You’re a start-up, funds are limited and cash flow is tight and your mind is focused on ideas to boost revenue – reseller hosting could be the best avenue according to recent polls.
Anyone that has been involved in a start-up business will know that cash flow is always an issue in the early stages. However, many start-ups (according to startups.com) are turning to reseller hosting as an effective way to earn revenue and diversify business models.
In the past 5 years start-ups getting involved in reseller hosting has rocketed a whopping 240% with many stressing that the recurring revenue from reseller hosting has kept their business in the black – a figure that is truly mind-boggling if you think that the premise has actually be around for much more than a decade.
What is reseller hosting?
Simply put, if you have a website it’ll need to be hosted. Reseller hosting, in its most basic form, means that you can offer another companies hosting services to your clients on a ‘white-label’ basis – and this can open doors to reap incredible amounts of recurring revenue.
Naturally, reseller hosting won’t fit into every business model out there, but if you’re a web designer or work in digital marketing it can be astoundingly useful and a great way to add to the bottom line.
Going that extra mile
The benefits of reseller hosting is essentially two fold. Not only do you stand to increase your monthly revenue, but also you may see a higher client retention rate if you can offer a full solution – go that extra mile for a client.
There are billions upon billions of websites on the World Wide Web (which is growing at a devastating pace daily), which means that the opportunity for start-ups to quickly establish themselves a nice sized reseller hosting client base is virtually endless.
Where to start?
There are multitudes of reseller hosting packages available on the market and it can become a bit of a minefield. There are plenty of factors you need to take into consideration in order to find the rightreseller-hosting package for you.
Read Reviews
With the emergence of thousands of review sites, it’s quite easy to find reviews on reseller hosting services with a quick Google search. You’re looking to find out what realpeople have said about the companies service.
It also maybe worth posing the question on one of the forums over at Startups.com to see if someone there with experience can refer you to a company that they’ve used.
Check Performance
Reseller hosting can be great, but if you choose a hosting company with poor hosting performance you’re going to find yourself in hot water with clients very, very quickly.
Ensure that you do your due diligence and make contact with the company to find out more about the specs of the server. What amount of space do you get? What kind of speeds can you expect? Once you have the technical specs another simple Google search will be able to point you in the right direction as whether or not the spec is going to suit your requirements, or fall short.
Price, price, price
Finally, price is always going to be a huge driving factor, especially with a start-up looking for the best margins they can get.
What you’re looking for here is a great price-performance balance – you want the best price with the best performance that suits you.
At this point, it would be advisable to short-list around 5-10 companies that are reputable and ask for quotes then compare accordingly.
If you’ve done enough homework and due diligence, you should find yourself in a position where you can offer clients a superb hosting experience and also add to the bottom line nicely alleviating some of the financial pressure that being a start-up usually always comes with.
