Save Money by Consolidating Your Hosting

If you have multiple shared accounts for a bunch of websites, you can save money by consolidating your hosting onto one Hostgator reseller account. Doing this would make managing your collection of sites a whole load easier too!

One reason you'd have several small shared hosting packages dotted all over the place is if you were caught up in the old SEO method of hosting a small personal network of sites on different IP addresses. That might still be a reasonable assumption to make, but these days of so many dead SEO practices that once proliferated before 2012, is it even viable any more?

Is Multiple IP Hosting Dead?

Whoa, what are you saying here? Everyone knows that if you want to host a small network of sites that provide link authority to a "money site" with links that you control, you have to host them in different places, right?

Well, that used to be true. Maybe it still is to a certain extent, but think about how much SEO has changed over the past 18 months. Your chief reason for doing this was to try and fool Google into thinking you didn't own the sites that were linking to your money making site, right?

But Google has gotten very good at sniffing out blog networks. So good that even if you think you've done everything possible to throw them off the scent, you'd be wrong.

One thing I figured out a long time ago is that I might be pretty smart, but the collective brains that run Google are a whole load smarter!

That means the chances are, unless you have really gone to extreme lengths to cover your tracks, there will be a footprint that can be tracked and traced back to you. In any case, the value of links is not quite as high as it once was and you can rank sites surprisingly well without them.

So is there any point to trying to cloak a network of sites by hosting them all over the place anymore? I am tending to think not.

Out on a Limb

I know the SEO guru crowd will disagree with me on this, and to be honest I couldn't care less what they say. I have little faith in anyone's opinion on what works best these days.

Remember, unless a person actually works on Google's algorithm and truly knows how it works, they are not qualified to tell me or you how to optimize a site (on or off-site) to get the best serps rankings.

So a lot of blustering and hot air might convince a lot of you out there that these so-called experts know what is right, but it doesn't convince me of anything. So there, I'm out on a limb in my reasoning and I kinda like it!

So Save Some Money on Hosting Already!

So all that money you're probably spending on a bunch of shared hosts may be money wasted. The sensible approach would be to try and save money on hosting these days where possible.

That money you're spending on shared accounts could be put to better use by sucking it in and splashing out on a reseller hosting plan, like the popular Aluminum plan from Hostgator.

It will cost you less than $25 a month to run it if you want to pay monthly and that can handle a lot of sites. I spoke about the benefits of reseller hosting in the previous post you can read by following that link.

Put simply, if you're spending $5 a month on 6 or more shared accounts, you can save money by consolidating them into one reseller. Better still, if you want to stump up the cash for a two year billing cycle, you can save 25% off the total cost of hosting by using the Hostgator coupon printed above in the right hand column on this page.

Here it is again if you missed it: NOWSAVE25PC

You can argue the pros and cons of doing this until the cows come home. But if you are finding money a little tight these days because maybe your sites aren't producing the income they once did, you might want to consider this option for saving some cash.

Think about it at least and you might just see the common sense in what I'm saying here.

How to Make Your Hosting Pay for Itself

If you chose to host your sites on a reseller plan, you can make that hosting pay for itself by doing a few simple but effective things that I will tell you about here.

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?

Reseller or Shared Hosting?

As you build more and more websites, your needs for web hosting will grow. Do you upgrade to a bigger shared or a reseller package? Your choice will be determined by several factors which we'll cover in this article.

When the size and type of your next upgrade in hosting becomes the next dilemma, you need to take note of what you actually need. The number and type of your websites will dictate to a certain extent the kind of account you will need. So which will it be and why?

Shared Account

If you intend only to maintain a handful of sites and expect them to grow in terms of physical size and traffic, you can often stay with a shared account until your sites have become too big for the amount of server resources and bandwidth your sites are taking up. Simply requesting an upgrade to the account can pose the simplest option because it will mean no moving of sites, IPs or nameservers.

This is the solution favored by many because it involved zero work on behalf of the website owner apart from contacting their host's support people to request the upgrade. This usually happens seamlessly and you simply carry on as before. It's a great way to continue as you were and still save money on web hosting.

Reseller Account

If your intention is to grow the number of sites you own to more than around 50 or so, then it becomes a lot more manageable to opt for a reseller package. You can get one for under $25 a month from Hostgator (it's a lot less with our discount 25% Off Hostgator coupon code) so it's actually very affordable considering the additional functionality you get over a shared account.

The most obvious difference is that you can place each website into its own hosting account within your reseller. This is a big step up from allocating an add-on domain for each site with shared hosting. In fact, a reseller is just like having your own master host with a load of smaller shared accounts attached to it.

It also means you can recoup some or all your expenses by hosting other people's websites for which you can charge them a monthly amount. They get their own shared account with cPanel and all the features you had with you basic shared account!

With a reseller, you can allocate resources to each internal account so if one site is getting lots more traffic than another, you can allocate more resources to that sub-account and less to another.

Another big benefit of a reseller over a larger shared account is the way in which the host allocates resources to its accounts.

Benefits of Reseller Over Shared

Shared accounts get loaded together onto each server by the hundreds or even thousands. So if one account starts getting a lot of traffic and exceeds its limit, it will quickly be disabled to protect the other accounts on that server.

A reseller account on the other hand will be placed with other resellers and not so tightly packed onto the server. So if one account exceeds its limits, there is some leeway where the customer can be contacted to rectify the situation themselves and not have their account taken down right away.

This is pure gold if you absolutely cannot afford to have one or more sites on your reseller go down, or be taken down by someone else's site. You can get into the admin panel and suspend the offending sub-account before any further damage is done, then work it out with the owner of the site (if it is not you) later on.

Your Choice

The final choice will be yours as to which way you decide to go for you hosting needs. It will depend on the number of sites you have or intend to have as you business expands online.

It will also depend on whether you are happy with the simplicity of a shared account and your intention is to only host a few sites, or would prefer the extra power and control available with a reseller if your intention is to host a lot of sites and keep that number growing.

Cost and resources will ultimately govern your final decision, but which way you choose to go should be the right one for your individual circumstances. Either way, you will be able to upgrade as your needs increase over time, so you never need to feel limited by what you have when you choose Hostgator as your host.