Hello!

As you probably know we (Jonas & I) are currently running www.genius-hosting.com . We've just started, and thought it would be wise to start by working through a reseller solution, since we don't have much money to invest and don't want to take any big risks...
Now to the point: I was thinking of switching over to a dedicated server in the future with an ISP who offers bandwith really really cheap. We would start offering 'high-resource-hosting', which means hosting sites that eat a lot of bandwith (but I mean REALLY a lot; I'm talking about websites that need in between 10-15GB / month, and up to 50-60-70GB/month, -even more), but don't have the money/ability nor the knowledge to run their own dedicated server.
I have the following plan in mind, very easy: sell bandwith @ a rate of 1 - 1.2$/GB/50MBwebspace.
In english ;) this means a dollar to a dollar twenty cents per gigabyte data transfer per month, and per gigabyte a customer buys, he gets 50MB of webspace.

So, for example:
a customer buys a 20GB-data-transfer-package. He will get (amongst other services like ofcourse cgi, php etc.) 20GB data transfer ànd 20 times 50MB webspace (1000MB/1GB).

As far as I know this is the cheapest I've seen with shared hosting!

This all seems very good and perfect, but the problem is that the ISP where I can get this offer needs a minimum of 500GB bandwith payed per month.
Unfortunately, I can't just invest this money the first month, since I simply don't have it!

I would need to have sold around 350 gigs to lose no money!

It seems much, but if you think of this: I see lots of people searching for a webhost that can provide them 50GB transfer a month... that means only 7 customers!

So... I came up with the plan to -maybe, if you guys have positive comments about this plan of mine- make a "subscription-list" on genius-hosting.com where people who would be interested in high-resource hosting can subscribe themselves to a list -they wouldn't be obligated to actually signup for anything, just for us to know if there's interest.

If there would be any interest, I'd start with a Linux-based server.
(is this a good choice?)

Our target public would be (small, but popular) download-sites, maybe adult (pro's & cons?) sites who get lots of movie downloads for example, etc.


I know that this is a very big post and request, but I hope there will be many replies!

Also tell me what price I should ask per GB. I myself prefer 1.2$/GB, ofcourse, but 1$ is doable.


Thanks in advance!!!!


Thomas K.
(www.genius-hosting.com)
thomas.k@genius-hosting.com

If you could afford to go that low then I would do it. But where are you going to find a place offering bandwidth for cheaper than a dollar per gig? You'd need to make some profit right?

Brian

Finding a niche ( in your case high-resource-hosting ) is always a good idea, however I would really count on the possibilities for profit.

My own plans are somewhat under priced - that is I do oversell to some extent. People typically ask for like 5 GB ( have a buffer/something to grow in ) for their startup site and it will usually take a lot of time before their site become that popular.

However asking for like 50 GB often do that for a reason - they are more or less needing that.

You are rarely going to find bandwidth less than 2.00 per GB and more often 2.50 dollars per GB.

if you could get this going, I think alot of people would be interested in this type of hosting. The only problem I see is that a site that uses 50-70 GIGs of bandwidth per month would have to bring down the overall CPU speeds, meaning you would need high processors and large memory supplies, thus putting an increase on the amount for hosting. Sure its nice to purchase bandwidth for under $1.00/gig, but if the account costs $300/month for 50 MB of space, its not worth it (atleast in my opinion).

You may have a better chance at colocation services, say you could sell u1 space for like $30/month/per u, and then offer the $1.00/gig pricing. You could still use the high-bandwidth niche, since you would be selling bandwidth at a lower price.


Hope this helps.

Jim

In terms of bandwidth you can easily get those rates and profit (using cogest bandwidth) but like many others said, youll kill the cpu. When it comes to high end "virtual servers" you really shouldnt put mroe than a dozen people on the same machine IF that. Assuming you make your own ,achines and get a co-lo, you rmodel could still work but youd be cutting it close.. add say a small monthly fee for the basic pakacga enad you may be able to do it.

The real issuse is, how are your going to handle payment (prepay, automatic lock down, etc...) and how much are the machines going to cost you.

About the CPU 'killing'...

First thanks for all the replies ;)

Second; This ISP I'm planning to use offers dedicated servers at the price of the bandwith cost. I wouldn't make a lot of profit (bandwith costs 0.7$/GB for me), but I don't have any extra fees to pay so...

The CPU I will get is a Pentium 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 40GB hard disk.
Shouldn't this be enough to host like 7-8-9 accounts that each eat 40GB ? I think so.:confused:

To jimb: I think you didn't fully understand my first post...
Per GB someone buys, you get 50MB webspace with it.
I'd sell packages starting at at least 5GB a month. This way the customer gets 250MB storage (with the cheapest formule).
Understand? :stickout


Any further comments ofcourse always welcome!

Thomas. :cool:

To be honest, that ISP deal seems a little too good. I seldom go with the cheapest about anything, I mean one have to be somewhat sure that the provider can stay in business.

Also you are pretty locked up to that provider ( cause there cant be many deals like this ??? ) and if you are unlucky and the provider goes out of business you probably will as well.

You've got a point there.

Still, we aren't doing this to make (a lot of) money, yet as an extra option for our customers.
We would sell from month to month, so IF our ISP would turn out of business, it wouldn't be a disaster! (it would be a pain in the a**, though ;) ). By the way; if they would stop their services, it would be because CogentCo.com went bankrupt. (yes, we are talking about offering Cogent-bandwith to people)

So lets say I would do this, no matter what critical comments I get from you... what price should I ask for the bandwith to stay one of the cheapest around (yet as high as possible ofcourse)?

I really can't go any lower than 1$/GB...
But I'd like to ask more. How much max. ?
==> I am talking about offering REAL ACTUAL PHYSICAL data transfer! I will not oversell!! I have seen hosts that offer it for less than one $, but they are overselling! People who would go with us, will be certain that they will get the amount of data transfer asked!

So ??

Thanks a lot for all these replies, guys!

Thomas K.

ps: no one has replied to one of the questions I had asked in my first post: We can't invest much. So what we would do is let (really) interested people put themselves on a list, so that we can see if there actually is interest. After that, when we see there's like 40-50 people, we could let the new customers pay a fee in advance, so that we can buy the server.
Again: could this work? Thx

Originally posted by .::DefCon::.

To jimb: I think you didn't fully understand my first post...
Per GB someone buys, you get 50MB webspace with it.
I'd sell packages starting at at least 5GB a month. This way the customer gets 250MB storage (with the cheapest formule).
Understand? :stickout



Ooooh, I get it now :D


Jim