How to Make Money with Reseller Hosting
Many people have heard of reseller hosting, but they might not know what it actually entails. It is the process of taking a company’s web hosting service and then selling that same service to other companies.
The idea behind reseller hosting is that if you are able to offer a better product at a lower price than your competitors, you will be able to grow your business more quickly. In this post, we’re going to cover some key tips for how you can make money with reseller hosting but before that, let’s take a quick look at what reseller hosting is and how reseller hosting works.
What is Reseller Hosting?
Reseller hosting is a type of web hosting service where the reseller (be it an individual or a company) purchases a larger hosting block with larger disk space & bandwidth and rents it to its customers.
Depending upon the number of existing/potential customers and their requirements, the reseller needs to decide how many resources s/he should buy from the parent company. Based on this, the reseller can then create multiple packages and sell them to its customers.
How does Reseller Hosting work?
Reseller web hosting has some great advantages when done well. A reseller works directly with the parent web hosting company to manage their hosting accounts. The parent web hosting service provider often gives discounts to resellers for buying in bulk and for acting as a salesperson for them. The reseller hosting provider then markets the parent company’s resources as their own.
Essentially the reseller hosting provider will share the server resources of the account(s) it controls. The parent hosting company will then manage and maintain the account(s).
Tips for How to Make Money with Reseller Hosting
Finding the Perfect Niche
As a reseller web hosting business, you’ll be competing with thousands of other players in the market, including the big boys. To enter successfully into this business and sustain consistent growth, you must understand the market situation beforehand and launch a product/service that people need or will look forward to. Instead of catering to the mass, it is better to be specific in your offerings. Pick a niche where you can serve better than your potential competitors.
In order to determine where to start, you should check the search volume, competition (in terms of both SEO and PPC), price range, CPC, and similar metrics. If you’re already serving clients in a particular vertical, then it is easier for you to take action.
Position Yourself in the Market
Once you have found your niche, you need to identify what they want from a web hosting provider. To understand the needs of your target audience, you should examine the existing providers already operating in your chosen niche. Wherever possible, try identifying at least five competitors who’re targeting your future potential customers. You can then examine the products & services they are offering and their price points.
These will be your direct competitors. In order to stand out from the crowd, you can either offer a hosting solution that is more budget-friendly or present yourself as a premium option. Of course, the latter option will involve offering unique features, more resources, or a higher standard of customer service.
Additionally, you should also gauge your direct competitors’ size and the resources available to them. It is quite possible that established hosting providers may already be targeting your chosen niche. In this scenario, you may choose to further refine your target audience.
Choose the Right Hosting Provider
As a reseller of web hosting, your services are completely dictated by your web hosting provider. Choose the right hosting service provider for your business that can give you a strong start.
For the best results, you should look for a hosting provider closely matching the resources and features your existing/potential customers need. Also, it’s not enough just to look for hosting providers offering the latest features or uncapped resources such as memory, bandwidth, disk space, or data transfer speed, but you must also pay attention to choosing the hosting provider that will help your online business flourish.
Additionally, make sure to look for 99.99% uptime. If your hosting provider’s servers face downtime, it will certainly take all of your customers’ websites down with it and it’ll be very difficult for them to get much traffic as their visitors won’t be able to access it only. Thus, opt for a hosting provider that offers an uptime guarantee.
Create a Strong Brand
There are certain misconceptions surrounding web hosting resellers. Some customers feel they can get a better experience and offer by cutting out the middleman and purchasing directly from your hosting provider. And some may believe that reseller hosting is more expensive, as both the provider & the reseller have to earn a profit at their end. Therefore, it is important for your branding to reflect your chosen niche and communicate what makes you unique. By creating a consistent message that runs through all the platforms such as social media, website, emails, etc, you can clearly communicate who you are targeting and what you have to offer.
Having a clear & consistent brand message now will make it easier for you to market your business in the future. Strong branding also helps obscure your identity as a hosting reseller.
Promotion
Once you’ve set up your web hosting reseller business, the next step will be capturing leads and closing the maximum sales.
Depending upon your budget, skills, and experience, you can decide which marketing channel(s) will be a suitable choice for you. SEO, Email, Social Media and SMS Marketing are useful media channels to deliver your marketing message to potential customers. Moreover, with some marketing budget, you can also try PPC or other advertising available options to generate quick business.
Finally, WOM (Word of mouth marketing) and affiliate marketing are the best way to drive referrals to your web hosting reseller business.
Excel at Customer Support
As a reseller hosting provider, your customer support has the potential to make or break your business. Provide them with a high level of customer support; this will help you stand out from your direct competitors.
Happy customers can certainly be the best way to advertise your business. The best customer experience starts as soon as they land on your website. If they have any questions, then it should be easy for them to get answers. This might involve taking their questions via live chat or making it easy for them to research the answers themselves using self-help resources such as FAQs. Ideally, you should provide multiple ways for your customers to contact your customer support.
However, it is important not to over-promise and under-deliver. It is far better to offer a few customer support options and provide excellent customer service across these limited options than to offer inconsistent support across all channels.
Ending Note
Turning reseller web hosting into a profitable business is not always easy. However, many people are there who have successfully added web hosting to their offerings and have even launched entire businesses dedicated to reselling web hosting services.
Keeping all the mentioned above tips in mind is a great start for making money with reseller hosting.
Set clear goals and work towards achieving them.
As said earlier, as a web hosting reseller, the service you provide to your customers is ultimately dictated by your web hosting provider. Contact BigRock to become a reseller hosting partner as your hosting plan will come with an uptime guarantee, performance as the top priority, and 24/7 customer support.
