With the rising preference for online modes of communication, transaction and purchase, businesses are working towards establishing an online identity. While social media presence helps attract customer attention, having a website further authenticates the business identity and builds consumer trust in the brand.
Thus, with more and more businesses wanting a website, the demand for web hosting services is also on the rise. While big web hosting companies have been the conventional choice of big business websites, small businesses require personalised hosting solutions. This has led to the popularity of Reseller Hosting business.
Is Reseller Hosting a Profitable Business?
Reseller Hosting is a type of hosting where you buy server space and resources from a full-fledged web hosting company and then re-rent those resources to your customers. Reseller Hosting enables you to get into the web hosting industry without having to spend a ton on server hardware and maintenance. All you need to do is buy a Reseller Hosting plan, and the web hosting company will take care of the backend issues.
Reseller Hosting is a great proposition, especially for web professionals like web designers or web developers. A lot of small businesses trying to start a website get in touch with web professionals first. So, if you’re a web professional, instead of designing a website and asking another company to host it, you can do it yourself. The web hosting business income adds to your profits, and you establish a recurring business model. The clients have one point of contact to deal with for all their website needs— you.
5 mantras to build a successful Reseller Hosting business
1. Choose a good web host
In Reseller Hosting, as mentioned earlier, you don’t own any of the hardware. Instead, it’s the web hosting company that owns the hardware and maintains it. So, it’s crucial that you choose a web hosting company that has a track record of offering reliable, secure, and fast web hosting services. Additionally, look out for features like high uptime guarantee, pre-integrated advanced caching solutions, high-performance infrastructure, and seamless upgrade of Reseller Hosting plans.
Unreliable websites won’t draw a lot of visitors, and that means that a lot of your customers will switch over to more reliable and secure offerings. So, ensure that you do your homework and choose a web hosting company that’s reliable.
2. Pick a niche and become an expert
There is no dearth of hosting companies online. It’s imperative that you stand out and offer distinctive services. To do that, it’s best to choose a niche and become an expert in that niche. Every industry needs a few distinct features for its websites. So, you can tailor your hosting plans to cater to those needs.
Along the same lines, you should also be actively customizing your hosting plans. Huge web hosting companies aren’t agile. They have a set structure of hosting plans. However, the USP of Reseller Hosting companies is that they can offer personalized hosting solutions. So, ensure that you create custom plans that perfectly align with the needs of customers in your niche.
For example, WordPress bloggers have conventionally been a popular target audience. Additionally, the long lockdowns increased this number further. WordPress bloggers have a specific set of requirements, such as ease of use, one-click WordPress installation, in-built control panel for seamless access to hosting setup. Further, if your niche users are bloggers, then you need to mention that on your homepage to attract the clientele. Additionally, include multiple blogs and guides on how to get started with blogging and WordPress on your business website.
All this will allow you to offer targeted hosting solutions that completely satisfy your client’s needs.
3. Customer support
Customer support is perhaps the most important feature of any hosting business. Extremely personalized customer support is what makes the proposition of a Reseller Hosting company appealing. Full-fledged hosting companies, like their hosting plans, cannot alter their customer service funnel too much. They have a set template, and support is provided according to that template only.
Reseller Hosting companies can and should be more agile. Use chatbots, AI search applications, how-to videos, blogs, and more tools to ensure that you provide as much support to your customers as possible.
Social media is turning out to be a brilliant way to resolve customer grievances. It’s an easy channel for customers to reach out to the company. So, make sure that your company is on social media and is actively resolving issues that customers have.
Finally, it helps to understand the most common complaints or grievances that people have with customer support. The general complaints are that support isn’t fast or efficient. There are also complaints about the transparency of communication. So, ensure that you don’t fall into these pitfalls. Be fast when resolving issues and if there are delays, keep the customer in the loop.
4. Marketing
Marketing your brand is how you reach out to people and add paying customers. However, marketing isn’t just about placing ads on Google. Marketing has gotten far more nuanced. Now, marketing is all about targeting your niche and promoting to people who are most likely to buy your products.
Apart from targeted advertising, you should also build a blog or a YouTube channel where you post information that your audience will find useful. When writing blogs, optimize them for SEO. This will ensure that you get featured at the top of search engine results, which in turn drives organic traffic to your website. Along with that, increase your social media presence. Instead of asking people to come to you, go where people are. Communicate your discounts and offers to your potential customers.
Increasing social media presence, writing a blog, shooting a video — these are not just about directly marketing to your audience, but it also builds your social strength as a company. Being a well-known company and having social credibility increases the value and trust of your brand.
5. Automate and scale
Automating a business refers to automating as many tasks as possible so that you have the opportunity to concentrate on growing the business. For example, there are a lot of applications like WHMCS (WebHost Manager Complete Solutions) that can automate repetitive tasks like billing. These applications will send bills, reminders, links, and everything to your customers automatically. You don’t have to follow up.
Similarly, use applications like WHM (Web Host Manager) and cPanel that gives you an easy way to control your entire Reseller Hosting business through a simple dashboard.
Automating tasks will help you concentrate on growing your business. Reseller Hosting is all about scale. So, that’s where you should be spending your time — customer acquisition and retention strategies.
