Trying to grow

Well I started my hosting business around 10 years back, at that time I used to thought that after 10 years I will be millionaire it did not happened but atleast I am not doing day job.

Now for some I am running successful business, but for me its not very successful as from the beginning my expectations were high and I saw big dreams.

You learn with time, experience of 10 years but still what I lack is marketing expertise. That is what make the difference, find someone who is very good in marketing and you will go.

Now for you it seem like you are not either technical person hire someone to update your website design, people livelihood depend on their website they will not trust who have bad design.
 
robert4u said:
Well I started my hosting business around 10 years back, at that time I used to thought that after 10 years I will be millionaire it did not happened but atleast I am not doing day job.

Now for some I am running successful business, but for me its not very successful as from the beginning my expectations were high and I saw big dreams.

You learn with time, experience of 10 years but still what I lack is marketing expertise. That is what make the difference, find someone who is very good in marketing and you will go.

Now for you it seem like you are not either technical person hire someone to update your website design, people livelihood depend on their website they will not trust who have bad design.
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Actually I am a technical person. I went to school for computer programing.
 
My own 0.02 on the topic:

I started my first online 'business' years ago. I'm not talking about the hobby I used to pass the time (mud hosting) , but the first genuine business that I felt could take me away from my 'day job'. In 2002, it took me about 4 months to realize my potential and leave my day job.

That being said, I do not recommend doing this today, or to anyone who is looking for a hosting company. Sorry kids, but you're not going to get there for years to come.

My trick? I have never sold 'hosting' to supply my main income. I provide the services that keep those companies running. Whether it's server administration to WHMCS administration, manipulation, etc... It's where the money is. Screw selling 'hosting'. That's a child's game that (literally) children are getting into every summer because 'bored'.

My second trick? I spent YEARS enveloping myself in what I was doing before I dared to call myself a systems admin, or a programmer. We're talking probably 5 years, with no Windows, nothing but a Linux PC, modifying the hell out of it, breaking it, fixing it, programming various crap . I (almost) miss those days... You're not going to get anywhere just trying to 'own your host'. Again, that's childs play. Go to work as an apprentice for a host, work your way from the mail room up to management, as it were... Get the know how before you get into things.
 
whmcsguru said:
My own 0.02 on the topic:

I started my first online 'business' years ago. I'm not talking about the hobby I used to pass the time (mud hosting) , but the first genuine business that I felt could take me away from my 'day job'. In 2002, it took me about 4 months to realize my potential and leave my day job.

That being said, I do not recommend doing this today, or to anyone who is looking for a hosting company. Sorry kids, but you're not going to get there for years to come.

My trick? I have never sold 'hosting' to supply my main income. I provide the services that keep those companies running. Whether it's server administration to WHMCS administration, manipulation, etc... It's where the money is. Screw selling 'hosting'. That's a child's game that (literally) children are getting into every summer because 'bored'.

My second trick? I spent YEARS enveloping myself in what I was doing before I dared to call myself a systems admin, or a programmer. We're talking probably 5 years, with no Windows, nothing but a Linux PC, modifying the hell out of it, breaking it, fixing it, programming various crap . I (almost) miss those days... You're not going to get anywhere just trying to 'own your host'. Again, that's childs play. Go to work as an apprentice for a host, work your way from the mail room up to management, as it were... Get the know how before you get into things.
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I agree, i see many on ebay and these increase during the summer holidays, these kids will get a unlimited everything reseller plan from Ebay for a few $$ a year and call themselves a webhost, they dont even have their own website and will just sell again of ebay and use paypal for taking payments and when something goes wrong they just vanish as they have no idea what they are doing. I sometimes for fun will ask some of these so called hosts simple questions and see if they reply. I once asked 1 of them if they offered dedicated IPS and DNS hosting and was shocked when they replied with 'what is a dedicated IP and what is DNS' and you will get poor victims sign up with these to host their websites
 
whmcsguru said:
That being said, I do not recommend doing this today, or to anyone who is looking for a hosting company. Sorry kids, but you're not going to get there for years to come.
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That honestly apply for anything your wanting to do. Want to start a lawn care business? It will still take you more than a summer to have a full blown shop.

Want to have your own "fix it" garage? You has to start from the bottom and work your way up to owning your repair shop and so on.

With that said, no one should do ANY business if they don't plan on doing it for several months if not a year or so before they get meaningful results.
 
In the UK HMRC state it can take 12 months for any business to start to make any sort of profit.
lucky for me i was already in business when i started my hosting business ( which i started on a simple reseller account) so was making a profit from day 1, when after 4 years i moved to a VPS, my profit from hosting drops slightly while i spent the time getting all the various addons for the server, but was still making a profit and still am
 
webling said:
When I started my web hosting company I had hoped it would grow enough to take me away from my day job. I hoped to eventually live in an RV and live in the warmest area of the US depending on the time of year. But that hasn't come close to even happening. I don't even have enough clients that I earn any money. Maybe I need to advertise more but with money as tight as it is it's hard to get many ads out there.
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My advice is to spend your advertising budget wisely! make sure ads are optimized as much as possible to get the best value for money, and don't just use one method of advertising, try many and find what works for you and delivers the best results, also good SEO will help you get more organic traffic.
 
whmcsguru said:
My own 0.02 on the topic:

I started my first online 'business' years ago. I'm not talking about the hobby I used to pass the time (mud hosting) , but the first genuine business that I felt could take me away from my 'day job'. In 2002, it took me about 4 months to realize my potential and leave my day job.

That being said, I do not recommend doing this today, or to anyone who is looking for a hosting company. Sorry kids, but you're not going to get there for years to come.

My trick? I have never sold 'hosting' to supply my main income. I provide the services that keep those companies running. Whether it's server administration to WHMCS administration, manipulation, etc... It's where the money is. Screw selling 'hosting'. That's a child's game that (literally) children are getting into every summer because 'bored'.

My second trick? I spent YEARS enveloping myself in what I was doing before I dared to call myself a systems admin, or a programmer. We're talking probably 5 years, with no Windows, nothing but a Linux PC, modifying the hell out of it, breaking it, fixing it, programming various crap . I (almost) miss those days... You're not going to get anywhere just trying to 'own your host'. Again, that's childs play. Go to work as an apprentice for a host, work your way from the mail room up to management, as it were... Get the know how before you get into things.
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Actually, about 16 years ago I ran my sites on my own linux server out of my home on a dedicated wire. I did everything in the configuration files, setting up the websites, forwarding the domain names to the right directory, setting up email addresses and forwards, etc all in the configuration files. I didn't have cPanel back then It was bare bones server administration. So why do you suggest I don't know the back end of a Linux environment?
 
Get in touch with your customers. Try to know why they love and use your service, what are your strength and weaknesses. Develop on your strength.

Leverage the power of social media to your advantage. It's a cheap way to market yourself. With the knowledge you got from your customers, use it ad your selling point on social media.

Social media marketing ain't that hard if you dedicate some of your time to it.
Find your niche, know your customers. Personalise your message to address those set of customers.
Let people find your presence online an interesting one that suggesting to them to try out your hosting service won't be met by "Nahhh, Nop or Not Me".

What I'm trying to pass across is this: Work on your brand image. What do you want your future customers to perceive you as?
 
One thing I would not do is give away free hosting in the hope of converting your customers to paid customers.

1. Free hosting attracts the worst people
2. You'll be tempted to keep the costs down as to not make a loss.
3, You will end up with miscreants on poor hardware.
4. You end up with complaints posted about the above.
5. Even people who want to pay, get put off by the bad publicity of free hosting.

I think many of us realised long ago, it's easy to attract people to free hosting. Much harder to convert. I
n fact we've spent a long time ensuring we keep profitable customers and shed the freeloaders (or people who create more problem than money).
This I believe has resulted in better services for the remaining customers.

95% of your problems will come from 5% of your customers.

95% of those problems tend to be people who want everything for £2/month

(Ok those stats are what it feels like and not based in fact, but you get the point).

If you lose the people who consistently raise tickets for things they could google easily, that will be better than attracting freeloaders that will damage your bottom line.

Just ask yourself, would you want to share a server with non paying customers?
 
ughosting said:
One thing I would not do is give away free hosting in the hope of converting your customers to paid customers.

1. Free hosting attracts the worst people
2. You'll be tempted to keep the costs down as to not make a loss.
3, You will end up with miscreants on poor hardware.
4. You end up with complaints posted about the above.
5. Even people who want to pay, get put off by the bad publicity of free hosting.

I think many of us realised long ago, it's easy to attract people to free hosting. Much harder to convert. I
n fact we've spent a long time ensuring we keep profitable customers and shed the freeloaders (or people who create more problem than money).
This I believe has resulted in better services for the remaining customers.

95% of your problems will come from 5% of your customers.

95% of those problems tend to be people who want everything for £2/month

(Ok those stats are what it feels like and not based in fact, but you get the point).

If you lose the people who consistently raise tickets for things they could google easily, that will be better than attracting freeloaders that will damage your bottom line.

Just ask yourself, would you want to share a server with non paying customers?
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Yeah this isn't even a webhosting issue though. This is a problem with every service I can think of. Just think you've been giving a general consumer a bite at the trough for free for years then you ask for a bit of compensation for that food. It's never a good time. I had these issues with VDS,Gameservers,Voice servers, and especially webhosting. I really don't understand the psychology of it, but its best to avoid giving out free services for traffic. The service is still a cost to yourself, so throw that inherent cost into some advertising or something.
 
I once has a specific server i gave out free hosting to registered charities and certified community groups, but these charities had to provider their charity number which i would check with charity commission and then i would call the charity direct to make sure they were the ones asking for hosting and for community groups they has to be registered with the local authority which i also checked. In the 4 years i ran this before selling it to a specific charity webhost i only had 1 issue when a volunteer with a charity tried to get free hosting using the charity details, this failed once i called the charity, but a couple weeks later that charity called me after they spoke to their board and wanting me to host their site as they were paying £70 a year with their current host and were informed it was going to increase.
 
ughosting said:
One thing I would not do is give away free hosting in the hope of converting your customers to paid customers.

1. Free hosting attracts the worst people
2. You'll be tempted to keep the costs down as to not make a loss.
3, You will end up with miscreants on poor hardware.
4. You end up with complaints posted about the above.
5. Even people who want to pay, get put off by the bad publicity of free hosting.

I think many of us realised long ago, it's easy to attract people to free hosting. Much harder to convert. I
n fact we've spent a long time ensuring we keep profitable customers and shed the freeloaders (or people who create more problem than money).
This I believe has resulted in better services for the remaining customers.

95% of your problems will come from 5% of your customers.

95% of those problems tend to be people who want everything for £2/month

(Ok those stats are what it feels like and not based in fact, but you get the point).

If you lose the people who consistently raise tickets for things they could google easily, that will be better than attracting freeloaders that will damage your bottom line.

Just ask yourself, would you want to share a server with non paying customers?
Click to expand...

I've had a few order the free hosting but didn't purchase or transfer a domain. I suspected they just want space to dump whatever into. I'm not that naive and I contacted each of those people concerning the terms but after a long time of not hearing from them I removed them anyway. I have set the terms so that just because someone orders a free hosting account, I'm still not obligated to give it to them. And I do not have that aspect of my service automated, else anyone could come in and set up whatever they want. That part I do manually. So I do have some safe guards in place. I do appreciate your advice which I am sure is based on experience.
 
webling said:
I've had a few order the free hosting but didn't purchase or transfer a domain. I suspected they just want space to dump whatever into. I'm not that naive and I contacted each of those people concerning the terms but after a long time of not hearing from them I removed them anyway. I have set the terms so that just because someone orders a free hosting account, I'm still not obligated to give it to them. And I do not have that aspect of my service automated, else anyone could come in and set up whatever they want. That part I do manually. So I do have some safe guards in place. I do appreciate your advice which I am sure is based on experience.
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The best thing to do with free hosting if you are going to offer it is to set a setup fee (maybe just 25c or $1) as by doing this they will need to provide a genuine address linked to a payment gateway like paypal
 
When I started my business with my brother, he and I have to face problems like you.If you do not mind, you will succeed
 
webling said:
When I started my web hosting company I had hoped it would grow enough to take me away from my day job. I hoped to eventually live in an RV and live in the warmest area of the US depending on the time of year. But that hasn't come close to even happening. I don't even have enough clients that I earn any money. Maybe I need to advertise more but with money as tight as it is it's hard to get many ads out there.
Click to expand...

Best thing you can do is give great service, and then you will get referrals. To start, post more often in the forums and use social media.
 
No doubt, there is huge no. of competition in the market now a days. To compete this you will have to provide best services at very low prices and when you get a good number of clients then you can increase your prices.

Firstly use methods for advertising which is cheap like social media advertising and when you get a good response then you can go for other advertising methods.
 
Hi Webling!

I noticed that the 'homepage01.jpg" image in the top left corner of your site uses a lossy file format and looks blurry compared to the other content on your homepage (especially on my 4K monitor). There are compression artifacts around the edges of the letters (giving them a noticeable blurred outline) and the colors in the logos are muted and washed out compared to the original logo graphics. I'm guessing the same JPG file was edited and saved multiple times, with each successive save throwing out more detail during compression.

Personally, I don't touch lossy file formats, such as JPG, for small graphics for this very reason and now only use PNG for these types of images - where quality is crucial. PNG will still give you a tiny file - but with the major benefit of it looking crystal clear and with no detail being lost, no matter how many times you tweak it in Paint (or whatever image editor you use) and re-save it.

So I had some time and thought I'd make a new image for you in Photoshop, using your existing one as a template - just to demonstrate the benefit of PNG over JPG. The text is nice and crisp (tried my best to match the font and the color is identical). The logos have been replaced with new downloads of current versions, so there is no degradation in image quality there. The asterisks have been replaced with actual bullet points. The width and height (400px x 140px) are also identical to your original image, so it won't break page layout if you do decide to use it to replace your old one. It just looks a bit more modern overall so it may help to give a better first impression to new visitors! The only difference between the two versions that I came up with is that the CentOS logo is different in each one.

Interestingly, the new images I made are actually half the file size of what you have at the moment, so recreating it from scratch and switching to PNG not only fixed the image quality but halved the file size.

I'm not sure if you have Photoshop but I threw in the PSD project file (with layers) so you can make adjustments - in case you want to adjust the text font or anything.

Hopefully that helps! :D
 

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