With the advent of the internet into all our lives and the growth of
e-commerce all over the world, entrepreneurs do look for web hosting
companies that provide cost-effective, managed services that allows them
a higher internet presence and thereby a vast audience.
STEPS
Start by deciding what are the types of hosting you are going to provide.
This can vary from shared hosting to dedicated server hosting to
colocation facilities. Categorize the products that you have knowledge
about and then decide on the range of products you can handle
-
Decide on plans and pricing for your hosting services.
Research your competitors to figure out what services they offer at
what prices. Choose prices and plans that will be competitive in the
market, but keep your prices fair for both your company and your
consumers.
-
Plan out your client handling mechanism. This can be a WHMCS panel through which all your website orders and client handling can be optimized, or something similar.
-
Get your hosting business rolling by tying down a cost effective ISP for your leased line.
Bandwidth is a major constraint that all hosting providers have to look
at since it is at the core of any hosting business. For this reason,
it's crucial to tie down an ISP who can provide you with a bandwidth at a
reasonable price with service level agreements of 99.99% uptime with IP
pools.
-
Plan your bandwidth purchases.
Buying bandwidth is one of the most important aspects of your business
strategy, as this well enable you to decide on your sales techniques as
this is the most important resource in the web hosting business. To
start off, a purchase of Bandwidth of about 10Mbps will allow you around
1000 VPS accounts, so decide on your whole budgeting based on the
bandwidth.
-
Consider investing in power.
Your hosting accounts will have to be online 24/7, and therefore will
be in the higher ranges of power consumption. Think about how you'll
keep these accounts live, even in the case of emergencies. With these
considerations in mind, power should be an important chunk of your
investment.
-
Think about hardware purchases.
Getting hardware as per you clients' requirements and balancing various
accounts on them will be critical for Dedicated, VPS and Shared hosting
businesses, since most of the providers do not charge any installation
cost for them. If you can get the best deals for hardware purchases then
you can save a major sum from your investment.
-
Consider licensing purchases.
A provider will have to decide on the product line that he is getting
into, for example : clients require cPanel with their Linux VPS accounts
for which the license cost is variable from one provider to another
depending on deals with cPanel.net, so having a pricing range for all
such license purchases in sync with the bandwidth calculations (shall
provide you a cost per client) and strategy of deciding product share
(Dedicated vs VPS vs Shared Hosting) in your business will provide you
with a complete overview of pricing ranges.
-
Know about support team costs.
Managing 10 accounts, starting off, will not be an issue for you. But
once your business grows and there are hundreds of tickets that need
resolution, you will need a strong support team. Since support is one
thing that clients look at in the most minutest of details, and most of
them going for monthly contracts will keep you on your toes with respect
to longevity of accounts that provide you recurring incomes. So,
keeping aside a small amount to get in system administrators as and when
your client base increases is a sound strategy to have for sustaining
your business.
-
Make your presence felt among web hosting business and competing.
Once you have streamlined and decided on your business strategy comes
the most exciting part, competing. You will need to be a competitive
provider, keeping your existing clients happy, getting in new clients
and making your presence felt in web hosting communities and forum.
-
Always be a part of existing discussions on various forums.
Use web hosting talk or web cosmo forums, etc. to make your online
presence felt. Always have something constructive to say, since these
forums are a powerful marketing tool for your business and say a lot
about your business.
-
Deciding on various online
marketing strategies such as SEOptimisation, SEMarketing, running a
Google AdWords campaign can also provide you with an option of creating a
larger client base.
-
These are a few major aspects of any web hosting business.
One thing you must note, that all these constraints are really
important from a customers point of view, since in hosting, stability
and support along with guaranteed uptimes are the most crucial
parameters.
Comments
Post a Comment