Starting a New Web Hosting Business

[SenseiSteve]

How do you persuade prospects to know, like and trust your new business? It starts with having a professionally written, well designed website that makes it easy to get from point “query” to point “purchase.” Unfortunately, you can have a superbly designed site and never make one sale because it’s never found on the search engines. With brick and mortar businesses, the manta is location, location, location. For newly launched shared web hosting businesses, the key is much the same, only online.

Your business needs to be seen as industry experts on web hosting forums, plus be found on every web hosting directory. I like to compare this to fishing, in that the more hooks and the more appetizing the bait you put into the water, the greater your chances are of attracting and snaring a fish. In web hosting, this relates to providing a perception of value, which leads directly to sales.

If you’re consistently helping newbies on the forums, and responding to or posting threads that set you up as a go-to source, sales and referrals will come. When everyone else is settling for satisfied clients, you should be striving for raving fans. This doesn’t mean giving away the world. Simply going an extra one percent in every contact you have with a prospect or client will set your business apart.

Your thoughts ...

 

[thcservers]

It depends on the budget you have when starting a new hosting business. I'm going to address those of you that start with a lower budget, where you don't have enough money to do advertising.
We found that most of our customers came via word of mouth. That's probably how most startups start creating their customer database. We gave service and support for free, in exchange for an honest review on forums or review websites.
We also sponsored someone with X months of hosting to review our (then) website. We asked him to test the links, pages, and provide us with feedback on where we can improve. This lead to people trusting us and our services, and recommending us to others. Some even asked to interview us - which gave us a boost in confidence and positive feedback.
Yes, helping your customers whenever you can is the key (or one of them, for sure!). It doesn't matter if they're on a budget shared hosting plan or an expensive dedicated server. If you or someone form the team can help them or even try, trust me, they will appreciate the effort!

 

[Kuzmenko Vlad]

Not a bad strategy, considering that you visually help others without imposing your product openly, increasing your credibility.

 

[pavlosinterlir]

I tried to contact a lot of hosting companies and I see that, in general, the customer support is awful.

If you just respond to your tickets which you receive from the potential customers and partners, you will probably get more chances to make a new business.