I'm still a highschool student but I'm very much experienced in webhosting and I think I have the business know-how + technical side to manage a webhosting operation efficiently. Despite my positive outlook on the idea, I have the feeling small is not functional. I know there’s ways to start REALLY small and slowly build up but my service will mainly be website hosting and audio stream hosting and I'm not sure if I will be making enough presence or sales in the time needed.

I was planning on buying a VPS to increase power to a already existing site of mine and then setup a second site launching a webhosting business. Services would include.

Standard webhosting account:
5gig
100gig transfer
unlimited email
3 mysql db
php allowed
free domain name
$10/mo by monthly basis, or $25/3mo.
All features are customizable; we will fit your needs. Contact us with price inquires for extra services. Sorry no refunds at this time.

website creation service:
same account specs as above
$100 base website design cost to fit your individual needs. Coded with Drupal CMS. We customize for you. Payment first, one on one design process after initial interview for customer needs (design cost will go up pending our graphic designer outlook on your project).

Audio streaming:
Shoutcast 96kbps @ 70 slots $100/mo.
Shoutcast 96kbps @ 35 slots $50/mo.
Other plans are available, we can customize for you. Contact us for a quote.

MISC:
There is a direct cell-phone support line to call on all services.
Paypal, check, or money order. Credit cards might be available later.
Abuse of services is in full discretion of the webhosts and we reserve the right to cancel or suspend your services. Contact us if you have questions about going over limits.



But I have a few concerns with my concept. One is the fact that I wont be able to provide services for more than a guaranteed 3 months. This could worry potential customers. Maybe I can get that up to 6 months, but it really comes down to the setup costs of the business and how much I want to spend.
Second concern is professionalism of services. I would be buying the domains through a 3rd party in my name, but filling the details with theirs. I also think the name servers wont be in my name (that could worry some people).
The other main worry of mine is being a small organization and getting sales. I figure theres bound to be a few people that will find my site and order something but I dont want to go out assuming something that wont happen. I'll have a few hundred dollars to spend in ppc advertising and I'll be listing my services on a bunch of different community websites like this. I'll have a professional hosting website design done by the designer used for the website creation services. Besides that and a dedicated support team of myself available at almost all hours of the day idk what else to do. Please give me your thoughts on this.

Note that I didnt include every detail I've planned for this business in this post. Just the main facts and numbers. Im asking for criticism or advice for the new guys out there. Thanks for reading.

I started by first hosting business at a similar age, you should not let it hold you back.

To be honest, your biggest worry is your pricing structure, the prices to me seem way too cheap to be viable and profitable. Perhaps also by raising prices, you can guarantee to hold the server for longer?

There is no such thing as having definite sales in the hosting industry.

Your prices are modest, but one thing that you might want to add on to your hosting is google-ad supported free hosting, and put google-ads on your hosting page, that could generate some money.

To be honest, your biggest worry is your pricing structure, the prices to me seem way too cheap to be viable and profitable. Perhaps also by raising prices, you can guarantee to hold the server for longer?

To add to this, if you raise your prices, you will probably get less customers. HOWEVER, you won't need as many to generate a profit. This in turn represents less cost overall as you'll have less to support.

Also, when you're getting ready to go back to school (as I assume that's where this came from:


One is the fact that I wont be able to provide services for more than a guaranteed 3 months.

) You could also look into outsourcing your support, or going with a reseller account that offers end-user support (there are a few on here; just do a search for 'end user support')

ok thanks for the advice guys
I think I will raise my prices a little in the idea of dedicated support and guaranteed results. The google adwords pro program looks interesting as well. Now I just need to get started on it all. I just hope I wont be completly boggled with work once school and football starts.

Hi,

Also think about offering a free hosting services implemented with the ipanel script for automated setups. This woudl allow you to place various ads in their free hosting account websites and then you can make some money that way.

Good luck

Being so small I don't know if you can attract serious customers, your best bet would be to do it locally. Focus on design and providing websites rather than focusing on the hosting aspect and I think you would do fine.

Good luck with it.

You will find that once you get a strong schedule going that working around school does become quite easy.

If you can provide good service priced fairly then you will get clients in the long run. Hosting business is tough, but every site has hosting so its a huge market. If you run it like a business and give good support you can do it, although pricing is important, and it may take a long time to build up a client base that makes it worth while.

I know a lot of poeple say don't let age hold you back...but. I'm still in highschool as well, but I don't run a hosting business, I work for one. I honestly suggest working at a company for a bit, get to know how it works, the systems, etc. Before starting up your own.

Also, you'll save a fair bit for the company as well.

Agreed with the poster above. Might want to ask friends or family to be your first clients.

If your at school then how are you so confident in your webhosting "experience" and business "know how" ?

How old are you and where did you get all your business experience?

Don't worry that much, look into your pricing, have higher prices at first and sell hosting to your friends etc.

I know that my brother (21, at stevens tech) will migrate to me if I give him ssh access. I also have 2 other potential local clients, one a local band, another school website.
I'm 16 and going to be a junior next year in highschool. I ran 2 previous websites and currently working on my third, I optimized a local business's website for search engines and currently their lead webmaster, I've built my own computer w/o help, I currently do local tech repair as a part time job, I custom coded my drupal php cms to my last site, I ran my last site on 3 different (switched three times) dedicated hosting companies and secured that system. I've done several tech involved activites throughout my life and use the computer everyday. On the business side I like to think of websites as a business, with organization and management needed to be successful.
Everything I will be providing with this new hosting company will be completly understood by me, so I can solve almost every customer problem or request. VPS is the only part that I have not been experienced with, but if it acts just like a dedicated account with less physical power I should be fine. I will be striving to be flexible and have a strong support that customers wont be afraid of calling for extra information or feature requests.

As far as PixelManual's post, theres really no local places around here that do that sort of thing. Plus I dont think I will benifit working at a webhost remotely. But that reminds me, one of my friends that works for a webdesign group, they make sites at a pretty constant rate and I dont know how they work out hosting for thier clients or if they just leave the clients to get the hosting. I could possibly strike a deal with their org to provide hosting for clients instead of leaving them to find a place.

Thanks again for all the comments

I would suggest you look for work with a web hosting company. Web hosting requires 24x7 attention (even with employees) therefore what will you do if something fails while your in school? Drop class to go fix it, thats certainly not a good idea as school is the most important thing in life.

Plus, your young. Have fun while you can. You got a whole life of work ahead of ya.

Not to mention how people don't like doing hosting with someone still in high school

Before you read, i don't mean to insult or anything, but take all of this more as of constructive criticism:

Build your own computer w/o any help? -- Irrelevant. and if you need to mention that, then you will be undervalued. That's basics.

Securing a server. -- Relevant, but basics. Very basics. This is a must, and you need to be good & experienced with this.

Your last site, 3 different hosts? -- Why did you change that often? Sounds bad.

With just 2 clients you won't be flying far from the nest, only if you have super high price, but will they stay if you charge 250$/mo?

You are on the right track there, thinking that website is a business.

You are young, so people will surely hesitate because of your age.
also, what jmweb said, hosting required 24/7 attention, so it's a big commitment. Plus, if you have morals, which you sure do, you cannot just stop when you want if you get bored with it, it's not that simple.

Just think hard & strong. Plan ahead, take precaution for possible problems.
Just keep your priorities straight.
You want to have fun? You are on that road for couple of weeks, it will for sure be visible in your profits.

It ran with 3 differenet hosts for a few reasons. The first host was unreliable (bad support, and horrible startoff with them) and capping my bandwidth when it was unmetered. I switched after the first month to the second host. The second host was a little better reliability but again the bandwidth wasnt being pumped out as much as I needed (2tb+). And by time came around with the third host I had already spent out more money than I was going to be making and school + football was starting so I made the decision to drop the project. It was a video archiving site (hence my username still), that I now realize if I had used some-what invasive ads, and cut the power of my server for something more of my budget I could have actually profited. I take the project as a losing learning experience, I learned a great deal of server things and how to manage projects better.

The client list I understand can be something hard to get going but the whole reason i'm starting this is because i'll be buying a vps with a nice bandwidth package and I'll put my site and my clients all on that. It will be able to hold til I get enough customers to buy a second vps for just the hosting buisness. In the mean time i'll be supporting the first vps with my site through ads and its not costing much to run in the first place. 45$/mo wont be hard to support even if I start out slower than a customer a month. I also plan on using over 300$ in free ad credit over the first 3 months of the launch. This i'm hoping will compensate for the initial crawl of a client base.

You do make a interesting point for me that I cant just decide to stop running the business whenever. Another is the 24/7 support. As you can realize someone of my status cant provide that and it will be stated on the website details. I understand it will be a big problem if something goes down while I'm at school but I dont think I will encounter major problems like that while still starting out.

As far as pricing wise Im thinking there might be more probabilty of usage problems than i initially planned. Therefore I think I should be raising the prices a little bit in compensation.

Thank you for the criticism, I understand your arguments.

Just to pick at a few things that caught my attention:
Sorry no refunds at this time.

I suggest that you put this in a more delicate manner.

I've built my own computer w/o help

This screams inexperience to me and as some one else stated the hardware end is quite irrelevant when dealing with reselling VPS.

On the business side I like to think of websites as a business, with organization and management needed to be successful.

I think you might do well to pick up a decent book on business because you don't seem to have any real experience in the matter. (Yes, running a website is a business but it does not prepare you for all the business aspects of running a website hosting business)

Your English isn’t bad for your age but still would definitely cause some hesitation on my part if I was looking from a client's perspective. I would suggest looking for some method of honing your transactional writing skills and/or having some one proof read any
text visible to the customer.


How much can you afford to lose?

What is your budget for hosting your current website?

How much will your costs increase when switching to VPS hosting?

Do you have enough money saved to sustain your new exploit?

VideoJunky, my advice to you is to step away from hosting momentarily and go get a job in some customer services oriented industry. Get used to dealing with the people that spend money so that you can better understand how to get them to spend money at your spot. A job with a web hosting company may not necessarily be the best route. Grab and read a few marketing and business related books (tip: use a library). While you're working at this job save up money for your business venture. Understand that web hosting is not quite the same as cutting lawns or opening a lemonade stand. There are customers who may rely a great deal on your services. Data loss, downtime, etc all tend to make them very, very unhappy and an unhappy customer is never a customer for very long. You should take good care of your customers and they will take good care of you.

Now, about your knowledge of hosting. You need to increase it. I suggest picking up some good administration books and reading up on things and then getting a cheap VPS account to put these things into practice. I'm afraid that without actually researching the "finer art" of server administration for atleast a few months your run as a web host might be somewhat short.

Speaking of short run. You can not just get a company going for 3 months and then cease to offer support. A business requires commitment, you don't just start one to make a few dollars and then leave. You start a business, ideally, to set you up for life.

Just my 2 cents.

There are people on this forum who opinions suggest not to venture into your own business at this present time in your life. I think its only for your best interest at the end of the day because they can see venturing into this as hazardous mainly if it all crashes down and goes pear shaped.

But if you strongly believe you can run a business at this age, then go for it. Although your age might be a bit of a turn off for some people, so long as you present a professional and sensible image I belive people wont hold your age against you.

Also if you feel that you can organize your time efficiently, whether that be planning out how much you need to be making a month to start out sourcing support and how long it would take you to be making that much profit.

Analyze all the factors of starting up carefully, then begin to look at the factors of running a business. Then once you belive you have looked at everything and all the legalities of a business then go for it. How ever I stress this is not something that happens over night.

I'm really determined to start up a business because I have a sound interest in the business world. Although I maybe young and probably naive I'm still researching and have been for quite sometime what my business would be, because my interests cover such a wide range.

Just my thoughts,
Matt Seymour

I wholeheartedly believe that you have the capacity to create a successful hosting business. However don't expect it to last forever, or operate without frequent bumps or even profit. It will be a great experience for you - not necessarily in running a hosting business - but it will provide you invaluable business experience in general.

Also, being young is no issue - this is the internet, you can remain as anonymous as you wish.

Best of luck, and keep us informed.

Luke

P.S. Final piece of advice, don't mention your age again. The marketplace won't give you any credit for being young, just get on with what you're doing.