The Hosting Industry has become so saturated with Small Hosts, that it is no longer acceptable to just offer your basic Shared hosting and really expect to get anywhere fast. A very wise owner in the Web Hosting field once told me, "There are two ways to grow your Hosting Company, throwing money at it, or spending time and building it from the ground up." let me tell you, I have tried both, and the latter is the way to go. In this hopefully helpful tutorial, I will cover the Top Ten ways that I have been able to grow my business.

Listing Site In Directory
This method can be effective, but now it seems that almost all the directories want you to pay to be showcased on their directory, and as I have said, although it might get you a few signups, you will always spend more then you make. There are a few Web Hosting Directories that will let you place and ad for free, and it might be a useful to do just that. But I would not recommend that you payout anything until you have a few signups and have covered your basic server costs.

Posting In Relevant Forums
This is one of the best ways to attract customers to your Hosting Company. Putting your link and a little about your company in Keyword form is a great way to advertise your company for free to a large audience. Maintaining a Business Like appearance at all time is very important, everything you say on these forums will be readily available to the public, and once you say something, it is very hard to take it back. Set a goal, something reasonable that you know you can accomplish. Start with 10 posts a day, and make sure you stick to it. Before you know it, your signature will be on several of the topics around the forum, and you will start getting relevant visits to your site. Join as many possible relevant forums as possible, the more you post the more your name and your company is getting out there, it is free so why not take advantage of it.

Social Media Marketing
Social Media is all the rage. Not a day goes by that most people do not check there Facebook, Twitter, and many other Social Hotspots. Getting into your potential customers every day life is a great way to gain there attention. Make it a point to post 3 updates a day, relevant to your company. Start a Fanpage on Facebook, make a business account on Twitter. Adding pictures to your social profiles, of your servers, the datacenter, the more you put out there the more you will get back.

Article Submission
Getting backlinks to your site is a key to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). The better your site ranks in SERPS, the more traffic you will get. If you post quality content to article sites, and they are accepted, some bloggers will link to your article, getting you listed higher in the SERPS and a better chance of gaining some new customers.

Sponsoring Web Sites
This is a great way to get some relevant link s back to your site. There are plenty of webmasters out there that would love for you to fund their Hosting, while they maintain and market their website. They can even place a small banner somewhere on their sate that claims they are hosted by you, just another way to get some traffic back to your site. I sometimes offer my Hosting services free of charge to consumers that can not afford monthly hosting fees, but that know what they are doing in the webmaster field and have a site that I believe will succeed.

Local Business Cold Calls
This a great way to get started with little to no knowledge of hosting, all you really need to know for this is mainly the basics. Most Small Business have no IT department, most don't even have an IT guy. Most small business are happy with a small static 5 page website that displays what there business is about. They are happy just knowing that they are now advertising to the web. A good way to get started in finding companies to cold call is to grab a local newspaper and browse through the business classifieds. Call business's you think would benefit from having a website. The great thing about these type of clients is that they do not require a lot, they usually have no problem paying the small hosting fee, and they do not eat up your server or Reseller account resources.

To be Continued...

Nice writeup, thanks for sharing!

nice tutorial Dude!

Well said. I myself have used many of these to grow my business over the years. And, it works!

Each one is correct.. I try to do, but takes too much time .. It is a fact it is worth spending time!!

10 posts a day in relevant servers??? I will try)

I think you'll have more immediate success in your local market if you focus on NEW businesses. Most of these have no website and have no clue about hosting.

Thank you for all of the remarks. I will be adding Part 2 today at some point!

@Steve, you have a very valid point!

Thanks for the write up Tanner, nice to see you over here

thank you for this nice tutorial and we are now looking to get into sponsoring quality websites and webmasters and I hope it will turn good for us

Great write up! I couldn't agree more with each method you mentioned, and they will all provide results if done correctly.

I don't think that reseller have enough resources to sponsor websites. Giving calls to local business owners is a good idea.

Domain name reselling is a good business if you are an imaging and assumption expert. Thanks for describing about various aspects of pulling traffic through different link building procedures. I have read all of them. Thanks

Some nice tips there! Building a customer base is not quick or easy but if you spend the time on it you will get there.. just takes some work.

Great tips, I'll be putting these to use sometime soon hopefully.

All information is good info

Great post~