What to do with your brand new reseller plan
You just bought a reseller plan or are going to grab a reseller plan and may be unsure of what to do. This guide will help you get your billing system, website, advertising setup, and pricing. We are not going to get into setting up FTP and uploading websites. If you cannot do this, then working for a company or some form of basic training is suggested, at least until you feel comfortable doing these things.
The pricing
One of the most essential parts to your company is a business plan and its pricing. Most people figure web hosting is purely numbers, which is helpful to follow but should not be the only factor in deciding how you run your company.
For example: You are paying $20 per month on your reseller account that offers 20gb of space and 100gb of bandwidth and figure you can get about 40 customers on it at 4 dollars per month with slight overselling. You would be making 160 dollars per month. That brings you close to two thousand dollars per year to start. Not bad as these numbers will increase as your brand becomes more well known. But there are a few catches, refunds, support charges, unexpected errors, etc.
For this tutorial we are also assuming you signed up with a provider which provides end user support for you. (This is recommended to start off with.) But if you do not choose this route, you will either have to outsource your support at an average of three dollars per ticket or higher or train a staff member to work with you.
We are going to deduct half of each client's money on the first month's signup to be used in case of any refunds or discounts that they request. Not doing so may wind you up in a tight spot if they want a refund and you do not have the funds to do so.
Once you reach your reseller's limit, you should buy a larger plan for more customers to use or purchase a virtual private server, which can run you anywhere from 50 to 120 dollars per month fully managed. Virtual private servers (VPS for short) allow for more control over the service you provide but cause more worries over security, downtime, and other unknown variables. This is why a managed server is preferred over an unmanaged server as the server management company will take care of most of this for you.
Before we go on to design portion of the guide, you should be aware that offering UNLIMITED will cause a lot of issues when you just start your company. If someone were to use more space than your reseller plan provides, you could get in trouble with your host you obtained the reseller from.
The design and starting content
A well-placed web design with few to no typing errors is essential to your company branding and setup. It is best to make your own design if you know how or pay a designer to make you a unique logo and website, as you want visitors to remember your site and logo.
For this guide we will be using a free template to start off and to show you how to set your website up. Click here to download the template (obtained from websitetemplates.org or Template Monster). This section can be skipped if you are getting your own designer or doing it yourself.
You will need to make a 293X112 logo of your company name (assuming you are using the template) and name it logo.jpg.
Open up the index.html file with Notepad and find:
<li><a href="#">5gb of space!</a></li> <li><a href="#">50gb of bandwidth!</a></li> <li><a href="#">UNLIMITED MySQL databases!</a></li> <li><a href="#">FREE Domain!</a></li> <li><a href="#">99.9% Uptime!</a></li>
(Please note these numbers are just examples and should be changed to how you have your plans set up.)
Now find:
<li>$9.95 worth domain for FREE with the ‘Ultimate’ hosting plan</li> <li>50% discount for returning customers!</li> <li>Free eCommerce installation!</li> <li>$75 commission for top performing affiliates!</li> <li>20% discount for ‘Dedicated server’ orders for 24+ months!</li> <li>$25 Google AdWords and Yahoo website marketing credits!</li> <li class="last"><a href="#">Learn More</a></li>
And change them to whatever text you would like.
It is very important to change <div class="fleft">Copyright (c) 2009 GrandHost Inc. to <div class="fleft">Copyright (c) 2009 yourcompanyname Inc.</div>
Now for your privacy policy/terms of service, http://www.webmasters-cavern.com/tools/tosgen/ is a good start. You will have to edit the text how you wish and although it's a good start, it would still be best to buy real documents from Legalzoom or a lawyer.
Now you are going to leave the testimonials page blank or fill it with "Coming Soon."
Now open the hosting-plans.html page with Notepad and change the plans accordingly. By now you should be able to find it rather easily just looking through the page.
The FAQ can be left alone unless you do not allow adult hosting.
Open up your contacts page and change it to the information you are going to use, including your tech support email, sales, and any other means of support you have. This is a general idea of what to do.
Billing
The billing system is one of the most essential parts to your company. It would be best for it to have built-in support and automated billing with some form of fraud protection. WHMCS has this, it is also the normal billing panel given to you when you purchase a reseller plan. There is also ClientExec, HostBill, Blesta, Ubersmith and CannyBill. This guide is going to deal with WHMCS as it is the most common and most users who have had hosts before know how to use it. Most users do not like change, so unless you are able to provide a very convincing and great-looking panel that people want to try, I would stick with WHMCS for as long as possible.
The company should provide you with a download link with a license key or an account to do so. If they don't, ask them now. This part is taken directly from the [www.whmcs.com WHMCS website]:
- Unzip the contents of the zip file to a folder on your computer.
- Rename the file configuration.php.new to configuration.php. (This part should be rather easy.)
- Upload the entire WHMCS folder to your website - if you experience problems, try uploading in binary mode.
- Next you can rename the folder to whatever you like (billing, clients, etc...).
- Now visit the installation script at http://www.yourdomain.com/whmcs/install/install.php to run the installer process - if you get an Ioncube related error message, contact your reseller provider.
- Follow the instructions on screen to install which will involve setting file permissions as listed below, entering your license key and setting up your primary admin account.
- When complete, delete the install folder from your web server and CHMOD the configuration.php file back to 644. ( VERY VERY important for security reasons)
Required file and folders permissions (unless your PHP is suPHP or PHPSuExec):
/configuration.php CHMOD 777 Writeable
/attachments CHMOD 777 Writeable
/downloads CHMOD 777 Writeable
/templates_c CHMOD 777 Writeable
Now we will be getting into setting up the WHMCS now that it is installed. On the last step, it may ask you to setup a cron job and provide you with the exact command you need to use.
Log in to the Admin Area and configure your General Settings (Setup > General Settings). Fill out the information about your company in the general tab.
Set up your payment gateways (Setup > Payment Gateways)
- Select PayPal from the dropdown and click Activate. If you have a merchant account, activate what was included in your merchant account email./>
- Enter your PayPal email address and check off what kind of subscriptions you would like. You may have to enable ipn callback in your PayPal account. PayPal has made some changes, so it is best just to make a one penny test payment when your system is set up to make sure all is working. Click Save changes.
Set up your products & services (Setup > Products/Services)
- Click Create a new group and enter a name. In this case it will be shared hosting.
- Choose which payment gateway you would like and then click Create group.
- Click Create new product, enter the name of the product and click continue, enter a product description and select the welcome email your customers will obtain on signup. This will require more or fewer steps depending on your version, like entering your quota, maximum FTP accounts, and more.
Configure your domain pricing (Setup > Domain Pricing)
- Enter the type of tld followed by a dot [.]. Check epp code and choose what domain registrar you are going to use. Select the domain addons you wish to offer also.
- Now click Save changes. When the page reloads, open the pricing menu by clicking on Open pricing. Now set your domain pricing for all the options depending on whether you want to make a profit on the domain or want to offer them for the same price you are charged.
- Repeat for each top level domain you wish to add.
Set up your support ticket departments (Setup > Support Department)
- Click Add new department and enter the details of the department. Click New department.
- Next go to Setup > Administrators, click the edit icon, and tick the department checkbox to assign yourself to it. Follow the steps you see depending on what you wish to offer in terms of support.
Set up email piping so you can manage tickets using the WHMCS support desk
- Go to setup > support departments. Copy only this part of the command from the email forwarders field:public_html/demo.pip/pipe.php (please note this will be slightly different on yours).
- In cPanel click the forwarders icon, click Add forwarders and enter your support departments email address. Select pipe to a program and paste the command you just copied. Finally, click Add forwarder.
- Ensure the WHMCS Cron Job is set up and configure automated tasks (Setup > Automation Settings).
- Place some test orders on your website to check that everything works as expected.
Advertising
Once you have set up WHMCS the way you want (check out all the options to get used to the system), you will need to focus on advertising.
List your site in web hosting directories: Some potential clients will look in web hosting directories for there host. Submit in FREE directories until you make enough to submit to the paid directories.
Post in forums: Do NOT spam your website in forums. Instead provide as much help or discussion as you can. It helps people see how the members of your staff present themselves.
Go to websites like Facebook or MySpace: Tons and tons of people use Facebook or MySpace as well as other social networks. Slip in a few links into your page for if anyone is interested but please do not spam it.
This is one of the most important things to do when you are starting out: Advertise locally. Make ads in newspapers, find companies that do not have websites and offer them a great deal. If you are not that great at speaking in person, then newspapers by themselves would work fine.
Word of mouth: This is just when customers that you have recently obtained speak about your company to friends, family or places online. You can also do this if someone mentions needing a website, drop your company's name in along with a deal for them to sign up.
The template was obtained from Template Monster.
Whmcs setup is from personal experience and from the WHMCS company's documentation.
Web Hosting Wiki article text shared under a Creative Commons License.
