I have been in hosting for a short period, though 7 months would be considered long here at WHT,

I just get this feeling that people just want everything for a buck and then complain when a company fails. I charge far from rock bottom prices but people don't seem to be able to differentiate between a cheap host that won't be around for long or a moderatly priced host that is here to stay.

We constantly see complaints of XYZ host ripped me off. Geez, what do people expect when paying a buck for 100GB bandwidth.

I know that the clients who want everything for nothing are not really people I want on my books since they are generally not so able and drain support resources.

So, In question where do you seek the 'ideal' customer who wants to pay reasonable prices for reasonable resources

I have also wondered where you go or advertise to seek the good customers. I have turned down a few accounts lately cause frankly I don't want the 10 buck a year guy on my server. All my clients I have now are good ones they are willing to pay a bit more for the extra service and care I give to them. Those are the ones I want more of.

I see some of the request in the forums here and shake my head, and some of the offers are so silly it is not even funny.

I think most of these people that come here and complain about being ripped off or bad service get what they deserve, what do they really expect to get from a host that offers 60 gb of BW for $4.95 a month?

Monte Roberts

Monte, I think you have got it in one.

I suppose it's back to the old overselling/make a quick buck debate

I understand your frustration.

The fact that people are impulsive in their decision (possibly from being overwelmed) to gain services through the Internet (Which lends itself to get it now thinking) is going to produce a flea market atmosphere and will only subside as time goes on.

Businesses that oversell their features will fail, be sucked up by another group, or just go out of business.

Your integrity and your sticktuitiveness is what matters, and the type of customers that respond to your efforts will reward you.

People want to know someone is there, and if someone isnt there for them they will bail, so just continue what you do with the right attitude towards the demographic you seek and it will come together.

A lot of people ignore search engines, thinking that if i have a cool looking site I will make a million dollars!, thing is noone finds it at the rate that you need so they look at spending money (To me that is like buying friends, and you know what kind of friends you get when you buy friends), so to me it comes down to search engines.

How many companies that visit WHT regularly know what SEO means? Or actually has a great understanding about specific search engines.

Offline advertising is another missed aspect by most and truly needs some focus.

People that want to stay in business, will pay the type of money YOU need to offer them the services they need to be in business in the first place.

Charge what you need, work with your customers, and above all hang in there.

Greetings:

You are not alone. We run into a lot of prospects that have a long list of desires and needs, but don't want to spend what it takes to meet them.

And they, too, complain they've been burnt before.

They don't see a relationship between quality they can have and the lack of quality they received for the price they were paying.

Our parent company has been researching for some time the best ways to educate prospects on such issues, but we don't have many answers.

Thank you.

personally - I haven't done ANY online advertising... but have advertised offline and have gained every single one of my 'good' customers this way.

imho - offline advertising is great, often local people do not know that there are other hosts around - and 90% of the time they're with a local isp .. paying WAY too much for services they don't need.

I challenge you to call up a local business who has a website. Do a whois - try to figure out who they're hosted with from the technical contacts / dns servers. Find out how much they're probably paying. . . if you can beat it, call them up - them them who you are, and ask them if they're interested in saving money.

Every one of my initial customers and 95% of my solid customer base was gained this way. Lots of hosts think they can just put up a website - maybe buy a few banner ads and sit back and watch the customers flow in.... it's just not that way - you have to get out there on the street - get business cards printed up and give them to anybody. Another great way to advertise is to design / host a basic website for a local charity on the pemise that you can advertise your business on their site. I get a lot of hits every month this way - and often the free sites don't take up that many resources.

-neil

Greetings Neil:

That presumes people buy based on price and there is no other factors that separate you from company currently servicings their needs.

We get a lot of customers from word of mouth, but since we are international we do spend money on adverising to go beyond that scope.

From time to time we do outbound sales calls, but generally not in the genere of stating "I see you are with so and so, we are cheaper; therefore come to us" (you probably have more style; so that's not a cut).

We typically try to focus on behavioral patters. What makes them buy, and why do they stay where they stay.

If they are 100% happy with their current provider, money doesn't mean squat. On that note we have a next door business neighbor with whom we could have saved close to $10,000 per year in hosting and managed services. They were 100% happy with where they where at. So they stayed.

We are still friends, and they just finished shooting a movie in our lobby area (they are in the entertainment industry).

Thank you.

:) :)

when i started - I had about zero adversiting money, so that's how I went about things.

All of the local hosts in my area are isp's - or obfusicated resellers. None of them (that i've seen so far) have things like control panels or 24/7 technical support, so besides the money factor there are other factors.

-neil

I don't understand why you guys are targeting people who can only afford $10/month. Why not go after people with money? It's better for me to deal with a few several hundred dollar a month accounts than 300, $10 a month accounts.

But Brian ... getting those customers isnt very easy without a good rep, and getting a good rep without those high paying customers isnt easy either.

A catch-22

Of course you can build up your hosting, and then move to higher scale/larger profit margin sales.

I think cyberWings.com tried that ... moving from shared to reselling, but they got hammered by customers and went back

Good posts guys, I have been in business for 20 years, even though my business was not even remotely connected with the internet it still grew with the same principles you are talking about.

I enjoyed reading your posts, as far as I am concerned the free and cheap hosting deals are not good for the industry which has good growth in front of it.

I enjoyed higher than market prices in my business with these principles.

customer service
quality equipment
honesty
high standard of work
pricing which reflected my worth and service provided.

thanks.

Originally posted by k9register
customer service
quality equipment
honesty
high standard of work
pricing which reflected my worth and service provided.

That's what I've been saying for years. I don't think there's a better recipe for success than that :)

Greg Moore

We try to hit the middle mark. We give quality support and quality service but understand that customers don't want to pay an arm and a leg. So we slide down our prices a bit but not to the point where you do have those 10 buck a year guys on our server. Our customers understand that if our prices were any lower than the quality features some of the depend on (like toll free support) would disappear.

Greetings:

Our parent company did a price cut for hosting last September; and, while now the prices are still higher compared to many I've seen post in WHT, the founder keep shaking his head stating if he had to do it all over again, he would never had lowered the pricing.

The hope was to increase the customer base; the end result is the base increased some; but not enough to make up the price cut. And from feedback from our customers, extremely few would have left.

So do be careful on pricing models.

Thank you.

provide good support

do some small stuff for free- religious, community freebies

dont spam ever

and be patient


the rest will come........

As chicken once said (the mod) it's better to have 20 clients with $19.95 plan then 100 clients with a buck plan. The 20 clients don't all come at once but they're a lot better then the 100 that would.