A friend who I am thinking about doing business with and I have been talking about hosting. I'm going to target local customers, and online niche customers. He's curious about expansion.

My the overall sense is, within the boundaries I have decided on (for myself) better work to money ratio, customers you'll like more, less competition (a LOT less), less having to justify your non-oversold pricing, and being the #1 person about that thing in your niche becomes a lot easier. Taking it mainstream with more customers sounds like more work and entering the "I have to be up 24/7" area.

Thoughts?

Oops, wrong forum. Can this be moved to business discussion?

Oops, wrong forum. Can this be moved to business discussion?Done! Reporting the post would ensure we act faster though. :)

First off, just because you are filling a local niche doesn't mean that it's a small feat. A business venture is, after all, a business venture. You will have clients (and you best hope for many), and your clients have to be satisfied for you to survive. Don't rule out the need for 24/7 support. There are always clients who consider their email being down a critical disaster, and will make it their business to ruin your credibility if you don't respond withing 3 minutes of a trouble ticket submision.

One of your concerns is pricing. In my experiece, you get what you pay for. We always get customers asking why our prices are a little higher than most places. I just explain to them that this is the value we place on our service. The pricy hosts can afford to charge more to justify the quality of their service. Oversellers will often create ridiculous plans because their service is poor at best, and the way they make money is by cycling new clients all the time. That's not how you want to operate.

Also, part of investing in your business is staff. You don't have to be up all night running the business. You can hire techs, or outsource your support.

The last thing I want to say to you is, don't be scared of expanding. The hosting industry is constantly evolving. If you can't deal with expanding your assets and staying on top in terms of service and technology, this isn't the industry for you. You don't sound like a guy who wants to fail. That said, good luck. Post back.

Thanks Dan, I didn't know that I should report posts to a mod for just a move. Now I know :)

I like providing hosting, and I'd doing it to the point where it provides a core income. It isn't the be-all and end-all of what I want to do. There's a point to where I'm going to say "I have enough clients and I don't want to be putting the additional hours in because of the diminishing returns". Keeping inside the area I want to play in means that I will be able to genuinely care about my clients much more sincerely. Also, 100% of my thinking and planning has been focused on targetting an online niche in addition to the local market- I have no problem with making my host available to the world, but it just doesn't seem like what I want to do based on what I read from all of the hosts on here who do that.

I'm not scared of expanding within my target market to others that overlap and are related, but honestly my local market + initial online target market already provides a massive pool where no one else is specifically catering to them.

I guess it comes down to having more realworld prices, no overselling, customers I like, and free time. It's also MUCH better to have 50 customers @ $20-$40 each than 750 customers @ $2-$4 each.

I've run both a general-type hosting business (ie not targeted at a very specific niche, just multiple-domain hosting) and a much more specific niche, and I can definitely say that I have had a lot more success and fun targeting the more specific niche then I ever did when I tried to appeal to a broader audience. It's not so much about the money this time, and the aggervations are a LOT less.

What it all boils down to with niche hosting is getting involved in an area that you are interested in along with your clients. Don't target garden clubs if you don't like them, if you see what I mean.

To paraphrase a famous quote I once heard "There is no perfect niche. There's only the niche that's perfect for you" (or something like that ;))

Good luck with your endeavour and whatever route you decide to take!

I think targeting to your niche market is right way to reach the mainstream, as soon as you start getting additional increment of your market share, it is obvious that you should be able to provide 24x7 support to your customers.