Started a web hosting business

dahac

I've started a web hosting business and have spent bit on facebook offers but no one buys when they claim the offer. Any ideas how I can turn these into sales. I've done a offer of 75% off unlimited web hosting for only £4.99

gb12345

Your site has no privacy/cookie policy.

Your site has no physical contact address.

You are breaking Nominet rules by using the non-trading individual opt out to avoid showing your registration details.

A number of the links on the site go to 404 pages.

If you can't even get the simple things right it doesn't give much confidence, so I wouldn't touch your business with a bargepole.

PasturesNew

Apart from what has been said above ... and dealing with the question as if asked by a serious player in business.....
.... hardly anybody buys hosting. The way to get customers is to provide a packaged service. e.g. hosting with Wordpress installed, hosting with an ecommerce shop ready to go, a local directory business ready to go. Nobody wants hosting, they want to buy into an easy/packaged solution that sits on the hosting. Provide people with an instant business/site they can use and you might be able to make something out of it.

People who buy hosting "know what they are after" - and won't touch your current offering with a barge pole.

Look at packages you can install/put together and sell.

Beyond that you'd need to add more services to those accounts, more cross-selling and up-selling. Add more value.

dahac

The unlimited web hosting package comes complete with Wordpress, ecommerce, and if you look over the web hosting features they have some great features. Going to look into sorting some of the problems

gb12345

The 404 problem is worse than I thought - including, on your homepage, your news story about your sale goes to a 404.

Also, if you go through the order process, when it comes to the hosting selection, the only option I get come up is the Unlimited package - how are you supposed to select Starter, Medium or Business.

Also, at least one of your testimonials appears to be fake as when I search it the exact same testimonial comes up on other sites.

Also, why aren't you promoting the fact you offer Linux hosting as well as Windows?

dahac

Maybe there's no money in doing this as there is two many doing it, plus I would need to spend millions on marketing to get a return

patman99

Maybe its down to the fact that customers will soon blog about 'dodgy-looking webhosts with pages that generate 404 errors'.

One rule about online business is - Make sure your site works faultlessly before you launch it to the public.

Also, you are breaching MSE rules by having your website link in your signature.

paddyrg

Some excellent responses above - people who buy hosting will have specific requirements, and so will go to a decent host. You may get some interest with pre installed drupal or similar, but you'll probably still work hard to get that business.

Hosting means infrastructure - are you just reselling somebody else's hosting, or do you have a rack in a co-lo farm? Or an old desktop running on a DSL account? If you can't offer space in a farm, you rely on home-spec connectivity, so your SLA's will be up the wall

dahac

Do you think there is any money in doing it

gb12345

dahac wrote: »

Do you think there is any money in doing it

That depends on your costs - as paddy said, are you just reselling or do you have to shell out for servers or co-hosting.

What did your business plan indicate would be your turnover and profits? That should indicate to you whether you are likely to make any money out of it.

dahac

Reselling, business plan means nothing, you can plan lots but if there isn't any money coming in on plans then there isn't any point