I am planning to enter the web hosting business to make a little personal spare money. My competence is on web building instead of server management so I can join the party only as either a reseller or an affiliate.

I am a Chinese based in Hong Kong; this position gives me two niche market options:

(1). Offering VPS or dedicated servers based in China to the Western World.

My thinking is there may be companies who wanted to run a virtual business in China but pissed off by the internet traffic bottle neck across China's border. My typical web page on a US server needs 6-10 seconds to load up in China, while the same page need only half a second when residing in a China server.

(2). Offering US web hosting to Chinese companies.

Millions of Chinese companies are wanting to sell overseas. Most of them already have web sites but typically they are living in a China server. You can imagine how attractive they can be to the English world when the pages are often loading very slowly.

Subjectively I prefer option (1) as I guess by merely advertising in WHT can bring me a dozen of customers. Selling service to Chinese companies is relatively harder and tedious; and I don't want a million customers.

My hesitation is on the accuracy of my fundamental assumption: "there may be companies who wanted to run a virtual business in China but pissed off by the internet traffic bottle neck across China's border". I wish people in WHT can give me your opinions and insights :)

I'm Singaporean, and here are some common factors discouraging people to host in Asia :

1.) High fraud rates in Asia. A U.S. targetted audience gives a much lower fraud rate.
2.) Have you actually checked the bandwidth pricing? HK/SG is almost 5 to 10x more expensive than US.
3.) Chinese aren't the best at English, and hence poor communication.

You might want to type in smaller font, it's rather big.

tsj5j, thanks for the quick comments : )

US hosting is cheapest in the world, no doubt about it. Still data centers in UK, OZ, DE.... indicate me there are local needs.

"Chinese aren't the best at English" --> this is exactly where I am trying to make some money from this gap, or else people won't need me at all. A casual search in Baidu can yield hundreds of local hosting companies.... all in Chinese.

I'm Chinese as well, and Singapore also is kinda good at English.

Anyways, filling the gap is a good idea but start by getting actual figures and comparing it with the market rates.

which hosting company in CHINA you recommend? I would like to have a file hosting site in China to provide service to Chinese

which hosting company in CHINA you recommend? I would like to have a file hosting site in China to provide service to Chinese

PCCW actually has very good connectivity to HK.

FDC uses them.

HK is NOT the same as China in terms of internet connectivity to the world. They have independent infrastructures and T1 back bones.

This is some ping speed from my Shenzhen (a Southern city in China) and Hongkong servers for your easy reference:

Shenzhen to Hongkong 130ms (PCCW)
Shenzhen to Shanghai 24ms (Taobao)
Shenzhen to US 380ms (Servint)
Shenzhen to US 690ms (Fortress ITX)

Hongkong to Shanghai 164ms (Taobao)
Hongkong to US 266ms (Servint)
Hongkong to US 400ms (Fortress ITX)

So if your target users are mainly inside main land China, and want to achieve maximum network speed, host directly in China, not in Hongkong.

The top three cities in China with the most bandwidth going overseas are Beijing, Fujin and Shenzhen. Datacenter sevice is most expensive in Beijing, and cheapest in Fujin. I am in talk with a few of the promising datacenters on reseller/affiliate deals, nothing fixed yet. So beebizz if you want to host in China now, try this search:

福建 互联网数据中心 (sorry, the system said I am not senior enough to post URL here yet, so you can search google with that Chinese keywords)

Tons of relevant choices but I won't know who can read/write English.

The above search used Chinese words, because if you use English "Fujin datacenter" or "fujin web hosting" they give you not much relevant results.

beebizz, can you please share with us more of your opinions in deciding to set up a file host directly in China?

HK is NOT the same as China in terms of internet connectivity to the world. They have independent infrastructures and T1 back bones.

This is some ping speed from my Shenzhen (a Southern city in China) and Hongkong servers for your easy reference:

Shenzhen to Hongkong 130ms (PCCW)
Shenzhen to Shanghai 24ms (Taobao)
Shenzhen to US 380ms (Servint)
Shenzhen to US 690ms (Fortress ITX)

Hongkong to Shanghai 164ms (Taobao)
Hongkong to US 266ms (Servint)
Hongkong to US 400ms (Fortress ITX)

So if your target users are mainly inside main land China, and want to achieve maximum network speed, host directly in China, not in Hongkong.

The top three cities in China with the most bandwidth going overseas are Beijing, Fujin and Shenzhen. Datacenter sevice is most expensive in Beijing, and cheapest in Fujin. I am in talk with a few of the promising datacenters on reseller/affiliate deals, nothing fixed yet. So beebizz if you want to host in China now, try this search:

福建 互联网数据中心 (sorry, the system said I am not senior enough to post URL here yet, so you can search google with that Chinese keywords)

Tons of relevant choices but I won't know who can read/write English.

The above search used Chinese words, because if you use English "Fujin datacenter" or "fujin web hosting" they give you not much relevant results.

beebizz, can you please share with us more of your opinions in deciding to set up a file host directly in China?

Yeah, I know.

From Singapore, I get U.S. like speeds to HK but the speed to China servers are along the lines of 5 to 20 kbps on a 5mbps pipe.

Poor.