I am just curious , did most of you start with reseller accounts and work it up ? did you just jump in with a dedicated box and go from there ? How did you promote to get your first batch of clients and build a good name for yourself?
What kinda opening specials did you offer ?

Please share your wisdom as I understand this is always a learning game .

Thank's for your time.

or more to the point I drifted into it, it all started when I designed a web site for my wifes business and intergrated Solna Sols web store so she could sell on line back in early 98. It was the early stages of the ecommerce on the net and not too many people were offering shopping carts and those that were cost bunches of money to buy. So friends starting asking me to design them sites and intergrate carts etc. From that I found a reseller account and started offering hosting with the site design and setup. My main focus was on selling the shopping cart setup and the hosting was just a side to that, all local business at the time. Well to make a long story shorter, the wife became an X and I lost my other businesses in the process, so I shifted focus and started offering mainly hosting, soon got feed up reselling since I could not control anything on the server and didn't like being the man in the middle, got my own server and from there concentrated solely on web hosting. Now that we have that part down pretty good, I am starting to get into resellers hosting.

Side note I still have some of the first clients I started with in 98.

EDIT: As far as getting clients that is the hard part starting out but concertrating on local business is always the best. Knock on doors neet people, find a local magizine you know one of those freebies everyone gets in the mail? Offer to write articles for them on the Internet and doing business on the net. Great way to get exposure. Once a few clients come in then word of mouth spreads.

PPC advertising on host only forums is a good way to start, stay way from the big PPC engines to expensive and returns too small.



Monte

I agree with you Monte I didnt care for the reseller part ethier , I gained a few customers from it though. I am really thinking of doing the local thing because I love talking and meeting people.
I feel that maybe these local companies and people would rather deal with someone local that they can see face to face and not just some guy emailing them and promising them the world.

Thanks for your insight and advice.

We are still in the reseller stage and have already been burnt, I would rather have my own box but i need to learn more about admining it first, i wouldnt wish my customers to have to deal with someone who couldn't run their own server, like i did

tazd9t9, who are you with right now ?

i would suggest reseller account if you are not sure if you will have many customers or don't know how to run a server.

now you can find a lot of cheap reseller plans with Cpanel, try www.nocster.com etc.

dedicated servers usually have some kind of set up fees and you could spend that money on advertising...

Thomas

VIP i am with Donhost and Purple-paw.com