I am a newbie here, what do I do now since I have accomplished these following steps:

1. Bought website at www.morphxtech.com
2. Bought business cards
3. Listed on Yahoo
4. Hired marketing team

Now where do I go from here? Most of our clients have been through word of mouth. Also, could someone tell me how many clients they receive per/mo on average?

Just wondering, if you've hired a marketing team, why are you asking us? Isn't that their job? I'm really just wondering. Good luck and welcome to the hosting biz!

Marketing team in terms of local B2B consulting. I am talking about drastic measures over the net.

Have you considered writing a business plan?

Originally posted by SYAlam
Now where do I go from here?Well, since you made another post about search engine marketing, you clearly already know the answer! :)

Search engine positioning for web design firms isn't easy; it's a very competitive area -- you really have to target a niche, and focus on a few terms for which competition isn't too bad. The bright side, of course, is that there is a lot of traffic to be had, even if it is being divided among so many sites.

And if you have the budget to hire a marketing team for local business, you might also consider some paid placement/positioning campaigns. And well... first you should make sure your site is optimized as well as possible, before it is placed in search engines.

Without advertising, even the best site is not going to succeed. As for the site itself, I try not to criticize but in this case, I think it might help.

The main page is kind of bland for my taste. There is no call to action, all I see is text. The pictures are nice and the general design is great but fact is, you want to focus on getting sales and with that, you need to remove at least 40% of your text from your home page and focus on getting the attention.

From an unbiased point of view, if I were a customer looking for a web hosting account, I would have left your site in seconds. Look at the most successful web hosting companies and get some ideas.

As for advertising, get your name out there. Directories, trade organizations, everything. Don't miss a chance to get noticed, everything and anything. Try partnerships, they are very time consuming but really help.

Originally posted by inbuco
Without advertising, even the best site is not going to succeed. As for the site itself, I try not to criticize but in this case, I think it might help.



I agree with that, a site without visitors simply doesnt exist.

Advertising works up to a point - then when you have a solid enough customer base you will find that most of your new business will be refered from your old business. You will then not have to advertise so much.

Another good way may be to start an affiliate program. But the best advertising is word of mouth.

Originally posted by SYAlam
Also, could someone tell me how many clients they receive per/mo on average?

Well, we've only been operating 10 days, but we get about 1 signup a day now.

I think your quarterly hosting prices are messed up. They are all a multiple of four times the monthly price.

Since there are only three -- not four -- months in a quarter, I think you may want to correct them.

Take care,

Louis

Originally posted by stlouislouis
I think your quarterly hosting prices are messed up. They are all a multiple of four times the monthly price.

Since there are only three -- not four -- months in a quarter, I think you may want to correct them.

Take care,

Louis

*phew* thought you were talking to me!! *L*

Greetins Jeremy:

"Well, we've only been operating 10 days, but we get about 1 signup a day now."

What factors do you attribute this early success?

Thank you.

It would be rude to say this but: the failure of other companies.

Every single person who has signed up has said they did because of our emphasis on personal service. Any company can provide hosting, but people signup because they find something we like.

We generate decent traffic (1,000 uniques a day) becuase of advertising, but we generate sales, consistently (in fact today was a banner day with 5 sales) because of our focus on personalised service :)

Greetigs Jeremy:

"Every single person who has signed up has said they did because of our emphasis on personal service. Any company can provide hosting, but people signup because they find something we like."

It sounds like they call you before signing up.

Is that the case? Or just email response time to questions about your services?

Thank you.

Questions about the service, posts in the forum, trouble ticket comments, etc. We've only been serving customers for a week and we have 10, so it's not like it's an overwhelming majority of people or anything.

I wouldn't say we are "a success" either *L*

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
[B]It would be rude to say this but: the failure of other companies.

Every single person who has signed up has said they did because of our emphasis on personal service. Any company can provide hosting, but people signup because they find something we like.
But you only kicked off 10 days ago?? :eek:
We generate decent traffic (1,000 uniques a day)
Traffic means nothing. Is the "traffic" targeted?? Which keywords did they come through from? Search engine traffic from highly descriptive keywords will convert heaps higher than your "traffic"
becuase of advertising, but we generate sales, consistently (in fact today was a banner day with 5 sales)
1000 uniques per day. How much did that cost?? What is your traffic acquisition cost and subsequent customer acquisition cost?? How long will it take to absorb that customer acquisition investment into your cashflow?? 1000 uniques/day for 5 sales must mean low quality "traffic" and not folks "hunting" for your specific service etc.
because of our focus on personalised service :)
But you've only been going for 10 days. How can these clients know all about this "service" ??

No big deal. Just curious at your stats. :)

Hello,
One big advantage all hosts starting out is that they can offer a pretty much dedicated responce to their new potential clients. Every support/sales e-mail you get, you can work your socks off to ensure you can get that client, or even talk for an hour or so over chat.

Your first few clients important, to be a successfull company you need a client base, as is said above you will find once you have a good range of clients/customers you will see maybe 70% of your business coming from refferals.

Refferal programs themselves can be very effective, personally on our site we dont see a great responce from our affiliate program, we see maybe 5 - 7 a week, better than nothing I suppose, but we have alot of memebers!

Well, I wish you the best of luck with your new hosting company, with the right dedication and support you will succeed.

Take care,

*L* No problem, all info here :)

We may be only 10 days old, but myself and my 2 partners have relatively good reach within the online community. We are all on staff at SitePoint Forums (which really helps), we all recently got published on various sites (www.alistapart.com, www.sitepoint.com, www.devarticles, www.scene360.com, www.designers-network.com, etc) so we had good exposure from that as well.

Anyways, down to the questions :)

Is the "traffic" targeted?? Which keywords did they come through from?

I would say so. Every piece of it is related to "personalised web hosting". It all came from those keywords, or similar. One odd one was "miromalised dance mix", but besides that they are all related to our target audience: those who aren't necessarily finding the personal service they require.

1000 uniques per day. How much did that cost?? What is your traffic acquisition cost and subsequent customer acquisition cost?? How long will it take to absorb that customer acquisition investment into your cashflow?? 1000 uniques/day for 5 sales must mean low quality "traffic" and not folks "hunting" for your specific service etc.

We have spent a total of 10$ on advertising. On a per-sale basis, that works out to about 50 cents, average sale is 30$/quarter. 1000 uniques a day, 5 sales is a .2% conversion rate which is actually quite good for an unbranded service. As I said, much of our traffic comes from people just seeing us on SitePoint and wanting to know our newest venture. Every single person who has signed up either says "I heard you guys were ..." or "I was looking at your site and the level of ...".

Sure, .2% conversion ratio isn't spectacular (though it is high on a pure-traffic scale), it also isn't bad for the first couple of weeks. If we were relying solely on advertising, a 2% CTR would be pretty good. Out of that, good traffic conversion is roughly 5%. 5% of 2% is a .4% conversion ratio. We aren't too far off the ball, but considering our costs I think we're doing okay :)

But you've only been going for 10 days. How can these clients know all about this "service" ??

Already explained above :) Word of mouth is a powerful thing. I have never had such a succesful launch. Next month we should generate more traffic than several of the sites we maintain put together (in fact, it will probably be our second most popular site, way behind RingQuest).

Anyways, I think we should get the thread back on topic, it shouldn't be about me or my company. We aren't a success, we are'nt a beacon. We've done okay with what we've had, but until it pays my wages it's nothing to brag about :)

One of the most important components of a successful web hosting company is providing friendly customer service to your customers. We have received a number of customers that have moved from other hosts that simply do not provide this. You'd be surprised how many customers out there love receiving great customer service.

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
Anyways, I think we should get the thread back on topic, it shouldn't be about me or my company.
Thread is on topic - "How to become a successful web-biz" :D
We aren't a success, we are'nt a beacon. We've done okay with what we've had, but until it pays my wages it's nothing to brag about :)
Good to see you're using your positions at places like sitepoint for customer acquisition etc. Can't beat the "street level" visibility in the forums.

But it's going to take a fair while before all 3 of you are earning several thousand dollars a month [after costs] with the type of plans you offer. IE - you offer nothing different. No niche market etc...Best of luck though.

I love the smell of a new venture. :)

I hear what you are saying, believe me I do, but I dont' want to grow and then lose our level of customer interaction. That is why we started the business, and that's why every customer has come.

Any income that comes in really is secondary. We can now offer our development clients hosting, we can cross-pollinate with our other sites and we can have a concerted strategy to grow the network.

There are some holes including a "pure content" site and that kind of thing, but we'll get there :)

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
::: Jeremy C. Wright :::
Personalised hosting: http://www.barefooting.com
Design/Development: http://www.studiococo.com

Is it not supposed to be "personalized"? Personally, I've always used a "z", not an "s".

Could just be me though. :D

I'm Canadian :p

So if I used the slogan: "Personalized Hosting," would you be mad? :)

j/k :D

:stickout

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
*L* No problem, all info here :)

Anyways, down to the questions :)
...

We have spent a total of 10$ on advertising. On a per-sale basis, that works out to about 50 cents, average sale is 30$/quarter. 1000 uniques a day, 5 sales is a .2% conversion rate which is actually quite good for an unbranded service. As I said, much of our traffic comes from people just seeing us on SitePoint and wanting to know our newest venture. Every single person who has signed up either says "I heard you guys were ..." or "I was looking at your site and the level of ...".



0.2% conversion? To me that seems kind of low. Especially for the level of targeting your getting. Counting every visitor to produce a sale ratio, we are doing 0.6%.

But, if we take out our internal monitoring bots, external monitoring bots, and search engine crawlers from our visitor count, our conversion rate is about 2.5%. Are you counting bots and agents in your conversion ratio?

Take care,

Brian

Brian,

As I said, it is a touch low but much of the traffic is "curiosity traffic". We get this a lot mainly becuase of how visible each of us are. I can attribute fully half of our clickthroughs to people on SitePoint seing my signature and out of curiosity seeing what the new site is.

.2% isn't bad, I wish my web dev company had that. If you were getting 2.5% you could likely write a book :)

I think our conversion rate will increase as time goes on because that curiosity traffic will drop off. My main concern is building recognition and ensuring that the "brand" (for lack of a better term) is being adequately reflected in the few advertising initiatives we do have. :)

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
Brian,

As I said, it is a touch low but much of the traffic is "curiosity traffic". We get this a lot mainly becuase of how visible each of us are. I can attribute fully half of our clickthroughs to people on SitePoint seing my signature and out of curiosity seeing what the new site is.



That's a good point. I didn't think about that before, but even I visited your site based on your signature. (Hey, its always good to check out the competition right? :-) I'm sure you've gotten a lot of other web hosts, and non-potential customers to do the same based out of curiousity.



.2% isn't bad, I wish my web dev company had that. If you were getting 2.5% you could likely write a book :)



You think so? Know any good publishers? :-)

Seriously though, I've got to become a lot more successful before anyone would want to buy "Brian's Secrets to Obscene Wealth through Web Hosting". We are profitable yes, but only profitable enough to call the book: "Brian's Secrets to 1/2 a Mortgage Payment through Web Hosting".

Take care,

Brian

Not asking how to run your business on this forum or how to start a business on this forum.

Originally posted by bteeter
We are profitable yes, but only profitable enough to call the book: "Brian's Secrets to 1/2 a Mortgage Payment through Web Hosting".
:laugh: Well, that's a start. 5 years from now it'll read - "Brian's Secrets to luxury sports cars" :D

You said you had 3 partners?
You will be in for a big surprise, companies with that many partners will always end up in a big mess once the company becomes a money making machine.

I'd say 75-80% of the companies that have 3 partners or more are in for big trouble, there are stats on this.

Not to mention you make a lot less.

99.99999999999999% of companies have more than one owner. I would love to see your stats.

Jeremy,
You mean many companies have more then one owner AND where one owner has the majority vote.


Companies with 3 owners with 33% each and nobody has a majority -> big time problems in the future.

Sure its nice and peachy when you are making no money. but later...

Jeremy W. is a advisor (moderator) over at sitepointforums.com and he has quite a reputation there ;)

Good luck with the hosting biz Jeremy. You will start seeing me over at SPF again once I get my ADSL (should be next week). I have been through the worst house move of my life; no broadband; and just finished a pretty intensive six week course too :( No time to play :bawling:

Originally posted by mrbling
Companies with 3 owners with 33% each and nobody has a majority -> big time problems in the future.
Ahhh, that's actually 33.3333333333333333333% :D :eek: :eek2: ;)

I'm about to start a webhost with 3 partners all 33.33..%. Can someone give me some info on what could go wrong?

Originally posted by Gyrbo
I'm about to start a webhost with 3 partners all 33.33..%. Can someone give me some info on what could go wrong?
Heaps can and probably will go wrong. You'll have personality/ego clashes and 100 other things. Starting with 3 partners has many advantages. You just have to weigh up the disadvantages too. :)

Hey sid, everyone has been wondering where you are ;)

Anyways, ANY endeavour withour proper focus and process will fail. "Failing to plan is planning to fail". It isn't a matter of partnerships always producing failures as it simply being another area where you can either shine or fail.

Originally posted by mrbling
You said you had 3 partners?
You will be in for a big surprise, companies with that many partners will always end up in a big mess once the company becomes a money making machine.

I'd say 75-80% of the companies that have 3 partners or more are in for big trouble, there are stats on this.

Not to mention you make a lot less.

Yes, usually what happens is that two of the three partners side against the other and then the trio becomes a duo...

Hal

Originally posted by Jeremy W.
It would be rude to say this but: the failure of other companies.

Every single person who has signed up has said they did because of our emphasis on personal service. Any company can provide hosting, but people signup because they find something we like.

We generate decent traffic (1,000 uniques a day) becuase of advertising, but we generate sales, consistently (in fact today was a banner day with 5 sales) because of our focus on personalised service :)

Jeremy, 1,000 uniques a day?
Are advertised with SearchCactus or something like that?
Quality 1,000 uniques a day cost over $1000 a day.
Just my thought.

Sorry if my post sounded as though I was saying 1K uniques from PPC. I wasn't meaning to infer that at all, in fact I said later on that I was only spending about 10$/week in advertising.

The 1K/day came, as mentioned before, through a lot of various advertising. Since we are highly involved in various areas (SitePoint for example), much of our advertising is low-cost or free. The only advertising we pay for is Google AdWords, though I will likely have a stab at Overture just before the next Google Reindexing.