How to Become A

Web Hosting Reseller

If you've checked out the stats from some of the sellers on the Top 5 Web Hosting sites page, you'll see that most of them claim to have a 100,000 + client range with some even around 500,000. I guess that you can believe their sales figures or not but I can certainly attest to the fact that most of them have been around since the turn of the century, so those numbers are quite feasible, given the exponential growth of the web during that time.

So, why would you consider becoming a web hosting reseller when these web hosting companies seem to have the market sewn up? Well, here are...

1   It's easy money! When you sell web hosting packages, whether you're top-end or budget, there's a monthly turnover that usually grows at a slow but steady exponential.

Yes, there's attrition as some websites hit the cyber-dirt but if you're lucky enough to get a good customer, it can become quite lucrative as they sometimes take several hosting packages and occasionally, numerous other services!  

2   Web hosting reselling is clean! You're just a middle man and you never have to handle enquiries, irate emails or phone calls etc., making it a very cheap business in which someone else has all the real-world costs. 

In fact, I consider that the best thing about being a web hosting reseller is that you don't even have to know a thing about:

• web hosting
• Linux
• PHP
• dedicated servers or
• anything technical at all

...that's all the business of the data center operator

3   It's your web hosting business, so you can create your own hosting service plans and pricing structures. Indeed, if you have distinct sources of web traffic, you could make several businesses from different sites out of the same reseller package:

• cheap web hosting for the youth market & internet marketing mini-sites
• competitive website hosting for the Adsense & Niche Affiliate Marketing crowd or even
• branded hosting, with you or your cyber alter-ego's personal recommendation e.g., I know of one very successful internet marketer who, in June 2007, used some highly manipulated emails to suggest that I sign up for his FREE replicated website (and only pay the $12.95m web hosting) on a sub domain, hosting that would have probably been costing him less than one cents. Another internet marketer (the web's top ebay guru) was offering a similar deal for a one-off $97  

The only argument against becoming a hosting reseller seems to be that you're one of many, so how do you drive traffic towards your site? 

One of the best ways I've seen this being done is via Article Marketing and articles that explain various aspects of web hosting. The aim of that is to create both direct traffic and eventually increase their search engine rankings through backlinks, which hopefully increases traffic to their web site.

4   Away from cyberspace and in the real world, becoming a hosting reseller is a smart move if you have any have any kind of a web consultancy, whether it's as a:

• web designer
• website builder
• copywriter
• seo expert    

...etc. because if you've used the web host for long enough and are sure sure of its customer service, you can leverage that incredibly.

Most real world folks are like putty in the hands of a web expert and if you choose to use some scare tactics about web hosting disasters (and to be fair, there are many) they will follow your every recommendation, to the letter. 

So, should you become a web hosting reseller? 

Why not?

For a few hours work and the occasional article you could create a nice little earner. If you're interested in the hosting reseller the prices vary (Godaddy starts at $99 per annum) but Resellers Panel  are the best and cheapest that I've come across and have some really good hosting reseller packages. 

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