HEy Guys, i just bought a reseller hostting account with inno.
Im looking for info from you experienced folks.
How did you come up with your business name for your hosting?
ANy name suggestions for me?
Can you give me some ideas on some plans i should do up.
I have the business plan with inno, so you can know what i have for space.
Not sure how much space and stuff to go with prices that would be good for my reseller plan.
Im totally new to this and appreciate any help and or tips you guys could give me/.

Might want to have thought this through before buying a reseller plan ?
You will get some help here, but the core of your business plan needs to come from you. Sit down and think about what you want to offer and how you want to offer it.
Then try and think how you can deliver that and what's going to drive people to sign up with and not one of the other 3.9 trillion resellers out there, if you can get that right in your head and on paper then you are halfway there.
Also ask yourself why you are doing this, why exactly do you want to become a host ?

well i bought the reseller account because i could use it for my own personal stuff, and it would work better for me than a plain account. Now that i have it i thought about getting into selling.
Ive been with numerous companies and had some good experiences and soem terrible ones.
I want to offer people a palce they can count on.

Right okay, well I'm sure your doing it with the best intentions, but take some time to think about how you can deliver the service you want to offer.
You will get more advice here I'm sure, Good Luck !

You may want to check the running a hosting company forum.... It provides information on coming up with your business name, registering your domain, getting your reseller account, setting up pricing, setting up a web site, billing systems to chose from. All of it in one forum entitled running a hosting company... (or something close to that lol)

When thinking up a name for your business, you'll want to make sure that it is original. You don't want to have a similar name to another company. Make it unique.

On that note, you might want to try this link: http://www.dotomator.com/web20.html

Lol, the first name I got was Gabzoom and I happen to like that. Wonder if it's to late for us to rename Aquarius Storage...
Yup :(

That's a nice little name generator there!
You'll definitely want to sit there and plan everything out on paper and start getting ideas together. You should probably browse some of the top hosts / other resellers and get an idea what they offer, and what you can offer to get business as well.
You should also plan the future of your business, what you will do after you get enough clients to move on. Always a good idea to stay a step ahead.
Good Luck.

Moved > Running a Web Hosting Business .

#1: Business plan! This holds true for any business but to me it seems as if hosts are notorious for skipping this step. With such a low cost to enter into the hosting industry (any industry where people still try and make the costs even lower) many people are ready to jump feet first and seem to do things backwards.
In my experience most people buy a reseller (vps, dedicated, etc..) account and grab a domain, throw up a quick (and cheap as they can find) template and one of your standard billing systems. This really is not the way to go IMHO (and I am guilty of having done the same poor routine I just griped about).
If I were to start a hosting company I would start from scratch with a piece of paper and a pencil (ok, I have an 8' whiteboard that I'd probably use but you get the idea!). In the center draw a big circle and put "My Hosting Company". From there start branching out in every direction to every tangent of running a business you can imagine. Things like naming, taxes, LLC vs. S-Corp vs. Sole Prop vs. etc..., control panel software, hardware, billing software, support methods, staff, and the most important (at least in my opinion) niche.
Niche marketing has been a buzz word for quite some time and I don't think it'll be going anywhere anytime soon, especially in a market as crowded as the hosting industry. Having a quality niche will help you drive the entire rest of your business and really show the best increase in sales (in my opinion of course) while making many other facets (advertising at the top of the list) generally more affordable as well as easier.
To toss out an example niche you could go for PHP Developers and target your hosting at them. By deciding on targeting PHP Developers specifically you can narrow down a list of features that you don't see at most other hosts which will help set you apart. Things like custom apache modules, SVN support built in, latest versions of PHP, MySQL, etc..., multiple versions of PHP running at the same time, SSH access, letting them mount their public_html directory as a network drive in windows, so on and so on.
When it comes to advertising it's as simple as putting yourself in the shoes of your target market. If you were a PHP developer what would your day be like? Where would you venture to that you may come into contact with advertisements? Specific forums, resources, websites, blogs, mailing lists, etc... These would be the place you want to advertise. No need to try and setup an expensive and ineffective "catch-all" advertising type scheme.
You can also pick a name that appeals to your target market. "FluffyBunnyHosting.com" probably wouldn't do it (actually it may do a great job, guess it depends on how geek you want to target). None the less you can poke at the opinions of those in the market you wish to target and get some real feedback from people you'd like to convert eventually on naming. Personally I've always been a fan of the meaningless names turned into a brand (Lulu, Google, Yahoo, etc...) but the market would really determine your naming.
Now that you have your name, your market, your features you can start looking into building your site. You'll want a site that fits with the market you are trying to target. PHP Developers will probably be drawn to a very 2.0 / RIA type of setup. On the other hand if you were targeting personal sites for local families you'd want a much more family friendly type of feel.
As you can see the market should define your business, so once you have selected a market start going through (as I did above) and marking off things on your paper that don't fit, and adding new things that do. Once you have a complete mindmap of what you would like to have in your business, I personally like to actually write out an actual plan of how I want the first year to go in detail, and then goals for the remaining years.
A big thing to remember that so many seem to forget is a business plan can, will, and should change. Maybe that big feature you thought would rock the industry flopped, that's OK, go ahead and adjust your plan.
With a quality plan in hand then it's time to start setting everything up. Grab the domain name (snatch it earlier of course if you're sure on the name you want). Get in contact with a designer and/or developer (if you're going custom on billing or anything else). Get some quotes and some timeframes. Start scheduling everything together and be sure to leave lots of time for bug testing and missed deadlines.
Once you have all of that rolling and everything finally comes together, make sure you completely bug-test everything. Don't just assume things work, browser checks on the website, billing system dry runs, etc... I always like a "what if" list, and then going through each and every line to ensure things are golden.
Now that your bug testing is done you are ready to actually open your doors and make money (or at least attempt to make money). Personally I feel if you follow the above advice your chances of making it in this market should increase dramatically.
Just my $.02 though.

Thanks for the ideas guys.

#1: Business plan! This holds true for any business but to me it seems as if hosts are notorious for skipping this step. With such a low cost to enter into the hosting industry (any industry where people still try and make the costs even lower) many people are ready to jump feet first and seem to do things backwards.
In my experience most people buy a reseller (vps, dedicated, etc..) account and grab a domain, throw up a quick (and cheap as they can find) template and one of your standard billing systems. This really is not the way to go IMHO (and I am guilty of having done the same poor routine I just griped about).
If I were to start a hosting company I would start from scratch with a piece of paper and a pencil (ok, I have an 8' whiteboard that I'd probably use but you get the idea!). In the center draw a big circle and put "My Hosting Company". From there start branching out in every direction to every tangent of running a business you can imagine. Things like naming, taxes, LLC vs. S-Corp vs. Sole Prop vs. etc..., control panel software, hardware, billing software, support methods, staff, and the most important (at least in my opinion) niche.
Niche marketing has been a buzz word for quite some time and I don't think it'll be going anywhere anytime soon, especially in a market as crowded as the hosting industry. Having a quality niche will help you drive the entire rest of your business and really show the best increase in sales (in my opinion of course) while making many other facets (advertising at the top of the list) generally more affordable as well as easier.
To toss out an example niche you could go for PHP Developers and target your hosting at them. By deciding on targeting PHP Developers specifically you can narrow down a list of features that you don't see at most other hosts which will help set you apart. Things like custom apache modules, SVN support built in, latest versions of PHP, MySQL, etc..., multiple versions of PHP running at the same time, SSH access, letting them mount their public_html directory as a network drive in windows, so on and so on.
When it comes to advertising it's as simple as putting yourself in the shoes of your target market. If you were a PHP developer what would your day be like? Where would you venture to that you may come into contact with advertisements? Specific forums, resources, websites, blogs, mailing lists, etc... These would be the place you want to advertise. No need to try and setup an expensive and ineffective "catch-all" advertising type scheme.
You can also pick a name that appeals to your target market. "FluffyBunnyHosting.com" probably wouldn't do it (actually it may do a great job, guess it depends on how geek you want to target). None the less you can poke at the opinions of those in the market you wish to target and get some real feedback from people you'd like to convert eventually on naming. Personally I've always been a fan of the meaningless names turned into a brand (Lulu, Google, Yahoo, etc...) but the market would really determine your naming.
Now that you have your name, your market, your features you can start looking into building your site. You'll want a site that fits with the market you are trying to target. PHP Developers will probably be drawn to a very 2.0 / RIA type of setup. On the other hand if you were targeting personal sites for local families you'd want a much more family friendly type of feel.
As you can see the market should define your business, so once you have selected a market start going through (as I did above) and marking off things on your paper that don't fit, and adding new things that do. Once you have a complete mindmap of what you would like to have in your business, I personally like to actually write out an actual plan of how I want the first year to go in detail, and then goals for the remaining years.
A big thing to remember that so many seem to forget is a business plan can, will, and should change. Maybe that big feature you thought would rock the industry flopped, that's OK, go ahead and adjust your plan.
With a quality plan in hand then it's time to start setting everything up. Grab the domain name (snatch it earlier of course if you're sure on the name you want). Get in contact with a designer and/or developer (if you're going custom on billing or anything else). Get some quotes and some timeframes. Start scheduling everything together and be sure to leave lots of time for bug testing and missed deadlines.
Once you have all of that rolling and everything finally comes together, make sure you completely bug-test everything. Don't just assume things work, browser checks on the website, billing system dry runs, etc... I always like a "what if" list, and then going through each and every line to ensure things are golden.
Now that your bug testing is done you are ready to actually open your doors and make money (or at least attempt to make money). Personally I feel if you follow the above advice your chances of making it in this market should increase dramatically.
Just my $.02 though.
Beautiful post! This should be required reading for all new hosts and those considering hosting as a business. It's the answer to this question from earlier in the thread:
Then try and think how you can deliver that and what's going to drive people to sign up with and not one of the other 3.9 trillion resellers out there, if you can get that right in your head and on paper then you are halfway there.
...though I might have said the number was higher... :)

Very nice post by dollar.