Hey everyone, I've got a question about target audiences with web hosting.

For the most part, I think that most people target a very general clientel, using their hosting plans to seperate the clients by audience (naturally most people purchase who purchase a low storage, low bandwith plan most likely doesn't have the same intention as someone purchasing 2 gigs of storage and 40 GB bandwith plan (not always true, but not unreasonable for an example.)

A question I have is if there would be any benefit to targeting a specific audience from the start, say for example, specific groups. Rather than catering to Ma and Pa's personal store, or a high school student's personal web site, you'd market your selling and hosting to cater to the needs of one type of client.

An example I've seen of this a web host that provides hosting mainly for musical groups (bands, musicians, etc.) They don't target the average user (so no personal plans or anything like that), but instead offer high storage plans and high bandwith plans (for lower prices than what a more 'regular host' might offer, and they stress a lot of features that someone in that field or career would most likely be able to associate with.

I just wanted some opinions or ideas if limiting your audience could have more benefits than drawbacks in this case. I could see on one hand that it makes your marketing a lot easier (especially if you know and can relate to your audience), and that focusing just on the things that this audience needs could also prove to make these easier on the user end and admin end, but it also limits the potential of the business, as you're losing out on many other types of clientel.

Any thoughts or opinions on this?

If you can find a market to target, then by all means go for it. However, you have to figure out, for example, how many musicians are in your area/online that need a web host? Is it worth it just targetting them?

What I'm basically getting at is, don't try and limit yourself.

Hey thanks for the feedback so far :)

I don't want to limit myself by just focusing on one market that I can appeal to, but I find it to be a lot easier to provide help and support to people that I can relate to (being a musician myself, for example.) In my local area alone, I already have like over 10+ prospective leads already (and I live in a town of 8,000 people), so it's not a completely hopeless stretch.

Something I was considering was to create like "sub-companies (for lack of knowing what they would actually be called)", but like web hosting catering to different groups. On one hand, I'd like to help out my fellow musicians by providing the kind of requirements they need and being able to deliver an affordable price, but on the other hand, I'd also like to be able to offer hosting to a more broad range of the market.

I know some hosting companies have several "names" (I think iPower owns several different variations of hosting companies, but all are still owned by one company.) Does anyone here do this? Would this be a case of incorporating (in my case, most likely an S-Corp), and creating subsidiaries? Or are there other means to achieve this?

I hope to hear more ideas and opinions on this soon :) Thanks again so far for those at least checking this out, and for those providing feedback!

I've never personally seen this in web hosting, but I do this same thing in my web design business. It's one of the best decisions I've made.

I worked as an engineer for many years in a firm that represented and sold products and services from several manufacturers. This gave me a good idea of the requirements and needs of these types of companies. With that knowledge, I now almost exclusively market to this segment and have had greater success in web design and development than I had previous to making this move.

I think the biggest thing to watch for is, as GideonX said, make sure there's a market there. 10+ leads may sound good now, but that's probably not going to pay the bills. The problem with doing business online is that most, if not all, of your clientele are going to not be local to you. That's also the benefit - there's a larger market outside your local area.

It can go both ways I suppose. I wish you the best in whichever direction you choose. :)

As for you subsidiary company question: It depends on how you want to run them. If you want each to run independent of the others, then most likely you'd need to incorporate each of them individually and set a parent company as the founder/whatever.

If you just want to operate under a different name, you can get what are called Certificates of Assumed Business Name. These are commonly referred to as "Doing Business As" (abbreviated d/b/a). You often see companies list their name as ABC Company, Inc. d/b/a XYZ Company, Inc.

This is useful for doing business in other states (so you can use a registered name in that state, but not have to incorporate in that state).

In either case, you'll want to check with your state Small Business Association or Department of Commerce.

Hope that helps. :)

Niche marketing can be very successful. Just target a market niche that has enough "depth" in the client base to meet your financial objectives and go for it.

You don't have to limit yourself and not accept other accounts - just keep in mind that before you invest a lot of money in DBA filing fees and/or multiple incorporations - make sure the business model is working like you want.

Perhaps you could operate under one DBA name and just have a splash page or special industry resource area for each of the niche markets. This way, you get branding for your DBA name from all areas yet you can customize it for various niche groups.

Best of luck with your new business launch! :)

Alright, here's a question then:

Say I create a parent company and incorporate it as an S-Corp (for my needs, an S-Corp is my best option in terms of liability and tax reasons), and we'll call this corporation "Symbul, Inc".

Now, just for example, if I wanted to target a market niche for web hosting, that I created a DBA for the business called "ASDF Hosting". Now, "ASDF Hosting" is doing well down the road, but I also want to expand my areas of expertise to a more broad market, but I don't want to change my current business name, nor do I want to add anything more to an already prospering business (sometimes minor additionals can be several dramatic.) Could I just create another "DBA" under my corporate company? So "Symbul, Inc." would effectively be made up of two seperate DBA's, "ASDF Hosting" and "More-Broad-Market-Than-ASDF Hosting"?

Is this even possible? Would it be easier to create subsidiaries owned by Symbul, Inc., in a case like this? I know there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages to this (and probably the safest bet would be just to create another business with the state and incorporate it altogether), but I'd rather have one parent company "own" the rest of my businesses.

I'm also in the works of creating an e-commerce business for computer hardware/software, and this is another reason why I'm so curious about DBA's and what would be the most reasonable course to take. I eventually want my incorporated business name to have a name and message for itself (so when people see a company is owned by Symbul, Inc., they'll be able to associate hopefully good things with it.)

Alright, so to recap (in case anyone cares to add in comments, opinions, or ideas):

1. Regardless of my business and marketing niche, I *WILL* be incorporating my parent company.

2. Is it possible to create multiple DBA's under one corporation (so to have multiple businesses owned by one parent corporation, example, Symbul, Inc. owns XYZ Host, ASDF Host, and
QWERTY Computer Supply)?

3. If question #2 is possible, do the DBA's under the parent corporation also recieve the same protections of the parent corporation (I would assume so, since the businesses are still actually part of the corporation, just a different assumed name, but I wanted to make sure.)

4. Are there any benefits or insights to incorporating multiple businesses like that, in case the DBA under one corp doesn't fit with what I need? I know incorporating can be a pain the rear sometimes (more work), and incorporating multiple times could prove to grey my hair even more than it already is, so if anyone has anything to add on this, by all means, my ears are open to wisdom.

Well that's all I've got for the moment. I do apologize for skipping around a bit with my topic, but I feel that my questions are at least loosely tied together :)

And I'd like to thank you all again for the posts. There's a lot of work and planning that goes into business, and I for one would like to be as prepared as possible before even spending a dime getting into this business (too many people start running before even taking their baby steps), and your input is very much appreciated. Thanks again :)

Yes, you can create (as far as I know) as many DBAs as you require. A DBA is just a way of having a recognized name associated with your company without the need to incorporate that name. So, to answer question 3, everything passes through the DBA to the parent company. The DBA only exists as a name and is not responsible for the normal tax/accounting things that an incorporated organization is (it's passed up the line to the "parent" company).

As far as insights or benefits, I couldn't really tell you. I do all of mine as DBAs and handle all the accounting/tax issues through one company. While you're small, this may be easier for you. When you start incorporating multiple companies (especially under one parent), you run into more problems. Each company will have associated accounting and tax issues to deal with, and will be run essentially separate from the "sister" companies. Then you have to add more tax and accounting issues on top of that because the "parent" company still owns the other companies, and thus would receive a portion of their revenues.

I think it depends on where you advertise. if you're only advertising on music websites, then by all means make a musician targeted plan.

What I would suggest is that you make different landing pages for different target audiences. This lets you target many groups, but at the same time appeal to each individually.