Well - I have probably spent too long on the internet and it has surely, but slowly, corrupted my sanity. I am considering jumping into the hosting caper - catering, as most hosts do, to an international clientel.

The justification for this madness is that I can cross-sell to my mebership and site visitors to my exising free webservices (see sig). The problem though is that that would involve upselling my members out of the free hosting providers they are using now into paid shared hosting - and quite frankly, some of the prices being thrown around at the bottom end of the market make my jaw drop!

Anyway, the point of this post. The long hours that people groan about on the boards seems tough enough - but how do you AUSSIE hosts deal with this given the added complication of the big time differences between Sydney (GMT+10) and the rest of the world?

I am looking at starting off as a one man band - so, partnering with someone else or contracting tech support is not an option in the short term.

Your feedback is appreciated:

1) Which hours (local time) do you usually provide tech support?

2) Which are the bussiest hours?

Thanks
:)

Originally posted by freakysid


1) Which hours (local time) do you usually provide tech support?

2) Which are the bussiest hours?



1) Our billing department officially works for 9-5 PST. However, since the billing department is also myself - I work lots of overtime.

2) For me it ranges ... different times are different depending on the day or week. One day it can be fast, and the next day it could be dead.

So, if PST is pacific standard time (excuse my ignorance) which is GMT-8, those hours are 4am-11am Sydney time. So are you saying you keep those hours monday to friday?

Thanks for the reply :)

Yes, Monday through Friday - billing is officially open from 9-5 Pacific Standard Time

My billing staff includes 3 people, 1 of which is me, the owner. Since I also work weekends, it also means that I will process billing related things on weekends as well.

Oh yeah, I'm not an aussie host :D Just thought I'd tell you my hours. As most hosts are US based, you can get an idea of our hours.

Ah - thanks :) But I would really be curious to know what any aussie hosts experience has been with juggling sleep and weird hours.

BTW, nice site xnet, nice and clean. However, I don't think you need that topmargin=55 in your body tag - just MHO (without it the page would probably fit in a 800*600 window - as viewed in ie5.5 - it didn't quite fit) :)

We are run by 2 people, however Its primarily just me running th show. We are located in Brisbane, and have a lot of clients overseas. Basically I work from about 6 or 7 AM ( Brisbane time, +10 GMT ) to about 12 - 1 am, sometimes later, 7 days a week. Keep in mind that I am basically running 3 separate businesses. When I'm not here we have an emergency paging system that calls my cell phone and I can get to a computer and answer the email or create the account.

So that answers questions 1. Questions 2:

It really depends on the day really. We find that the middle of the week ( Tues through to thursday ) are the busiest days for new accounts. Support is really hard to say, but generally for us its between 8 am - 11 am and 10 pm - 1 am.

I hope that helps :)

Hi Haze, thanks for that reply. Can you tell me more about your paging system set up? Thanks again.

Originally posted by freakysid
Ah - thanks :) But I would really be curious to know what any aussie hosts experience has been with juggling sleep and weird hours.

BTW, nice site xnet, nice and clean. However, I don't think you need that topmargin=55 in your body tag - just MHO (without it the page would probably fit in a 800*600 window - as viewed in ie5.5 - it didn't quite fit) :)

thanks I'll check that out.

Originally posted by freakysid
Hi Haze, thanks for that reply. Can you tell me more about your paging system set up? Thanks again.

Its quite simple, I just set up our help desk and sign up form to send us an email to an address that will send a quick sms to my cell phone whenever anything funky happens.