When you sign up for web hosting, you’re opening a lot of opportunities beyond hosting a single website. You can often host multiple sites that you own on a single hosting account, depending on the terms and conditions provided by your host. Many web hosting customers even host others’ websites, often for a lucrative fee. The practice of hosting websites for other customers is called reselling hosting. If you’re signed up to be a reseller of web hosting, then you can charge customers any price you deem appropriate and bill them on a monthly or annual basis. Not all hosting accounts should be used for reselling hosting, however. Read on to learn when to avoid reselling your website hosting, and how to make best use of the practice.
Reselling Shared Hosting
Shared hosting servers are setup to host multiple websites on a physical remote server. Companies that provide shared hosting services will divide their servers into allotments for use by each customer assigned to the device. Some users see the “unlimited domains” offer on a standard shared hosting package and think immediately of reselling their web hosting.
This doesn’t work well in most cases, because the customer you will be reselling the web hosting to will need occasional or even frequent access to the hosting account. This is so that they can make changes, add posts, or perform administrator tasks to their websites.
The only way to allow your own customers to access the administrator section of the hosting account on a typical shared hosting plan is to give them your password and other credentials. This is not only against the terms of service at most shared hosting companies, but it can leave your billing information and other sensitive data open to the public.
The proper way to sell shared web hosting is to buy a reseller website hosting plan from a trusted host. This way you can give each customer access to a root file system or control panel, without compromising your own data or websites.
Reselling Hosting with VPS
Another popular form of web hosting that people tend to profit from reselling is Virtual Private Server hosting. By offering VPS hosting to your customers, you will enable them to know how much resources they can use on a monthly basis, or in any given moment, and you’ll be protecting yourself and your customers from delays in load times that can occur on shared hosting systems.
VPS hosting generally costs a bit more than shared hosting, but has much more to offer in terms of control over your website and resource allotment. Either system works great for reseller hosting businesses and can make you a sizeable profit with a little marketing.
Branding and Billing with Reseller Web Hosting
You should generally avoid reselling your hosting if you don’t have unique branding in place. Creating branding for a reseller hosting business is pretty simple and can be done in a day or so. Start by making a name for your new reseller web hosting business and purchasing the domain name that reflects your company or services.
Create a logo or font-based image to display on your reseller website hosting site or on your billing invoices and marketing graphics. You can use free tools like GIMP to create logos and graphics pertaining to branding. If you’re keeping the branding simple and text-based, there are some great font generators on the web that can help you create your logos and banners in minutes.
Every host works differently when it comes to billing for reseller services. You may be able to create your own invoices, depending on the hosting provider you’ve selected. If you can create or stylize your own hosting invoices, it’s a good idea to add your logo and remove any logos generated by the primary hosting supplier. This will keep the identity of your supplier private and help build confidence in your reseller service.
Making Money with Reseller Web Hosting
The best aspect of reseller web hosting is that you don’t need to maintain any physical web servers to make money. You can act as a helpful conduit between your customers and a primary hosting provider for a reasonable fee in the reseller hosting business. There isn’t a high barrier to entry in this practice, as many hosts will let you purchase reseller plans with as little as five resellable accounts.
This often works out to about the same price you’d pay for standard VPS hosting for the websites you own yourself. As your business grows and you collect more reseller web hosting customers, you can generally add more accounts and room to your primary account.
Reselling hosting is pretty simple, given that your hosting supplier will take care of most tasks involved in your business such as physical device maintenance and network connections involving the hosting.
To make money with hosting, you should focus on advertising your services and finding new clients. You can advertise on social media networks, with local businesses or groups, or across Google and other search engines.
Reselling website hosting is a fun and easy way to make money online, if you’re dedicated to coming up with a great name and catchy branding, and marketing your services locally or across the web. There are things and times to avoid when reselling hosting, including attempting to resell hosting without the proper account or setup, but in general the process is easy and rewarding for many users.
