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How to start your own hosting company for free ?!?
By markneter | August 30, 2007
(1 votes, average: 1 out of 10)
Loading ...“How to start my own hosting company?” This was the question that I asked myself 8 years ago. After making a research I understood that it is not easy for an individual to establish his/her hosting company! You should be familiar with the latest hardware and software, and you need to have the money to invest them. (I am not talking about buying only a cheap computer and installing several free software). Say that you are a tech guy who has the money required for this investments, also remember that you should make agreements with bandwidth providers, hire some employees (you can’t work 7/24), deal with support, sales, finance, marketing and operational works etc. etc. Briefly, it is really hard to run a physical hosting company.
It was so 8 years ago, and it is the same now! Nothing changed! If you are the guy that I described above, you don’t need suggestions from me, cause you are one step beyond me! But what if not? Don’t quail yourself, nowadays we have some other ways to start a hosting company. Additionaly, there are some companies that offers this service free. Now I am going to explain how to start a hosting company easily (compared the starting one physically) and some free or cheap solutions.
What is reseller hosting?
Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting wherein the account owner has the ability to use his/her allotted hard drive space and bandwidth to host websites on behalf of third parties. The reseller purchases the host’s services wholesale and then sells them to his customers for a profit. The certain portion of hard drive and bandwidth is allocated to reseller account. (Source:Wikipedia)
Basically, you’ll buy a reseller package from a provider, and sell hosting services under your brand within the limits of your reseller package. With a reseller package, you don’t have to deal with hardware, software, maintenance, backups or anything technical. All you have to do is, designing a website or using a pre-built template, learning the simple to use control panel, and start marketing your company. Most of the reseller hosts even doesn’t provide support and outsource it to the main company. (Mostly applicable if you are targeting english speaking customers.)
Which companies provide reseller hosting accounts?
Actually, I can’t provide you a full list, or a suggestions for reseller accounts. The Web Host Magazine’s Reseller Hosting section should help you to find some paid companies that offer reseller hosting. (http://www.webhostmagazine.com/wh/re/), for free alternatives continue to read.
Free Reseller Hosting Alternatives
There are two free alternatives I know that serves for different purposes;
The first is resellers panel, which offers you a free reseller account that you can sell your own hosting services for a premium. Their free reseller hosting program offers complete automation for your web hosting business. They provide the hosting service, the billing and the 24/7 technical support to your clients. You have the freedom to set up your own prices and thus maintain full control over your profits. In addition, as a reseller you have full access to your clients’ accounts and to detailed statistics of all your sales. Follow this link to start your hosting business at resellers panel.
Resellers Panel is a great free way to start your own paid hosting company. I said paid, cause there is another alternative to start your own free hosting company. As you know there are many free hosting providers that offers visitors free web hosting with some limitations. They give the service for free for either making money by adding advertisement to users pages, and/or forcing them to upgrade paid premium packages.
ByetHost allows you to start your own free hosting company for free. You will have your own free hosting company under your brand, add advertisements to users pages, and make money from this advertisements. You will get 100% of the ad revenue, but nothing if someone signup for a paid package, or upgrades their free hosting account. Honestly, I don’t think that the ad-revenue is a big amount. A friend of mine operates a free hosting site (not at ByetHost), makes about $300 monthy with 2000 active users.
You can find a list of ByetHost resellers I’ve found at ByetHost Clones post. This people started their free hosting companies at ByetHost and giving out free hosting to the community under their own brand. The post may give you an idea what type of features you can offer to your potential users.
If you want to operate your own free web hosting business for fun, you should start with ByetHost immediately, otherwise Resellers Panel is a better solution for starting a web hosting business, especially if you have a good customer potential.
Dedicated Servers
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting where the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc. Server administration can usually be provided by the hosting company as an add-on service. In some cases a dedicated server can offer less overhead and a larger return on investment. (Source: Wikipedia)
If you want to increse your freedom on your hosting business, offer customized hosting packages and services to your clients, and have a total control of your servers, you should lease a dedicated server from a provider. Although it offers more, you should also have the technical knowledge to get all this additional opportunities, otherwise you will use it as a regular reseller hosting package. The only difference will be all your clients sites will be on your own dedicated servers and didn’t affected from other clients of your provider.
Unfortunately there are no free dedicated server providers that I know as reseller hosting, but if required I can suggest you some software to use for your hosting business in my later posts. That is all for this post.
Feel free to ask a question, or giving a feedback using the comment form below. Moreover, I’ll be glad if you add the other free services you know.
Tags: Article, Dedicated Server, Online Business, Reseller Hosting, Web Hosting | No Comments »
How can you host your own wordpress blog!!!
By markneter | August 26, 2007
(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...Several days ago someone (relequestual) asked a question on yahoo answers site, and after a search for this topic, I noticed that there are many similiar questions. I replied relequestual’s question on yahoo answers, but I want to broaden this topic here.
Wordpress is a blog publishing system written in Php scripting language and backed up by mysql database management system, therefore it needs a server that is capable of PHP (at least PHP 4.2) and a mysql server (at least MySQL 4). To publish your own wordpress blog you need either host your own wordpress blog, or create one on a wordpress based blogging service like wordpress.com. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Article, Web Hosting, Wordpress | 4 Comments »
What do free web hosts gain from offering free web hosting?
By markneter | August 14, 2007
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...There are a lot of free web hosting providers offering their services for free, you may wonder why & how they make this favor to us. Usually, the free web hosting services will earn by placing advertisements on your pages. The hosting service earns money whenever your pages are surfed by the end users. The more your page is visited, the more it costs to them, but also the more they get from advertisers. Briefly, they make money by combining their technical resources with your content.
Some of this companies also provides ad-less hosting to the community. Some might be supported by big companies, universities and similiar sources, but how about the others? How can they provide this service for free without adding any advertisement to your content? The answer is simple, they use it as a marketing strategy, they provide the service with some limitations and if some day your page grows and you need a better package most probably you have to go for a premium package from them. It is hard to migrate to another provider on a high traffic web page. If you can’t make the migration process smoothy you will lose lots of time, visitors and prestige.
After all this information, it is good idea to read the article “How To Decide Between Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting?”
Tags: Article, Web Hosting | 1 Comment »
How To Decide Between Free Web Hosting And Paid Web Hosting?
By markneter | August 13, 2007
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...There are many choices for hosting your webpage or blog either free or paid. But why to pay for a hosting package while they are free ones? I suggest you to read the article “What do free web hosts gain from offering free web hosting?” before this one if you didn’t read it already. The question is “Are you rich enough to buy cheap things?” It may sound strange but sometimes free web hosting might be more expensive then paid hosting solutions. However, it doesn’t mean that choosing a free web hosting provider is not wise action. It depends on some parameters, which I am going to list below;
1. For what purpose are you going to use the web hosting?
Are you going to use the hosting to make a simple page to publish your child’s photos to show your close friends or relatives? Are you going to use the hosting to operate your blog that will be visited by only your friends? Are you going to blog about something popular that will get a lot of hits? Are you going to sell some products, even open an online store? Are you going to use it for your company web site? Are you going to make money on that web site on some way?
In other words, How many visitors do you expect? What software are you going to use? Are you sensitive about the uptime? Are you sensitive about your “own” brand?
Most of the free web hosting providers put ads on your webpage, and the others are setting some restrictions for the service. Even there are some providers with no ads and a little restrictions, the “free” may harm your pages prestige. Say that you are okey with “free”, but what if you need a better hosting package? Be aware that migration to another provider is not an easy process, on some situations almost impossible.
I recommend you to pay for your own hosting because it gives you a wealth of choices, much more storage space, much more bandwidth and almost no restrictions. Having a support staff at the end of the phone line is another advantage of paid hosting. If you don’t need or want to pay for the hosting, just surf arround this page and you will find one that fits your needs for sure.
Tags: Article, Web Hosting | 1 Comment »
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