Planning to run a webhosting business ?
Great, so lets make a move but suddenly popup few basic questions , like how much investment is needed and will i be able to make profit and how can i make it successfull ?

Relax, before you start webhosting business, you need to decide on few things and prepare yourself for some other.

People have started with josh(energy) and fallen with face down. Obviously you wouldn't wnt to be in such a situation.

First of all understand this clearly, webhosting business will run good till you are honest with it and moment you start loosing interest, its downfall shall start one way or another.
So, you need to be motivated to spend some time daily on it.

Now comes finance. If you are experienced in this line, not a problem but if you are new entry into business, yes finance is THE CRTICIAL issue.
If you are planning to run free host, then consider monthly payments as investment to reap profits later, if you manage to, lol
If you plan to offer paid hosting, then consider a month or two in losses before business picks up to atleast get you what you spend monthly. Beleive me , ther eis fierce competition nowadays, with kids have this new hobby of getting cheap resellers, run business for few moths and dump it or sell it to get into another. Not many bother about quality and service but thats what matters most.

Anyways, decided you will run for free host, okay now you can either start with good reseller and as and when need arises, you can make higher investment and upgrade reseller or go for dedicated.
Dedicated will give you control to manage server and also sort problems but then its not going to come cheap. Dedicated pricing logically start from $100 while reseller you can get from reputed firm from anywhere $20 to start.
In freehost, either you can go for adfree, or ad-supported or post2host.
To get business, many start as adfree, but as traffic and members come, they switch to ad-supported or post2host.
Obviously you have right to minimise your losses since you will not get much from ads either, so decision is upto you. Ads can scare few genuine customers even but whatever you decide, be clear and transparent. Don't hide things.
Also, amongst ads, google i beleive is paying more at present that yahoo and clicksor and related are low paying.

Also, if you are intelligent enough , you will not use phrase UNLIMITEd unless you wanna just fill up server (reseller) and sell it to move to another project.

Move about in top forums like FWS, HWHT and WMT and similar and look whose with good reputation and reviews and whose being cursed, so you know whom to avoid.

Once you have reseller or dedicated, now you need good team to manage it and assist you. A few may work for free but quality support will demand money or atleast some form of payback.
Unless you have time to support all yourself, initially you may but as it grows you do need help to maintain efficiency and quality, besides preventing burnout.
Also, be careful with what packages you design. Design them in a way that chances for abuse are minimum, when you are on reseller such abuses may get your reseller suspended at times though mostly they suspend sites. Besides abuse will always slow down server and add to your bad reputation, so minimise chances of abuse. Few are there to test and experiment and they are usually the trouble creators. Most established and mature webmasters will only use account for what they need but some are there who get hosting at 10 diff. places and play with scripts, uplaod pirated stuff, warezx. TOS is last thing they will ever care for and you need to be careful with them.

never oversell. Like if your reseller gives you 10Gb space and 100 Gb bandwidth, its irrational to annoucne plans with 1Gb space and 10Gb bandwidth unless ofcourse you want only 10 people on reseller.

Overselling has never helped anyone.

Again, as much interest you show, so good the host turns out to be. Advertisement is necessary to let people know about it and decency and respect should be reflecting from your conversations.
No one likes to stay with someone abusive.

Advertise with as many palces as possible. Use forums and sites and all.
You may have promotional schemes to attract people and simialr.

Again, its an art which you will learn as you work, so doesn't matter if you flop once but there should be determined effort next time. Competition is fierce.

Thomas

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