How To Start A Web Hosting Business in 20 Steps

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20 Steps to Follow Before Starting a Web Hosting
Business
You might have daydreamed of starting your own
business. Thats a good idea! And why not? Its
really amazing as you will be the boss. No doubt
your schedule would be too tight as your working
hours will be more than a 9-5 job but you will
really love every second of it. Wont you? Also,
once you start your own business, you wont be
ever hunting for a job. Is your heartbeat
increased in excitement? Want this to happen in
reality? The first step in any online business
is to develop a website based on your chosen
niche and then host it on the server to make it
available to all. But what if you start your own
web hosting business? That sounds to be a good
idea! You just need to buy a reseller hosting
plan, create your own hosting packages and start
selling them. There will be several tips and
pieces of advice about what you should and
shouldnt do prior to starting your web hosting
venture. So, you get stuck on whom to believe
and where to start. To clear your confusion,
below is the list of factors that you should
consider before starting your web hosting
business 20 Steps to Follow Before Starting
Your Web Hosting Business 1. Identify Your
Business Goals
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The innovative technology has eliminated almost
all the barriers in any online business and so
anyone can start their web hosting business. With
reseller hosting its not at all tough. While
starting a business, everyone aims at earning a
profit or extra income and web hosting business
actually helps in that. You can completely focus
on your business growth while you choose to
become a reseller. 2. Find Your Target
Audience You should know your target audience
prior to starting your hosting business. Since
you have chosen your niche as hosting, your
target audience would be all individuals,
bloggers, web developers, web designers,
professionals, startups, small and medium
business owners, or anyone who wishes to have
their own website.
Deciding your target audience and how to reach
them easily is a crucial factor that you must
study before starting a web hosting business.
This will not only help you to attract the
audience but also assist in increasing the
traffic of your website.
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• Analyse Your Competitors
• It is always important to analyze your
  competitors while you are starting your hosting
  business. Check what they are offering in their
  hosting plans and then include the features that
  are different from them. Identify the pain points
  of your target audience and then add the
  solutions to those in your hosting plans to make
  your hosting unique. Also, study the trends and
  promotional activities of your competitors.
• Decide Your Brand Name

The first and foremost thing that people notice
while buying anything online is the business
name. So, before finalizing your brand name, deep
research is essential. You will find several
companies in the market all with different names.
Your brand name shouldnt be similar to any of
your competitors. Remember that a brand name
needs to be innovative, creative and should
reflect your expertise or niche. 5. Decide the
Domain Name and Build Your Website After you have
decided on your business name, you can choose the
same for your domain but if it isnt available
select the URL that is easy to spell or relates
to your web hosting business. For example, if
your brand name is ABC Hosting and abchosting.com
isnt available you can try something like
hostingbyabc.com. Secondly, see that your
website is visually appealing as well as easy to
navigate. Related How To Create A Website When
You Are Not A Website Designer?
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6. Get Familiar with Features and Software

• Initially after selecting hosting as your niche,
  you need to have the basic knowledge of features
  such as bandwidth, disk space, domains, control
  panel, email accounts, etc.
• This will help you to design the packages for
  your hosting service as well as explain the
  features to your clients if they ask for them.
• Select the Right Host for Your Reseller Hosting
• You will find several hosting companies in the
  market that offer reseller hosting and so, you
  need to choose the one that offers the best
  quality service at a reasonable price. Also,
  check their customer service experience through
  the reviews as you will need to contact them for
  your client queries. Dont miss to check, if they
  are available 24/7 to
• resolve your queries.
• Check for White Label Support
• Check if your provider is supporting 100 white
  labeling. This means they should use an
  anonymous domain name for the hostname of their
  servers. With white-label support, your client
  wont see your hosting providers name anywhere
  in the hosting control panel and will easily
  sign up for your services. This will help your
  business to appear independent from your hosting
  provider.
• Buy Reseller Hosting and Create Your Hosting
  Packages
• When you have finalized your website design, you
  should buy reseller hosting and create your own
  hosting packages for your clients. You can check
  your competitors

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pricing and the features they have added to their
hosting plans. This will help you to create
hosting packages with competitive prices for your
clients. 10. Complete Information About Your
Business

• Your website should have the complete information
  about your hosting business. This
• will include an About Us page that describes your
  companys story a Contact Us page that contains
  your postal address email address and phone
  number details about your hosting plans and
  features etc. Also, add privacy policy pages,
  terms of service, and service level agreements
  on the website. The information needs to be such
  that it builds trust among the visitors to your
  website.
• Offer Different and Secure Payment Gateways
• Today, security has become the most important
  factor when it comes to payment gateway. You
  could be offering different modes for online
  payment such as credit cards, debit cards, net
  banking, etc. so that the clients can choose the
  simple and reliable one. But since you are going
  to deal with monetary transactions, you need to
  offer payment gateways that are highly secured
  for you as well as your clients.
• Use a Corporate Billing System

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• Having an excellent system for handling your
  billings is also a key factor in a hosting
  business. You cant be 24/7 online to activate
  new orders and also cant make your clients
  wait. Therefore, a corporate billing system such
  as WHMCS will help you to activate the orders of
  your clients automatically. It allows you to
  manage your clients with a built-in helpdesk
  without logging in to multiple systems. WHMCS
  will make communication easier and your overall
  presence would be more professional.
• Use Private Name Servers
• Private name servers make you appear professional
  as well as allow you to easily switch from one
  hosting provider to another. You can migrate all
  web hosting accounts of your customers without
  asking them to make any changes from their end.
  After
• migrating the data, you will only need to change
  the nameserver IPs from the old hosting provider
  to the new IPs offered by the new hosting
  provider.
• Install an SSL certificate
• Security is another key factor in a hosting
  business. Since customers are going to buy the
  product from you, their personal details such as
  names, addresses, e-mails, credit cards, debit
  cards, etc. will be stored in your billing system
  on your server. Therefore, your clients must get
  assured that their personal data is secure and no
  one can steal or misuse it. An SSL certificate
  helps in encrypting the communication between the
  server and the visitor. Due to this, no one can
  steal the important information.
• Related SSL Certificate Can Act Like A Superman
  To Protect Your Website

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15. Provide 24/7 Technical Support

• It is essential to offer 24/7 technical support
  to your clients as you are running a hosting
  business. This will help the clients to resolve
  their issues easily at any time and they would
  always be happy with your service. Make sure you
  are offering all the contact options such as
  live chat, email, and phone support. For live
  chat, you can select tawk.to as it is free and
  also, lets you monitor chats via its mobile app.
• Provide Dedicated IP
• It is recommended to buy a dedicated IP with your
  reseller hosting and use it for the domains
  hosted under your reseller account. The IP
  provided to you by your host is used by multiple
  resellers for its clients and if anything goes
  wrong on any of these domains, it will affect
  your clients domains too. When you provide a
  dedicated IP to your clients, it helps in
  securing email usage and reputation from the
  abuse consequences.
• Have a Marketing Plan

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• Once you have built the website with all your
  hosting packages lined up, you should know the
  ways to market them. Marketing is important for
  people to know that you are selling hosting
  services. Also, with marketing you can present
  your hosting service in different ways and make
  it stand unique among competitors. This will help
  you in gaining the attention of visitors.
• Related Creation and Execution of Digital
  Marketing Plan for Online Business
• Create a Buzz
• Creating your presence on social media in advance
  to starting your business is good.
• This is just to make people aware of your hosting
  service. You can also display your brand name by
  saying, On the way or Coming soon. Or can
  start a countdown on social media to create
  enthusiasm among the customers.
• Give People a Reason to Buy
• The online platform has become the need of every
  business today. Therefore, there are millions of
  websites being developed daily and those need to
  be hosted on the server to make them live. This
  is where you can give people a reason to buy your
  hosting service.

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20. Add Trust Seals at the Footer of Your Website
The BBB-accredited company seal, McAfee, PayPal
seal, and a seal of a PCI company show that you
have passed all e-commerce requirements for
selling online. Also, it represents that you are
running a company that is active as well as
verified. This will help build a trust among
your clients. At least you should have one of the
seals at the bottom of your website footer.
Reseller hosting is not only the best way for
starting a web hosting business but also to earn
a good profit. Becoming a web hosting business
owner isnt a tough job as you just need to buy
the reseller hosting, design your own packages,
and sell them. Also, since reseller hosting is a
recurring business, you will continuously earn
revenue by billing your clients at your own
prices. But you should basically know some
factors beforehand starting your web hosting
business to make it a success.