I have been woundering around these forums getting ideas and looking at how other people run their hosting companys for some time now and i have decided that i would like to give it a go. Before i venture into the deep end i have some questions.

1) Where should i start who so be the very first person i go and see.
2) How do u keep records of your clients becuase u need them for the accountant right?

Anyother tips trick or starting pointers would be ideal.

Rich

I think the following courses from a local college or institution would really help:

- Financial Accounting
- Managerial Accounting
- Principles of Marketing
- Managerial Decision Making (Analysis w/ Information Systems)

As a general pointer, you should:

1) Do some more research about your idea.
2) Get 1-2 hours of consultation with a local CPA/Attorney.
3) Contact your secretary of state (USA)
4) File all the neccessary documents.
5) Keep accurate books (you can outsource a book keeper from your local CPA as well).
6) Work according to your business plan (kaizai budgeting works the best)

you should start by speaking with your accountant. He/she will adise you on how to set up your business.
As far as running your hosting business goes, just stck around on these boards.

If you are new to hosting you can get all the information that you need to setup a hosting company, you can find good resources at myhostinglinks.com

On this domain there is everything that a hosting company looks for accounting softwares, contol panels, control panel tutorials, server monitoring, support etc....

Before you do anything sit down and build a sustainable business model and business plan. These are essential to any business and usually skipped over by most.

1) Where should i start who so be the very first person i go and see.
Decide whether you want a reseller, VPS or dedicated server, then see your web designer or get a template to customise. Then still advertising via word of mouth or other wise. Anything and everything promote promote promote


2) How do u keep records of your clients becuase u need them for the accountant right?
Setup an Access database to store the info of your clients.
Better dun store online , dangerous.

1. get the cheapest server you can find (browse these forums for good offers). it must have CPanel installed!
2. get a 2checkout account (kinda like merchant acct; 2checkout.com).
3. get WHM Autopilot (this is billing software; whmautopilot.com).
4. make a website for your biz. basically, the more professional look it has - the more sales you have. do not make it too flashy.
5. start selling at low prices. current popular offer is 1GB space + 100GB traffic for $6.95 paid annually. make it $5.95 and off you go.

you will need to advertise too. but at first try to not spend money on that. advertise your services thru webmaster forums. also, you need to learn linux. at least to the point where you can install/compile software without problems and you know where to find the logs.

basically, when you are getting into the business, make sure you are spending AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. otherwise, you will not last. some guy posted a message on this forum recently how his company did not work out. he wasted thousands of dollars because he went the "write a biz plan" route. lol :) i get this feeling that many people on this forum intentionally give wrong advise to make newbies fail.

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
1. get the cheapest server you can find
5. start selling at low prices

Oh yeah.. sounds like some quality advise for a quality service right there. :rolleyes:

"Do you want fries with that?"

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
1. get the cheapest server you can find (browse these forums for good offers). it must have CPanel installed!
5. start selling at low prices. current popular offer is 1GB space + 100GB traffic for $6.95 paid annually. make it $5.95 and off you go.

i get this feeling that many people on this forum intentionally give wrong advise to make newbies fail.

Hmm, yes, me too. (Hint: Ignore the quoted parts of the above post if you wish to build a sustainable business.)

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
1. get the cheapest server you can find (browse these forums for good offers). it must have CPanel installed!
2. get a 2checkout account (kinda like merchant acct; 2checkout.com).
3. get WHM Autopilot (this is billing software; whmautopilot.com).
4. make a website for your biz. basically, the more professional look it has - the more sales you have. do not make it too flashy.
5. start selling at low prices. current popular offer is 1GB space + 100GB traffic for $6.95 paid annually. make it $5.95 and off you go.

you will need to advertise too. but at first try to not spend money on that. advertise your services thru webmaster forums. also, you need to learn linux. at least to the point where you can install/compile software without problems and you know where to find the logs.

basically, when you are getting into the business, make sure you are spending AS LITTLE AS POSSIBLE. otherwise, you will not last. some guy posted a message on this forum recently how his company did not work out. he wasted thousands of dollars because he went the "write a biz plan" route. lol :) i get this feeling that many people on this forum intentionally give wrong advise to make newbies fail.


I'd disagree with possibly every word of that post...

so you think i'm wrong? well, here's what happened when someone actually followed your advise:
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=345484

find me one single person who failed when they employed a "budget" model such as the one i explained above.

Take a Look here : http://www.webhoststartup.com/blog/

This would Really Help :)

Create a business plan. That is the first thing you need to do.

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
1. get the cheapest server you can find (browse these forums for good offers). it must have CPanel installed!
5. start selling at low prices. current popular offer is 1GB space + 100GB traffic for $6.95 paid annually. make it $5.95 and off you go.


ya, that's a quality service, there.

If you do the exact opposite of what he said, you'll be fine.

Originally posted by akashik
Oh yeah.. sounds like some quality advise for a quality service right there. :rolleyes:

"Do you want fries with that?"

Ditto, I was about to say the same.

If you do get a server, Linux for Dummies Quick Reference will prove helpful. :) It has for me.

i am glad to see no one has any real argument to offer here.

seriously, you guys offer a thoughtful advice, but it is completely useless to a person who is just starting out. it is good for someone who already owns one web hosting company and wants to start another one.

we did not go the "quality" route when we started out, and that is the reason why we can go that route now when we have a budget company running stable.

Goodspeed, good point, but not necessarily - not all of us started with the cheapest, some have been with Quality from the beginning. You have to invest money to make money / start businesses.

It all comes down to - "Hey, I think I will start a hosting business today. Tell me how!". Question is - WHY? Why not start some other business? Because hosting is easy? I don't think so. Running any business requires knowledge - you have to know what you are doing, at LEAST 50% of it, before asking for advice from others.

I, for example, know very little about owning a grocery store, and I won't dive into it, but if I absolutely had to, for whatever reason, I would have become an investor and let others (who know what they're doing) to run it.

Hosting is no different. It's a business, just like any other, and you have to know how to run it before "I think I'll start one today, what do I do next"?

Besides, this question was discussed here - at least 1,000 times. :D

Additionally - I think this is the reason why WHT members are hesitant to offer advice, they loose interest offering advice after giving it to the other 1,000 users asking the same question all over again.

I think "Running a Web Hosting Business" topic should have an auto-reply - "use search / browse older pages".

my advice - each advice posted here are from their own personal expereince it may not apply to you.

as we have read on many other failed host thread and how they have research and read everyone comment but still end up losing their biz.

yeah, there should be a how to start webhosting forum all by itself.

so many eager to start and yet so many have failed.

Threads like this are popping up every three days and becoming quite annoying, please use the search.

Here is my advice: If you want to last no more than a year and enjoy the pocket change you make, go the cheap way, get a cheap server and provide the worst possible hosting with your two hundred customers (after around two months) whom you can't possibly support. Oh and also make at least $15 a month, just think, you can buy enough candy to last you a week.

If you want to last, go the other way, be very patient and you'll see a big increase in people interested in your company once you've got a bit more experience and have done things to improve your original company (that you want to/are about to start). It should take no more than three months for you to see things to improve on and you should have significant improvements by the time your company is around five to six months old. Don't aim for any profits your first three months, infact I don't recommend aiming for any profits during your stay with a reseller account, otherwise your prices will be too high. Keep the amount you spend to a minimum, reduce any unnessesary spending (for accountants and such, if you don't know basic book keping, you are doomed anyway).

I personally feel you and anyone who starts threads such as this is not ready (unless the original post is lengthy and shows that the person understands what he is going into and has intelligent questions). Next we'll be seeing people asking in two sentences what they need to do to start their own country. By the way "so many eager to start and yet so many have failed," those who failed didn't deserve to survive.

The budget concept is fine. However, the 5 trillion Tetabyte bandwidth for 1 Cent per decade stuff does not work out ! Make it cheap but make realistic plans. Overselling is fine but not 300 GB for 5 bucks. Such users can easily take down your account even if only one out of 300 uses the bandwidth assigend to them. Do not forget to calculate support, advertising and tax costs into the price.

Originally posted by Im_Goodspeed
1. get the cheapest server you can find (browse these forums for good offers). it must have CPanel installed!
2. get a 2checkout account (kinda like merchant acct; 2checkout.com).
3. get WHM Autopilot (this is billing software; whmautopilot.com).
4. make a website for your biz. basically, the more professional look it has - the more sales you have. do not make it too flashy.
5. start selling at low prices. current popular offer is 1GB space + 100GB traffic for $6.95 paid annually. make it $5.95 and off you go.


$6.95 a month? Are you trying to price him right out of the hosting market. The key is to have as many clients as possible. Start off more like $2.99 and maybe give them 6 months free if they pay for 6 months upfront. Just think when you have 10000 clients. You will be earning 2.99 X 10,000 = $29,900 a month. :) You can buy a new skate board, ps2 and even a Bike. :)

If you want to last, go the other way...
sell 1 kilobyte of storage and 1 megabyte of traffic plans at $29.95/month and thank god there is enough uneducated customers in the market. explain those people that you provide a divine quality tech support and all your representatives are white caucasian. that's the road to success and a humble deed just in general :)