How did you start off picking up customers after starting a web hosting company?

I've been in the web hosting business for about a year now. Initially, I offered web hosting on serveral Internet Marketing related forums as well as turning to Craigslist for new clients.

WHT primarily.

friends are the most loyal customers to start and get the ball rolling

I openened up local newspapers, and looked for any and all page advertisments that didn't have listed websites, or were using aol email addresses as contact information. Or, if the newspaper ad did have a website, I'd check it out. If it looked old, or appeared to need updating, I'd give them a phone call.

I figured if a business like an antique shop, landscaper, real estate agent, etc is using AOL or Yahoo for an email address, they may need some web assitance.

Like Fred above said, friends/referral initially set me up. But it didn't wish to fully rely on friends/family. I wanted to test the waters with real canvasing - even hard core cold calling. Yep, I'd have my Burlington Coat Factory suit, with laptop in hand and just visit local business!

Brad

How did you start off picking up customers after starting a web hosting company?

Like any other company out there... advertising. It takes money to make money.

I agree with Brad's idea of marketting. We did the same thing and it worked like charm for us.

First 10-15 sites we designed and hosted came through this trick!

"Ohhh you have a very prestigious business yet you use Yahoo mails? That looks so unprofessional! How about getting info@your own company name?" and they usually fall for it!

I followed some of the advertising ideas given by Aussie Bob coupla years ago and they worked like charm as well. To sum it up, concentrate on local market and the business will keep coming!

Good luck!

I will have to take a closer look at the newspaper ad trick...

The newspaper trick sounds do-able but might be a bit time consuming. Let me try it out and see how's the response.

The initial batch is the toughest, after that you can get more customers from word-of-mouth.

Agreed, the initial customers are very difficult to get. Don't be deterred, though.

WHT has been a great success for my company, we picked up members days after opening and advertising here. Once you start hosting people and provide them with good service, they will likely start spreading the word around. This is the most powerful part! When other people spread word about you, you will likely get more customers.

Also, look for Web Hosting Request forums. If people are requesting something that you can offer, pick them up!

Friends, then friends of friends etc etc

One main thing that i do is buy advertising spaces on different websites and i found this a success.

Stood on the side of a busy road with a cardboard sign that said, "WILL SWAP HOSTING FOR FOOD".

:D

Oh and another form of advertising is just offering good promotions on other forums.

Im surprised nobody has mentioned this.

Affiliate programs work wonders. Why? You'll get every slacker, high school, middle school, elementary school student, every stay at home mom, dad, son, daughter, wife, etc. signing up to make some free cash.

You offer $X for the signup, and/or $X every month after that.

I personally used, 50% of the initial payment minus domain registration fee. then 25% of every payment after that. So the person has a recurring income.

Once you get a few people signed up for that, guess what? They go out and find you customers, via their friends, family, or just blind posting on a web forum.

Im surprised nobody has mentioned this.

Affiliate programs work wonders. Why? You'll get every slacker, high school, middle school, elementary school student, every stay at home mom, dad, son, daughter, wife, etc. signing up to make some free cash.

You offer $X for the signup, and/or $X every month after that.

I personally used, 50% of the initial payment minus domain registration fee. then 25% of every payment after that. So the person has a recurring income.

Once you get a few people signed up for that, guess what? They go out and find you customers, via their friends, family, or just blind posting on a web forum.

That does sound like a good idea, and I've already written an affiliate program back-end in PHP that I could probably modify to use with my hosting company.

The main problem with this is that now you have to advertise an affiliate program! It sound easy at first but, it's really not.

How did you start off picking up customers after starting a web hosting company?

By following the parts from your extensive business plan about customer acquisition - you did do the necessary market research and preparation before "launching" yourself into the business ?

Try contacting all your local shops who dont have a website and create one for them for free ...

As for us we just got a few jobs from friends and family. We offer website design as well as hosting. We did a few websites for a cheap but fair price. Next thing you know 1 website turned to 3 websites and 3 turned to 6, etc. etc.

We have very few companies that we just host their website. Most of them we designed. Now we have companies that are starting to call from out of state to do their websites. Just finished one from Chicago and another from Indiana. All of this came from the cheapest form of advertisement. "WORD OF MOUTH". It's pretty powerful and a great tool.

I spent $150 on phone book advertisements. And I only got 3 jobs out of it in a year. And they were small websites so we didn't make our money back. Won't do phone books again.

Other than that, we don't pay for advertisement. Happy with my results.

friends are the most loyal customers to start and get the ball rolling

yeah i plan to start there and slowly advertise in forums, places like craigslist and i believe that even ebay lets you do something like that

and of course, hope to get into search engines with good keywords, great for traffic which has potential to convert to customers