Hi

Here is what I am looking to do:

I am running seminars in web design for small/new business I am also offering free hosting and domain for one year.

I need:

To provide the free hosting for the fist year, but act as a reseller to those clients for subsequent years, thus build a residual income to the seminars I run.

The reseller package bust basically do it all, billing reminders support etc, where I can just concentrate on the sales.

The hosting most be branded as my own, or at the very least in partnership with.

I can:

Set up accounts for my clients through a control panel.

I can't do all the ongoing maintenance and support.

.....

As you can probably tell I haven't done reselling before and am a little baffled by the array of options on offer, so some help and advice would be nice.

And a suggestion of where I can get the right kind of hosting for me.

I can:

Set up accounts for my clients through a control panel.

I can't do all the ongoing maintenance and support.



Generally, when you become a reseller, you take on all of the responsibility of billing and supporting your clients. The hosting company does the actual server monitoring and maintenance, but you are expected to handle the tech support to your own customers.


One option to consider is to enter into a partnership with a hosting company, who will bill and service your clients. If you want to offer free hosting and domain and build the cost of that into your seminars, then pay your host appropriately, I'm sure you can work something like that out.

Another option would be to enter into an agreement with the host that would pay you residual commissions on a percentage basis.

If you are prepared to do the actual support, then there are billing solutions like Modernbill and others that you can use.

I hope that is helpful to you.

Hi

Here is what I am looking to do:

I am running seminars in web design for small/new business I am also offering free hosting and domain for one year.

I need:

To provide the free hosting for the fist year, but act as a reseller to those clients for subsequent years, thus build a residual income to the seminars I run.

The reseller package bust basically do it all, billing reminders support etc, where I can just concentrate on the sales.

The hosting most be branded as my own, or at the very least in partnership with.

I can:

Set up accounts for my clients through a control panel.

I can't do all the ongoing maintenance and support.

.....

As you can probably tell I haven't done reselling before and am a little baffled by the array of options on offer, so some help and advice would be nice.

And a suggestion of where I can get the right kind of hosting for me.

deja vu ;)

You can go with a host that provides end-user support if you want them to provide support for your clients...

Good luck :)

It's not going to be a totally hand's off type of deal. If you really care about the retention of the customers, you'll want to be hands on. Billing is a lot more daunting than you may think.

Just find a host that will offer a billing software solution, and auto account creation to make it easy for you. Then have the customers e-mail you for troubles they are experiencing, after-all, you ARE the one telling them how to do stuff on the web. If you need help, talk to your reseller provider.

Take care of them like your children, otherwise, they'll just pick up and leave, and won't care if you told them about it in the first place.

I think you're going to find a reseller account is not going to last you for a full year. When you begin to offer free hosting people will jump all over you.

With that said. Many hosts will provide you with a free billing manager program. You can also use phpCoin with any host that provides fantastico.

If you really don't want to deal with the support then you should find a company that offers end user support.

Other then that good luck!

Or, you can hire someone to do this bloody work for you.

Billing is very important. I recommend you take care of this.

Did you considered an affiliate program?
I mean, you recommend a host to your customers and the host pay a reward to you, that can be a residual every month or a fixed payment per new customer.

Did you considered an affiliate program?
I mean, you recommend a host to your customers and the host pay a reward to you, that can be a residual every month or a fixed payment per new customer.

Many of the mainstream web hosting companies won't do this, however there may be smaller hosts. But then again, you again, you are better off maintaining your own customers and taking care of them yourself.

Go with a reputable H-Sphere host, get a reseller account and you'll be set. H-Sphere is all inclusive, even billing. Many hosts won't support your clients, but will support you. Keeping it simple, you get a support request from a client, you send to your host, your hosts responds to you, you respond to your client.
Good idea with your seminars by the way!

That looks good on paper, but it probably won't work out like that. The automatic billing will turn out not to be so automatic, the planned number of clients won't turn out as planned, the great highly recommended provider will hit a 3 month bad spell on day two, the outsourced support that looked so good in the sales chats will turn out to be worthless at best, and a customer repeller at worst. The website traffic report will mostly contain your IP and a few comment spammers And to to make it all succeed you will need to be able to master it all and put in many long hour days.

Innohosting sound good on paper, has anyone had experience with them?

Also the affiliate and partnership models sound doable, can anyone recomend a reliable affiliate?

hosh, no flood control or delete button, sorry for the double post

and thanks for so many useful responses

yeah innohosting look good.. checking on other forums for comment :)

Let's say it looks good, which it does.

But I have been with hosts that look good only to find they are not, so has anyone had any bad experiences?

ResellersPanel.com may be what you are looking for - their free reseller program, not the cPanel program. The free reseller program is more like a very advanced affiliate program - they handle billing support etc, you can create your own plans, set prices and stuff. Take a look at it.