I'm a prospective reseller. I've been doing some research for about a month now and just found these forums. I was just wondering if some expierenced resellers would tell me what kind of things i should know before becoming a reseller.

How long have you been in business?

What type of support do you offer? Chat, Email, Forums?

Do you have a money back guarantee?

Where are you located?

Do you have a phone # where I can reach a live person?

Basic questions like that and try to develop somewhat of a freindly relationship with your host over a week or so to see what types of response time you will get.. Try emailing support at 3:00AM with a question and see how long it takes them to respond etc. The main problem I see that people have is a lack of support with thier hosting companies which pretty much leaves them stranded in the event that a server goes down and they have no one to find out whats going on or what the issue is going to be resolved..

Last but not least it is always a good idea to do a search here at WHT on any host you are interested in to see if there is any feedback available on them.. good or bad..

dirty: Just hang out on these forums for awhile and you should see the day to day problems that we all encounter. ;) Especially in Dedicated/Reseller/Running a Web Hosting Biz categories.

Good luck!

KNOW HOW THE BUSINESS & TECHNICAL ENDS WORK.
I cant stress that enough, Too many resellers jump into the water without learning to swim and quickly ruin their reputation if they even get customers, due to their lack of understanding of both the business and the technical aspects of the webhosting industry. The most important thing is that you know you will be able to devote enough time to this subject, if you do not do so then you are not able to run qa reputable business over the internet. You need to be able to answer your customers off hand regarding control panel and FTP issues. The problem with many resellers is that they think whenever they have a problem they can just email their host. But unless your provider is online 24x7 then you will have no help, you can slow down the whole contact procces because first you need to read the email and then forward it to your provider, whereafter he forwards it back to you and so forth. What i reccomend is reading a book or as brandonk allready suggested, take a look around WHT a few times a week if you can and especialy take a look in the running a webhosting biz forum, because that is where the truth is revealed about this industry. Too many people jump into a reseller plan too quickly because their provider has ridiculous prices, but chances are if your provider has ridiculous prices then he has ridiculous service too and you will not be able to sell a decent serivce to your customers if your provider does not do so to you. You need to look into it as an investment and for gods sake, dont get into the industry for MONEY. Get into it cause it interests you.

Heed the advice given as it is good advice. I would also add that you need to decide how much money you are going to invest and what is a good reseller plan to invest in.

Before I go I'm wondering if your question has been answered or was it taken out of context?

I don't know if you have experience with *nix or Windoes (j/k) servers or if you are asking what you need to know about platforms/operating systems before undertaking this venture . . .

If you have experience with one platform then start there. Get your feet wet and learn the ropes before you start trying to offer a foreign platform.

I don't have any experience with any kind of linux server which i am going to use. Someone I talked to though said that i should load linux to one of my old computers and play around with it there.

I would also like to know if their are any advantages for taking a linux server over a Windows server.

And I also have questions about connections of the servers, like what are good and what are not so good.

Any help would be appreciated.

I would also like to hear what you have to say about FDCservers.net, their prices seem very competative.

Wow. What excellent advice. I'm new here and also considering a start-up reseller business. The difference for me is I want to run a reputable and honest business. First, there's much for me to learn. That preparation will take 3-6 months. I may subscribe to a reseller account and not take on any customers until I've mastered the control panels and other configs so I can answer customer questions with a minimum degree of competence.

Would be nice to find a document/website that lists a lot of these issues/know-hows... How to Become A Reputable Reseller?

I do know this: UNIX is far superior than any Microsoft OS.

Thanks for the info you Veterans of Hosting Wars.

Am considering this reseller plan. Any comments?

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118489