Before I get into the workings of what you need to do, I should first point out that this is not some trick to defraud the hosting company or get your hosting for free in any way. This is a legitimate business strategy that people are using to make their hosting work for them. Here's how:
How to Sell Hosting Yourself
You need a reseller account to do this properly, but it's as easy as anything to set aside some of your resources to sell other website owners some hosting on your account. A Hostgator reseller account comes with a front end called the WHM (Web Hosting Manager) panel that you use to maintain your websites each in its own sub-hosting account within your reseller. At least that's what you should be doing!
Each account is literally its own "shared" hosting account that you manage within you own WHM. This means that you can allocate one or more of these accounts to other people in return for a small monthly or annual (or other periodic) subscription from your "client(s)".
How to Attract Hosting Clients
To attract clients, you can make use of a variety of mediums such as Internet Marketing or web hosting forums, your own website or blog, an email list or other social media such as a Facebook page. The method you choose should be suitable as I'll set out below:
- Forums: You need to have already built up some standing and respect from your fellow forum members before you start offering them hosting on your reseller host. People don't much appreciate new forum members coming in and offering such services right off the bat, so if you want to be successful with this method, make sure you are well known, active and respected in the forum before you start making tentative steps to offering hosting services.
- Social Media: Places like Facebook are ideal for advertising your services in this way, but be a little careful how you go about it. Don't spam your family and friends with the hard sell because you'll only end up annoying the hell out ot them! Same goes for people in your circles as you don't want to alienate people.
- The List: If you have built up a substantial email list over time and are working it correctly, that is sending subscribers lots of useful informative newsletters and only the occasional sales email, then you could make a special offer of cheap hosting for the subscribers in your list. Tread carefully because people are quick to unsubscribe if they think they're being treated as cash cows, so easy does it.
- Your Website or Blog: On your own site you can do pretty much whatever you want as long as it is useful to visitors and of course you are already attracting relevant traffic to be able to sell to. The best way to advertise is to write a big article about hosting and drop plenty of hints that you are providing this service.
How Much to Charge Your Clients
How much you charge depends on what you are offering them and what you are able to offer depending on the size and resource level of your reseller account. If you have sufficient resources, you can offer unlimited bandwidth but limit storage as a reasonable percentage of your account's allocation. Remember to set aside sufficient for several sub-accounts should you be lucky enough to attract them.
You could advertise that you offer unlimited domains, which looks good but few people ever end up hosting more than a handful of domains on any one account, so you should be OK there. You should also be careful to make sure you don't charge any more than your host charges for their cheapest shared hosting account, or why should anyone use your service when they can go direct through the hosting company themselves.
Also bear in mind that there are lots of cheap hosting companies out there that are already vying for business and some are so cheap they almost give it away. That doesn't mean you should try and match them. Chances are your reseller will be more robust than a really cheap host and you'll be providing a better service.
With relatively good shared hosting available for under $5 a month, you will probably want to pitch your price a little less than that to attract business. That will be up to you and what you think you can get away with charging and still make enough to cover your own hosting costs.
An Alternative Way of Attracting Business
Do you flip websites? Then one additional source of clients could come from this and make a selling point for the sites you are selling. You could include an extra bonus that the buyer of your website gets 6 months free hosting and after that you can start charging them.
Many website owners will readily accept the free hosting and be too lazy to bother changing when the free period is up as long as you come in with an affordable price, they'll likely stay with you. This is especially so if you sell your websites with a Wordpress setup.
This is a good way of getting clients to host sites on your reseller and pay you for the privilege.
When you have enough people hosting with you, you'll find you're soon covering your costs and then making a nice profit every month. And it doesn't take long before this builds up using this method and you need to buy a second reseller to cope with demand.
A nice situation to be in, wouldn't you agree?
