Making money from the comfort of your home has never been easier. There are millions of freelancers working from home all over the world. One idea for making money involves providing reseller web hosting to third-parties.
Overview of Reselling
If you are familiar with the field of web development, you have certainly come across many different hosting providers. Reselling hosting is when you subscribe to a plan from one of these providers and then rent out the resources to your clients. The number of clients you can have depends on the resources and plan that was chosen.
Providing reliable reseller hosting to your clients is great way to establish long-lasting relationships and maintain a steady stream of profit. You will be the middleman between the provider and your clients. If the client has questions or concerns, they will be turning to you for help. You can reach out to your provider for help, but you will be communicating with the clients directly.
Provide Other Services
Clients often use reseller hosting plans because they are also receiving help with web design or building from the same source. If you have the resources and skills required to help with web design or development, you could initially offer these services. When the client is happy with your work, they may also decide to subscribe to your hosting plan. This way, you are receiving payment for your initial service as well as earning reoccurring revenue for your hosting plan, all from the same client.
Determine Your Profit Margins
Running a reseller business is popular because there are no high start-up costs. However, there is still the cost of the hosting plan to take into consideration. Typically, a hosting plan will cost at least $30 per month or $1 per day. For you to break even, you need to make at least $2 per day.
Keep the prices of your hosting subscription in mind when you set the cost of your plan for clients. They will be expecting certain features, so you will probably not be able to get away with the cheapest plan. Once you start signing up multiple customers, you will easily cover your costs and continue making a profit. At that point, you can start thinking about upgrading to a better plan as your client base expands.
Efficient Marketing
Once your reseller hosting business is up and running, you will need to spread the word about yourself to make money. If you already have an established website or blog, your regular visitors may have an interest in your new service. Even if they are not looking to switch providers, they may be able to forward your information to other people who may contact you.
Create a distribution list of your existing customer or people you think may be willing to switch hosting providers. Send out an email of your service and what you are offering. With any luck, you will reel in some new clients.
Offer Perks
Competing with other big-name hosting providers can be difficult, as they already control a great deal of the market. You will also have a hard time beating their prices, as you will lose money if you try. Instead of focusing on price, you will need to offer your clients additional bonuses if they sign with you as compared to someone else.
For instance, you could offer an incentive that you will include the hosting setup for free. Another thing you can highlight is your unwavering customer service and offer to be available 24/7/365 for whatever they need. Clients may get attracted to a smaller provider such as yourself, as they will not get lost in the shuffle of being with a big-name company.
Choose a Good Plan
To make money with your endeavor, you will need to select a good hosting provider and reseller plan. You should check that the provider has a favorable reputation among the hosting community. Another thing to make sure of is that the provider has a high uptime rate. The uptime is the amount of time that your clients’ websites will be live on the internet and not down for maintenance, hardware failures, or other reasons. If the servers are down for longer than what they guaranteed, the provider may have an obligation to pay you for the lost time.