A reseller hosting business is one of the best ways to make money right now. You get to create a business that’s subscription-based (which earns you more money over time) in a way that feels legitimate, instead of being contrived just to keep money flowing away from your customers. (It’s just like renting a house, so it feels fair to pay a monthly fee for the server space.)
Best of all, because we offer unlimited reseller hosting, you don’t even need to buy your own servers! You get to save the money you’d otherwise have spent on expensive servers, a location to house the servers, electricity to power the servers, air conditioning to cool the servers, and staff to maintain the servers. Instead of paying any of that, you only pay a small monthly fee. This keeps your overheads nice and low.
To make sure your business reaches its full moneymaking potential, you need to follow ten basic steps.
But, first things first…
What is a reseller hosting business?
The first thing you need to know to understand reseller hosting businesses is that every website on the internet is stored on a server.
Servers are expensive to buy and operate, so most people don’t buy their own servers. Instead, they buy a hosting package from a web hosting company. Web hosting companies buy and maintain servers, and then they rent server space to their customers. In exchange for a small monthly fee, web hosts will let you store your website on their servers.
A reseller hosting business is a business that resells web hosting.
This means that you’ll buy hosting from a web host, then you’ll sell that same hosting space to your clients for a profit.
Ten steps to start a successful reseller hosting business:
- Choose a great hosting company
- Choose unlimited reseller hosting
- Set goals and make a business plan
- Create a variety of hosting plans
- Figure out your tech support
- Make your company legal
- Brand your business creatively
- Use a billing system
- Install an SSL certificate
- Promote your business
1. Choose a great hosting company
This is the most important part of creating a profitable web hosting business. If your web host has terrible uptime, your customers will have terrible uptime. If your web host has terrible customer support, and you can never get in touch with anybody when you need them, you won’t be able to get answers for your customers’ questions.
The success of your business depends on the quality of your web host. So, make sure you choose a great hosting company.
Here are some things to look out for:
- Customer support: Choose a web hosting company that offers great customer support. We offer 24/7 customer support all year round.
- High uptime: Uptime is the percentage of time that a website is functional. The opposite of uptime is downtime, which is just as awful as it sounds. If your web hosting company offers anything less than the 99.9% uptime guarantee that we offer, you should keep looking.
- White label hosting: “White label” means that your hosting company won’t label your product with their logos. We offer white label hosting, so you’re free to add your own logos to your product and brand it however you want!
- WHM panel: The Web Host Manager panel makes it easy to keep track of your customers’ accounts, grant admin privileges, and do all the other things you need to be able to do to perform your job as a web host effectively. This panel is so easy to use that even complete tech novices can use it to become expert web hosts.
2. Choose unlimited reseller hosting
Unlimited reseller hosting means you’ll be able to buy unlimited domains. If you get tons of customers and need more storage space to host those domains, all you have to do is buy more storage!
You don’t have to pay every single time your customers need another domain.
3. Set goals and make a business plan
Great businesses don’t happen by chance. They require a lot of planning and a great strategy.
Think about what you want for your business in the next month…three months…year…three years and figure out exactly what you need to do to make those things happen.
4. Create a variety of hosting plans
Even if you’re just starting out, you want to attract lots of different customers. This means you need to create different hosting packages, so you can satisfy their various needs.
Some customers will want a hosting plan that’s affordable and doesn’t give them lots of extra storage space they won’t use. So, make a plan for them. Other customers will happily pay top dollar for lots of storage space and some web hosting extras, like SSL certificates, an email marketing tool, and anything else you can come up with.
Make enough plans to keep all your customers happy!
5. Figure out your tech support
If you’ve chosen a good web host, you’ve won half the battle here: All you’ll need to do most of the time is contact customer support if your customers have a problem.
But that won’t always be enough. You’ll eventually need your own tech support team. This doesn’t have to be a dazzling lineup in the beginning. A few patient, tach-savvy friends should do it. But make proper tech support a priority as soon as you have the customer base to justify it.
6. Make your company legal
Legal requirements vary from one jurisdiction to another, so contact an attorney and find out exactly what you need to do to satisfy the legal requirements where you live. You don’t want to do all the work of creating a successful company, only to get in trouble with the law later on. Make your company legally compliant right from the start.
7. Brand your business creatively
To make your small business compete with big, established businesses, you’ll need a strong brand. The more unique it is, the better. There are successful brands that are built on reliability and seriousness, and then there are successful brands that are built on accessibility and humor. Choose the brand personality that feels right to you, then make sure every aspect of your brand works together to attract the kind of customer you want to work with.
8. Use a billing system
A billing system like WHMCS takes a lot of the headache out of keeping track of customer payments. That’s why we offer it to our reseller clients. You’ll love not having to jot down pay dates in your calendar, and the automatic notifications you get when a customer misses a payment will make your life so much easier.
9. Install an SSL certificate
You’re going to be collecting a lot of sensitive information from your clients, including their credit card information and their addresses. Protect them by installing an SSL certificate.
10. Promote your business
Of course, you can’t make money from your product unless people know you’re selling it. So, promote your business anywhere you can. (Find creative ways to do this, so you don’t end up annoying your friends.) You can promote your brand on social media, tell your friends and family that you have a web hosting company, and work with bloggers to get your brand name out in the world.
That’s it! Follow these ten steps, scale your business, and you’ll reap the rewards of having a successful reseller hosting business.
