I don't quite understand this whole reseller process. They claim that you can make "as much as 100 or 200% profit per plan", now I'm thinking that they could as well sell these themselves and keep all that "profit." So is it really difficult to sell plans, and they just would like to get some sucker to pay $45 to join their reseller plan, or what?

There are many reasons why people choose to be resellers. One of the main reasons would be you don't have to handle the administration of your server(s).

Why do webhosts provide reseller plans? Even if they only make $2 out of each resold plan, instead of $5 ...the reseller usually needs to handle the support for their clients :)

Most of the reseller plans I've seen give you a pittance for every account you bring them. You have to have a substantial number in order to make any appreciable sums. The reason companies do it is simple, it makes you a commissioned sales person for them and gets them more business that they may not have had otherwise.

Paying a fee to a company to bring them business is absurd.

Better than a reseller account (in my opinion) once you have some customers, is a virtual server. This is when you rent space on a server that you can resell to your clients, adding their accounts within your space and handling a limited number of functions related to server management. It has the added benefit of helping to teach one some of the things necessary for server management in preparation for getting a dedicated server.

Reselling hosting service is an effective, or even the best marketing plan to a host company.

Internet is just so huge with 7 million web pages added into it each single day and increasing competition among hosting players that it becomes harder and harder for a host to be found by visitors even though a great hosting plan is being offered.

A good reselling program can get thousands of self-motivated resellers to promote the company's hosting service. It means more and more sales as well as profits.

So in concluding, reselling or marketing is the key to whether a host can succeed on the hosting business or not. Of caurse, there may be differences among reselling programs, and so are the results.

:blush:

As a reseller you are able to administer your clients as if they were your own (in most cases). You can set them up, bill them and they think that you are the actual hosting company.

Alot of resellers give your own IP address's and DNS if wanted, which can seem to make you completely independent.

If you have a virtual account and just add them under yourself you will be required to do most of the admin work for the customer, instead of the costomer doing it for themselves.

Originally posted by alaniscool
They claim that you can make "as much as 100 or 200% profit per plan", now I'm thinking that they could as well sell these themselves and keep all that "profit." Kiwi basically already said this, but a few followups answered a question you didn't ask -- explaining why someone would be a reseller -- instead of the one you did -- why a host offers a reseller plan instead of selling the accounts themselves. So, to reinforce the answer: the host with a reseller program is transferring the most costly parts of their business to their resellers: marketing, support, and billing. They can sell the plans to the reseller for less because the reseller takes on those expenses. In some cases, also, the reseller has an affinity relationship with market sectors that the upstream host might not be able to effectively sell to, and so may be able to sell accounts that wouldn't be sold otherwise.