Common Scenarios for Becoming a Web Hosting Reseller Review of 4 types of web hosting reseller business	Visited: 682 5.0/5.0 (2 votes total) Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Hartono Oey July 13, 2009

When you're looking for web hosting space on a budget, reseller hosting is the way to go. And as with any service, you can expect the best from people who operate within the proximity.

Web host reseller means that not only can you find great web hosting for your site(s), but you can also provide it for others as an extra source of cash. Web hosting reseller programs let you act as middleman between existing web hosting providers and new clients that you find for them. Income in reseller hosting programs is derived in the form of commissions paid directly by the provider and/or profits based on reselling discounted packages at a higher price.

Web hosting companies that offer a web host reseller program find it to be an extremely popular tool for them to market and sell their services to new clients in untapped markets with minimal overhead. As a participant in a web hosting reseller program, you would be a hot commodity to these companies, who will often compete to obtain your reseller hosting services almost more than they might to get new clients. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense; one client is just one client, but any one person doing reseller hosting represents limitless new clients.

The benefit to setting up a reseller hosting service, rather than, say, running your own server and starting a web hosting services from scratch, is that you get the support and resources of an established firm. You get to sell and possibly manage a small portion of an already successful enterprise rather than having to scrimp and save, sweat and toil to insert a new player onto an already inundated field of competitors.
There are many ways you can sell web space on another company's server:

• You can act affiliate marketing programs where a link from your sites and advertisements may take the potential customers directly to the company's own site, or customers may simply mention you to the provider as their referrer.

• But besides merely marketing another host's services, you might also choose to sell the web host’s services personally to the clients. All future contact would then take place directly between the web hosting company and the customer, but as a reseller hosting provider.

• You could act as the hosting company yourself, marketing, selling, and then managing the web space that you provide. You purchased it from the actual provider for a discounted price. It would appear to the customer as though you actually owned your own web hosting company, rather than just being an affiliate in a web host reseller program.

• Last but not least, you buy a bunch of web resources yourself and parse it out as you see fit to provide whatever packages you wish to sell to your customers. If can even buy your own server, and connect it to high speed big bandwidth internet connection. Of course you need help from an internet tech-man. This, probably the most comprehensive reseller hosting program, offers you maximum control over your business and potentially the greatest returns, but it also requires significantly more attention, responsibility, and risk.

If you do decide to explore the wonderful world of reseller hosting, you'll want to figure out which services to offer. You could offer store fronts, search engine optimization tools, dedicated server accounts, domain names, etc. While you definitely want to offer your customers as much in one place as they might need - as most customers won't want to purchase their packages a la carte from a handful of web hosting (and reseller hosting) companies if they can avoid it - you also don't want to overextend yourself. It's advisable to consider specializing your services to a degree, especially if you're just one person. Decide who your target market is, where specifically you'll be advertising to find them, what the predominant needs of those clients might be, and then cater your reseller hosting packages to their specific needs.

Whichever method of reseller hosting you choose, if you do it right, you can host your own websites for next to nothing.

When you're looking for web hosting space on a budget, reseller hosting is the way to go. And as with any service, you can expect the best from people who operate within the proximity.

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