With the whole mess of researching hosts and and dealing with people who let you down, I am questioning is all of this really worth it? I know reselling could bring a web designer a little extra income for themselves for hosting his/her clients sites but what about when you concentrate your efforts into making this a full fledged business.

Is there anyone out there who really does like what theyre doing and is actually making a real good profit out of this in the long run? Or at the end is it really the Host Provider making most of the money and all you end up with is empty pockets and a headache? If there are actual people who are doing well I'd like to hear any suggestions or opinions.

Well, nothing is easy.

You can get a reseller account for around 20 bucks "Or you can pay as much as you want" Most people I have resold to want a little help since the big problems aren't mine because I'm just a reseller I just get involved with the part you can make money with.

Like installing scripts if you have installed a script a hundred times and one of your customers ask you to suggest a certain script which one would you suggest?

That's fast easy money:D You could make more in an hour then the host would make in 3 or 4 months.

Hi,

Yes, this is EASY to be a Reseller. However, I am afraid that this is not easy to get a profit.

Working hard and good luck!

Best regards

Getting a profit is easy wiht 1 customer if you know what you are doing, and no I am not talking about scamming, I am talking about Customer Service that would put rackspace to shame. :)

Its low cost and easy to start off as a reseller, however dont expect to quit your job and pay yourself $40/hour by next week. Lets say your average sale is $10/month. You have 20 customers. thats only $200/month or $50/week. Most people make more then that a day. Plus, you have to pay your provider and you might as well add in the costs of your internet connection (~$35/month), etc...

Obviously you need to have a sizable customer base or have value added services in order to turn a nice business.

T7702

It takes a while, as long as you have time to dedicate to your customers, the knowledge to help them, a solid business plan (Yes hosting IS a business ;) )and a reliable host for your own reseller plan you could work at it and make your way into the industry.

Its not the easiest thing to get into I think and it does take a lot of hard work

As Angelic81 would have known by now, the hardest part in starting up a reseller business is finding a reliable host.

In the three weeks since I first registered my domains under a domain reselling business which I previously set up, most of my time was spent, albeit belatedly, reading through WHT trying to find a good host or trying to decide whether I should stick it out with the first host I signed up with or moving over to another or getting another one to use as backup for the first one.

In the meantime, I had wasted those days instead of concentrating on my website's design and development. Until now my web reselling site is still not up because of time spent (usefully, of course) in researching through WHT.

someone once said this very clever line: "once your site is loop proof, dont spend time on anything else then marketing your product..." this has workd for me time and time again

same thing for a reseller - bafore anything will be stable you need to get those 20 firts sign ups which are the hardest...

Originally posted by iWebSpeed
someone once said this very clever line: "once your site is loop proof, dont spend time on anything else then marketing your product..." this has workd for me time and time again

After a few days of signing up and preparing the DNS, subdomains, & email accounts for my reseller business, the host went down and so did my account. I scrambled to set up another account in another supposedly reliable host and went through everything again but the same thing happened!

How can we concentrate on our site development and not be distracted by simple things as finding a good host?

same thing for a reseller - bafore anything will be stable you need to get those 20 firts sign ups which are the hardest...

Yes, but where will they sign up? I've got 3 friends itching to sign up and my sales team (2 guys) raring to go do their thing but I can't give them the go signal because my site is still not finished after 3, no let me correct that, 4 weeks of distraction!

sounds very strange this happend twice to you and within such a short timeframe while such a thing never happend yet to me...people make the entire "hosting" concept sound so scammy and unreliable...

how did you manage to find 2 providers who dropped you like a potato? who were they anyway?

I hear you on that its a complete pain to find the right host! I signed up qith equivity and like 1 and a half days later the host is down for many hours, most of my emails and tickets got lost, they are nice people but its a bit hard to get live help. The only way were ever gonna find a really reliable host is through experience, sure people say nice things about hosts here I did not hear 1 bad comment about equivity and I am hoping it was just a coincidence that after almost 2 days of signup they are down for hourss..

RESEARCH

Thats the most important thing when selecting a host for your reseller plan.
Dont go with the first host that offers you the world for $5/month

Think about it for a second. All that money you pay has got to go somewhere. There's pretty much only three places it can go:

-Making the host financially stable
-Getting better support
-Getting a more stable server

So if you're willing to pay more, you probably won't have to switch hosts as much.

Edit: Woot! Post # 200.

Strange, indeed! But to be fair to these hosts, they did give valid reasons for the downtime. Untenable, it was, but still valid.

I signed up with one but right in the middle of my site development they went down. Virus, they said. I proceeded to set up my site when they went down again about a week later. FBI was the reason this time. This time it was for a very extended time hence I signed up with another one.

Things were going well with the other when they suddenly went down. Just a few hours but intermittently for several hours again. I was clueless as to what happened but I saw in another thread here that they put up an announcement on their support forum before they pulled the plug. How was I to know that I should regularly check out their forum even if I had no problems with my account?

Anyway, I'm keeping both accounts as backup to each other. Or maybe I'd use the more reliable one for my high-end hosting accounts and the other for my budget hosting accounts.

I had been very enthusiastic in setting up this business. I was armed to the teeth with my business plan. I also had a very powerful marketing plan. With these, I signed up for hosting and started my site development.

The rest is history.

Originally posted by neorder
Well, nothing is easy.

That pretty much sums it up...

:stickout:

As long as your provider is hostforweb.com then you will be happy like me. I've been with them since December 2002. :-)

just one word here.....

dinix

boeki,

Why would you spend time and money on a marketing plan for a reseller account. Buck up and pay for a VPS or DS something you have control over.

That's the advantage of having a business and a marketing plan. you don't just jump in the water and get surprised with what happens!

The plan we made called for a phased implementation of the company's goals. We get a reseller plan, get a merchant account, do our ads & promos to our local market and start selling.

Three months later we'll assess our status and gauge against our set benchmarks. Then we act accordingly. It could be getting a VPS or DS or maybe increase/decrease our marketing efforts. Who knows? We have the plan as a guide and we'll use it as a measuring rod against our successes or failures. This we'll do every six months for two years.

Unfortunately our plan didn't foresee what happened with our reseller signups! ;)