Reseller Hosting

I am often asked about reseller hosting. Specifically, often a web designer or web developer is in a position of creating websites for clients and then recommending a hosting provider. The question arises from these developers and designers, ''How can my web design business benefit from reseller hosting?''.

Here are the main reasons that you as a web designer or web developer should consider reseller web hosting.

As a person in a position of trust - you can point your clients in the right direction. The 'right direction' in this case being a solid web hosting company that will provide reliability, expert service and support, and be available to answer designer or client questions if necessary. The reason that the client looks to you is to get an unbiased opinion on what is best for their website. You obviously have a great deal of interest in seeing that your design is hosted by the best hosting company that the client can afford.

Since you will have many clients over time, and you will be referring the majority of those clients to the same web host - over and over again - it makes sense for you to include this process as part of your business model. So how exactly do you as a designer make money from the web hosting portion of this equation?

Here is a financial example taken from reseller hosting company 34SP.com. You can easily substitute any other reseller host into this model using their current prices to create your financial model. Let's assume that you have just 10 clients that you have designed websites for, and will be recommending hosting to. The reseller hosting account costs 15 per month. The wholesale cost of this type of hosting account is 3.95 per month. You can charge that same amount - or if you add some additional value like support and website updates - you can charge a bit more, say 5 per month. So to do the simple math: you pay 15 per month for the reseller hosting account - your clients pay you 10 x 5 per month = 50 per month. Your business earns 50-15 = 35 per month. You earn this additional money each and every month. Over the course of a year your business has just gained an additional 35 * 12 months = 420. And that's for simply referring the design clients into your hosting account. If you do 30 or 40 or 50 website designs each year - the numbers get even better. The best element of the reseller hosting model is the recurring revenue that it generates. You simply get paid month after month for ensuring that your clients' websites are working and online.

To make the best use of your position as a trusted advisor to your website design clients, it is imperative that you select reseller hosting that is of the very highest quality. If you have not used and become comfortable with a hosting company, here are a few resources you may want to use to select a good reseller web hosting company.

Google search - most of us turn to Google with questions regarding the Internet these days. You can start with a search for reseller hosting.

Webhostingtalk - another great source of information on reseller web hosts in Webhostingtalk. You can view their reseller hosting forum here.

HostingCon - if you have the time and money, it is a good bet that many many hosting companies will attend this year's HostingCon trade event. Since your reseller account will be managed by one of these larger web hosts, you can actually sit down and speak with them face to face at HostingCon.

Good luck setting up a reseller hosting account for your web design business. Take time to do the proper research, and you'll be earning a great return on your investment.

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