Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : HostingCon : Group Association

[MadroosterTony]

After being in several other industries and all have group associations, it amazed me there is no association for our industry.

I have talked this over with several of you, and the vendors. I already have the commitments of several manufactures to help kick this off.

Many of you may be asking why we need an association. They did a great job with Hostingcon. While it is true, they did an excellent job with Hostingcon, conferences is not all an association can do.

Here are some of the things that were discussed in the background of the conference:
[list=1][*]Competition - We all are competing, and while we all want to be number 1, there is plenty out there for all us. What is happening is this: Everyone can start a company, but many are not following all the business laws the rest of us have to live by. Many do not pay taxes, or are run by young kids that are just bored for a few months. This causes many accounts to go down for no reason, and then the whole industry gets a bad name which is not good for any of us. To be a member of the association, you would have to show proof of your legal existence, as well as some other qualifying stipulations that are being determined. Then by educating the public about the association, this would help the industry grow as a whole.[*]Help standardize the software we us - Let me explain a bit here. I do not mean we all use the same OS, or control panel. What I am talking about is to work with all the Vendors of the association to make things work together. Make software x work in unison with software y. We all have experienced this. We goto to install a new cool piece of software, only to find it breaks half of the things that were working. While we cant 100% eliminate this, standards in the industry can help relieve this.[*]Training and Certification - While we are all familiar with the national certification like MSCE, A+, etc. It is not realistic for all techs to fully certified. We run our businesses just like every other service industry. We have techs that are educated and can answer basic user problems, these techs receive all support tickets first. If they can not answer the problem, the ticket is escalated up, until it reaches a tech that can handle it. Just imagine if we always fed simple email password resets to our level 3 techs. They would get quite upset quickly. Trust me I know, just from asking them to help out sometimes, and problems like that come in. The Level 3 techs are more concerned with keeping our servers secure and advanced users problems. What the association can do is provide training and certification for several levels, for example (Tech Level I, Tech Level II, etc). This will not be just limited to techs. How many of you hire sales people with experience in this industry? Most don’t. Most hire good sales people that can be trained. Same as office managers. While most recruit from within, some hire outside help that doen’t have the experience in the industry. Then you just have to think how the industry grows with technology. We all need to be kept on top of this. The idea is for training and certification of Sales, Managers, and Technicians. While you may not think the certification is important, I can tell you from previous industries, anything you can brag (yes brag) that you have and your competitors don’t to future customers is always a good thing.[*]Preferred Vendors – While we all have our vendors that we love, the ones we hate. Many of us spend hours looking for solutions to problems, that could be easily solved by an association. A preferred vendor would be required / given the opportunities to do certain things for association members. Probably the number one thing that the boss man would be concerned about is discounts. Preferred vendors would be required to give a discount off standard pricing to members. Now before you go haywire, many of us already get discount pricing, but many do not. This can be as something as simple as 5% of standard retail price, or a volume discounts to members. There would be nothing preventing the vendor from giving you a volume discount lower then the association rate. We don’t want to be forceful of the partner vendors, but we do want to see them take care of the members. Another thing the vendor will have the option to do is, provide training in relation to their product and or the certification programs. This will be held at either a sponsored association conference or at their discretion. So I know many of you asking, why would a Vendor join the association? They would be put in a win / win situation. They would get the ability to work with verified businesses in this industry, as well offer extended training at events, and they normally would not have the option of doing. If people know how to use / sell their products, they will sell more, which makes everyone happy.[*]Group Discounts – Many of the smaller hosting companies as less then 5 people. Sometimes its 1 or 2 people, while there is nothing wrong with this, as long as they are legitimate business, many suffer for being so small. The association would work on getting things like: Group Insurance Rates, 401K options, Large Business Options, Accountant services, etc.. As long as we could show a major group interest in a product of doing business, we can go forth as an association, and get the discounts the larger companies enjoy.[/list=1]

There are many other benefits, but seeing how it is 2:20 am, after a long and enjoy conference, I am going to pause for group comments / concerns / wants. Or anything else you want to discuss on the product.

Please understand I am not trying to create an association, and then take over Hostingcon. I think the association can work together with Hostingcon to make it even better for all of us.

If you are interested in going forward with this, please respond to this thread or PM here. Please do not send email quite yet, as we are still handling requests, etc from the conference, and want to get to those first.

PS – since it so late, I am sure I have grammar and spelling errors, if I do I hope you will understand it is late, and I think we all partied a little too much.

[6PS-Jake]

Tony,

I am very interested in this idea. Please add me to the list of people you will be contacting for follow-up communciations.

[MadroosterTony]

Here are the preliminary guidelines for membership:

Provisional Membership:

1. Applicant must comply with all applicable state, local and/or regional laws and business licenses.

2. Pay Annual Dues (Amount to be determined, but will probally be atleast a couple hundred dollars) The membership dues are payable for each company and all employees of your company would be considered association members..


3. Provisional members are non-voting members.

4. Provisional members cannot use the Association logo.

5. Provisional members are not listed on the Association Finder Service.

6. Provisional members are eligible for all discounts

Full Membership Level:

1. Applicant must be recommended by atleast (1) one vendors that is a member of the association

2. Applicant must comply with all applicable state, local and/or regional laws and business licenses.

3. US Based applicants must provide proof of Federal Filings.

4. Pay Annual Dues (Amount to be determined, but will probally be atleast a couple hundred dollars) The membership dues are payable for each company and all employees of your company would be considered association members..

5. Must have been in business for alteat 1 year.

Please remember, this is just all preliminary - Vendor memberships will probally determined based on total sales in a year.

Comments, Questions, etc...

[6PS-Jake]

Tony,

Can you contact me offline to discuss? See profile for howto info.

[IntraHost]

I dunno if I'm the only skeptical person here, but it just doesn't seem to work for me.

The small business down the street is not going to care if I'm part of an association or not, I'm going to get his business anyway just because I'm down the street.

That and even the companies who "give the industry a bad name" would be able to be members of the association. Some of the hosting businesses that have flopped or made serious mistakes were larger companies and had a couple years of service under their belt before they went corrupt.

For a couple hundred a year I don't see how you'd be able to gather enough to do any large marketing that will educate users to look for association members. Any large assoc. fee then you won't be able to let small businesses join because the cost will be too high.

Just think about the BB and local chamber of commerces. Customers SHOULD know to look for companies that are members of one or both of those, but most don't. And now you want to try to get them to look for a Hosting Assoc. logo?

[MadroosterTony]

The Marketing end is only part of the association goal. Being a small business yourself, what do you pay for business and health insurance compared to the group rate that say the grocery store down the road is paying.

What about applying standards to the industry? Does installing all new software run smoothly for you? If it does, I am glad you have had such good luck. But I for one have spent several hours trouble shooting, etc only to find out that my control panel had formated the directories differently then what the developer had intended. I could have spent those several hours doing marketing, dealing with customer service, etc.

There any more benefits, that unfortunatly I am too pressed for time at this second to go into right now. I will expand on this later tonite.

[bravelion]

I dunno if I'm the only skeptical person here, but it just doesn't seem to work for me.

I'm not against the idea, but I think it would be a tough sell.

What strategic business advantage will the Web Hosting Association member have over the non-member? How will the average hosting customer become aware of those things? Will they care?

[MadroosterTony]

Directly a member will not gain more customers to start. A first its about making our life easier.

As far as the average hosting customer, the association would contact various other associations of small businesses and work alliances with them. Try to goto a small association as a hosting company by yourself, and see how far you get without having to pay larges amounts of money for that association to tell its members about you. But as an association, we would be able to approach other associations and form a general alliance. This is done all the time. They recommend our members, we recommend theirs. Just as most of them need our services, some of our members will need their services. Its a win / win situation for both.

[MadroosterTony]

Ok, a discussion board has been started for anyone interested.

http://www.ipitha.org

[music]

Probably need to have a few more events and build a base... Did this event have 600 people show up ?

[MadroosterTony]

This is not something that is gonna be born overnight, and we all know it. But by HostingCon next year, I would like to have a good strong base and even start offering some training classes...

[sirtwist]

Originally posted by music
Probably need to have a few more events and build a base... Did this event have 600 people show up ?

Yes, we had over 600 people at HostingCon 2005.

[music]

That was the number theWHIR TV for June 11, 2005 gave.

Can I find out what the total count was?

[sirtwist]

The number was "over 600" We haven't released a specific number because there's not really a reason to give out the exact, specific number.

[MadroosterTony]

I have put up a survey on the web association


http://www.ipitha.org/ask/public/sur...=IPITHA_Survey


I know I have been quiet on the subject for awhile, but real work took over for a little bit.