How to Start a Web Hosting Business at Home

Many people want to start a personal web hosting business sitting in the confinements of their home; while some of them feel that it's not a very realistic idea, others even manage to generate thousands of dollars merely by reselling the hosting packages of top hosting firms such as HostGator, FatCow, JustHost, and the likes of them. There are two things to focus on; the first one being promoting and marketing your new start-up business and attracting more customers, and the second one being choosing the right kinds of reseller hosting plans that can be easily used by anyone to seamlessly set-up a new hosting business without any technical know-how.

Knowledge about running servers is a vast topic in itself and is not covered here.

If you are able to get several back-to-back clients then running a web hosting business can be quite lucrative. That being said, you would pretty soon realize that the market is extremely competitive and big dogs already have the bigger pies of the market, making it more and more difficult for smaller firms to establish themselves or even survive for too long. Attracting natural traffic from search engines would be another tough nut to crack, as buying visitors through something like Google AdWords may not give you the expected return on the investments that you make.

Sell and Buy Websites at e-Auctions
There is no need to lose hope as still there are enough ways through which, you can get the job done. One of the best ways is to sell and buy websites on different auction websites. Free hosting for one month, 6 months or 1 year can be offered with every single website that you sell online.

This way, your listings will easily stand out, attract higher bids and generate more profits too. These kinds of marketing strategies will also attract the customers who are thinking of renewing their hosting plan after the free hosting period of your package is over.

Leverage the benefits of WordPress
Wordpress is a totally free and easy-to-use platform for making simple, free blog hosting websites.

You can add your personal links to these free blogs created by people. This can help you in generating revenue and promoting your service along with selling upgraded packages to customers who have free accounts. You can also try to build and create new relationships with web designers, and different developers who develop small CMS scripts.

Become a Reseller
Even if you do not know anything about hosting, you need not worry, because, with help of reseller hosting programs, you can still start your hosting business. In other words, you can purchase hosting packages at wholesale prices and market them at higher prices, just as in the case of any other business. This way, you can focus on the marketing front, and leave the technical aspects to people who know how to deal with the technicalities.

You Don't Need to be a Great Designer
Even if you are not good at web design skills for creating your own websites to sell your hosting plans, you can still manage to do so by making use of private label programs as most of them are free to use. They offer you with different templates and a dedicated control panel that can help you in building your website in a matter of just a few minutes.

Keep a Healthy Mix of Services in Your Portfolio
This is where most of the newbies go wrong; reseller hosting doesn't mean that you should only resell the shared hosting packages.

If you sell just one hosting package, customers will always find something to be fishy, and they'll realize very soon that you're merely a reseller! While there's nothing wrong in that, folks often prefer to buy the hosting packages directly from the main company than through a reseller or affiliate, because they know that you'd be getting a good margin as the middle-man.

On the other hand, if you pay decent attention to branding, and offer a healthy mix of hosting services ranging from budget hosting packages, business hosting packages, multiple-domain hosting down to VPS, then you won't run into such problems, and most of your customers will never come to know that you're merely a hosting reseller.

So, go ahead and give it a go; who knows you may be able to actually generate a lot more money than your 9-6 job, working as a hosting reseller! You may also want to read my article that discusses how much money one can make working as a reseller host, and a few handy tips to get started in a jiffy.