Hello all,

Im building my business plan and the products I'm focusing on are reseller accounts, VPS, dedicated servers and eventually colocation. Im just trying to plan how im going to get to each stage, considering most new hosts start off with a reseller account, selling shared hosting, this isnt really a market I want to get involved with since its generaly a low income market and will take me a long time to get to the more serious products that im more interested in selling.

I would MUCH rather have fewer reseller/dedicated/vps/colo clients with a larger income than many many support hungry shared clients.

My question is, where do I start? I have read almost EVERYWHERE "you should always start with a reseller account", but considering im avoiding that market, it doesnt seem the best thing for me to do.

Here is how I see my options:

1. Buy a VPS, start selling reseller accounts until I reach the need for my own dedicated server. At this point move to colocation and buy a few Dell servers, offer dedicated hosting and VPS hosting. This option means I start off only selling reseller accounts, which seems strange for a hosting company

2. Rent a dedicated server and sell VPS/reseller accounts. When I need more servers I buy a few Dell servers and colocate. Then start offering dedicated servers.

3. Buy a few Dell servers, colocate them and offer reseller/vps/dedicated server hosting until I can afford to offer colocation.

Maybe avoiding the shared hosting market is a bad idea? Let me know your thoughts!

EDIT: My other thought is "what the hell am I waiting for". Why start small offering only shared or reseller. Why not start bigger offering dedicated and VPS from the start? Ok its more expensive if you dont get the customers, but if you cant get them now, what says you will get them in 6 months time?

If you are able to manage a Server and accept that you will most likely lose money in the short term. Lease a Dedicated Server , That way you can offer Reseller accounts (lease 2 if you want to do VPS as well) You may be able to resell servers from the company you are leasing from in the mean time.

Then when you are profitable enough for it to be viable , move to colocation.

But you need to make sure you have the money and the knowledge to manage the servers , Otherwise you should get a fully managed server.

Do you have a unique value proposition? Do you have any experience selling these services? If you do foresee getting "real" customers in the short-term, then I would go ahead and get a dedicated server.

I think many recommendations you see for people starting out to get a reseller account, is that the person starting out doesn't really know what they are doing and just want to get their feet wet. Most of these web-hosting startups fail because they can't sell anything, they are just trying to do the same thing that thousands of other web hosts are doing. So, the suggestion to start with a reseller account is just to minimize the losses compared to the cost of a dedicated server.

Hi,

Thanks for your comments. I have been in the industry for about 3 years now, I'm 17 but have a great deal of experience in networking, both Windows and Linux. I ran a small company a few years ago, which went well. I have been working on Linux dedicated servers for over 3 years, since I used to look after my communities game servers and was shortly employeed by a GSP. I can configure WHM/cPanel installations and lock them down securly, upgrade PHP/MySQL and all other general administration tasks.

So I have the knowledge, and if I run into problems, I seem to be able to fix them with some time/googling. I have used virtuozzo before, except I haven't hosted it. There is a dell server sitting in my room currently installing Linux so I can play with virtuozzo and learn as much as possible. I always use my little linux box here to test anything fully before it enters a live environment :).

I think you managed to highlight another reason I want to avoid shared hosting!

Most of these web-hosting startups fail because they can't sell anything, they are just trying to do the same thing that thousands of other web hosts are doing.

Most new hosts buy a reseller package, shove a quick template on their new reseller, add a simple cart script and try from there. I dont want to do this.

Cheers all

Hi,

Most new hosts buy a reseller package, shove a quick template on their new reseller, add a simple cart script and try from there. I dont want to do this.

Cheers all

Most fail to have a marketing plan. Who are you selling to? What are your goals and how will you reach them with the budget you have?

Most fail to have a marketing plan. Who are you selling to? What are your goals and how will you reach them with the budget you have?
It seems to me "everyone" says the same thing..plan,plan,plan..
allot of ppl have a plan or atleast an idea...start small and work your way up..
I have an idea as to how I want to grow but as fare as writing a plan..i dont seem to understand that portion of concept i guess.
If i want to start out small(no money really) or the knowledge of running any server(vps,deticated) then how are the ones in my postion suppose to "plan" properly..unless say you or anyone for that matter give me access to a server to mess with?( not saying anyone will ever do that..lol)
Ppl can read all they want but without any hands on with that portion of the business how is someone get going in the right direction?...
I think im rambling too much..theirs alot of things on my mind in this aspect of the industry..after reading alot of these forums, im starting to relize im not as smart as I first thought..

I think planning is a very important part, or at least the writing down is, I think of new ideas all the time and I forget them very quickly unless I write them down.

Also when having a day "at work", sometimes you need a plan to refer to. I used to find myself thinking, ok today im going to try hard to bring some customers in.... where do I start? I had no plan, no marketing stratagy, no target market, so I would spend my day looking at other companies, googling for somewhere to put a random banner saying cheap hosting, reading advertising offers on WHT, and getting absolutly nowhere.

Planning is cruicial. I found I couldnt just "do it", I needed a stratagy in place.

I think planning is a very important part, or at least the writing down is, I think of new ideas all the time and I forget them very quickly unless I write them down.

Also when having a day "at work", sometimes you need a plan to refer to. I used to find myself thinking, ok today im going to try hard to bring some customers in.... where do I start? I had no plan, no marketing stratagy, no target market, so I would spend my day looking at other companies, googling for somewhere to put a random banner saying cheap hosting, reading advertising offers on WHT, and getting absolutly nowhere.

Planning is cruicial. I found I couldn't just "do it", I needed a strategy in place.
I see your point..during the time I reading your post I realized just then I was doing the exact same thing you stated..wondering around no where trying to figuring something out but getting absolutely nowhere ..lol..I think its time to spend the time and write some things down..but where to start?
My goal is providing the most reliable service I can..I have the utmost confidence in my current provider and with allot of the groups im around, they surely need that kind of reliability.
But how do i go about telling them in a way as not to be pushy or desperate .

i think one of the planning areas to carefully study is financial planning as much important as marketing, etc. no matter how loaded you are with capital funds, if your business cannot sustain good cash inflow, at end of the day its your money got sucked in for nuthing. just my 2 cents.

Marty

Whatever you do make sure you account for bandwidth. I find that bandwidth is the fastest way small business fail.

I dont really know where you can start.... Just get yourself a pad of paper. Write your company name in the middle (or "my company" if you dont have a name) and draw a big brainstorm of everything you can think of... from the products you sell, to how you can make them different, ideas on how to make people excited about the products etc....

Let your mind go wild :)

I have to confess, branding is one of the difficult part! This includes finding a catchy and easy to remember domain name which suits the business itself, especially most of the domains on the earth are already registered.

Marty

I realize from allot of reading and advice from you guys that even though I'm only 2 months olds(company wize) I have started wrong...I dont pay much for my resellers Plan so im not out allot at this time.
But I also realize I have a hard time putting on a value for allot of diffrent items like rental houses ( which i have 2 other then my house i live in) so in short, I think now is the time to replan everything from the name to planing and custom templates..thx for all the advice..it really helped out.