Well after doing web and network admin, I finally took the jump to being a full blown web host. I have chosen a reseller plan from Stand By You hosting, and now I am working out all the fine details. Now for the questions:

1. My plan is pretty small, so I can't host too many clients. I chose this plan because I wanted to start out small. How can I maximize the use of this plan to give the best plans for the most clients? My Plan has 1gb of space and 10gb of bandwidth.

2. My plan comes with Cpanel/WHM. Will I be able to offer Cpanel to all my clients or is it just for my own administrative uses?

3. Security-As a reseller I'm pretty sure i'm not responsible for securing, but from my standpoint, what measures can I take to secure my account?

4. Online Ordering-Currently I'm looking for a very inexpensive way to take online orders. I was originally thinking of just a form that had inputs for Billing info, and I would just bill people through snail-mail. From the research I've done, this isn't the most effective method of billing. What options are there specifically for handling credit cards and billing those cards?

5. Domain registration-How can I offer domain registrar services to my clients?

OK thats it, thanks for all the help to whoever who replies :)

1. split your reseller account into the number of clients you want to host... 5-10 would mean plans of 100-200mb space and 1-2gb of transfer.. then work out a fee which gives you a nice profit margin on top of what you pay for your reseller account and the time you take for support.

2. You should have no problems giving your customers cpanel access.

3. security will be down to your hosting company above you.

4. snail mail is bad - people want to be setup nearly instantly. Consider getting a merchant account for credit card processing and then you can have people setup within hours, even doing it manually with a form then doing the credit card transaction (do a search on: 2checkout, hostcharge etc.. etc..) paypal is a cheap resort.

5. Domain registration is a good thing to offer and you would probably be best with an enom account (you get domains for between $6.95-$8.95) then charge your customers whatever.

Hope this help and good luck.

1. Offer small web site hosting plans on your site no more than about 400MB of web space, because if you get more than one sign ups of 400MB of web space accounts, then you'll be running short very fast. Buy additional add-ons such as MB of space to your account, and try not to oversell.

2. You'll be able to offer Cpanel to your customers.

3. I would check with your provider to see how well they are doing with security.

A Good alternative to email billing is a program called PHPManager. (http://www.phpmanager.com)

The program is relatively in-expensive and handles all the recurring billing for you, but you would still need to have a payment processor such as worldpay, hostcharge or paypal or whomever you prefer.

Good luck!

DM :)

Thanks for the tips! I came up with these two plans after considering all your tips:

1. Basic Hosting-$3/month
50mb space
1/2 gb bandwidth
PHP
CGI
5 MySQL Databases
Control Panel

2. Advanced Hosting-$7/month
150mb space
2gb bandwidth
PHP
CGI
15 MySQL Databases
Control Panel

Pretty basic, and they will keep me in business for a while a month. Under these plans, if I sell 1 of each plan, I break even for the month, and if I sell 2 of one plan plus one of the other, I profit for the month.

Thanks for all the billing suggestions too!

In response to your question 4 .. look for a whois script that can cope with real time credit card processing as well as allowing users to pick a hosting package.

I am not too sure about the advertising policy in this particular forum, so here are a few, the first one is something that I made ..

http://www.chrisblack.co.uk/cgi
http://www.cdomain.com - seems to be popular
http://www.cgi-resources.com - lots here to choose from
http://www.perlarchive.com/guide - and here

Hope this helps.

Chris