Reselling Hosting?

[kyleirwin]

I've seen "reseller" accounts with just about every hosting company I've checked out. How many of you guys actually resell it. Have any of you setup websites selling webhosting through any of these reseller accounts?

If so, what host do you use?

Obviously, it would be a very competitive market to get into, you'd almost have to find some sub-nitch to get into. Anybody care to vaguely hint as to what nitch's to target?

 

[Payton]

Yeah I do some on the side for people I know... basically it sucks

low margins, a decent amount of work, and never ending competition. You can definitely make a living out of it if you want to, but it's not the kind of work I'd want to keep on doing. I've started turning away referrals and just keeping it to people I know.

 

[Fraser]

Yeah I think you would be better promoting some of the hosting companies as an affiliate rather than reselling. The margins on hosting are so small that you have you would have to be doing it in huge volume to be competitive. Also when you are reselling and the website goes down your customers phone you to complain but you don't really have any control over fixing it.

The hosts that are doing the huge volume also seem to manage to offer great commission rates so maybe try that route instead.

 

[Nathan]

I used to run a web hosting business once upon a time. it specialised in reselling. Basically people resold my product.

Let me get to the point here. Don't waste your time with reselling you will make no money from it. It is a very very flooded market and unless you can offer something that no one has ever offered before at a price that kills every one else.

Become an affiliate of hoting companies for sure but becoming a reseller? You will wish you hadn't.

Having said that, reseller accounts can be a good way to get access to large amounts of space and bandwidth and teh ability to host several of your and friends domains for reasonable prices.

 

[Dave]

i had a reseller account, i just used it to manage multiple sites, couldn't be bothered to sell anythin.

 

[Charlie]

If you design and then manage sites for clients the hosting can be an add on that pays. Often they will pay 200% what it costs you and they may pay a retainer for ongoing work.

But otherwise, I wouldn't bother unless you know you will get hundreds of clients. The margins would be too low,

 

[Jan]

i had a reseller account, i just used it to manage multiple sites, couldn't be bothered to sell anythin.

That's what I plan to do with mine. It's so easy to do oneself, why pay some else?

 

[KSRothwell]

That's what I plan to do with mine. It's so easy to do oneself, why pay some else?

Is doing this THAT much cheaper then just getting a domain and some hosting? Or even renting a server?

 

[marc]

If you design and then manage sites for clients the hosting can be an add on that pays. Often they will pay 200% what it costs you and they may pay a retainer for ongoing work.

i would imagine a lot of the people here who run lots of sites either have a dedicated server or are using some flavor of reseller hosting. I have had a reseller account for as long as I can remember, though it took some time to find a place that is reliable (currently ResellerZoom). I host all my sites there and a few handpicked clients pay for at least 400% of my operating expenses. A real easy thing to do is sell folks email hosting for $100/year - a few of those and you have your hosting paid for. Of course if you have any really high traffic sites that is another story, but one would hope these would be generating income to compensate.

 

[chrislingle]

the nice thing about a reseller account is that for $25 a month I can host a bunch of my sites. I get 5 gig of space that is hard for me to use up even with my datafeed sites. I have a blog with more than 5000 pages and it takes up just 300 meg or so. I have plenty of band width etc. most companies might let you host 6 domains on an account but I have 35 per account and could host more but don't have the space.

 

[sknydave]

Reselling hosting online is cutthroat. You have to host sites for 2 dollars a month and offer 5 terrabytes of bandwidth with 100 gigs of space. Support for the customers is the real pain.

I don't offer hosting of any kind, but I know someone who is making a killing offering web design and hosting for local businesses. There are still a ton of companies out there that are clueless when it comes to the web.