Greetings,

I own a web host (won't post the URL in this message cause of the ad rules) and even though we opened only 4 months ago, we've been getting about 1-2 new clients/day for the past month. However, during the last 5 days, we didn't get any clients at all, even though we still receive a lot of sales questions, etc.

Is this normal? How can we get out of this "rut"?

Thank you in advance for any advice you can give us.

Best regards,
Boris

Boris:
Things happen. Slow periods are usually followed by upswings. As long as you take care of your customers, the referrals will come and in turn you will get more and more customers. Don't dispair. Keep up what you were doing initially to get the 1-2 signups a day. Things will get better, not much for you to do but keep on doing what you have been.

:)

Things come in waves.

WebHosting is much like the stock market!! One day its great, the next day your digging in the furniture for pocket change.. Not quite that drastic but there will be up and down periods, you just have to structure your business to handle the roller coaster ride.

Echoweb, for a start-up, I think 1-2 clients a day is pretty impressive! What's your marketing strategy like, if you don't mind sharing some tips?

Andy

I work part-time at a small hosting co that's been in business for about 3 months (just before i joined them) and we get anywhere from 3-5 to about 20 new orders per day. There seems to be no real pattern to it - some days are just busier than others.

If you're not very busy, why not spend the time looking round newsgroups and helping people, posting your urls, or submitting to search engines/host directories? I bet you couuld benefit from some work in this area.

Robbie, how/where does your company market its services?

Rehan,

The company does not do any paid advertising - it is just basic search engine submission and word of mouth from clients. You provide good service and you will get recommended.

Sorry I can't be of massive help - there's no simple secret or anything.

I would like to know how many signups per day *****/webhosting.com/communitech and the other big boys get. Anybody have such figures?

Well, congratulations... Those are very good numbers without paid advertising. :)

Oh, and welcome to WHT. :)

Thanks for the welcome! I've been lurking for a good few months now and already feel like I know you all very well :)

Echoweb,

The same thing happens with domain registration - don't fret over it. The business will pick back up.

If you're getting one or two new customers per day, then you are doing just fine. Just keep doing what you have been doing.

If you think about it:

If you get one customer per day, then by the end of your first year in business you will have over 350 customers - not bad if you ask me!

If you get two customers/day then you'll have about 700.

Neither are bad numbers, and once you get your first few hundred more of them will probably follow from recommendations which will speed up your growth.

thanks all :)

actually, we recently found out that word of mouth is more effective than advertising on sitepoint.com or hostsearch.com

we have excellent reviews on hostsearch, so that's really helping us out a lot

Boris

It's also a relevant point to note a lot of people (in the US anyway) are doing their taxes around now. Sometimes people aren't too interested in spending money on hosting when they're ducking and weaving the IRS :) We find it not so much coming in waves but rather spurts. dead for a while, then a bunch of people sign up virtually on the same day, then dead again... Very hard to predict.

Oddly we get most of our signups in the first half of the month for some reason...

Greg Moore

First half of the month is right before people get their bills - they think they have a lot of money so they make a buying decision and then BAM! reality. :)

Andy

Originally posted by akashik
It's also a relevant point to note a lot of people (in the US anyway) are doing their taxes around now.
...
We were slow the first week of this month, and we also chalked it up to tax time. December was another slow period for us.

Well December is an obvious one. :)

I bought my fiancee a domain and hosting for X-mas so was doing my part to keep the industry ticking over *lol*

Greg Moore