So I started a hosting company...

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Good luck with this - I know first hand how competitive and sometimes boring the hosting industry can be! Decent money if you can get a small dedicated customer base however.
 


i love your post.

I hope zen six is listening :) . I loved your post so much(erect) i printed it and filed it for later reference. This will earn you users without spending a whole lot of money on advertising. Affiliate bloggers will blog about you endlessly. :)

Dont be suprised having more, money to acquire premium domains if you follow the advice from guys in this forum.
erect said:
You've got a large supply of a tangible good that we all consume monthly. Just get creative and build up users & income before running with the big dogs.

More than likely, many of us would probably do this for free hosting & domains. Not to get too in depth but something like

Sales
1 domain name = .25 points
1 small package = 1 point
1 med package = 2 points
1 reseller account = 2 points
1 vps account = 3 points
1 dedicated account = 5 points

So you accumulate points (residually also at 1/2 the point value) and pay for the services you use with those points.

Services
domain name = 5 points yearly renewal
reseller account = 10 points monthly
new ip address = 1 point monthly
vps = 15 pts monthly
dedicated = 30 pts monthly

So it's close to worthless for PPC people but there are those of us who are 100% organic and could easily push hosting at no hard cost.

I personally drop about $225/month just on hosting and domains and would welcome a system that would help recoup some of that lost income. It would cost me nothing. It would cost you very little & would get you recurring users.

You could even go as far as outsourcing a designer to make landing pages for those PPC only people and could provide an all in one service to them as well. How about installing a homegrown tracking system or preinstall p202 with all reseller accounts for all your clients so they don't have to deal with that side of things.

You can't go buck for buck with godaddy, HG, etc so you're going to have to try and bring something to the table that they can't.
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I might try a $25/year plan in a few months. I'd like to have a backup for when my main host goes down. Also, will you do private domain registrations?
 
Well I managed to rack up 15 or so customers from this thread so far (not counting the 2 fraud attempts). Not to bad for testing purposes.

I'm still not advertising anything and this thread is the only place online that I've even mentioned ZenSix. I spending a lot of time on the back-end tweaking the client area.

Here's a few questions I've had from you guys so far:

How quick can you get my account set up?

The guarantee is 24 hours, but I normally have it up within an hour.

How fast is your ticket response?

Normally under 30 minutes. Longest so far was 6 hours because of an e-mail issue.

How about an affiliate program?

I'm working on it. It will either be a one time payment, equal to the amount of the customers first month. Or it will be a small recurring payment for the lifetime of the referred customers account. It will still be a few months before it goes live.

I tried the coupon code "wickedfire" and it didn't work.

Yeah, that was my fault. I gave it a limit of ten uses, not thinking too many people would sign up from this thread. I went back and made it an unlimited coupon, so if you tried before and it didn't work, give it another shot.

Will you host an autoblog?

Sure, as long as it's not pulling a crazy amount of feeds. Remember this is shared hosting and there are limits to the resource usage.

You're forum is closed, can I have access?

Not yet, I'm still working on it. Besides, there's no real point yet... give it a few weeks (or months).

---

That should answer all of the questions. Thanks to everyone for the positive comments. :)

Now go use coupon code "wickedfire" and get $5 off any plan.
 
posted by subigo:
I'll be setting up the affiliate program at some point, but I obviously don't have the capital to compete with companies like Hostgator, so the payout probably won't pique the interest of too many WF members.
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I had the idea with my hosting affilate program to create custom coupon codes that would be indexed to a specific affiliate (I doubt I invented the idea mind you; just one of those things that came to me while taking a shit that I have not actually seen being done, although it probably is.) The concept is simple enough -- just let affiliates create dynamic coupon codes on which they are paid a recurring commission. No need to worry with an affiliate link to promote, and the tracking is dead simple -- and since it's recurring, a code posted at a couple of coupon/freebie related or hosting related forums could produce some decent commissions for the affiliate without ever having to spend a dime on PPC, build a review site etc. You might consider something like this as it is much easier to track, and the appeal of the recurring commission can attract affiliates who might otherwise shy away from a low cash value.


Frank
 
I think you should up your limits from 1gb to 5gb and 2gb to 10gb. 1-2 is just too low, maybe increase your price like a dollar a month and you'll be fine. You won't be able to compete with a company like hostmonster @ 6.99/month for "unlimited" but idk.
 
CShoemaker said:
I think you should up your limits from 1gb to 5gb and 2gb to 10gb. 1-2 is just too low, maybe increase your price like a dollar a month and you'll be fine. You won't be able to compete with a company like hostmonster @ 6.99/month for "unlimited" but idk.
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You'd be surprised at how much "just a GB more" will do to a company. Personally I think his prices are spot on. It's better to offer quality than an overselling monster that goes down daily.
 
CShoemaker said:
I think you should up your limits from 1gb to 5gb and 2gb to 10gb. 1-2 is just too low, maybe increase your price like a dollar a month and you'll be fine. You won't be able to compete with a company like hostmonster @ 6.99/month for "unlimited" but idk.
Click to expand...

I could do that, but I won't. If someone actually needs more space/bandwidth I can always work with them.

I'm pretty sure everyone knows that sites like hostgator/monster/etc all oversell like crazy. Very rarely do they deliver on their promise. Hell, they now suspend any site to hit the front page of digg (or get a lot of stumbles) and tell people to go dedicated. That's ridiculous.

I prefer to go after customers who know the value of a host with real limits and good support. I could fill up a server in three months if I oversold everything, but I would pay for it with a ton of tickets everyday from uneducated customers.

Hostgator and the like are one type of host, ZenSix is another. I'd compare us to someone like A Small Orange. They've never oversold and always focused on customer support. When I was with them (before starting ZenSix) I never had a ticket go unanswered for more than an hour. They have a ton of clients and they offer less space/bandwidth than ZenSix does and they charge more.

Anyway, my point is that I would rather be realistic in approach and not overhype the service. You know what they say, "Under Promise, Over Deliver".

And if you or anyone need more space/bandwidth, just ask.
 
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