Archives for September 2007

Reseller Hosting: How to Earn good Money

September 26, 2007 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

Reseller Hosting: How to Earn good Money

What is reseller hosting? The main idea of reseller hosting is to be a web host who sells reseller web hosting to other (usually smaller) web hosting businesses. Reseller hosting accounts are also used by webmasters who operate more than one website. Lately reseller business prospers, because more people want to be online with their own website and their own domain. For many a hobby turns into a (part-time) business. So, there is a steady stream of people needing more than just a single domain web hosting account.

There are two types of reseller hosting.

1) Traditional reseller hosting
2) Private label hosting

Traditional (bulk) reseller hosting is like a wholesale business. The reseller host buys in bulk aka an entire web server and splits it into small, but medium sized chunks. A smaller web host buys one of these chunks (reseller accounts) and populates it with single domain accounts of normal consumers. The benefit for the reseller host is that he has only to support one customer while the smaller web host deals with each singe domain customer. The smaller web host who buys the reseller account has the advantage not to worry about the technical side of the business as the reseller web host is responsible for the server health and maintenance.

Private label reselling is a step on top of traditional reseller hosting. With traditional reseller hosting the reseller host’s identity is not hidden. Everyone can easily identify the real web host. With private label the identity of the reseller host is hidden and the reseller (smaller web host) appears to be owner of the server. This tactic is often used/needed/required to make a different impression marketing-wise. Many consumers do not want to deal with small web hosting businesses. Web hosting businesses know this and disguise the fact that they are using a reseller account.

So, where is the money in reseller hosting? Is it on the side of the reseller host/server owner or is it on the side of the smaller web host? It depends on the business model and overall pricing scheme on both sides. For the actual reseller host the bigger profits come in when the cost for system administration and co-location are spread out across more servers. For the smaller web host the big profits (on a smaller scale though) come in if he can add as many single domain accounts onto a single reseller account. Hereby is to consider that if the smaller web host aims at the bottom end of the market in regards to price, it is much more difficult to become profitable. I have been able to use a $35/month reseller account and load it up with 8 single domain customer accounts paying me a combined $320.00 per month. And I am sure that this is by far not a record.

Check out Lunarpages for (currently) $5.00 reseller accounts. This is a great and almost risk-free way to get your hands wet in the reseller arena and make money on the Internet.

IPOWERWEB $5.95/mo sale extension

September 25, 2007 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

IPOWERWEB $5.95/mo Sale Extension

The Web Hosting Resource Kit has just received word of a great sale extension on one of the best web hosting packages out there. iPowerWeb is extending their $5.95/month sale for one more week! This sale offers their normally-priced $7.95/month Business Pro hosting package to customers at the extremely low price of $5.95/month. The Business Pro Hosting package is the most popular plan available at iPowerWeb. Customers are advised that this discount is available on the 12-month and 24-month web hosting plans!

The Business Pro Web Hosting package includes (but is NOT limited to) the following:

• 300 GB Hosting!
• 2,500 Email Accounts
• Website Builder
• Free Domain Incl.
• Host 6 Domains in 1

Additional bonuses include a FREE Site Design Consultation as well as a FREE Search Engine Optimization Consultation! Combined, these bonuses are valued at $280. Hosting account pricing is based on the initial term and will renew at regular rates.

About iPowerWeb

IPOWERWEB is one of the world’s leading eBusiness Website Hosting provider. IPOWERWEB’s Internet based end-to-end solutions enable small and medium-sized enterprises to build, promote, manage and profit from their online presence. IPOWERWEB is supporting over 700,000 customer accounts from over 150 countries.

Web Hosting Rebates

September 24, 2007 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

Web Hosting Rebates

In the “old” days of web hosting web hosting rebates were much more common than they are today. Hosting has become a low price commodity and from a customer perspective prices are extremely attractive. These low prices barely leave room for web hosting rebates. It will take a web host a year to break even if he has to pay a referral fee (which is very common). If he has to offer web hosting rebates on top of the referral fee it will take even longer to make any money from a customer.

Web Hosting Rebates are dead!

If you are a customer looking for web hosting rebates you will find quite a few different rebates, but buyer beware. Do your research and you will find that it is often always the same companies that offer hosting rebates through different channels. On the first look this can be a great deal for you, but we recommend to be a little more hesitating before signing up with a host just because of an existing web hosting rebate. Sure, other web hosts might not offer rebates, but as a customer you should compare pricing and service independently from the existence of a rebate. What good do you those $5 or $10 you save in the beginning, if the service sucks and uptime of your website reads more like a downtime report card?!

Most web hosting services are inter-changeable these days. Price and features are the same and it really comes down to the quality of service. A rebate will certainly not give you that advantage that you are looking for. If you want to go cheap a hosting rebate is not the ticket you need. The Web Hosting Resource Kit (this very website you are on) has been involved in web hosting for many years. We have seen good and bad web hosting. If you are not sure who to sign up with, we can make some recommendations that do not require a web hosting rebate offer. Feel free to check out the following web hosting businesses. We have referred quite a few customers to them and most of them have been extremely happy with price, service, and uptime.

Host Rocket Web Hosting

Dot 5 Web Hosting

Host Monster Web Hosting

Host Gator Web Hosting

These 4 web hosting companies have been around for a while. They had their up and downs like everyone else. What has kept them successful was dedication to excellence and great customer service. These guys do not need rebates to gain customers. They decided to work with reputable websites like us (Webhostingresourcekit.com) to get customers referred to them. Feel free to check them out. We recommend using their money back guarantees as needed. If you do not like the service you can always back out without risking any money.

My Web Host is terrible ….

September 22, 2007 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

My Web Host is terrible ….

“My web host is terrible and has shutdown my website.” – these kind of complains are very common to read in different web hosting forums. Users complaining usually have less than 50 postings on that particular board. When asked about details it always comes down to “cheap Web hosting” combined with some “unlimited” resources” and an unreasonable expectation of the user what he can do/expect for $1.00 per month.

Here’s the web host point of view: User signs up for a “unlimited something account” and starts using those resources. Other websites on the same server suffer and the server is overloaded. Server eventually gets blacklisted and everyone is pissed off. The web host shuts down the abusive website and bans the user.

Here is the user point of view – version 1: I sign up for web hosting and great – these guys offer unlimited disk space and tons of bandwidth. I can finally host my entire MP3 collection for me and my friends + all my digital pictures. Why is the server so slow? I can’t download anything and this thing is just darn slow. Oh, wait – now it says my website has been suspended and I shall contact the web host. WTF? I will smack ‘em down in a web hosting forum.

Here is the user point of view – version 2: Cool. Another “unlimited” web host. I love those. Plenty of resources I can use for my “questionable” ventures. If they shut me down it does not hurt too much and I make fun of them in different web hosting forums. I just pretend to be a normal user and make them look bad. At the same time I move on to the next stupid web host who offers “unlimited” for a penny a month.

If you are a web host these stories probably sound familiar. But where is the problem? Is it the wrong user expectation or is it the web host offering something at unreasonable prices and therefore attracting the “wrong” kind of customer? I’d say there are 2 reasons. Reason #1 is missing user education about how the web hosting industry works and that there is no such thing as unlimited. Reason #2 is the web host hopping onto the “unlimited” and “low price web hosting” band wagon. The web hosting has this self-created problem of where unreasonably priced web hosting packages dominate the public image. Offering server-like hosting packages for bottom-end prices of shared web hosting packages has created this problem in the first place. It’s no longer about how many resources a server can handle and then split into web hosting packages matching these resources. And customers have started to compare web hosting businesses based on price and offered resources.

Web hosting businesses playing the “unlimited” game deserve to be slammed in public by disgruntled customers. Customers deserve to be rated as “idiot expecting X resources without paying a reasonable price”. My ratio of distributing fault would be 65% web host and 35% hosting customer. Unless the web hosting industry steps up as “one” to set the perspective right, we will continue seeing crazy hosting packages advertised and customers falling for it (and then complaining about it).

VMWare IPO

September 13, 2007 By Christoph Puetz Leave a Comment

VMWare IPO

This summer VMWare pulled off one of the hottest IPO’s (initial public offering) of the year. The parent company EMC went public with VMWare and 10% of the stock is now publicly traded. The stock jumped instantly from the official $29 price to the mid $50’s. Whoever got in early made a good chunk of money. For the next few weeks the stock went up and down between low $70s and mid $50’s and day traders were able to make some good money.

On September 11, 2007 VMWare opened its annual user conference and released quite a few news stories as well. The additional publicity pushed the stock $80+. Great performance and good for anyone who got in early enough (even at $70 you were able to pull of a 10% ROI almost instantly). But where will the stock price go from here? The P/E ratio with over 243 is way above normal and VMWare will have to beat some high expectations to justify a stock price that high.

From a web hosting point of view the IPO can be beneficial as it will help to drive VMWare ESX into the hosting industry. More implementations of the software will mean more user-based support and eventually some Open Source scripts and tools. VMware released its VMWare tools already as open source this week and I am sure we will see a lot of good stuff heading our way. Exciting times for those web hosts that are able to position their business in the right place.