Difficulties New Providers Face

A

Anurag M

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Becoming a web hosting proving is getting tougher and tougher each day. With so many competitive and established providers, new providers don't really get a chance to get customers. They cannot make any profit from it as they really don't know much about "where to begin", especially the advertising part.

Advertising:

Buying a reseller hosting or a vps or a dedicated server and setting it up with with a website is the easy part. Getting customers is the HARD one. I myself ran my company with loss for over a year and then started make some profits.

Spending Money:

One have to spend a lot of money at first to start their own web hosting company. Server/ Reseller account cost, Control Panel software, Billing software these are the basic things. Even if you start with Reseller account, say $25 per month with free billing software provided, you can't really make much profit with it as it comes with limited resources. One eventually decides to upgrade to VPS, so now they have to pay VPS rental ($40), Control Panel rental ($15) and billing software rental ($16). So the spending jumps straight to $70 from $25. And I haven't even mentioned paid advertising yet.

Competition:

Now a days, Its like every person is trying to start their own company, and believe me, 90% of them fail to continue their services due to loss of money and time. Their are huge competitors out there. So one have to provide services and give exceptionally good support to their customers to succeed. Service cost is another thing to notice, people won't buy hosting at higher or even at the same rate as another established company as they would like to go for the one that they know of unless it has bad reviews.

Patience:

A lot of patience is required in this field. People often get impatient and close their services. You won't be making profit from day one. You will have to wait, you also have to suffer losses during the startup. Its all part of it. If you don't have patience, this might not be the perfect business for you to start with.

Stability:

Once you start getting some customers. You can't be casual about it, you have to monitor the servers well, and maintain the same high level of effort in advertising, spending and providing support for your customers well. This step is maybe the hardest of all listed above but without it, a web hosting provider won't be able to make their path to SUCCESS!


Thanks for reading. English is not my native language, Please excuse me if I made any mistakes. Feel free to share your point of views as well.
 
Can I ask how long you've been in business now, Anurag M? And congrats on hanging in there. The best to you going forward.
 
Given that English isn't your first language, you laid out your points pretty well.

In this age when everyone can provide the same set of offerings, the only factor you are competing on and that can make you stand out is the level of customer service/support.

But perhaps what's more important than startup capital is the patience that you mentioned. Those who are thinking of getting into this industry today should be well aware of it.
 
It certainly isn't an area where you are going to get establish quickly. However if you are passionate about what you are offering, prepared to put in the hours and learn to adapt when required then I don't see why you cannot be successful.

Plus with all the bad reviews of the big hosting companies if you stick with it and offer a quality service I'm sure you'll succeed.
 
Its never easy break thru in this business or any other for that matter. It takes a bit of patience and hard work. I think though that if one offers an honest and good service its a matter of time before they get what is due to them. With so many poor service providers there are so many clients looking for good service. That one client you have could get you 10 more before you know it. Just treat each client as good as you can offer and the numbers will keep growing
 
I just started to work in a new company after 6 years in a known company. I do not really afraid about anything, I just have a goal and I know what to do. Definitely I will boost the sales.

There nothing impossible. I have many examples in my life, when guys created superb hosting companies from 0.
 
Andrius said:
I just started to work in a new company after 6 years in a known company. I do not really afraid about anything, I just have a goal and I know what to do. Definitely I will boost the sales.

There nothing impossible. I have many examples in my life, when guys created superb hosting companies from 0.
Click to expand...

I love your determination. I remember feeling like that some 9 years when I sold my first dedicated server. Sometimes I look back and cant believe how far that was
 
its good that you managed to get profit in 1 year for me it took 2 years to balance myself and get profit and its keep on getting better year by year, 4 years now and i am glad i did not quit
 
Leasedlayer.com said:
And even needs more knowledge to handle if the case is servers.
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I must agree that the main diffrence in what we all offer in this server business is largely the technical know how to manuplate the servers to do what the clients needs all the time. Its the only reason clients buy from us (Hosts) and not the Data Centres. They want someone who is there to attend to their unique need
 
IN any business though especially in our niche, competition is quite high. Most people will really discourage you and say hey it is not worth your time and effort and you earn less. But actually in general if you can see the most successful people in the world are those who failed but never gave up. It is the matter of how dedicated you are to your goals and how you apply the learnings you got in every venture.

Nice points by the way :)
 
From what I have seen, the first thing everyone should think before launching themselves to this industry is to set a targeted audience. Once we set the targeted audience we can work on marketing and sales tactics based on the nature of customers we are looking to welcome. This is one of the effective method as far as I see.
 
Very nice layout i have to say well done.

It takes time that is for sure, The first year for me was a struggle we worked through it and we did it. The second year was much better to the point that I didn't have to pay out of my own pocket.

Now that I am on my third year of business I'm glad I did not give up because we are doing quite well for only being open for three years.
 
Getting new customer is most difficult part here.You will have to patient and need to find ways to get your customers and yes,usually it takes at least year or two make some good money even
 
We're just entering our 2nd year and I'm glad we didn't throw in the towel. The first year was a ton of work for not a lot of reward.

Getting customers is indeed the hardest part with so many options out there, it's hard to get noticed. Once you do word of mouth is the way to spread and offer incentives for existing customers to become your advocate with affiliate programs.
 
Very good article and advice for people to hang in there. I appreciate it and it outlines the trials every host is going to face.

Just reviewing 2015 it's fun to see how much things have changed and for the better!
 
How do you deal with unused hardware that was bought/ rented by a customer for a limited period of time and he canceled afterwards and you got stuck with it? How do you recover the downtime.
 
WOuld it be rude to ask how much profit you are actually generating atm ( an estimate would be great ).

Great read btw !
 
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