Becoming a Web Host
by Marina Maximova

I have decided to write this article due to the interest of many people as to what is exactly involved in becoming the web host especially, how much does it cost and how can one manage it.

First of all, I would like to say that the web hosting can not be your hobby or little add-on to your business; it needs and should be your main business. It is something that you devote quite a lot of your time and attention otherwise it will just fail and not only leave you with the sad feeling of failure, but can as well ruin your reputation as an Internet business at all.

The main and the most important part of your web hosting business is not the fancy scripts installed on your server or the amount of space you generously give to your clients – it’s your customer support service. Each and everyone of your clients needs to feel that he is the only client you have. You must be able to devote quite a time answering his questions even if they do not seem urgent to you. You have to be always there for your clients no matter what day of the week or time of the day it is – weekend or holidays, vacations or big dates – your customers needs your help and support now and today. Otherwise they just start looking for some other place on the net to host their site/business.

When you’re just starting your business prepare yourself to spend a LOT of time personally communicating with people. Later on, when your business grows, you may start thinking of adding the computerized support systems and automatic answering services but be ready that no matter how many FAQs, automatic systems, etc you have implemented your clients will still email you for the personal support and you can’t just answer them “Well, this is all written in the FAQ, just go and read it there” – this is what will make your clients think that they are unwanted in your business!

Now that you've decided that you are able to devote enough time to your new business and that your potential customers won’t drive you crazy with their questions... it’s time to think about what type of web host you would like to be. There is the choice between being reseller, purchasing the dedicated server or making your home computer your own hosting. I will touch here only first 2 options as the third one involves too much for this little article. It would apply to very few people due to the fact that it requires your computer to be connected to the Internet 24/7 per week (which means superior Internet Service provider), purchasing of the expensive hard- and software and other things not common for normal Internet users.

Therefore let’s see what is the difference between Reseller and Dedicated Server owner? As a Reseller you will share a space on the server with the other Resellers like you while if you get the dedicated server you will be the only one hosted there and you will get the special tools to install the certain software just like would you do on your own computer. Of course, dedicated server is much more expensive to start with and needs more knowledge so for starters are recommended to get the Reseller account first. The other good thing about having Reseller account rather than the dedicated server is that in case of the failure of the server you won’t be on your own struggling with restoring it as the special service will take care of it right away while with dedicated server you can find yourself in situation that your server fails while you were out of home for couple hours and when coming back you found that no one took care of it and your inbox is filled with the emails of angry customers.

Let’s say you decided to get the Reseller package – now you need to choose what control panel your clients will have on their accounts. Control panel is one of the really important things to take into consideration as most of the features offered at the hosting depend on what control panel is installed on the server. C-panel is the most progressive choice but the most expensive too so you may want to look into the other choices as well. It is recommended to get first (before you purchase the reseller account) several shared hosting accounts with different hosting providers to see what type of control panel they offer and how close they are to suit your needs. After you made the choice of the control panel you may want to dedicate some decent amount of time to exploring it's features and studying how things work there. As later on, as a Reseller, you will get the most questions on how to do this or that in your control panel and even if most control panels come with the tutorials on how to do things, there many questions are out of the range of those tutorials and you may still need to answer them personally.

Your next step will be deciding on the operating system you would like to have on your server, you need to choose between Linux and Windows. As much as Windows seems to be easier to operate since you already have Windows OS on your personal computer, most scripts and programs were written for Linux as the most common OS for web servers. Also, the Windows servers are generally more expensive but again the choice is yours; choose what you feel more comfortable to operate.

Now that you have your choice of control panel and your operating system, you will need to find the hosting company offering resellers accounts with the control panel and operating system of your choice and get the smallest package to start your business with. Each Reseller account comes with the special control panel for Resellers where they manage their packages, clients and characteristics of their hosting and your first task as the new Reseller to learn this control panel from A to Z before you can start offering the hosting services to the clients. The best way is to read thoroughly the tutorials and documentation provided by your hosting company, some of them will even teach you (free or for a fee) how to use your new account. Try it with your own domains and build your own sites using your new Reseller account to get used how to do it. When you feel comfortable enough you start adding the real clients and develop your business on a regular basis.

As you grow you may want to add the extra stuff to your business such as automatic billing system, automatic support services, live help and others. This is not free of course but by this time you should already start making the profit from your business that will go to the expanding of your Hosting Company.

So as much as I would love to say that it’s really easy to start your own hosting business, you can see that lots of time, knowledge and training (as well as money) goes to develop the really successful business. Offering your services and collecting money from your clients bind you by the mutual contract and you can’t just open your business to see “how it goes” just to close it in couple months or so. As I said before, you can easily ruin your online reputation as a business which can prevent you from developing any other business at all, if people don’t trust you they won’t buy from you no matter what is your business all about. Therefore collect all pros and contras before you start your new hosting business, decided what would be the best for you and if you feel that yes, this is the business that you can and like to manage then go ahead and start with those steps listed here. However if you are not sure, in the bottom of your heart, it would be better think if there is something else in the vast world of Internet that you would like to do rather than starting the business that will not benefit you in the long run.