Hosting on your Own account, Local Websites

[Berne]

I was looking at all the threads here talking about local niche/directory listings and when your selling a client a website and say hosting a lot of people mention using reseller accounts for hosting.

Why not just buy a hosting plan that allows for as many sites/databases and then just host them on your 12$/month plan for 20$/month? You get more than a reseller account and next year you'll continue getting money from hosting them. All you'd do is offer them an ftp username/password to their subfolder in your hosting directory.

 

[p0532673]

Because they don't get a cpanel account so you will probably get a shitload of calls from them asking you to do admin work which will not be worth the few bucks you're saving. It's also easier to automate the billing process if you have a reseller account, some resellers integrate WHMCS as an addon.

Lastly, think long term. With hosting you will want to build a loyal customer base and create some sort of switching costs for them, clearly not happening at the moment. When in doubt always put yourself in your customer's shoes.

 

[aStroke]

I see your point. However, I find that people who don't know SEO don't really have the know-how to use cpanel themselves. Instead of just blowing them off, it would be a good (and very easy) upsell to offer 3 minor text (or image) changes a month for $50 a month or something like that. If you get them to learn cpanel themselves, you are missing out on that extremely easy upsell. $50 isn't much but when you have 10 clients paying you $50 a month for 3 easy revisions a month, that's an extra $500 a month for 2-3 more hours of work!

Because they don't get a cpanel account so you will probably get a shitload of calls from them asking you to do admin work which will not be worth the few bucks you're saving. It's also easier to automate the billing process if you have a reseller account, some resellers integrate WHMCS as an addon.

Lastly, think long term. With hosting you will want to build a loyal customer base and create some sort of switching costs for them, clearly not happening at the moment. When in doubt always put yourself in your customer's shoes.

 

[Berne]

See that was what I was thinking. The people I'll be targeting tomorrow morning will be the local restaurants and locally owned shops. They have no idea what cpanel is. Nor databases, or ftp on that matter. So I was planning on charging a low ish (few hundred) price for a website that I would turn around in about 3 days give or take and then charge a low $10/Month hosting, or $100 on the spot for hosting for a year.

Then supply them with a ftp username/password and tell them if they want to make modifications please go ahead at your own risk. If you want me to do modifications, hosting goes up to $35 each month. (As per your example) Tada. I want to keep the price low all in all because my market area is less than 50K and there is already a huge local website that takes in some 45% of the city's population each day.

 

[tnhomestead]

Well a couple things could really go wrong hosting them on one site -- if 1 gets hacked you have a good chance of them all being hacked and that would hurt your other customers.
Another problem is if they screw up uploading, etc and take all the sites down.
I run a small hosting company and have seen both happen. Another one is since we are on a blackhat site, what happens if one of them tries to login and messes it up? With most sites, that would lock you out too! Also if the accounts are under your name, what happens if you die/arrested/etc? Just go for the reseller, get cpanel for all of them, still sell the upsell! And dont forget, that unlimited account you are going to use has limits in the TOS. This can work to start, but you run a lot of risks!
Good luck!