Hi

You purchased a reseller account, spent a lot of time working on your site and promoting your new service. How long was it before the first client signed up?. A few days?...a week?...a month?...a year?. Be specific about it and provide a few details if you like:)

- Cheers

.:)

My first clients were the two offices on either size of my office, in my first week of business.

My first clients were people I knew and through word of mouth ;)

My first client (that wasn't already lined up) signed up almost two months after I opened my door.

Of course, I had health problems during that two month period, so couldn't really do a whole lot of local canvassing. I planned to rely on local businesses and word of mouth for the initial client base, rather than hoping that the host listings and search engines would do a whole lot for me. I had a few friends, two family members, and one word of mouth signup in that time period.

The thing is, if people were just choosing a host based solely on the features, they could go to any host. What you want to sell is yourself. Not easy, but you'll end up with a client base that is less likely to host-hop the minute they find a package that will let them save a few dollars a year. Back to the car-sales analogy: if you're going to buy a car (new or used), from whom would you be more likely to buy it: a car sales lot where the people acknowledge you coming onto the lot, ask you what *you* want in terms of capabilities and so forth, and folks who offer you coffee; or the anonymous folks who just kind of leave you alone until you start looking like you're looking for someone to hand a check to? Saturn made a big splash selling themselves when they first started.

I already had clients willing to buy our services before I started. I wanted to make sure I could cover all costs within the first month.

Originally posted by Santiago-RF
I already had clients willing to buy our services before I started. I wanted to make sure I could cover all costs within the first month.

....

We had that too, but thanks to a number of unforseen (naive) circumstances, that didn't work out, never rely on this to get your business rolling as it's not viable, we found that over 80% of them didn't keep their promises (they were given promised rates months ahead of time, extremely competitive), and though they filled out the signup forms, some signed contracts (Lavasoft, the makers of ad-aware for example) and even had custom servers built out for some, didn't affect the outcome.

I remember Lavasoft specifically as they had a full contract signed, a custom server built out, got their signup details and then when it came time to bill, they were nowhere to be found and we were powerless to do anything as they were overseas, and the contract couldn't be viable enforced.

I know, that happened with some of our clients that pre-ordered. It then took us some time to get a good client base and cover all costs.

Well, we didn't start with a reseller account, and had spent about 8 months developing the site, business plan, etc etc. The first few customers were friends who I had talked to previously about it and offered them deals to just get them online and basically to test out our backened and such.

But our first "real" customer that came from either advertising, search engines, or whatever came a little over a week after we officially opened the doors. Had actually planned on waiting a month for our first client, but it worked out better than planned :)

Deleted and reposted elsewhere because I posted in the wrong category - sorry:)

Same day... but it was a friend. I use IRC and it's great to help advertising since people know you 'personally' versus just the website it lets them know you'll be around.

I'd say 95% of my clients come from the IRC world or word of mouth of clients of mine that use IRC.

my first client signed up before i officially launched :)

My first client was from Mexico... He signed on about a month into reselling, and moved with me to my dedicated servers. He then became a reseller.

Then, sometime last month, payment didn't go through, several inquires via email to him, went unanswered... He just dissapeared off the face of the planet.

My girlfriend was convinced something bad happened to him... :rolleyes:

It was really strange... I worked my tail off with the guy to get his site up and running... LOTS of hours put in, for only 15.99 a month...

From what I can tell he never moved his domain names either.

Oh well... Maybe he'll come back again someday... Who knows.

Since then, my customers have been local, mostly because of lack of funds for any major advertising.

Oddly enough, I'm getting more dialup customers than web hosting customers... I guess there aren't as many $10 a month nationwide ISP's as there are web hosting companies offering packages for $7.50 a month... :)


Steve

Hi

Well, I'm 90% finished and have been open for business about 3-4 days. Of course, I'm always wanting to add new goodies to the service so your never really "done". My cousin IM'd me yesterday and inquired about hosting...said she wanted to keep it "all in the family" and thought about letting me host her. Nice idea but I'm pretty close to my cousin and would feel really bad if I ever had to terminate her account and she is big on mass-mailing so that would create a problem. Yikes!:D

- Cheers

Originally posted by jimbrown
Hi

Well, I'm 90% finished and have been open for business about 3-4 days. Of course, I'm always wanting to add new goodies to the service so your never really "done". My cousin IM'd me yesterday and inquired about hosting...said she wanted to keep it "all in the family" and thought about letting me host her. Nice idea but I'm pretty close to my cousin and would feel really bad if I ever had to terminate her account and she is big on mass-mailing so that would create a problem. Yikes!:D

- Cheers

Ouch! Luckily none of my family know much about computers beyond how to check their hotmail accounts and use yahoo chat ;-)