Results 1 to 25 of 26
-
05-27-2004, 06:43 PM #1Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Nov 2002
- Posts
- 4,667
How to raise $40,000 and start a webhost in 3 days
-
05-27-2004, 07:19 PM #2Web Developer
- Join Date
- Feb 2003
- Location
- Connecticut
- Posts
- 5,460
This belongs in Related Offers and Requests.
-
05-27-2004, 07:54 PM #3Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- May 2002
- Location
- Sunny California
- Posts
- 1,679
Actually, it's already sold out, so it's not an offer.
Pretty interesting. They raised $40,000 (well, $39,800) by offering $199 "lifetime" hosting to 200 people. I suppose they'll use that to start a hosting business and the ongoing costs will be absorbed as marketing/startup expenses. That's one way to do it, I suppose...Erica Douglass, Founder, Simpli Hosting, Inc.
»»» I founded Simpli Hosting, and sold it in 2007 to Silicon Valley Web Hosting after over 6 years in the business.
Now I'm blogging at erica.biz!
-
05-27-2004, 07:57 PM #4Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Nov 2002
- Posts
- 4,667
It is not an offer or request.
The offer is over.
It is just an example of how someone quickly financed a new webhost business.
He cleverly raised $40,000 in 3 days ($200 x 200 members) in an initial offer for lifetime hosting.
When he goes live it will be regular 1 year pricing.
I waited until the offer was over before posting. (sorry )
FYI It was $200=10 domains & 10 gig/month - lifetime.Last edited by Techno; 05-27-2004 at 08:02 PM.
-
05-27-2004, 08:45 PM #5Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Aug 2000
- Location
- NYC
- Posts
- 6,623
Originally posted by Simpli-Erica
That's one way to do it, I suppose...
Flat rate "hosting for life" offers by startup hosts have been around before, and if they come out of nowhere from someone unknown to you, you'd have to be a little skeptical.Specializing in SEO and PPC management.
-
05-27-2004, 09:33 PM #6Aspiring Evangelist
- Join Date
- Feb 2004
- Posts
- 363
Originally posted by JayC
One way that's not as easy for most people as it was in this case -- since this offer was made to members of a well-established online community, who apparently have a lot of trust and confidence in the person making the offer.
Flat rate "hosting for life" offers by startup hosts have been around before, and if they come out of nowhere from someone unknown to you, you'd have to be a little skeptical.
-
05-27-2004, 09:58 PM #7Junior Guru
- Join Date
- Apr 2004
- Posts
- 245
damn that's pretty sweet startup
all you need is one server and put those 200 ppl on it
and heck you won't lose that much money overtime since you are acquiring more and more ppl
smart idea
-
05-27-2004, 10:02 PM #8CISSP-ISSMP, CISA
- Join Date
- Aug 2002
- Location
- Seattle
- Posts
- 5,525
Most of us in this thread right now are pretty well known around here, right? Lets go make us $40k
-
05-27-2004, 10:17 PM #9Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Feb 2004
- Posts
- 631
kinda like pre-selling condominium units even before construction starts
-
05-27-2004, 10:48 PM #10Web Hosting Guru
- Join Date
- Apr 2004
- Posts
- 344
Definately a hosting company worth keeping an eye on. I know I'm really interested to see how they go about promoting their site with 40K startup capital. It's certainly not big dollars, and those sort of dollars can go in the blink of an eye, but it's more than most start with and it will be interesting to see how they go.
-
05-28-2004, 12:22 AM #11Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Feb 2002
- Location
- Australia
- Posts
- 24,027
Originally posted by JayC
One way that's not as easy for most people as it was in this case -- since this offer was made to members of a well-established online community, who apparently have a lot of trust and confidence in the person making the offer.• WLVPN.com • NetProtect owned White Label VPN provider •
• Increase your hosting profits by adding VPN to your product line up •
-
05-28-2004, 01:35 AM #12Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- Sep 2003
- Location
- New Delhi, India
- Posts
- 78
well it was an interesting way to earn starting revenues for better buisness and they just earned $40k was really good.
If you go for a server to offer people lifetime hosting coz a good server would cost around $1800 or something and you can offer to your customers.
Well good upto 8-10 years or so i think after that you will earn a lot of money to handle a free hosting server for sure.Even you can handle server like them a lot.
-
05-28-2004, 06:43 AM #13Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jan 2003
- Location
- Houston, TX - Originally from UK
- Posts
- 707
Heh...well the cat's well and truly out of the bag now, so...
I saw this when Dean first posted it. Thought it was a great idea. Decided to replicate it.
Not advertising (because the offer isn't live...yet! ), just letting folks know that when our offer does go live, this is where we drew our inspiration from.
In our case, it's our relaunch special, in cased anyone's curious.
-
05-28-2004, 08:30 AM #14Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Aug 2000
- Location
- NYC
- Posts
- 6,623
Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Yep, but they're not really a large community, as it only has around 11,000 posts.Specializing in SEO and PPC management.
-
05-28-2004, 09:30 AM #15Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2004
- Posts
- 88
Neat way of getting funded and also lots of word of mouth advertisements
-
05-28-2004, 10:36 AM #16Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jul 2003
- Location
- Satyr, Chrisalya, Canada
- Posts
- 1,901
Originally posted by Zopester
Heh...well the cat's well and truly out of the bag now, so...
I saw this when Dean first posted it. Thought it was a great idea. Decided to replicate it.
Not advertising (because the offer isn't live...yet! ), just letting folks know that when our offer does go live, this is where we drew our inspiration from.
In our case, it's our relaunch special, in cased anyone's curious.--
-
05-28-2004, 10:46 AM #17Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Dec 2001
- Posts
- 5,221
Greetings:
Fine print: "After 12 months you get the same hosting package free of charge for as long as TextDrive exists."
What I cannot understand is any envy in what is most like another rip off.
There are more important things than money or how quickly it is generated.
Thank you.
-
05-28-2004, 12:19 PM #18Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2004
- Posts
- 85
Greetings:
Fine print: "After 12 months you get the same hosting package free of charge for as long as TextDrive exists."
What I cannot understand is any envy in what is most like another rip off.
There are more important things than money or how quickly it is generated.
Thank you.
He HAS to have a disclaimer in place to protect himself. Also, he has obviously earned credibility over time as the developer of the textpattern software and admin of the forum where the offer was made.
In addition, $199 broken down is only $16.58/mo over a year for a pretty decent package. With a fresh injection of cash, I wouldn't think it likely that the company will go down within a year. And of course the offer is, ostensibly, for life. Yes, he could go wacko and disappear with the cash, but that could happen with anyone you do business with at any time.
I think it was a brilliantly executed promotion, and good for him. Yes there are more important things than money, but we're all in business here... for money. Recognizing his creativity doesn't necessarily equate to envy.
Finally, it probably hasn't been lost on anyone that he now has a huge responsibility to service 200 new clients that signed up within 3 days, and who will not generate any new monthly income. This is not exactly a risk free venture for him, despite the 40 grand. But it's close
-
05-28-2004, 12:32 PM #19Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jun 2003
- Location
- Washington State, USA
- Posts
- 690
$200 isn't a bad price to pay for a full year of hosting (assuming the hosting is of any quality --including support--) so even if he goes down after 12 months the initial customers basically should have gotten their moneys worth. I wish I would have t hought about this when I started out, would have been a lot less headaches.
As long as he delivers I think it's a great idea.Ryan Porter, Owner
Extreme Internet Solutions
Quality Hosting Solutions -- Affordable Prices
Providing Fabulous Hosting and Unreal Web Design! Excellence is our focus.
-
05-28-2004, 01:02 PM #20WHT Addict
- Join Date
- Apr 2004
- Location
- Phoenix, Arizona
- Posts
- 151
Someone is going to combine this with a revenue sharing offer.
Something like...
"For $1000 you get hosting for life (with these specs...) and a .1% of the revenue stream (off the top) paid quarterly. First 100 people only."
$100,000 cash infusion that cost 10% of revenue.
Starting with 100 customers, doubling every year, with an average package price of $10 / month, the investors recoup their $1000 in year 5 with about 1600 customers and make money after that - plus still get their hosting. (God bless the spreadsheet. lol ) Of course the pricing would have to create margins much greater than 10%
How many chances are there for someone to be a "mini-Venture Capitalist" for $1000? I've never heard of one before.
As always, the person doing it would have to have serious credibility and track record-proven ability to run the business.
I bet a write-up in mainstream business magazines would be simple because this is so unusual. That would raise huge awareness of the brand.
Just a thought.
Danielhttp://www.IwantFUI.com
If you could host a new kind of content from your old-fashioned web servers
and make new money from your customers and differentiate your business all at the same time... could you afford not to try? See the new site
-
05-28-2004, 01:03 PM #21Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Dec 2001
- Posts
- 5,221
Greetings:
How many "hosting for life" offers from companies are 1) still present in terms of the product line, and 2) the company itself is still present?
If my memory is correct, this tactic has been tried in the past how many times?
How many times were customers not scammed out of their money?
To be very clear ==> scam equal theft.
Thank you.
-
05-28-2004, 01:50 PM #22Junior Guru Wannabe
- Join Date
- May 2004
- Posts
- 85
dynamicnet:
thank you for defining "scam"
Look, I'm not inside the guys head. I can't tell you it's NOT a scam. But you can't tell me it IS.
Is it a new idea? No. If you want the answers as to who's done it before, who managed to stay in business, who was a crook and who wasn't, then do the research yourself. But don't blindly ask the questions, even rhetorically, and not be able to follow up with the answers.
Why condemn him if you're not privy to the inside info here? If he's honest, then both he and his clients are happy, a deal well done. If he's a scammer, then he's a thief, because "scam equal theft", as I've recently learned. But without knowing him or even waiting to see how it turns out, you've branded him a criminal.
My final word is this: it was a well conceived and well executed venture capital raising promotion, simple as that. Whether he turns out to be a thief or not is irrelevant to the concept itself.
-
05-28-2004, 02:16 PM #23Disabled
- Join Date
- Jan 2004
- Posts
- 420
Wow, that is just amazing!
-
05-28-2004, 02:31 PM #24Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Aug 2000
- Location
- NYC
- Posts
- 6,623
Originally posted by dynamicnet
How many "hosting for life" offers from companies are 1) still present in terms of the product line, and 2) the company itself is still present?
But there are important differences between this offer and most of the other similar ones I've seen. One of them, again, is the connection between the person behind the hosting company and the group of people the offer's being made to. Another is that the offer is limited to 200 customers.
The trap that "hosting for life" brings is biggest if it's the company's entire business plan. The problem is similar to that with yearly plan sales -- cash flow. If your customers only pay you once up front and are a burden on your systems and staff for years later, you have to continually bring in new customers to pay the bills and to facilitate growth (or you have to have put a lot of money aside). So, the typical result has been a company more focused on sales and marketing than on service -- paying more attention, that is, to finding new customers than to supporting the existing ones.
In this case the plan apparently is to operate just like most other hosting companies once the startup offer is over. There'll be a good amount of cash raised up front from the "lifetime" sales, but steady income from "normal" customers after that.
Seems like a sound idea and reasonably likely to work. Calling it a "scam" at this point based on nothing more than what little you know of the business plan is very much unfairSpecializing in SEO and PPC management.
-
05-28-2004, 02:44 PM #25Web Hosting Master
- Join Date
- Jun 2003
- Location
- United States of America
- Posts
- 1,847
What you get for US $199:
12 months of incredibly good hosting (see below) with the top TextDrive package (1gig storage, 10gigs bandwidth, 10 domains)
After 12 months you get the same hosting package free of charge for as long as TextDrive exists
50% discount on future Textpattern corporate licenses
A Textpattern t-shirt!
For those who trade: 10 pre-stock-split blogshares in Textpattern.com
After 12 months you get the same hosting package free of charge for as long as TextDrive exists
just an FYI, but yea this will be interesting to see how thing turn out on both sides of the fenceComputer Steroids - Full service website development solutions since 2001.
(612)234-2768 - Locally owned and operated in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area.