5 Mistakes to Avoid When Venturing into a Reselling Web Hosting Business
Every website or blog on the internet needs a web hosting service to initiate a web presence. In fact, it’s becoming more and more difficult for businesses or entities to thrive in the market without a well graphed online presence. Given this scenario, the reselling hosting business offers tremendous scope and opportunity for you as a web provider to step in the gap.
Understanding Reseller Hosting
A good thing about reselling hosting is that you don’t need to have large capital at your disposal to start a business. By investing fifty to hundred dollars each month, you can buy a reseller package from a reputed hosting provider. The reseller hosting package typically is measured in terms of disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, MySQL database, and add-on domains. As a reseller, you can divide these server resources amongst your client or create different hosting packages.
Who can start a Reselling Hosting Business?
There is no specific guideline or rule as to who can start a reselling business. Almost anyone can become a reseller. Adding to that, you also don’t need to be a hosting expert to set-up your own reselling business. However, a good number of resellers offer to resell hosting as an additional service within the framework of the core business.
For example, if you are an owner of a web design agency, you may have a range of clientele for whom you may have designed websites with a monthly maintenance fee. Now, if you want to include web hosting as part of the offering, you can purchase a reselling package and include email management, updates and server hosting as additional service. In short, it’s a good way to leverage existing resources and add income to your earning.
Advantage to Resellers
One of the foremost advantages of being a reseller is that while you are the face of the hosting side of the business, all the backend tasks like implementing security features, updating the software and maintaining the server infrastructure is carried out by the upstream hosting provider.
This brings us to the discussion on what mistakes to avoid when venturing into a reselling web hosting business. There are thousands of service providers out there, and your competence as a reseller depends upon the quality of service you offer to your clients. And this to a large extent depends on the parent host company you partner with.
5 Mistakes to Avoid for a Smooth Running of Reselling Business
Choosing an Unreliable Upstream Host – The reliability and credibility of your parent host are linked to your performance as a reseller. But, how do you determine whether the upstream host is reliable or not? A good way to initiate this is by finding out the uptime score of the hosting provider. Anything less than 99.5% score is a big no. Poor uptime score can lead unwanted ramifications like a slow performance of your client’s website. This is something you don’t want your clients to encounter.
Patchy or Delayed Customer Support – Although it is not mandatory for resellers to offer in-house customer support, it is always a good idea to have one. Delayed or poor customer support can negatively impact client relationship. For a long-term relationship with your clients don’t just rely on the support offered by the parent host. The in-house customer support team can act as an interface between your client and the upstream host which will enable quicker redressal of the problems.
Ignoring Branding & Marketing Efforts- To establish yourself as a reseller you will have to build a sound branding and marketing strategy. This is important from the perspective of visibility, since reselling hosting is a very competitive field of business. Leverage social media platforms to market your reselling business. If you are looking to promote your business in a full-blown manner consider hiring brand management and marketing professionals.
Not Offering Customizable Packages – Every business entity or client has specific needs. When it comes to web hosting the difference is determined by the amount of bandwidth and disk space. As a reseller, you need to pay attention to the individual needs of every business owner and divide the reseller packages accordingly.
Overlooking Customer Satisfaction – Most IT companies or design agencies look upon reseller web hosting as a mean to supplement their incomes. While this is the primary motivation why most entities set up a hosting business, to succeed in reselling web hosting, you should not overlook or ignore customer satisfaction. This is an important parameter that will drive your reselling business.
Start Networking
Once you have established your reselling business, the next big step is networking. Start attending conferences or participate in tech symposiums to increase the outreach of your reselling web hosting business.
If you are looking to promote your business in a big way, besides offering excellent service, you will also have to pay attention to marketing and branding efforts. Today business owners are looking for an end to end web development service which also meets their web hosting needs. Take advantage of this opportunity to leverage your reselling web hosting venture.
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