Another story of a small hosting provider
A personal story about how I opened my hosting, which even brings some profit.
Inspired by the history of habrahabr.ru/blogs/hosting/93364
The idea of ​​becoming a hosting provider came to me by chance, when one of the former clients of a web studio, where I officially work, asked where you can place your site.
Being engaged in web development I also have a virtual server for software testing. Server resources are not used and 10%, so the idea why not earned lodged in my head.
')
This idea had to be thought out to the smallest detail. I wanted not only to pay for myself, but at least a little, but to earn. Realizing that you won’t earn $ 2 on a hosting, I decided that I would take a much larger amount from customers. Naturally, the question immediately arose of how to find customers willing to pay the same amount for hosting and how to compete with hosting for $ 2.
By asking myself, what do I get paid for in my main job? I understood two things for myself. First, I get paid for my knowledge. Secondly - for the work itself.
This prompted me to the idea that my potential client is an organization, at least connected with the computer sphere .
First, as a rule, an organization is ready to pay more than a private client.
Secondly, the less such an organization possessed computer knowledge, the more I could sell my knowledge and services to it.
Surveys of acquaintances and some organizations (with which I dealt at work) showed that they would rather pay a living person than enter a visa number on the site.
This is easily explained - live communication inspires confidence in them, hence I made a conclusion - compulsory communication with the client, at least by telephone .
Despite the fact that today, probably all hosting companies advertise 24/7 phone support , at the stage of concluding a contract a representative of such an office is still virtual.
Next was built a list of potential customers, it fell into:
museums, theaters, social movements and some other small organizations.
So what can you pay for besides the usual hosting services?
Since my clients are far from everything related to IT , I suggested that they solve “practically any” problems associated with sites. Such clients are turned off by words like ftp / php / dns / ssh. What will take me 5 minutes to do, it will take many hours and a lot of tedious calls with “stupid questions”. I got this experience at the main job: when making websites, I had to give some support to them, even if they were built on a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla , customers still had almost anecdotal questions.
How did I look for clients?
To be honest, the first ten are organizations already familiar to me. For the second ten I left through the first clients.
If to summarize all of the above, then:
Now in numbers:
After learning about the features of some organizations, I offered them a new service for them - mail hosting and administration. For them it was a headache, for me it was - reset the password, open a new mailbox, etc. This is a separate service for $ 30 per month. 11 clients use it. These 11 customers do not want to go to the control panel and add something there, so I would prefer to do it.
In order to sign contracts, I had to officially register and pay taxes.
As a result, for each month:
- $ 40 per server
$ 30 * 24 = $ 720 for hosting
$ 30 * 11 = $ 330 for hosting and administering mail
$ 850 after taxes
If you divide it into work hours, then it turns out to be $ 42.5 per hour, not bad at all, considering that hosting is just my hobby.
I have no further plans to develop my hosting, so I’m no longer looking for new customers. This is explained by the fact that being a hoster is not my favorite occupation, and at the initial stage I set the bar at 20-30 hours per month for this business.
Nevertheless, for me it is a very interesting experience. If you find the right approach to customers and provide them with the necessary knowledge and experience, you can easily compete with hosters for $ 2. I think this experience can be applied in other areas.
UPDATE
The technical side of the case:
UPDATE 2
In case of holidays, weekends, etc. my assistant is working on the server. Calls from the official company number are simply redirected to him. Payment by the hour of work.
Over the past year he never had to work.
Good luck, in your endeavors and success in the new year!
Inspired by the history of habrahabr.ru/blogs/hosting/93364
The idea of ​​becoming a hosting provider came to me by chance, when one of the former clients of a web studio, where I officially work, asked where you can place your site.
Being engaged in web development I also have a virtual server for software testing. Server resources are not used and 10%, so the idea why not earned lodged in my head.
')
This idea had to be thought out to the smallest detail. I wanted not only to pay for myself, but at least a little, but to earn. Realizing that you won’t earn $ 2 on a hosting, I decided that I would take a much larger amount from customers. Naturally, the question immediately arose of how to find customers willing to pay the same amount for hosting and how to compete with hosting for $ 2.
By asking myself, what do I get paid for in my main job? I understood two things for myself. First, I get paid for my knowledge. Secondly - for the work itself.
This prompted me to the idea that my potential client is an organization, at least connected with the computer sphere .
First, as a rule, an organization is ready to pay more than a private client.
Secondly, the less such an organization possessed computer knowledge, the more I could sell my knowledge and services to it.
Surveys of acquaintances and some organizations (with which I dealt at work) showed that they would rather pay a living person than enter a visa number on the site.
This is easily explained - live communication inspires confidence in them, hence I made a conclusion - compulsory communication with the client, at least by telephone .
Despite the fact that today, probably all hosting companies advertise 24/7 phone support , at the stage of concluding a contract a representative of such an office is still virtual.
Next was built a list of potential customers, it fell into:
museums, theaters, social movements and some other small organizations.
So what can you pay for besides the usual hosting services?
Since my clients are far from everything related to IT , I suggested that they solve “practically any” problems associated with sites. Such clients are turned off by words like ftp / php / dns / ssh. What will take me 5 minutes to do, it will take many hours and a lot of tedious calls with “stupid questions”. I got this experience at the main job: when making websites, I had to give some support to them, even if they were built on a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla , customers still had almost anecdotal questions.
How did I look for clients?
To be honest, the first ten are organizations already familiar to me. For the second ten I left through the first clients.
If to summarize all of the above, then:
- I provide services only to organizations far from the computer sphere
- looking for customers myself and through friends
- one hosting plan (up to 3GB of space / unlimited traffic)
- I do not have a website
- I do not advertise anywhere
- no online billing
- signed contract only
- give some support in their sites
- Clients do not use the control panel (they simply don’t need it), so a free equivalent of paid cpanel and Parallels Plesk was taken
- backups are made to an external server (which is at my disposal for services about its administration)
- all clients (except one) from the city where I live
Now in numbers:
- today 24 customers
- one VDS server ($ 40 per month)
- tariff plan - $ 30 per month
- minimum payment for 12 months (it saves me every month to do the routine associated with the transfer of money)
- all clients together I spend about 20 hours a month (mostly small questions from the series “how to reduce the image in the correct proportion for the site”)
- these 20 hours include everyday viewing of server status logs and backups
After learning about the features of some organizations, I offered them a new service for them - mail hosting and administration. For them it was a headache, for me it was - reset the password, open a new mailbox, etc. This is a separate service for $ 30 per month. 11 clients use it. These 11 customers do not want to go to the control panel and add something there, so I would prefer to do it.
In order to sign contracts, I had to officially register and pay taxes.
As a result, for each month:
- $ 40 per server
$ 30 * 24 = $ 720 for hosting
$ 30 * 11 = $ 330 for hosting and administering mail
$ 850 after taxes
If you divide it into work hours, then it turns out to be $ 42.5 per hour, not bad at all, considering that hosting is just my hobby.
I have no further plans to develop my hosting, so I’m no longer looking for new customers. This is explained by the fact that being a hoster is not my favorite occupation, and at the initial stage I set the bar at 20-30 hours per month for this business.
Nevertheless, for me it is a very interesting experience. If you find the right approach to customers and provide them with the necessary knowledge and experience, you can easily compete with hosters for $ 2. I think this experience can be applied in other areas.
UPDATE
The technical side of the case:
- Rackspacecloud server
- 512MB RAM
- 20 GB HDD
- virtualmin control panel
UPDATE 2
In case of holidays, weekends, etc. my assistant is working on the server. Calls from the official company number are simply redirected to him. Payment by the hour of work.
Over the past year he never had to work.
Good luck, in your endeavors and success in the new year!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/111050/
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