The story of the creator of one-day hosting
After reading the topic about one-day hosting , I decided to describe my experience of creating a hosting provider.
Here is how it was. Back in 2005, I was thinking about selling hosting. After all, the costs are scanty compared to income - I thought. And my friend and I rented a small UPU. But then none of us had any experience and apparently no particular desire to do this. At the VPS there was not even a control panel, everything was done manually. In general, this UPU hung for two months and everything somehow turned down by itself.
But the idea to do hosting did not let me go. I read all sorts of articles on this topic. Studied the control panel. In general, he increased the level of knowledge as he could.
')
In addition, I was still engaged in the creation of sites, hoping to earn them. And it so happened that in 2007 I had a small income from my sites on the Internet, in the region of 700 rubles a month. And I just came across a reselling offer from an American company. In short, reselling, this is when the hoster provides a piece of its server for rent. It differs from the VPS in that it is in fact possible to use all the server resources, and in addition there is a convenient control panel.
So this hoster offered reselling ten gigabytes for 700 rubles a month. This was exactly equal to my income from sites. And I thought, why not try? If there are no clients, I will still have money from my sites to pay for this reselling. No sooner said than done. I figured that if we sell, say, 50 MB for 10 rubles, then it is possible to place 200 clients on 10 gigabytes and they will bring me 2000 rubles. Total net profit of 1300 rubles. With such joyful thoughts, I made a few tariffs from 50 MB to 1 GB. Placed advertising their services in several forums on the Internet. I did not even have a website and that the most amazing people began to knock on Asya! In the first month I managed to find a client who, in addition to hosting, also wanted me to administer his forum. He paid me right away several months in advance. And in the first month my revenue was about 5 thousand rubles. Of course it was a success! I rubbed my hands in anticipation of how much I could earn!
But not everything went so smoothly. The server of a hoster from time to time fell and angry letters of my clients fell upon me. In order to somehow make amends for myself, I gave them 1-2 months of free hosting as compensation (I still have this practice). For a total of 3 months, I managed to get about 50 customers without investing a penny in advertising. And I'm ripe for renting my first dedicated server. Like the reselling, I rented a server in the USA. In those days there were the cheapest deals. I also paid for server administration and control panel installation. In addition, I finally created a website promoting services and even wrote a small script to account for customer payments. But server rental and all other costs ate all my profits. Therefore, starting from this point on, hosting worked at zero, that is, without any profit at all, but there were no losses.
As time went on, customers came little by little. Income (but not profit) grew, but not very active. In general, hosting has become a hobby for me and nothing more. I worked as a programmer (though I still work as a programmer now), and I was engaged in hosting in my spare time. And the moment came when the server ceased to withstand the current number of clients. The problems started. The server crashed, and again I began to receive angry letters from my clients. I had to rent a more powerful server, since the income from the hosting allowed it. But even though my income has grown, the costs for the new server have been eaten all over again and hosting has not brought any profit yet. And then I decided to raise the cost of my services. This did not scare off customers and they still continued to come to me.
It got to the point that I already rented 3 servers. It seems that everything went smoothly, I even bought ads on Google and Yandex, as well as on one fairly popular forum. Customers began to go more and more. In addition, I bought professional billing, and I opened my personal WebMoney certificate by fully automating customer payments.
And then there was a global financial crisis. The data center in which I rented one of the servers went bankrupt. I urgently rented a server in another data center and transferred my clients there. But that was not the end of it. The course of the dollar from 23 rubles rose to 36. For me it was a blow. Total expenses then amounted to around 500 dollars. And expenses in rubles from 10-11 thousand increased to 18-19 thousand. It was deadly for hosting. Since I did not have any financial reserves, and as I said, the total income was almost equal to the cost of equipment. And then it turned out more profitable to place the server in Russia. Since on the background of the take-off rate, our data centers, on average, did not raise prices for servers. So what I did.
The move was painful. Besides the fact that the servers in Russia were weaker, besides, I did not have the financial ability to pay for the servers in the USA for at least a month. Therefore, all clients had to be transferred literally in two days, after which the server in the USA was turned off, but they did not have time to upgrade and many of them stopped opening their sites. For several days, the issue with access was resolved. But it turned out that I did not suffer billing! I lost the history of all payments! It took me 4 months to restore all the information. And then new problems began.
My two servers in Russia could not withstand the loads created by customers! Besides, I didn’t have money to pay for server administration. And I started administering on my own, since by that time I already got a little hand in this matter. Since the stability of the work left much to be desired, clients slowly began to scatter from me. After long and generally unsuccessful attempts to stabilize the servers, I had, without exaggeration in agony, my own software, which monitored the server load and, in the event of an increase in load, independently caught the culprit and blocked it for a time of high load. In general, this software package, although it used primitive means, but proved to be very effective and I worked for almost half a year without any changes.
The first months of work in Russia went quite well. The servers were able to stabilize and enough money for everything. But then a new rake appeared. The special services were interested in me, since I had clients hosting porn on the hosting. The question was decided by the fact that I asked all such clients to leave my hosting. After that, the income noticeably subsided. But even now, I basically do not accept such customers, since even then I was thinking about banning such sites on my hosting. But that is not all. Our data centers love to take money for traffic. And on my servers it began to accumulate a lot, which almost doubled the costs. Again hosting was in critical condition. For the first time in a year and a half, I had to get money out of my own pocket and pay all the expenses (before that, the hosting paid for itself). In this mode, the hosting existed for several months. And finally, I was waiting for a new move, already in Europe. Namely, in Germany, where the prices for equipment are very much lower than in Russia, and as practice has shown, the quality is much higher! Here in Germany, my servers are to this point.
The situation has stabilized again. Finally, even a small one appeared, but profits and things got better. Now I plan to rent two more servers and launch a new site. In general, a lot of plans.
From my experience I made the following conclusions:
To start a business, you need initial capital and investments. Without initial capital and investments, the business will develop very slowly and painfully. My experience showed this, since I actually had neither initial capital nor investments.
You should always have a stock of money or simply NZ. So that in the event of a crisis your business does not fall apart.
We need money for specialists (in my case, system administrators). These are big expenses, but they will bring returns.
It is necessary to adhere to the rule “Customer is always right” and in any situation be polite and responsive with customers. I believe that this is what allowed me to keep the majority of clients in the most critical times for business.
Only if you are interested in doing this business can you overcome all the problems and achieve something!
Well, in general, this is perhaps the most basic conclusions. Also, if you want your business to grow quickly, then you should not save on advertising.
Summing up, I can now say that my hosting has now been more than two years old. During this time, I changed dozens of servers almost worldwide. I managed to collect about 300 active clients with meager advertising costs.
But hosting is still a hobby for me and does not bring tangible money. I am interested in doing this and I do not plan to give up this business. On the contrary, even at the moment I plan for the first time in two years to invest in this business and bring the hobby to the level of business.
So everything is just beginning! Successes you in your affairs!
UPD. I did not expect so many positive comments. Thank you all for your support!
Here is how it was. Back in 2005, I was thinking about selling hosting. After all, the costs are scanty compared to income - I thought. And my friend and I rented a small UPU. But then none of us had any experience and apparently no particular desire to do this. At the VPS there was not even a control panel, everything was done manually. In general, this UPU hung for two months and everything somehow turned down by itself.
But the idea to do hosting did not let me go. I read all sorts of articles on this topic. Studied the control panel. In general, he increased the level of knowledge as he could.
')
In addition, I was still engaged in the creation of sites, hoping to earn them. And it so happened that in 2007 I had a small income from my sites on the Internet, in the region of 700 rubles a month. And I just came across a reselling offer from an American company. In short, reselling, this is when the hoster provides a piece of its server for rent. It differs from the VPS in that it is in fact possible to use all the server resources, and in addition there is a convenient control panel.
So this hoster offered reselling ten gigabytes for 700 rubles a month. This was exactly equal to my income from sites. And I thought, why not try? If there are no clients, I will still have money from my sites to pay for this reselling. No sooner said than done. I figured that if we sell, say, 50 MB for 10 rubles, then it is possible to place 200 clients on 10 gigabytes and they will bring me 2000 rubles. Total net profit of 1300 rubles. With such joyful thoughts, I made a few tariffs from 50 MB to 1 GB. Placed advertising their services in several forums on the Internet. I did not even have a website and that the most amazing people began to knock on Asya! In the first month I managed to find a client who, in addition to hosting, also wanted me to administer his forum. He paid me right away several months in advance. And in the first month my revenue was about 5 thousand rubles. Of course it was a success! I rubbed my hands in anticipation of how much I could earn!
But not everything went so smoothly. The server of a hoster from time to time fell and angry letters of my clients fell upon me. In order to somehow make amends for myself, I gave them 1-2 months of free hosting as compensation (I still have this practice). For a total of 3 months, I managed to get about 50 customers without investing a penny in advertising. And I'm ripe for renting my first dedicated server. Like the reselling, I rented a server in the USA. In those days there were the cheapest deals. I also paid for server administration and control panel installation. In addition, I finally created a website promoting services and even wrote a small script to account for customer payments. But server rental and all other costs ate all my profits. Therefore, starting from this point on, hosting worked at zero, that is, without any profit at all, but there were no losses.
As time went on, customers came little by little. Income (but not profit) grew, but not very active. In general, hosting has become a hobby for me and nothing more. I worked as a programmer (though I still work as a programmer now), and I was engaged in hosting in my spare time. And the moment came when the server ceased to withstand the current number of clients. The problems started. The server crashed, and again I began to receive angry letters from my clients. I had to rent a more powerful server, since the income from the hosting allowed it. But even though my income has grown, the costs for the new server have been eaten all over again and hosting has not brought any profit yet. And then I decided to raise the cost of my services. This did not scare off customers and they still continued to come to me.
It got to the point that I already rented 3 servers. It seems that everything went smoothly, I even bought ads on Google and Yandex, as well as on one fairly popular forum. Customers began to go more and more. In addition, I bought professional billing, and I opened my personal WebMoney certificate by fully automating customer payments.
And then there was a global financial crisis. The data center in which I rented one of the servers went bankrupt. I urgently rented a server in another data center and transferred my clients there. But that was not the end of it. The course of the dollar from 23 rubles rose to 36. For me it was a blow. Total expenses then amounted to around 500 dollars. And expenses in rubles from 10-11 thousand increased to 18-19 thousand. It was deadly for hosting. Since I did not have any financial reserves, and as I said, the total income was almost equal to the cost of equipment. And then it turned out more profitable to place the server in Russia. Since on the background of the take-off rate, our data centers, on average, did not raise prices for servers. So what I did.
The move was painful. Besides the fact that the servers in Russia were weaker, besides, I did not have the financial ability to pay for the servers in the USA for at least a month. Therefore, all clients had to be transferred literally in two days, after which the server in the USA was turned off, but they did not have time to upgrade and many of them stopped opening their sites. For several days, the issue with access was resolved. But it turned out that I did not suffer billing! I lost the history of all payments! It took me 4 months to restore all the information. And then new problems began.
My two servers in Russia could not withstand the loads created by customers! Besides, I didn’t have money to pay for server administration. And I started administering on my own, since by that time I already got a little hand in this matter. Since the stability of the work left much to be desired, clients slowly began to scatter from me. After long and generally unsuccessful attempts to stabilize the servers, I had, without exaggeration in agony, my own software, which monitored the server load and, in the event of an increase in load, independently caught the culprit and blocked it for a time of high load. In general, this software package, although it used primitive means, but proved to be very effective and I worked for almost half a year without any changes.
The first months of work in Russia went quite well. The servers were able to stabilize and enough money for everything. But then a new rake appeared. The special services were interested in me, since I had clients hosting porn on the hosting. The question was decided by the fact that I asked all such clients to leave my hosting. After that, the income noticeably subsided. But even now, I basically do not accept such customers, since even then I was thinking about banning such sites on my hosting. But that is not all. Our data centers love to take money for traffic. And on my servers it began to accumulate a lot, which almost doubled the costs. Again hosting was in critical condition. For the first time in a year and a half, I had to get money out of my own pocket and pay all the expenses (before that, the hosting paid for itself). In this mode, the hosting existed for several months. And finally, I was waiting for a new move, already in Europe. Namely, in Germany, where the prices for equipment are very much lower than in Russia, and as practice has shown, the quality is much higher! Here in Germany, my servers are to this point.
The situation has stabilized again. Finally, even a small one appeared, but profits and things got better. Now I plan to rent two more servers and launch a new site. In general, a lot of plans.
From my experience I made the following conclusions:
To start a business, you need initial capital and investments. Without initial capital and investments, the business will develop very slowly and painfully. My experience showed this, since I actually had neither initial capital nor investments.
You should always have a stock of money or simply NZ. So that in the event of a crisis your business does not fall apart.
We need money for specialists (in my case, system administrators). These are big expenses, but they will bring returns.
It is necessary to adhere to the rule “Customer is always right” and in any situation be polite and responsive with customers. I believe that this is what allowed me to keep the majority of clients in the most critical times for business.
Only if you are interested in doing this business can you overcome all the problems and achieve something!
Well, in general, this is perhaps the most basic conclusions. Also, if you want your business to grow quickly, then you should not save on advertising.
Summing up, I can now say that my hosting has now been more than two years old. During this time, I changed dozens of servers almost worldwide. I managed to collect about 300 active clients with meager advertising costs.
But hosting is still a hobby for me and does not bring tangible money. I am interested in doing this and I do not plan to give up this business. On the contrary, even at the moment I plan for the first time in two years to invest in this business and bring the hobby to the level of business.
So everything is just beginning! Successes you in your affairs!
UPD. I did not expect so many positive comments. Thank you all for your support!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/93364/
All Articles