How to Resell Hosting
To resell hosting not only means that you can find great hosting for your websites, but you can also resell this service to others as a source of income. In a nutshell, you're acting as the middleman for web hosting companies, seeking out new clients to sell web space on behalf of the hosting providers. Sources of income may vary from commission based earnings to reselling discounted packages at a higher price.
Hosting companies who offer a web host reseller program have found this to be an extremely popular way to market themselves and their services to untapped markets with little effort being made on their behalf. If you were to put yourselves in their shoes, one client is just another client, but if that client went out and sold the hosting company's packages to others, then that client represents a potentially unlimited base of new clients.
Setting up a reseller hosting service has great benefits over setting up and running your own server, where you have the resources and support of an already established firm. You have the opportunity to sell and possibly manage a small sector of an already successful business.
There are a few ways you can begin selling web space on another company's server, such as:
- You can act as an agent, similar to other affiliate programs, where links and advertisements on your site could lead new potential clients directly to the hosting company's website where, if they purchased a package, you would then receive a percentage of the cost as a reseller hosting provider.
- Another method which could prove more rewarding would be to sell the web host's services directly to new clients, meaning you do all the marketing as well as making the sale earning yourself a higher cut. All future contact would still take place between the hosting provider and new client
- You could also act as a host, marketing and selling the web space and then managing it yourself. To go about this you would buy space from the host, buying it at a discounted price and then reselling it a a higher price. To the customer, you would appear as if you owned the hosting company rather than just reselling a package for profit. In this scenario, customers would then call you for support and it would be your responsibility to make sure everything goes smoothly.
- Lastly and probably the most comprehensive of them all would be to buy web space in bulk. You would then create your own packages at whatever prices you see fit and proceed to sell this to the client. This offers you maximum control over your business and can see the greatest returns if gone about correctly. Understand that this also has the highest risk factor and your responsibility becomes much greater now.
If you decide to venture into the world of reseller hosting, you'll want to find the best services available to offer to others. You'll want to offer your clients as many products and features as possible in terms of search engine optimization tools, dedicated server accounts, domain names, and on and on. Do you homework, find your target crowds and how to market your products to them. Most people won't want to shop around buying bits and pieces here and there, if you can offer an all-in-one solution at a decent price, your chances of making those sales is greater than the next person who has a limited ammount on offer.
Reselling hosting, no matter which method you choose to use, if done right, can prove to be a great source of income and you can host your own sites for pretty much nothing.
