Reseller Hosting

Reseller hosting means that not only can you find great web hosting for your site(s), but you can also provide it for others as an extra source of income. Web hosting reseller programs let you act as middleman (or woman) between existing web hosting providers and new clients that you find for them. Income in reseller hosting programs is derived in the form of commissions paid directly by the provider and/or profits based on reselling discounted packages at a higher price.

Web hosting companies that offer a web host reseller program find it to be an extremely popular tool for them to market and sell their services to new clients in untapped markets with minimal overhead. As a participant in a web hosting reseller program, you would be a hot commodity to these companies, who will often compete to obtain your reseller hosting services almost more than they might to get new clients. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense; one client is just one client, but any one person doing reseller hosting represents limitless new clients.

The benefit to setting up a reseller hosting service, rather than, say, running your own server and starting a web hosting services from scratch, is that you get the support and resources of an established firm. You get to sell and possibly manage a small portion of an already successful enterprise rather than having to scrimp and save, sweat and toil to insert a new player onto an already inundated field of competitors.

There are a number of ways you can become sell web space on another company's server:

• You can act as the web host's agent, similar to other affiliate marketing programs where a link from your sites and advertisements may take the potential customers directly to the company's own site, or customers may simply mention you to the provider as their referrer. Either way, customers would purchase service directly from the web hosting company, and you would then get a percentage as a reseller hosting provider.

• But besides merely marketing another host's services, you might also choose to personally sell the web host’s services directly to the clients. All future contact would then take place directly between the web hosting company and the customer, but as a reseller hosting provider, because you did not only the marketing, but the actual selling, your cut would be greater.

• You could act as the host yourself, marketing, selling, and then managing the web space that you provide, having purchased it from the actual provider for a discounted price. It would appear to the customer as though you actually owned your own web hosting company, rather than just being an affiliate in a web host reseller program, though your hosting services would actually be a "skin" of the parent company. In this scenario and the following one, customers would call you for support rather than the provider itself.

• Alternately, you could buy a bunch of web space and bandwidth yourself and parse it out as you see fit to provide whatever packages you wish to your customers. This, probably the most comprehensive reseller hosting program, offers you maximum control over your business and potentially the greatest returns, but it also requires significantly more attention, responsibility, and risk.

If you do decide to explore the wonderful world of reseller hosting, you'll want to figure out which services to offer. You could offer store fronts, search engine optimization tools, dedicated server accounts, domain names, and on and on. While you definitely want to offer your customers as much in one place as they might need - as most customers won't want to purchase their packages a la carte from a handful of web hosting (and reseller hosting) companies if they can avoid it - you also don't want to overextend yourself. It's advisable to consider specializing your services to a degree, especially if you're just one person. Decide who your target market is, where specifically you'll be advertising to find them, what the predominant needs of those clients might be, and then cater your reseller hosting packages to their specific needs.

Whichever method of reseller hosting you choose, if you do it right, you can host your own websites for next to nothing.

View our list of Top 10 Reseller Hosting Companies