The way I do it is to get a low cost, managed VPS. You can do your shared hosting and reseller accounts on there and then you partner with another company to resell VPS. I would recommend getting some sort of billing/support system, WHMCS is one of them, there are others.

I'd love to do that, but I just cannot swing that 15 buck a month license.

I can get it for 12 from license buddy. But jebus. that's a lot of cash; when you don't really have a day job and when you don't have health insurance and have to buy your own meds.

I hate to sound rude, so please don't take too much offence to this, but if you can't afford the $12/month for the billing software in which you'd collect the payments from clients then you're REALLY on a shoestring budget and shouldn't be starting a business.

I'm not wanting to offend you, just stating the obvious. If you can't kick in $200 to get things going, you're going to have a hard time getting the necessary base software and procedures in place to be able to launch.

Think of it this way - 2 or 3 customers will pay for your license, so it's an insentive to go get those customers. If you don't have software in place, have a professional looking website and respond to clients quickly, you're not going to make it in this business. For web hosting and design it's all about image and perception. If your website looks run down, nobody is going to buy.

I got one thing to say:

Donate Button is on the right hand side.

Unfortunately, I don't give money away for free, but I'm more than happy to pay or donate for work done.

If you have something creative, or something that you think I could use, I'm open to discussion. Drop me a PM here on the forums and we can chat.

I hear ya man; I was just messing around.

What I was hoping with the company is to do more webdesign. I having been "Filly-Fartin'" around with WordPress for 6 years now. I know my way around that software very well. I was hoping to snag a few web design jobs for a few WordPress blogs. I don't know if you are aware of it or not. But, not only is WordPress a piece of blogging software, it also makes an excellent CMS. Which you can see over on my Business site.

Anyhow, I figured I could lure a few businesses into me designing them a company website with blog and make some money at it, and with that, I could invest in the licensing for the WHMCS software. I have been advertising on Craigslist locally, but so far, no bites. The economy and so forth.

Cool thing is, anymore, WordPress free templates are a dime a dozen, and if you're looking for a particular theme; chances are, someone has already designed a theme for it. Pay themes are an option too and I would pass that onto the customer.

As for it crashing or making a server freak out. I am very aware of with what works on the back end for WordPress and what does not. I have a regular list of "must runs" for WordPress plugins.

In short, I'm not looking to put anyone else outta business. I'd just like my own share of the pie.

Also too, I could see investing with that license and all, if I had a few people telling me, "I'd get your hosting, if you had auto signup..." But I don't have any, so there's no guarantee at all. I just do not want to be tossing money away...

Anyhow, that's my

-Pat

Oh, very aware on this. If you look at our company site (http://www.handsonwebhosting.com) this is a wordpress site that we built. We currently have a new design in progress (was hoping to have it live for this upcoming week, but will likely get pushed another week due to QA) - that too is Wordpress.

My wife runs an SEO company (www.bigredseo.com - also a wordpress site) and most of the work she does for clients looking to launch new sites or expand sites are in Wordpress or Drupal. She's always looking for people with Wordpress skill that can skin websites etc. If interested, drop her a note and maybe you can team up on a project coming in.

And there's a lot of business to go around too! We've found that the response rate on Craigslist has been pretty minimal, but if you team up with some small business meetings or designer groups you can usually pick up some outsource jobs with them too. Check out www.meetup.com and see if there's any groups in your local area. It's all about networking.

This all probably should go into another thread, so I'll stop hijacking this one

It's my thread and we can hijack it all we want.

Search for "open source billing system" and see what you can come up with. You sound like you really need some help, but help is out there if you want to dig.

When I started out I wrote my own program to take orders and interfaced it with paypal. Do you know how to write perl cgi? If you don't and you can learn it that's a good way to start off. I have done a lot of my own programing to get started and even though it takes time if you really want to make it work you will invest the time. I sometimes spend another 8 hours a day after working my other business all day to make my web hosting business work.

Have you had any kind of schooling in programing or computers?

Nope, all self taught.

Here's my stuff ya'll hopefully the Board cops won't pull me over.

My Biz site: http://kjvhost.com/
My personal blog: http://thoughtsandrantings.com/
My old personal blog: http://politicalbyline.com/

That last one I ran from December 28, 2007, will October 31, 2011. My first blog, the Populist was hacked on December 23 2007. I started it in 2006.

Anyhow, everything you see, except for the template, I did myself. Back end, widgets, custom photo, everything... I did it. No help, nothing. Just made it work.

The biz site template was one I saw in the themes thingy at wordpress.org. I liked it and downloaded it. I did the paypal code myself. Just a button you create.

anyhow, I won't do that again, rules are rules. I just wanted you all to see what I got so far.

-Pat

if you donty want to spend monthly on WHMCS and use cpanel then you could try these for a small one off payment

http://www.idevspot.com/PhpHostBot.php
http://www.idevspot.com/idev-autohost.php

or free is AccountLab Plus

Also checkout BoxBilling and TheHostingTool BUT I highly recommend using WHMCS from go or you'll have trouble migrating data from one to the other. Save the hassle and get WHMCS now.

Contacted your wife.

I will most likely go with WHMCS soon. right now I need to score a nice design job!

Not that I'm advocating you changing your hosting provider if you've been happy with it so far, but there are reseller hosting accounts that include a free WHMCS license. Such a reseller account typically starts at $20+, but it's still quite a money saver all things considered.