Reseller Web Hosting

Another option for starting your own web hosting company is to act as a reseller for another host. This has several advantages; most of them to do with the time you save. Acting as a reseller requires a relatively low investment, with only the monthly reseller fee to pay. If you already have a couple of sites yourself, switching them to your reseller package could be cost effective. You do not have to worry about technical support, server size or bandwidth. All you have to do is promote and sell the web hosting package. Of course, this has its own challenges.

Some reseller accounts are anonymous, which means that you can brand your web hosting business as you like. Others require you to use the branding of the main host. With some reseller accounts everything is taken care of, which means that billing and any follow up are all the responsibility of the main web host. However, other resellers may require you to do your own billing so if you choose one of these you will need to think about how to handle that. This is the backend of your web hosting company and it is just as important as the front end.

Most web hosting companies offer a choice of monthly or annual billing, and may offer a discount or incentive for the annual package. You need to think about options for taking money. Your choices are an online payments processor such as Paypal or setting up a merchant account so you can accept credit card payments directly. You may also accept money through the mail but this could be unnecessarily complicated, so it may be best to avoid this. An online payments processor is flexible and allows you to accept a variety of payment forms. In addition, it can handle automatic billing. If you are accepting payments online you will also need an SSL certificate so that your customers' sensitive information can be encrypted during online transactions.

There are several pieces of software that automate the process of collecting money and setting up the account, which means less work for you and instant gratification for your customers. Remember to keep a copy of your records offline for additional security. Include the customer's name, plan, price and billing date, as well as the domain name, email address, and subscription identification number. This is just one way how to make money with web hosting.