Hello,

I have been looking in to starting a web hosting service go along with my web design business (which gets slow, like a month without work at times) and I have been researching and number crunching and all and I have some questions.

I plan on reselling, I have a good host now. I am currently considering a price scale of $10/Basic, $20/Standard, $30 Advanced (Advanced will be Dedicated IP and a few hundred megs of space and generous transfer). I crunched some numbers, sale price vs. cost and I got some estimated figures and am sorta wondering some things.. I did a projected 100 account profit projection and it came out to $9,300 profit in one year (not including bank fee's or my salary, etc.. just sale price vs. resold account cost in those figures)...

Now sure I will probably design some web sites for those 100 clients and that will bring in good money. But is 100 clients difficult to get?

I guess part of me worries I will set up a hosting service and dedicate my great customer service skills and web background and only have 10 customers and only make a few hundred dollars profit every 6months lol.

Also I am wondering how many support hours 50 to 100 customers would demand? I will offer email/ICQ support 7days a week, answer emails everyday, not a 24/7 support center though. How many support requests per day do you some of you average with 50? 100? 200? 300 customers? I guess if $9,300 profit after resold account cost is all I have, it would not be possible to hire someone full time to answer emails. I do plan on going to a dedicated server after so many accounts, so that should increase profits some. At what number of accounts is it best to go dedicated?

I am targeting small businesses, local businesses, organizations and personal web sites as my main client base I am thinking. That does not restrict it though.

I would like to hear some of your advice/info/figures you have, if you are willing to share actual figures privatley and between us that would be great. I just want to hear what the actual business is like. Possibly even a business mentor type would be great. I am not out to be a millionaire or anything instantly. I just want to be my own boss, work from home, make a something fair/liveable for my time. Maybe I will end up stickng to web/graphics services, but that business has its ups and downs and advantages and disadvantages too. So I am thinking everything through.

Thanks in advance! :)