, content-rich website and a host that supports seamless hosting. Remember that your ecommerce host is the backbone of your business. Imagine what would happen if there are hundreds of customers eager to pay you and your website is down or certain sections are inaccessible. Or for that matter, some mischievous hackers steals your important customer and sales database and wrecks havoc with your business. Choosing an ecommerce or an online business web host is not as simple as choosing a web host for a normal website.
As it happens with any brick and mortar business, you need to take many things into account before choosing your ecommerce web host. How many other online business websites are they already hosting? What has been their track record till now? What do the other ecommerce entrepreneurs think of them? What all tools do they provide when you purchase their ecommerce web hosting package? Along with these, let us discuss in points what makes a host good for your ecommerce or online business website.
THE HOSTING PLATFORM FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSTIE
If you yourself are not developing/coding your website then your developer should be able to advise you what business hosting platform you require for your website. You may need Windows environment or Unix/Linux combination according to your website’s development environment and tools implementation. For example, if your developer is an experienced ASP (active server pages) programmer, he/she would prefer a Windows web hosting environment, but if he/she prefers PHP, then you’ll have to go for Linux/Unix business web hosting. Although different people have different issues with both the web hosting types, it all depends on personal preferences.
THE UPTIME OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEBSITE
This is the bane of countless webmasters. Millions in revenues are lost because when customers arrive at the websites, the ecommerce websites are down or some of the critical pages are not available. The customers arrive with the intention of making a purchase but there is no facility available…this is the worst nightmare for an ecommerce entrepreneur or a business person.
Make sure your ecommerce web host manages parallel servers so that if one server goes down, the others can take over. Your business web host should give you the guaranteed security of your critical data.
THE BANDWIDTH OF YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST
An ecommerce website requires lots of traffic in order to generate business because, as it happens with every business in this world, not every visitor is a buyer or a customer. 10 or 20 people do business if 1000s of visitors come to your website. You have to make provision for lots of traffic, and that too, targeted traffic.
THE STORAGE SPACE OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
Ecommerce websites take up more space compared to normal, non-commercial or semi-commercial websites. First of all, you need an online database to maintain comprehensive inventory details. Then, you may have tens of flash files or hundreds of image files if your buyers would like to view the images or if they want to go through some sort of an online catalog. Keep your future server space requirements in mind while negotiating for an ecommerce hosting package.
THE NUMBER OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST OFFERS
Some business web hosts offer a limited number of POP3 email accounts that you can manage through software like Outlook and Firefox and some offer an unlimited number. Some don’t provide a POP3 email account at all and you need to manage all your emails through a web-based interface. Make sure what your email requirements are going to be and go for an ecommerce web hosting package accordingly.
OTHER TOOLS WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOSTING PACKAGE
* Some other tools you may want to check out are: Autoresponders: most ecommerce hosts these days provide free autoresponders.
* Multiple FTP accounts: You may need multiple FTP accounts if you have a big team of programmers.
* FrontPage extensions: FrontPage is shipped with lots tools for an easy and fast assemblage of a basic ecommerce website but these tools need some extensions installed on the server. If you are getting your business website developed using FrontPage, you’ll need the extensions available on the server of the web host.
* Secure Socket Layer (SSL): SSL can be used to collect sensitive data from your site visitors, to ensure that your emails are not intercepted online, and to provide a sense of security for your customers.
* Shopping cart software: Some business web hosting packages are shift with a shopping cart.
About the Author
Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of
http://web-hosting-service-directory.com/ecommerce-web-hosting.html
Linux Web Hosting : The All you need to know
Linux web hosting is so named, based on the operating system on which the web server software, database, and coding conventions reside. The functionality and robust nature of Linux has definitely made it a very viable alternative to Microsoft and Unix-based operating systems. Linux is now recognized worldwide as an enduring network, file/print, and web server operating system. Endearingly called a LAMP server, the Linux web hosting model is based on the server having a LINUX operating system, an APACHE web server application, a MYSQL database, and a PHP server markup coding application. As time has proven, the Linux/LAMP server continues to be a strong option to reliably serving web pages and running web-based applications. Per netcraft.com, “…Apache continued to take market share from Microsoft servers…” during a March 2005 web server survey of 60 million web sites.
Advantages
The advantages of Linux-based web hosting surround the premises of reliability, security, functionality, and price.
In the case of reliability, there have been documented cases of Linux servers running for one year without technical difficulty or downtime! This is amazing, considering the fact that web hosting servers with Microsoft operating systems are notorious for needing scheduled reboots to refresh system resources.
Security is a bittersweet advantage. While out-of-the box installations may have known security vulnerabilities, Linux is continually evolving patches to make the operating system more bullet-proof, and overall, provide a greater degree of security than most Windows-based installations.
Functionality is another asset of Linux. Having evolved from almost a “hobbyist” operating system, to one which has vested interests from IBM, Sun, and other major companies, Linux web hosting now possesses phenomenal power and respect.
Lastly, price is a major advantage of Linux based web hosting, as distributions and flavors of Linux come in affordable ranges. Since Linux is available in these open source distributions, savings are generally passed to the customers.
Disadvantages:
Linux web hosting has the drawback of not being able to accommodate Windows-based applications and coding conventions. ASP coding, modules, and extensions specific to Microsoft generally cannot be run from Linux web servers. This can make a website coded specifically for a Windows platform obsolete, if attempts are made to host the site on a Linux platform.
While most Linux web hosting plans have evolved web management consoles, the “shell-based” views of Linux web servers may be intimidating to novice Linux web hosting customers. Furthermore, administrators of dedicated web servers must often read through obscure, extensive documentation to learn how to perform certain administrative tasks. Luckily, the increasing provision of great administrative consoles and documentation continues to evolve and make Linux server use easier and more ubiquitous.
Technical Benefits:
The type of development and code in which the site is written will determine the basic operating system, on which the servers are operating. This will directly affect the decision to choose a Linux/Apache web hosting account, versus a Windows/IIS shared server.
The Linux web hosting advantages and technical benefits surround cheaper hosting fees, more reliable servers, readily available free programs and scripts, greater access and control of files and permissions, and ever-evolving control panels for administrative utility.
On the contrary, Windows-based web hosting is generally easier to get started, well supported overall, and of course, integrates better with other Microsoft applications including FrontPage extensions, ASP generated pages, and SQL server installations.
Overall, many web hosting companies will offer a variety of plans and packages. Become familiar with the basics to make an educated judgment on your Linux web hosting accounts and how the accounts will serve the needs of the coding project at hand.
More about the Linux Web Hosting Environment
As mentioned earlier, the Linux Web hosting environment is most commonly seen as a LAMP box. This neat acronym stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, and is the basis for one’s decision in choosing a Linux web hosting provider. Here is more information on each component.
Linux – There will be several variants of Linux offered by different Linux hosting vendors. From RedHat to FreeBSD, Linux offers a strong operating system solution through more and more flavors. Per Linux.org, “…Linux is an operating system that was initially created as a hobby by a young student, Linus Torvalds, at the University of Helsinki in Finland. Linus had an interest in Minix, a small UNIX system, and decided to develop a system that exceeded the Minix standards. He began his work in 1991 when he released version 0.02 and worked steadily until 1994 when version 1.0 of the Linux Kernel was released. The kernel, at the heart of all Linux systems, is developed and released under the GNU General Public License and its source code is freely available to everyone. It is this kernel that forms the base around which a Linux operating system is developed. There are now literally hundreds of companies and organizations and an equal number of individuals that have released their own versions of operating systems based on the Linux kernel. More information on the kernel can be found at our sister site, LinuxHQ and at the official Linux Kernel Archives. The current full-featured version is 2.6 (released December 2003) and development continues…”
Apache – Per Apache’s website, “…the Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT. The goal of this project is to provide a secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards…” Furthermore, per the Netcraft Web Server Survey of February 2005, it was recorded that more than 68% of the web sites on the Internet are using Apache.
MySQL – As the recipient of the “2004 Developer.com Product of the Year”, MySQL has become the world’s most popular and efficient open source database. Per MySQL.com, “…over six million installations use MySQL to power high-volume Web sites and other critical business systems – including industry-leaders like The Associated Press, Yahoo, NASA, Sabre Holdings and Suzuki …. Its award-winning speed, scalability and reliability make it the right choice for corporate IT departments, Web developers and packaged software vendors.”
With PHP and Apache experiencing explosive growth, and while both applications have Windows and Linux-based distributions, Linux is generally the most conducive operating system to extract all utility of these applications. This furthermore validates the importance of Linux web hosting.
How to decide:
The decision to choose a Linux web host is dependant upon the track record of the company, as well as factors such as value, hardware branding, uptime, bandwidth, and the ability for growth.
More specifically, the major decision is related to operating system fundamentals i.e. Windows versus Linux. Again, this is based on the coding conventions of the site, the website database needs, and the need for reliability. The following table very generically lists the differences between Windows and Linux Web Hosting to assist one in making a general decision to pursue Linux Web hosting.
Features Unix Windows
MS FrontPage 2000, 2002 x x
Flash x x
Shockwave x x
Real Audio/Video x x
CGI Scripts x x
PERL x x
PHP x x
SSH (Secure Telnet) x x
MySQL x
Web-Based Control System x
Anonymous FTP x
Web Site Graphical Statistics x
Web-Based Email System x x
Visual Basic Scripts x
Miva/XML x x
Cold Fusion x x
ASP (Active Server Pages) x x
Windows Media x
SQL 2000 x
MS Access x
As seen here, Linux web hosting is a very sound choice for hosting needs. The ready availability of open source software and architecture has been a real asset to making a very reliable web hosting option affordable. One should heavily consider the benefits of Linux web hosting when initiating project plans on the web.
About the Author
Rodel Garcia is a freelance programmer and web developer. Owner and webmaster of
http://web-hosting-service-directory.com/linux-web-hosting.html
Shared Web Hosting Service Explained
The next concern for you after designing and developing web pages is to get your web site hosted on the Internet. But with so many web hosting companies offering various types of web hosting packages – shared web hosting, dedicated web hosting, managed web hosting, which type of hosting should you choose?
As a general rule, it is a good idea to go for shared web hosting if you are a small business owner and cost is your major concern. But before you make your hosting decision, let us first understand what is shared web hosting service and what are the advantages and disadvantages of shared web hosting.
What is shared web hosting?
Shared web hosting service is a convenient and economic way of hosting web sites if you do not require extremely high performance and high bandwidth. As its name suggests, in shared web hosting service, the web server that hosting the web pages are shared by many other websites. The number of websites on a shared hosting server can go up to thousands at times. Due to one large and high performance web server is shared by hosting many different websites on it, web hosting companies providing shared web hosting service could offer them at an economic rates.
Even with so many websites hosted on a web server, you can be rest assured that the web hosting providers will not compromise on any kind of security and performance issues on the shared hosting servers. Moreover, shared hosting web servers are operated, monitored and maintained around the clock by IT professionals to ensure minimum server downtimes.
Technically speaking, shared hosting servers are run on Unix or other multi-user operating system and each website hosted on the web server is given a separate account in the operating system. Typically, websites hosted on shared servers are given a shared IP addresses and allocated a fix amount of web resources.
Let’s examine the advantages and disadvantages of shared web hosting before you consider shared web hosting service:
Advantages of Shared Web Hosting Service
Economical: As many websites are hosted on a single web server, web hosting providers are able to offer low cost shared web hosting services. In general, you can expect to pay $5-10 per month for shared web hosting services. Today, due to stiff competition in the web hosting industry, you can even discover many web hosting companies offering huge web space and bandwidth (as high as 1000 MB disk space and 40 GB bandwith).
Convenience: Shared hosting web servers are managed and maintained by professionals who are highly skilled with specialized knowledge of the field. As a result, you can concentrate on your web business and let these professionals worry about the maintenance and uptimes of the web server.
Customization: Even though web resources are shared, web masters can manage their website using control panel or similar tools provided by the web hosting company. They are free to upload files, remove web pages, add database, check web statistic and etc. Also they are allowed to create domain name specific e-mails accounts.
Efficiency: Today, shared web hosting service comes with web space and bandwidth that are more than sufficient for small business websites. However, you can always add more resources should you overrun the web space or bandwidth usage.
Disadvantages of Shared Web Hosting Service
Slower Responses: Given that a physical web server is shared, websites in the shared web hosting have to accept slower server response time if compare to dedicate server hosting.
Reliability Issues: In most cases, web hosting providers may take care of the security and performance of the shared server. However, it may happen that some of websites hosted on the shared server run a malicious program or script or over-utilize the resources, can bring down the web server. Your website would have to suffer downtimes and inaccessibility as a result.
Sharing Issues: Moreover, you just need one “bad” website in your shared web server to get your website banned altogether by ISP or search engine due to shared IP address (Note: you can always pay extra to get a dedicated IP address to avoid this problem).
Security Issues: Shared web hosting is more risky and opens up potential security issues as other web masters having an account on the same web server could hacked to your sensitive data.
Before you decide to ink a deal on shared web hosting, be sure to consider all the pros and cons of shared web hosting services above. After all, selecting a right web hosting services may be one of the most critical business decisions for your online business.
Andrew Loh is the owner of Cheap Web Hosting, a website that provide complete and detailed review of affordable shared web hosting reviews. You can visit his website at: http://www.lowest-price-web-hosting.com/
The benefits of web hosting and choice of a web host
Well let me start this way, a lot of people don’t know why we need web hosting packages, some people feel web hosting id\s just another Internet thing, while others feel web hosting is an opportunity for some people to make out something i.e. money making.
But lets ask ourselves what is WEB HOSTING. Web hosting is the ability to move a business or information, product content, research to the Internet. Also a web host is the person who offers web-hosting services to clients, persons or business
Web hosting has many benefits, among them is
1. Advertising your business ideas and potentials on the internet; in today’s world more and more people are driven by the need to have Information, on anything from Tourism, to potential businesses, the safest Banks etc
2. Web hosting also provides jobs for people who can act as resellers for web hosting companies or act as server based Network or Affiliates to other web hosting companies who pay commissions to such clients.
So far web hosting is a million dollar business as it attracts more and more people by the day. One good thing you should do is to choose web-hosting companies that will offer you other services like free domains or web space, web designing script management and web templates. The choice of a web host is another great concern. A lot of people have fallen prey to bad web hosting companies, some web hosts are not so efficiency as they seem and kill so many business. I have seen an instance where a web host who had thousand of clients because of Spam killed their business forcing thousands of their clients to go else where, so to solve such problems one has to avoid such crisis
One great way of avoiding such problems is to listen to people and find out from people who have hosted their services on the Net, how efficient their web host is. Don’t be too attracted to web host that are so cheap and fall prey to their services. Some web hosts are very slow to upload while others enjoy great benefits because they had a listening ear. No doubt, there is no site that will enjoy 100% trouble free operation, but a key fact to find out is how often your site is down . another thing is never be in a hurry to change a web host always lay your troubles to other people who are in the business and find out how they cope with such problems.
For me patience is the key, never be too in a rush in choosing a web host and don’t play it down on cost. Of course everyone would love to be very fast and act right in changing hosts as long as the problem persists.
Finally, I would recommend two web hosts that can stand the test of time as having being efficient for a long while.
Uzoma Eze is Web consultant and Infopreneur the web host I strongly recommend are:
www.betteryourselfbooks.com
www.19jawebhosting.com