Hello
I would like to start prepaid card hosting which will give this:

1.One domain
2.hosting account
3.user buy card from market and register domain and setup account own self.
4.No body manually setup account in control panel, all system will work automatically.

Advice me how i can do this, and any body help me to setup this ?

Thanks

no body have idea about this ?

Originally posted by Hussain
no body have idea about this ?

How do you ensure people won't use these accounts for spam? In other words, how do you verify a person's identity?

Just a thought....

how do you ensure that credit card users will not spam, I am interested to start preaid cards instead of credit cards.

In my opinion, this is a bad idea because:

- It would require retailers to pre-purchase your 'hosting cards' and resell them to customers
- People would generally never blindly buy 'hosting on a card'
- It's pretty obvious that your product would be targeted towards a specific country, not unless you have a lot of capital to throw about and sell all over the world which I seriously doubt
- Hosting is not a product which people would buy on a card because hosting differs from HSP to HSP, its not like a pre-paid dialup access ISP or a prepaid phone card.
- The idea would in my opinion be cumbersome to implement

Just my 0.02c

- Asher.

I am not sure if they still exist, but 7-11 stores used to have a prepaid credit card by American Express. It was called internet cash or something like that and would work at any merchant who accepted American Express. It had a card number like American Express and did not expire (you used the current month as your expiration date). You could get one at any 7-11 and fill it with money as you needed to use it. As long as it had funds, there was no charge and the charge to add funds was very nominal. I would think that could solve the problem of one not being able to obtain a credit card to purchase services, however it does not help with spammers.

I plan to do this too.

Yes, I plan do it locally at my city and biggest cities of my country (country size equals to average US states aproximatelly) Internet access is relatively low here by now, that gives room to grow (I think).

My plan will provide:
- 1 domain, com/net/org.
- 20-50 MB of disc space
- simple web pages builder (written by me)

I plan to initially offer 3 month cards (I choosed 3 months not 1 in order to cover costs if clients get away with domain after that time)

After that service could be renewable with online credit card transaction or buying more 1 or 3 month cards.

I would like to use a automatic system that activates the prepaid card *and* creates the web hosting account (just like Hussain). I could develop it myself (using php or asp) if I find a way to interface with the web hosting controller software. If I don't I will have to create each account manually. Any ideas about this? Which web hosting controller could allow me to do this?

I see the strengths of this project:
- Alternative medium of buying. In my country internet buying is not popular yet, even my local credit card representatives are clueless when I ask'em about problems with my credit card Internet transactions.
- Will be the first in my country
- Will maintain low the cost of selling
- Will allow me to get many (i hope) clients to offer web design/development services that looks more profitable.

Weaknesses:
- I'm a starter at this business (but have researched a lot).
- Low budget. I plan to cover initial costs: cards printing, web hosting. No advertising budget by now, only fliers (or flyers?) at marts where my product is offered.

Please give me your constructive opinions. I do think this project will succeed, but it will be very helpful any thought I get about it.

Thanks and excuse my bad english.

Byron.

i think that it would be a Spammer-paradise, how would you prevent someone from buying your card (totaly anonimously) and immediatly starting spamming around?

Maybe thats the secret part of the business plan.

Severely limit the amount of outgoing mails at one time to more than one address (say set to 5 addresses at a time) and then monitor the hell out of email.

Spammer gets account, pays for 30 days, gets dumped for spam, no refund, and account resources are sellable again immediately.

(Hey, its a thought)

Help me to elaborate more on the spam issue...

Let's compare both approachs: a spammer can get a web hosting using credit card online from anywhere on the world and can spread his spam as easy as a prepaid card user. What is the diference?

Even if I know the identity of all cc users, I can't avoid that some of them do spam. Al I can do is cancel his account _once_ the spam is reported.

ISPs are using the prepaid card approach in order to give Internet access to his clients. They generally offer one email account included... the spam issue have not stopped of doing this.

Am I wrong? What do you think?

GreatBeast... thanks for the tip

Then you ll have to find a really good upstream provider, because his reputation gets slammed everytime spammer using your account starts spamming, and i dont think that most of the today customers (all for 3,99) would like the idea of 1 email account + send 5 emails/5 min ( i may be wrong, but take look @ some request-posts)

A spammer can get a web hosting using credit card online from anywhere on the world and can spread his spam as easy as a prepaid card user. What is the diference?

Any new opinion on this? :confused:

I was thinking of a prepaid system, but with a cardless system. All users would have to register on my site and they'd get [blah] gb's of space and [other blah amount] of bandwidth....the account never expires until their bandwidth = the amt. they purchased. There's also maybe $1 / gb. recharge or so

...but how would I get WHM to allow this? I only know that it does recurring stuff, not "prepaid" stuff....

Ian