We are about to start our hosting business. We plan to allow a select few people to resell. Unforntatly, I have no clue what I need to offer to be competitive. Can you guys give me ideas, or tell me anything i might need to know to be successfull? I know i should offer private dns servers but what else? What should pricing and setup fees be to allow someone to resell? We are hosting unix with cpanel. Any clues you guys can give me would be greatly appreciated.;) ;)

Well this being a poll will get moved to the advertising forum.
Anyway I`d say just look at what other hosting companies are offering and try to improve on those!

Biggest thing you need to offer is good support, that will make or break you.

I don't find it to be much of a poll, so it can stay. I move the, "What do you think of this...?" threads.

I suggest checking out what you consider to be successful hosts here (reseller hosts), and seeing what types of plans/pricing they offer.

I've been pondering these questions too. Obviously the point of offering reselling options is to bring in new customers--in this case, to get your existing customers to bring in the new ones. What's the best way to do this though? Many hosts offer percentage discounts on packages and put the burden of tech support and billing of the resold accounts on the reseller. Is this too much of a hassle for people that just want to be able to refer their friends to a hosting service they like? Would it be more appealing to just give the reseller a straight affiliate percentage every month and the resold accounts get billed and serviced directly by the host directly? What about a simple, one-time "finder's fee"? This is pretty much the way most affiliate programs like Commission Junction work (although I think there are some hosts on Commission Junction offering a montly percentage).

With the availability of low-cost dedicated servers with "easy-to-use" CPs doing the administrative work nowadays, I'm wondering if the traditional percentage-discount-reseller-does-the-billing/support approach is still viable. It's still a great way for people to get their "feet wet" in the hosting business, but it seems to me the smarter thing to do if you're serious about it would be get a dedicated server and get a bigger chunk of the revenue your resold accounts are generating.

Another good way to go about it....

Try putting yourself in your (potential) customers shoes. Think back to when you were looking for a hosting company to buy your accounts from. What were you looking for? What made you choose one over another?

If you can identify those attributes, then you're well on your way to providing the services your customers will want.

(those that are like you anyways) ;)

In regards to Chris's reply.

Perhaps a dedicated solution is not the best way to start out for most, therefore reselling is still popular. It gives you the opportunity to start out with limited funds plus if your company fails you dont have to sell hardware. You could approach Reselling many different ways. You could offer an affiliate program where current customers would get a fee for refferring new clients and then also offer a true Reseller program where you would be totally anonymous and charge either flat or tiered rates.

As Charles stated above as long as your Reseller programs are in the same ballpark as most, your biggest concern will be support for your actual Resellers (and clients if you choose to offer that).

My suggestion is to do your home work before you sell your first account.

Sure great customer service and a boat load of features are fine and dandy but the other real important thing is to make a profit and make it fast.

The only way to do this is to keep your costs down and sell service at the highest possible price while providing value to your customers.

Think about it hard and ask a lot of questions like "how do I minimize my support costs while still providing great customer service to my customers?"