How long before your first customer?

energizedit

energizedit

Member
How long was it before you got your first customer? I know this depends greatly on how much advertising you do. Maybe give me an idea of how you got the customer. I.e. using soley Adwords and forum advertising.

Mark
 
Our first customers where within months however this was mainly due to web design projects that where both past present and current as well as a combination of local advertisements. Though this does not particularly spell out a profit so considering taking a loss for a considerable length of time is something that needs to be heavily considered.

The easiest way to point that out is look at the profit margins of larger companies, Amazon for example 19% with a loss for the first 3 years if I’m not mistaken.
 
For us, we had the customers BEFORE we opened the business. As a web host you are almost required to align yourself with web designers and have them drive the business to you (at least initially). Starting out, I'd suggest contacting local web developers in your area, and setup an arrangement where you would refer work back to them etc.

Also, it's important to note that you must ASK for the sale, from EVERYONE. You'd be surprised at how many people want web hosting but don't know where to go. They then remember something they saw in a paper, and signup. It's your job to get them to come to you - get your name out there!
 
For us, we had thousands of clients in the fantasy sports industry before building out our first data center and going online. I remember (dot com boom) in early 2000, having 60 corporate sales reps (no territories) hitting the streets of Metro St. Louis selling connectivity and hosting, and the phones ringing off the hook non-stop. Those were crazy times.

My recommendation follows Conor's - align yourself with designer's and consultants, and have them drive business your way. Networking can grow your business exponentially, if done correctly.
 
My first customer(s) where nearly instant. I had a web dev friend who moved all her sites over, I also had a few family friends who where looking to move at that same time and they appreciated the fact they could call me direct.

As far getting not attributed clients, I'd say within 2 months. I was lucky enough to have gotten ahold of a professor at a html class who plugged my services.
 
handsonhosting said:
For us, we had the customers BEFORE we opened the business. As a web host you are almost required to align yourself with web designers and have them drive the business to you (at least initially). Starting out, I'd suggest contacting local web developers in your area, and setup an arrangement where you would refer work back to them etc.

Also, it's important to note that you must ASK for the sale, from EVERYONE. You'd be surprised at how many people want web hosting but don't know where to go. They then remember something they saw in a paper, and signup. It's your job to get them to come to you - get your name out there!
Click to expand...

Same here :smash:
 
It depends on your "niche". From looking at your home page it may be a LONG time because it's very general-like a thousand others (probably 5,000 others). You are a "Mac" host and that's a kind-of niche (Mac hosts are a minority for sure) but I didn't notice that at first and most people would probably click away before they noticed.

Advertising is also a tricky business, you can spend a lot with no results IF you aren't advertising to a specific "niche" in the marketplace. I spent quite a bit on advertising only to realize the cost per customer was so high they would have to stay for years---and if you are just doing "generalized" hosting (not pushing the "Mac") look at what you are up against-companies who run 1-5 page "spreads" in popular computer magazines and big ads for things like "1st year free" that you probably can't afford to compete with.

This the THE most competitive business there is by far and the hardest to get started and make money; so if you don't have something to set you apart and appeal to a particular "niche" in the market it could take ages to get that first one... only to find they are a "host jumper" and may not stay 2-3 months.

Since you are using Macintosh that's a niche in itself so you need to figure out where to find the people who want Mac based hosting and be sure to emphasize you have the benefits for them (whatever they are, I don't know about "Mac" hosting)
But you need to find people looking for Mac hosting first then look at other Mac hosts and see what you can offer that's different than them to appeal to a segment of the Mac hosting market somebody may be missing.
Maybe your website construction? Something special about that you can do with Mac hosting that can't be done on Windows or *nix? So you could emphasize your web site design & what you can do others can't? You only show me small thumbnails of Joomla sites you have done and say you specialize in customizing Joomla but I can't open the site in a separate window and see if it's really that good.
Your plans are reasonable in reality but look tiny when you realize all the offers for 500GB for the same price you have for 250MB
We both know that the customer probably will never come close to using 500MB unless they have a large site--but remember that's what they see everywhere (disk & BW amounts) and that's at the top of your page-(first thing I noticed was "only" 500MB for $5.95) and I didn't see you giving me any reason why I should choose you instead of someone else.
Even if I do keep reading (doubtful-remember the "8 second rule") Your guaranteed uptime/TOS etc. are very "standard" and nothing on the home page "jumps out" to tell me why I will be better off hosting with you than someone who offers 10X the space & bandwidth for $3.99 even though as hosts we all know those deals are all "too good to be true" and have a lot of fine print so nobody can really use that 500GB and 5,000GB of Bandwidth --or the ever-present "unlimited".

You need to get something on that home page that jumps out and tells me briefly but convincingly why Mac Hosting is better AND why you are better for my kind of site (whatever that niche is you are targeting) and if your Joomla sites are really that good let me see them in a separate window.
Otherwise from looking at your site - if you think it will cause someone to "sign up" you may be waiting a very long time for that 1st customer, perhaps so long that you just give up.
 
We started out almost 5 years ago now, we had initial clients within a few days, although these were mainly friends who thought it would be fun to have a personal website, then sales gradually picked up by recommendations - we've done little to advertise but grown a strong following.
 
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