… that is the question.
My Dad, Brothers, Friend and I are thinking about starting a Web Hosting company (well, more than thinking, researching really) and I have a lot of questions that need answered.
– First off, is it a good idea.
– Second, can we make money.
– Third, how do you do it.
I think we have the first two pretty much covered. Web Hosting can be a lucrative business, especially when packaged along with website design and consulting. But there is a bit of a learning curve that needs to be traversed in order to get up to speed. One of our major goals would be to provide reliable, friendly customer service. But to do this, we all need to know what the heck is going on.
There are many established web hosting companies around and we are going to have to set ourselves apart. I think we can do this with reliability and quality customer service. The biggest complaint I’ve seen about web hosting companies revolves around these two subjects.
The plan is to start out small. Rent one dedicated server and start advertising. The goal would be to, eventually, buy the servers and run them directly from our location. But in the interest of smaller up-front costs…. this will come later.
Anyway, if anybody out there has any advice on starting a business such as this, or any small business for that matter, drop me a note. I’m interested in hearing everyone’s opinions. Also, if anyone is looking for someone to host their next site, (shameless plug) look me up. Hopefully we will be up and running sometime in Early 2004.
Hmmm…. gotta come up with a company name…….
Having been there, I would suggest NOT hosting internally, if you can help it. I mean, it seems simple; just put up the machine on a decent-sized pipe. But it’s not. Redundancy is the real bugaboo, IMO. You need at least two connections in case one goes down. And hardware to manage the switch. And DNS that understands that. Oh, and a generator or major, major UPS in case of an extended power outage. And an administrator to deal with creating new sites. And viruses, etc.
There are hosting companies that will provides reseller agreements that can get you started for minimal cost. I use CIHost, and though I have NOT signed up for their reseller program — it was about $300 when I looked into it — it looked like a pretty good program. Very nice profit margin, and customers didn’t know they dealing with anybody but the reseller, even though CIHost provided all the necessary administration and even customer service.
Whatever you decide to do, good luck!
—- Nick
Thanks for the advice Nick. I think we are going to go with some sort of reselling. Although we may just bite the bullet and get a dedicated server from one of those companies. It’s not a lot more money and then there is more room for growth. If you do have any more advice, I’m up for hearing it. Thanks again.
Getting a dedicated server sure takes care of a lot of those problems.
Good luck with it!
—- Nick
Thanks for the advice! That will be useful for me.