What Is Reseller Hosting?

With reseller hosting services, you’re not running or managing any of the hosting server’s yourself. Instead, you’re renting out these servers, branding them with your own company, and then selling that server space to customers.

Since everything is white label, it’s as if you’re running your own web hosting services company. Your customers will never know that it isn’t you.

You’ll be able to create your own hosting plans, take payments, offer additional features like email and website backups, and more.

A Brief Overview of Reseller Hosting

As a hosting reseller, you’ll purchase a hosting package from an established hosting provider. You’ll then divide these resources into smaller hosting packages, and sell them to your customers for a profit.

As a business, it’s a bad idea to depend on a single revenue stream. By adding hosting services to your repertoire, you can diversify your income and protect your business against fluctuations in the market. After all, just because your flagship product is in high demand now, doesn’t mean it’ll be flying off the shelves forever.

In today’s market, it’s difficult to think of an organization that doesn’t need a website. If you have an existing customer base, you already have an audience for your hosting services. In this way, reseller hosting can help you maximize your revenue without the added expense of acquiring new customers.

As a reseller, you can generate additional income while also eliminating the upfront costs typically associated with launching a new business venture. This includes purchasing servers and software licenses, and configuring your own network. It also removes many of the ongoing costs, including hiring staff to manage your hosting infrastructure, and repairing broken hardware.

Reseller hosting can be effective for building long-term relationships with your existing customers. Since it’s a subscription-based service, hosting can transform one-off or occasional purchases into loyal, repeat customers. In the best case scenario, reseller hosting will provide your business with a reliable, recurring revenue stream that lasts for years.

How to Make Money With Reseller Hosting (10 Ways)?

1. Find Your Relevant Niche

Becoming a successful hosting reseller isn’t about competing with the big hosting providers. These established companies are often in a position to provide highly competitive pricing. They also have the funds to target a large, diverse customer base.

Many successful hosting resellers target a niche audience. By focusing on a specific audience, you can create services, features, and marketing that speaks to the deep needs of your chosen niche.

As such, your potential revenue may be smaller as a niche hosting provider. However, you’re not trying to compete with the big hosting companies. This means your costs should be lower – which is great news for your profit margins.

When deciding who to target, it’s important to find a niche that’s large enough to sustain your business. Here, it may help to use a tool such as Google Trends. Using Trends, you can gauge how many people are searching for keywords related to your potential customer base.

4. Choose the Right Hosting Provider

As a hosting reseller, your services are completely dictated by your hosting provider. Choose the right provider for your business, and you’re off to a strong start.

For the best results, you should find a hosting provider that closely matches the resources and features your customers need, without providing any unnecessary added extras. It may be tempting to opt for the provider offering the latest features, or uncapped resources such as bandwidth, memory, and disk space. However, this doesn’t represent good value for money if your customers don’t actually need these features and resources.

If you’re launching a new business, it can be difficult to predict what your target audience might need. Here, it can help to study your competitors. You can also opt for a provider that offers a range of bandwidths.

When choosing a provider, we’d also recommend paying attention to uptime. If your hosting provider’s servers go down, it’ll take all of your customers’ websites down with it. According to Gartner, unscheduled downtime can cost a company as much as $5,600 per minute.

A recent study by Moz also found that intermittent 500 internal server errors can cause issues with tracked keywords. Choose the wrong hosting provider, and your customers may see a drop in their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) after switching to your reseller business.

5. Create a Strong Brand

Your branding should reflect your chosen niche, and communicate what makes you unique. By creating a consistent message that runs through your entire branding, you can clearly communicate who you’re targeting, and what you have to offer.

By creating a clear, consistent brand now, it’ll be easier to market your business in the future. Strong branding can also help obscure your identity as a hosting reseller.

There are some misconceptions surrounding hosting resellers. Some customers believe they can get a better experience, by cutting out the middleman and purchasing directly from your provider. Other customers may believe that reseller hosting is more expensive, since both the provider and the reseller have to earn a profit.

6. Launch Your Reseller Hosting Business

Once you’ve chosen your provider, the next step is creating your hosting packages. This process can vary, but at A2 Hosting all our reseller accounts include Web Host Manager (WHM) as standard.

WHM is an essential tool for managing any reseller hosting business. You can use WHM to perform important tasks, including creating client accounts, monitoring bandwidth usage – and creating your web hosting packages.

To create a package, log into the WHM console and select Add a Package. You can then specify the resources that you want to include in your hosting package.

You’ll also need a way to get your hosting packages in front of potential customers. If web hosting is a natural extension of your current services, you might add a landing page to your existing WordPress website. It’s possible to create landing pages using WordPress’ built-in features. However, you may find it easier to create beautifully-designed landing pages, using a dedicated page builder such as Elementor.

Another option is to launch an e-commerce store dedicated to your web hosting business. When it comes to selling products and services online, WooCommerce is a hugely popular option.

7. Excel at Customer Support

As a smaller hosting provider, your customer support has the potential to make or break your business. Provide a high level of customer support, and you’ll stand out from your direct competitors – and potentially even the major hosting providers.

Happy customers can be the best way to advertise your business. Today, it’s difficult to think of an organization that wouldn’t benefit from an online presence. In a world where everyone needs web hosting, every satisfied customer could potentially recommend your company to a huge number of people. To grow your business, it’s essential to provide a good customer experience.

The best customer support starts as soon as someone lands on your website. If they have questions then it should be easy for them to get answers. This might involve posing their questions via live chat, or researching the answers themselves using self-help resources such as FAQs.