Advice for small-time developer moving into small-time reselling

[guiriverde]

Hi everyone. I am a small time web developer. Now that I have a few clients, I was wondering about becoming a small time reseller too. Rather than trying to be a reselling mogul (at least for now) I thought I can offer a more personal and complete service to clients I work with.

I can understand the benefits of your development business NOT being linked with any hosting problems, but for now many customers are close enough friends that I wouldn't suddenly lose customers & reputation.

However, I realised that the costs of hosting 1 or 2 sites of my own .. and a few customers sites could be reduced greatly by using a small reselling ooption. And I have the freedom to start some experimental sites of my own.

So, finally to my question:

I have the feeling that any small company offering small reselling options are themselves resellers, probably buying from other resellers .... and so on. Hence all the awful reviews I hear.

Is getting one of these accounts worth my while? Will I just regret the hassle of moving all these sites when problems appear and my support requests get lost as they are passed up a chian?

How is it ever possible to choose one when every review site seems to have fake positive (and quite possibly fake negative) reeviews.

Thank you all for you time,
Doug

 

[snorkel]

Will you be charging your current clients to host their website with you? If I were in their position, I wouldn't be buying my hosting from my site developer in case something went wrong. Nothing against you as a person, but you do have to have a bit of caution in business.

 

[handsonhosting]

I'll back up snorkel on that many people who get designs done won't necessarily want to have the same person doing the hosting - but maybe a working relationship.

I'd recommend contacting a host about an affiliate program (maybe even the current place you're hosting at). Many web hosts have RECURRING affiliate revenue. So the longer the client stays, the more money you're bringing in. It's a nice way of building a relationship between yourself and the hosting company too. We have many developers over the years that we refer some of our own hosting clients to them to get design work done (and vice versa).

If you decide to go the route of a reseller, that's fine too - ask the host if they are a reseller. Hopefully they're honest enough to say yes or no. Ask if they have their own dedicated servers, what the specs are of the machine and how many resellers (and resellers accounts) are on the machine. You may even be able to ask about the resources used, bandwidth consumed and disk space used etc. SOME hosts will provide that kind of information.

The more transparent a host is with you, the happier you'll be in the long run (usually).

Personal recommendation would be affiliate programs with a recurring monthly revenue. This way you can have your customer sign up with them as a host, the host can deal with all those problems, and you get to do your design and expand your business in that regard.

You could even work out a packaged deal where you prepay "X" months (or a year) of hosting as part of a bundled service.

 

[snorkel]

If you still want to go into the reseller business, I would would make it seperate from your developing business and offer it as standalone for new customers who necessarily aren't looking for some one to develop their site.

 

[smilly123]

Hello
1. Coordinate Telecommunications and Internet Solutions. With your small business clients, you will probably need to coordinate your own technology support and product installation with the local telephone company or Internet service provider. You will need to research which types of connections are needed and how they will work together to facilitate a sophisticated network.

2. Test, Test, Test. As part of delivering a complete, soup-to-nuts IT solution, your computer reseller firm should get involved in vertical industry-niched applications. You may bring the vertical applications in, but your clients might also ask you to test the application before they make a major investment. This way, you’ll control application selection and be able to coordinate application selection with other products you recommend, sell or purchase for them. You will also have to evaluate how vertical applications fit in with your clients’ networks.

3. Be Prepared to Train the Guru … or the Masses. Even if you think training won’t be a part of your duties as a computer reseller or you don’t want to do it, you will inevitably have to be involved at some point. Sometimes you will have to conduct formal end-user training where you take small groups aside and show new users an application or a new piece of hardware. Other times, you will have to help the internal guru through informal training. Training the internal guru can often help train others on routine technology matters – i.e., lost toolbar or taskbar recovery, simple troubleshooting – so you can free up time to help with more complicated issues that more easily cost-justify your high hourly billing rates.

 

[Kiplinz]

Well, as for me I think that if you are developer you need some space at some hosting for on line testing. That a fact. But if you can easily make such space for reselling and offer it to your clients who will check your result on hosted space for your tests then it will be great idea to sell the same hosting to them. They know that on that host their app is working correctly. As you use this host then your client think that you choose it from all available hosts as it is good for you and hence for client application. Then I guess reselling is not a bad idea. But how to find such a host which will suite all needs of client and software

 

[Fastian]

Cant see the point of replying to a 6 month old thread.

 

[AzadSingh]

ok...would you tell me, have any such effective plan that are suitable for small & enterprise company, if yes...send me reply..

 

[XeHSean]

What sort of budget do you have? Any other specific requirements? This will help us to point you in the right direction

 

[sydeny]

For this purpose first of all to focus on just developing.After that when you will have sufficient budget then go for reseller.