How do you go about finding clients?

[lludawg]

I have the opportunity to resell hosting at a low cost and I am possibly interested in starting my own site. However, the question I have is how would I go about getting clients? Since I don't have much experience, would people trust me enough to host their sites? Where should I start looking for clients? Will it be hard to get my hosting site to rank higher in the search engines since it will be very new?

It seems easy enough to start your own reseller hosting business. But is the reality totally different? Thanks for any tips!

 

[reddyash]

Thats a pretty good question and when I started my own hosting company I thought of this question almost all the time. To be frank it is really hard to run hosting or reseller business now days due to free hosting and many other hosting companies competing have lower priced hosting plans.
The main thing is you will need to market your site better. You should not expect profits at the beginning. You will need to see that your server is always up and running fast meaning there should not be any downtime and the websites should load faster.
The support what you provide to your customers is what really depends on the continuity of the web hosting business. If your customers are happy with your service then you will have them for more longer period than you expect.

A small marketing tip would be try focusing on Web hosting forums for a quicker success.

 

[Elisa]

This is a very tricky question, on your place I would just advertise on different social media for ex. facebook.
And just tell your friends around, make cheap web hosting offers, just do your best to gain traffic.
Also you could go with paid advertisements if you want to earn money quickly.

 

[JoshK]

When I was running my company, we were running on a VPS, but still the same marketing pretty much applies. I advertised our company on Twitter and Facebook with our own page on there running competitions as well as on several webmaster forums. The forums were the biggest hit to be honest as thats where the majority of our targeted audience were.

I also promoted using business cards and leaflets around my local area but to be honest that was not very good at all as it didn't bring anyone in unfortunately.

 

[MyDigitalpoint]

Actually there are too much hosting provider, so competence is fierce but possible if you plan your an strategy to drive potential clients.

From my own experience I can say that advertising your services on as much forums as you can, helps to get your hosting being known, particularly when posting on high-traffic forums, webmasters forums, and hosting/domains-related forums.

Offering a trial account or special discount coupon use to make the trick luring new clients willing to get hosting from services offering these characteristics, or selling cheap.

However setting up your offers depends on your costs. In fact many resellers offer free hosting with limited resources to get potential clients upgrading to full paid packages, but again, the decision on strategies and offers is yours.

Good luck with your hosting project

 

[Anuj Dhawan]

I have the opportunity to resell hosting at a low cost and I am possibly interested in starting my own site. However, the question I have is how would I go about getting clients? Since I don't have much experience, would people trust me enough to host their sites? Where should I start looking for clients? Will it be hard to get my hosting site to rank higher in the search engines since it will be very new?

It seems easy enough to start your own reseller hosting business. But is the reality totally different? Thanks for any tips!

If it was not about hosting, how would you do this? If you have the answer well, you don't need to ask. If you don't have the answer, on the other hand, you are asking a way broad question! Only if one answer fits well, all the businesses will just grow and no one will fail.

Having said all that philosophy, I agree with what MyDigitalpoint has said - get the strategy, advertise, work, amend, work with the new strategy!

Good Luck!

 

[nailah783]

There are a lot of sites online that will help you market your site to the right people. There are even some that will help you market it for free. You can find a lot of them on google. Marketing is the biggest issue in this venue. Social media is a great tool for marketing, but I just feel like I always have to beg my family and friends to help me out, and that's not always a good feeling. Just do what you feel comfortable with. In the beginning this will be the hardest and most time consuming part of your new business, but once you get the word out there, it will get easier.

 

[J Greig]

Getting clients isn't an overnight thing I am afraid and can take months before you eventually get one client. Your best option is to stay on top of your marketing and make sure you promote your hosting regularly. Become familiar with web hosting related forums and make sure to become a respectable member on them. Stay competitive in pricing is also a must, because a lot of people who are looking to get their first hosting package don't want to spend too much.

 

[Nate]

You have to look at what is out there already. Find out what you have to offer that others are not and fill a need. I used to run a reselling business in the past and I can tell you it isn't easy, but if you put in the hard work it can be profitable in no time. Most people want reliability and low cost, I would focus on that. Also, there are a lot of people that don't want to be involved with the monopoly companies like EIG, so advertise that you are a smaller company that is dedicated to customer service. Start with the social media marketing, forums, and even sites like Craigslist.

 

[tony]

I'd advise you leverage on well established social media sites to advertise your company. Go on to Twitter, Facebook and other well known sites to introduce and talk about your services to people especially friends and relatives. You can pay sites for advertisement and if possible let your price be easily affordable compared to others. Also be a regular participant in forums discussing about web hosting where you can learn more and create awareness about your company.

 

[Ibz]

Advertise on forums and dont be scared to spend money, alot of people are scared to spend money on advertising but as a old saying goes "it takes money to make money"