By Mario Sanchez

Reseller Accounts

If you operate several websites, each with its own domain name, signing up of separate hosting accounts can be an expensive proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as your full hosting fee.

The solution is to open a reseller account. Reseller accounts were created to allow web designers to offer hosting services to their customers, to create a one-stop-shop for all their web design and hosting needs. However, you don't need to be a reseller to buy a reseller hosting plan.

Reseller accounts are usually slightly more expensive than regular hosting accounts, but they will allow you to host different domain names without incurring in the add-on domain fees, making more efficient use of your space and bandwidth.

By Ashish Jain

Reseller Defined:

The term Reseller according to the dictionary means to sell again i.e. to sell a product or service to the public or to an end user, especially as an authorized dealer, while making sure that you make a profit on the sale.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting is no different either, a reseller buys a Web hosting package from a hosting company and tries to sell it independently. The profit for the reseller lies in either the discount or in the commission s/he gets from selling an account.

For example: The reseller might purchase a package whose features are valued at $100 for $90. So, the reseller stands to make a $10 profit on selling the package to customers. Normally as the customers increase, so does the profit margin for the reseller.

Or, you can get some money by earning commissions from a hosting company. This happens when you refer potential customers to the hosting company. If the customer signs up with the company then you earn a small recurring commission until the customer uses the services. Most web hosting companies try to outsource their services to resellers as it helps them to extend their business reach without the cost of marketing and sales and also helps them to concentrate on the business side of things.

What can be resold

As a reseller you can decide what kinds of services you can sell. You can provide shared, dedicated or co-location web hosting or merchant accounts, store fronts etc.

If you go with hosting then it might be useful to offer some other hosting related services like domain names, search engines etc.

Of course, if you have problems selling these value added services in the beginning then you can sell them later.

The cost and resources involved

The cost of becoming a reseller and the equipment and people required in order to be successful depends on many factors.

If you just plan to earn commission by referring people to the hosting company by using the Internet, then you do not have to put up a lot of money, all you need is an Internet ready PC and an Internet connection.

For a small start-up not a lot of money and resources are required. You can purchase a good reseller package from a hosting company by paying them some money upfront. All that is needed is a decent computer that can manage the accounts of customers and a good Internet connection.

It is advisable to start small if you are very new to the concept of web hosting and reselling. Then you can expand as you go on and start getting more and more customers in which case offering domain registration is also a very good way to make profits.

If you have the money and the experience then you can go as far as buying all the server equipment required, in which case you will also be responsible for all the server maintenance costs.

The other option could be leasing a server as this will be cheaper than buying the server, but here as well you are responsible for all the maintenance and running costs of the server.

In the above two cases you also need to make sure that you have multiple connections with the hosting company so there are no complications in case a connection goes down.

Upside

The best thing about being a reseller is that you do not require a lot of upfront investment.

There is no need to have a lot of technical knowledge. Account management and Internet skills are all that is required. However, it would be really handy if you have some sales and marketing experience so you can interact with your customers better.

The hosting company generally provides and maintains all the hardware and software.

You do not need to hire a lot of IT staff to provide support. Providing basic support and leaving the more technical issues to the parent company support staff can be easily achieved. Downside

Support can sometimes be delayed, as you are dependent on the parent company to handle the technical aspects. If there is a delay from their side then you along with your customer are affected.

Sometimes customers leave you if they find out that you are a reseller and not a real hosting company.

Tips for marketing yourself

If you are starting out on a small scale then visiting message boards and posting your services there is a good idea. A lot of potential clientele with relatively small hosting needs also frequent message boards and outline their desired services.

Having contests is a great idea for bringing awareness and interest about your services.

Online ad campaigns, signatures, and text links are very helpful techniques.

Once you have gotten a bigger budget then you can go for Google ad words or PPC search engines.

The best strategy is to try out various combinations of these approaches and work out the best one for your needs.

By Jeff Usher

There comes a time when the internet bug hits us all and we tend to acquire a wealth of domain names and web sites to feed our frenzy.

We start out with the best intentions, set up a personal home page with a few details about ourselves, then create more for our family, then our business and before we know it we have several domain names and web sites spread across several web hosting companies.

A more convenient approach would be to set yourself up with a reseller account with one hosting company.

Most people assume that to have a reseller account, you need to be in the business of selling hosting. This is not true. Anyone can set up a reseller account and enjoy the benefits of saving money and also having the convenience of only dealing with one company for all your hosting needs.

I'll take my hosting reseller http://www.HostingRevolution.com as an example. They provide a very competitive reseller account priced at $35. Their Reseller's Package allows you to host 100 Domains. You are allowed to give every Domain you host up to 20GB's of monthly transfer and up to 2.5GB of storage.

Previously I had over ten domain names and associated web sites that were costing me around $5 - $10 a month to host. The average months hosting costs were around $50 - $60. Therefore, by setting up a reseller account and transferring my domains and web sites over to my reseller account I made an instant saving of $15 a month.

Now, another extension of this would be to start selling hosting to your friends, after all, you have a reseller account. So if you have ten friends, ask them if they would like web hosting on your server, maybe offer it free to them and ask them to recommend your services to their friends, these can then become "paying" customers. Now YOU can get people to pay for hosting and make back the monthly reseller fee. Just sell ten accounts for $3 a month and you have instant income of $30 to offset the $35 reseller fee you are paying. So you get hosting for $5 a month for as many domains and sites as you like.

So, with the reseller account you have helped yourself, helped your friends, and possibly started making money as well.

Reseller web hosting is a web hosting service that re-bundles services available from real hosts or primary providers. Reseller web hosting could be an individual or small business that makes use of the bandwidth and web servers of a higher tier provider or primary host and resells the same to the customers by offering value added services like web designing, domain registration and web programming.

Most real hosting companies allow reseller web hosting in order to boost their sales. Recently, a significant number of web hosting businesses have infiltrated the internet with an eye on the ever-growing number of people who are jumping online. In order to remain competitive, hosting companies look for ways to market their services to a greater number of people rather than offering their services individually. This leads to the business of reseller web hosting accounts. In reseller web hosting, real hosts are able to generate bulk businesses and delegate individual clients to reseller servers. In turn, reseller web hosting businesses look after some individual client’s needs. This is a win-win situation for both, since real hosts will have an intermediary in the form of reseller web hosting to individual customers without having to attend to them one by one. The reseller is also able to put up a business and earn income without having to shell out capital outlays. Although in some instances they do compete with each other for a fair share of the web hosting market, the real hosts can still benefit from this set-up considering they do charge a certain amount from resellers.

The services offered by a reseller web hosting service do not really differ from a real host. As a matter of fact, reseller web hosting offers more features to the customers. Due to the added value services, reseller web hosting can offer web design and programming services to each customer that are often times not possible from real hosts. Real hosts tend to focus on bulk accounts and corporate clients. Reseller web hosting offers value added services to customers in order to maintain a competitive edge against bigger web hosting services.

Reseller web hosting is also better able to establish friendly relationship with their customers that go beyond the contract terms. This is the secret for those successful reseller web-hosting services. They fill the need that bigger hosting servers cannot provide. Those who want to start a reseller web hosting business are advised to look for a real host, such as Hostgator or SpeedHostingZ.com. It is very easy to obtain a reseller account from a real host these days.

If you need simple hosting services for your web site and you prefer to have personal attention from the web host for design and programming then a reseller web hosting account is highly recommended. However, if you have a business website that requires complex e-commerce solutions, have a very large number of customers accessing your web site or you have a large number of websites to be hosted, a reseller hosting would probably not suffice. This is particularly true for e-businesses. For this, you need a real host provider for your web site.