Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Running a Web Hosting Business : Are you profitable?

[Blikje]

Do you make any profit, a lot of profit or are you begging at the streets to keep your business running ?

Jacco

[tazd9t9]

Finally we can say, yes we are profitable

[Blikje]

After how many months/years?

Originally posted by tazd9t9
Finally we can say, yes we are profitable

[tazd9t9]

well we messed up our start up a bit, we were running another hosting company which was profitable within a month. This time its taken about 6 months because we had high startup costs.

[mlovick]

It has taken about 4 years to get stable, however we have always made a profit. Thanks be to God

[(SH)Saeed]

Originally posted by tazd9t9
well we messed up our start up a bit, we were running another hosting company which was profitable within a month. This time its taken about 6 months because we had high startup costs.

Who hasn't messed up a little in the begining? The important thing is to learn from your mistakes and get better all the time. We wanted to start right at the top with the best server hardware and best everything. Now we know from experience that it's better to start slowly and work your way up. All things are good now

[JamRover]

I agree with Saeed...my company is currently in the process of restructering its internal management to provide better support. Can't wait can't wait can't wait...


- Salam

[Jeremy W.]

By the end of the month we should be. First month in service, so we should recoup all our initial costs in the second month.

[phptalk]

Sometimes it takes time to make profit.

Sometimes it would be better to serve as web development plus web hosting company so that you can compansate your initial costs in web hosting.

[Jeremy W.]

We've been doing web development and design for 10 years Don't worry, we won't go under because of the hosting side of things

Right now our losses are a whopping 12$/month, as the existing paying customers cover the rest of the 200+/month. We've got contracts signed for the rest of the costs, payment just hasn't begun yet

As I said, I'm not worried, just waiting

[magnafix]

I've posted this story a couple times, but it's such an eye-opener to brand-spankin-new hosts, I'll type it again.

We first started out several years ago colocating at a big ISP. Within a couple months, we had enough customers to cover our colo fees. We were profitable!

Or were we? The four partners weren't being paid. Took a long time to start paying a living wage. But then we did. We were profitable!

Or were we? We really should have a professional office shouldn't we. So we got one, at some $2400/month. Took a few more months to recoup that cost, but then we did. We were profitable!

Or were we?... You get the idea.

[Jeremy W.]

There are always phases of growth with any business. The fact that you were asking yourselves those questions meant that you were likely not just concerned about yourselves but also your clients.

After all, it's difficult to grow that big without taking care of them. Good for you, maybe you should write an article on what you learned (did good/bad) and what you wished you'd learned during that time?

[sonichost]

Profitable!

[TopDog07]

Here's to you sonic

Profitable as well.

[ISPCEO]

Web hosting is an extremely tight industry much like the telecommunications industry where margins are razor-thin. In fact, I'm not sure if *any* of the public telco's are *truly* profitable since at least one of them (cough, WorldCon) has smoked their books (in WorldCon's case, I think they dropped the A-Bomb on their books).

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