Hypothetical question

I have a reseller account that has 50Gb disk space and 500Gb of bandwidth. I want to host both dynamic and static sites.

What I want to know is how many customers should I have on this account? At what point would this reseller account be considered oversold? Is there a formula or standard that is used to determine the above questions?

Thanks

First, you have to see if your host allows overselling. If they do not, you can only create as many accounts as you allocate.

I would add them until your host tells you that you are getting close to your resource limit i.e) CPU, RAM, HD space, Bandwidth. There is really no way for you to judge. If you have a VPS, or Dedicated server, that is a different story.

How would I figure this on a vps? I would not be opposed to having a vps over a reseller account.

Server load, CPU usage, RAM usage. You would have to determine if the usage is too high from the population on the server as a whole or from a particular client. If one client is using too many resources you could ask them to upgrade to a VPS or something that allows for more usage or more them to a seperate reseller account on a seperate server.

Of course on your VPS, you set it to kill off services that use too many resources for a given amount of time.

How would I figure this on a vps? I would not be opposed to having a vps over a reseller account.

Also on a vps you have a lot more control and stability. You're less likely to get your account suspended for "too much resources" because most of the time, the resources would be guaranteed to you, unlike a reseller account where you're still technically on a shared server.

You'd also be able to track down what's causing lag because root access can do a lot for you :) Getting a managed VPS would help you even more if you don't know your way around a VPS fully.

How would I figure this on a vps?

You figure out your costs, and then figure out how many customers the VPS must hold so that you can also make a profit. Any customer that gets in the way of achieving that goal, is a candidate for upgrade and suspension/termination. Harsh, but it's nothing personal, it's just good business. :P

You should make a marketing research and calculate in advance how it will be profitable for you to resell web hosting. Try to divide your disc space and sell hosting packages in a different ways than you will see what works better.

If you intend no to over sell then just choose how much profit you would like to make on that one account and then work out your plans from that.

If you intend to oversell it would depend on CPU and RAM. In which case I would speak to your host.

Have you thought about a VPS? This would make these questions easier to answer!