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Reselling web hosting services can be a difficult task, especially for an inexperienced webmaster that has never successfully built a hosting business. However, by creating appealing and unique hosting plans with reasonable profit margins, promoting to targeted audiences, and proactively marketing your services through a variety of avenues, it is possible to establish a significant client base rather quickly. Unfortunately, most resellers are only able to generate a small amount of income each month, as they are unable to find a large amount of clients that are willing to trust their hosting services. If you’ve been experiencing similar problems, then you may want to consider the following three ways to efficiently market a web hosting business.

Creating a Blog with Quality Content

It is well known fact that the best way to generate consistent web traffic on a residual basis is to utilize the immense power of the search engines. To do this you’ll need to populate your web hosting site with quality content related to various hosting topics. By building a blog within your hosting site you’ll not only attract search engine traffic based on keywords embedded within your blogs articles, you’ll also provide useful information to your visitors and thereby establish trust and professionalism more effectively. In fact, if your blog posts are informative enough other webmasters and web surfers will link to your site on their blogs, and will link their friends to your pages when they are in need of information. To maximize your traffic generating efforts it is important to ensure proper keyword density and usage within each blog post.

Newsletters and Press Releases

Another way to proactively market your hosting services and expand your web presence is to publish high-quality press releases on popular websites. A press release is simply a news story that professionally describes the products and services offered by your hosting company. This ultimately improve search engine optimization efforts and generates a significant amount of traffic originating from the sites that the press releases are posted on. After soliciting a client base and collecting a large number of e-mail addresses it would be beneficial to market additional services to your pre-existing and former clients, as you can be sure that this is a targeted audience that will bring high conversion rates.

Purchasing Banner Space

Another great way to attract prospective customers and expand your market outreach is to purchase banner space on established web hosting review sites, and the websites of other hosting providers. These sites are frequently visited by people that are most likely interested in purchasing hosting services on an ongoing basis. By marketing to a targeted audience through custom designed banners on websites that have significant traffic levels you can begin seeing significant results within just a couple of weeks.

A large client base is the key to becoming a successful web hosting reseller, and is usually the most difficult step in establishing a successful web hosting business. Every other aspect of reselling is covered within the control panel of your reseller hosting account, including site/hosting plan creation. To solicit a significant amount of clients you’ll need to put in some hard work and creative thinking. The best way to increase profit margins and ensure continual residual income is to target demographics and audiences that are relatively unsaturated and inexperienced in the Internet industry. Thus, targeting store owners and service providers that operate local businesses is the best way to bridge the gap between your online services and the real world.

The Advantage of Targeting Physical Business Owners

By targeting people that already own businesses, you can guarantee that your target audience already has an interest in expanding their marketing outreach. As a self established hosting provider you can meet this need by offering comprehensive website creation/promotion/hosting packages that will streamline the process of placing their business on the World Wide Web. Business owners also have a lot more money to invest than the typical audience, and many of them are inexperienced when it comes to online operations. Since your target audience will not be familiar with typical hosting prices and protocol you’ll be able to demand a higher price than you would if you were to target online customers instead.

How to Find Prospective Clients

The first step in finding a group of prospective clients is to browse through business directories, as these databases are full of business owners that are already trying to market their services. Ideally, you’ll want to target business owners that do not already have a website or hosting plan. You can do this by searching for the business name in Google; usually any business that does not have an online presence will not appear within the search results. After conducting these simple steps you’ll have a two-tier prospective client base to target – one group of business owners that are trying to market their services online and already own website, and another group that are trying to market their services online and do not own website. Although you’ll probably receive higher conversion rates from the latter group, both will bring sales if your services are promoted properly.

Properly Promoting Your Hosting Services

Most business owners are more susceptible to custom sales pitches than predesigned sales pages. This is because they like to feel as if they are important and valued before spending their hard-earned money on your services. Thus, while it is ideal to create a web hosting site that advertises all of the main features of your web hosting packages, it is also wise to approach each business owner with individual selling points that are based on their specific industry. For example, you could approach an owner of a bicycle shop and tell them how beneficial it would be for their shop to be listed in various online directories and to have their own professional website that can effectively target tourists and generate additional income.

Reseller hosting has gained a lot of popularity in the last few years, as more online business owners are realizing the profit potential of an ever-expanding web hosting industry. As a web hosting reseller you do not have to own your own web servers or hire any employees, because all of the tools and resources needed to build, maintain, and market a professional web hosting site are included within your web hosting control panel.

In essence, as a reseller you receive server resources at wholesale cost, and then split these resources into different plans which can then be allocated to your clients for a residual monthly profit. Perhaps the most sought-after type of web hosting plan is dedicated hosting, which gives the user access to a completely private web server that is only utilized for their websites. The following information outlines the benefits of reselling dedicated web hosting plans.

The Ongoing Demand for Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is often seen as the pinnacle of the hosting industry, and nearly every webmaster aims to lease their own dedicated server sooner or later. In fact, the majority of webmasters begin their online endeavors by purchasing a shared hosting plan, before gradually progressing to a virtual private server, and then finally to a dedicated hosting plan. Thus, there is an ongoing demand for dedicated servers being renewed each year, as new webmasters reach a skill and traffic level that requires the use of a more powerful web server. As a web hosting reseller you have the opportunity to capitalize on this popularity and demand by offering dedicated hosting plans for a small monthly profit.

Providing Dedicated Hosting Was Reseller Hosting Partitions

The majority of reseller hosting plans allow you to allocate a specific amount of server resources to each client through customized plans. However, it is usually not possible to resell entire dedicated servers to your clients. Thus, as an alternative you’ll have to resort to mimicking a dedicated hosting environment with a large reseller hosting partition. This can be done by finding out the exact specifications and server resources offered with an average dedicated hosting plan, and then allocating the same amount of server resources to your clients, in order to provide an equivalent service to dedicated hosting.

Mediating the Sale of Dedicated Hosting

As a web hosting reseller you also have the option to earn a commission on each dedicated web hosting plan that you sell. Instead of trying to mimic the capabilities of the dedicated hosting plan for your clients, you can recommend them to a dedicated hosting provider and earn an affiliate commission for each sale generated. This can be incredibly profitable if you have the capability to refer enough customers per month, however it will not create the ongoing residual income that is often seen as being a beneficial aspect of reseller hosting. Nonetheless, if your reseller hosting plan is not extensive enough to offer partitions that mimic the capabilities of a dedicated server, then you may need to resort to collecting affiliate commissions by mediating the sale of dedicated hosting plans.

Canadian Web host Bolt (www.boltwebhosting.com) declared last week its latest scalable reseller hosting packages.

Two weeks earlier, Bolt offered unlimited shared hosting packages. This announcement is definitely an excellent opportunity for customers to earn handsome money through the magnificent reseller plans.

“Until now, we’ve been focused solely on shared web hosting,” Christian Little, CEO of Bolt Web Hosting said in a statement. “We’ve wanted to offer reseller plans for a while. We get several requests each week from customers that have actually gone to other hosting companies because they either outgrew their shared hosting plans or they wanted to get into the hosting business themselves.”

In the press release, Bolt described the latest reseller packages which start from $14.99 to $75.99 for 25GB to 2.5TB bandwidth and 25GB to 250GB storage.

According to Bolt, the reseller packages will enable the resellers to provide cPanel to clientele and handle them by means of central WHM Reseller panel.

“We wanted to ensure we offer a variety of plans suited to all levels of hosting reseller, so we’ve created ten reseller plans that should cover it quite nicely,” Little added. “Included with this new product are two optional services that will empower hosting resellers even further – White Label Branding and End User Support. Customers may select if they want either of these services when purchasing their reseller hosting plan.”

All reseller packages comprise of End User Support, which allows resellers to guide their clientele to Bolt Web Hosting Support.

“We have support staff working 24/7 for our existing customers already, so it makes sense to offer this feature to our resellers who may not have the time or skills needed to provide support to their customers,” Little stated. “Most resellers have the skills and resources to handle support requests, so we’re offering it as an extra feature for resellers that want it while keeping costs lower for resellers that can provide their own support.”

Reseller hosting is a unique type of web hosting that provides access to all of the tools and server resources needed to quickly build, brand, market, and maintain a successful web hosting site. By becoming a hosting reseller you can quickly establish your own hosting company with minimal investment, experience, and expertise. In fact, many of the larger web hosting providers that are currently successful in today’s market began their endeavors by purchasing wholesale server resources as a reseller for another large hosting provider. The hosting industry is unique because it is structured in such a way that it is possible for the smallest hosting provider to gradually progress into a worldwide hosting empire. The following are three unique features that truly make reseller hosting plans desirable.

Simplified Site Creation and Business Branding

Perhaps the most desirable attribute of a reseller hosting plan is the simplified site creation, which is facilitated through the use of proprietary website building tools, catalog builders, photo gallery creators, content management systems, and forum building platforms, all of which can be controlled through user-friendly administrative interfaces. With the tools provided in a reseller hosting plan it is easy for you to create your own web hosting site using thousands of predesigned templates that can be quickly applied to every page without affecting the content. Not only is it simple to build the site, but is also easy to supervise, adjust, and brand the control panel interfaces that your clients will interact with on a daily basis in the web hosting environment. When your client logs in they’ll see your custom logo displayed in the top corner of the control panel, so they’ll never know that you are a hosting reseller, but will instead think that you are an established web hosting provider.

Flexible Plan Creation

When you purchase a reseller hosting plan you’ll be given a set amount of server resources, which you have the freedom to split up into personalized plans for your clients. You can allocate a specific amount of web hosting resources to each client, and carefully price your plans in order to maximize profit margins. In essence, you are the master of your own web hosting business with a reseller hosting plan. By having the ability to quickly change the size of your web hosting plans, you can offer to each client as much as they need on the spur of the moment, and you can ensure that some clients are not hogging dormant server resources unnecessarily. This flexible plan creation lets you maximize your profits and the overall efficiency of your web hosting business.

Streamlined Payment Collection

When it comes time to collect payment from your clients, your reseller web hosting control panel will give you the tools needed to set up automated billing via e-mail, and automatically collect payments through payment processing utilities that can be installed on your website with a single click of the mouse. From day one your web hosting site will be able to collect payments from virtually any credit card, as well as PayPal and other online payment processors. The automated billing application included with your reseller web hosting plan can instantly calculate how much a client owes based on how many server resources they’ve used, and then bill them accordingly, after which they are directed to a payment page where payment is collected and deposited to your account automatically.