If you are planning to develop a web hosting startup, but are still wondering how to grow your business, you should consider a few things first. You can join the hosting industry at different levels – buying a VPS with user interface and selling label-less services, getting a cloud hosting and reselling from there, putting your own hardware in shared data centers and managing it yourself or building your own data center with servers, network, connections, etc.
Each level requires a different investment and knowledge. That’s why you should read on to become clear and decide whether you really want to enter the hosting industry.
Do good research
If you had already decided 10 years ago to enter the hosting industry, it would have been very easy. Years ago, everyone could attract hundreds of customers with just 1 server and a certain amount of money invested in advertising. But today there are thousands of web hosting providers. So if you want a better chance of success, you should do some good research on the market.
Find customers
You have probably already asked yourself how web hosting providers – whether new or established – find customers. Some companies focus on local sales, while others are nationwide or even global. As the market for hosting services becomes increasingly saturated, it is difficult to find customers and you have to use different tactics to attract existing customers from other companies.
You can do this by providing better service at a better price. Before you make a decision, you should locate hubs to identify your prospective customers and see if they are satisfied with their current provider. Check out places like tech forums, review sites and sites where you can make money online (yes, these people need hosting at some point).
Organisation of your advertising
If you’re a new business in the industry, you should consider that Google Adwords charges up to €30 per click for some phrases and keywords in the industry, sometimes even more. This lets you spend a fortune on clicks with no guarantee of converting visitors.
You should be very careful when using Google Adwords with placement ads, because their service can sometimes be a waste of money by displaying your ads on low quality websites and you still have to pay several pounds. Of course, there are many other websites whose owners try the impossible to generate clicks for their customers’ ads. But sometimes this is not a good idea because they “force” people to click to display content, which is a waste of money for you.
Google is still the best solution for a startup in terms of traffic. You can also try other search providers like Yahoo or Bing, but these are not so big in Germany and it can be very difficult / expensive to generate a qualitative traffic from this.
Search for potential sources of traffic
You should definitely do good research on the efficiency and inefficiency of traffic sources. Some websites send large amounts of traffic, but very little conversion, while others send qualitative target customers who are more likely to become customers. Therefore, good research is critical if you don’t want to miss opportunities or lose money on advertising.
Web hosting providers use different methods to attract potential customers. The reason is that not everyone who visits the website is planning to buy anything. But does this mean that these people can’t be helpful? Your web hosting management team should know that these people can at least be used as recommendations. For example, before leaving the site, you can ask anyone a question or give them a discount. This may tempt some of them to leave feedback or recommend the site.
Support measures
Your web hosting company has some options regarding customer support. You can hire and train a support team or hand it over to a third party – because there are many companies that offer customer service at a low price. The downside is that you hand over control of your business to third parties and you can’t guarantee quality service. If you decide to keep support in-house, it means more security and service, but it will also cost more money.
Issue invoices and avoid fraud
Some web hosting companies issue invoices to the customer through an online merchant account of any bank. Most use PayPal, but of course there are many other options. Operating a merchant account has its drawbacks. Every online merchant must order screening procedures to prevent fraudsters from becoming “customers” and need advanced fraud prevention technology.
Another problem you may have to face is dishonest people. Some use your service and decide to reverse the payment when they close the deal and ask for their money. Others become very offensive and transmit bad reviews on your website as customer feedback.
However, you should not panic let us become aggressive ourselves because you could damage your company’s reputation. You must be prepared to respond appropriately and deal with the situation gracefully.