Hosting and Domain Name

Registering your own personal name is probably one of the first things you should do as it is a great place to put your blog which we will do later. The most obvious place to do this is GoDaddy however there are plenty of others. Mainly you will want to use the same registra for most of your names as you will have a lot as time goes by. Having a domain name and adding content to that domain is probably one of the cheapest forms of advertising you can do. Well add some more during the conference.

If you want to resell domains take a look at http://www.wildwestdomains.com/

Overview

A web site is a collection of web pages. 

A web page is a group of files compiled together using the html protocol to produce a viewable page through a browser. These web pages can be a collection of text, graphics, multimedia and other components.

To make these files viewable they must be stored on a computer that is linked to the web and is called a server. Our aim in this workshop is to show you how to create a web page and then how to join a group of web pages together to form a website. We will then show you how to upload them to a server so the world can view them.

Reseller Hosting

There are plenty of great paid hosting accounts and we have listed a few we use below. When you go to these sites click on the reseller hosting tab. This will allow you to add unlimited domains for one small fee and also resell to others.

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Tip One – Don’t try and compete with the big guys. There are literally hundreds of people selling hosting however there are niches where you can get a lot of customers. Local businesses, local papers etc. Lets face it people like to have some one they can reach and talk to. This also means you can charge a premium price.

Example: A local politician wanted a new website and knew I provided hosting so contacted me. He already had a site but wanted to change it to a Content Management site. He paid a premium price for me to transfer all the current information and set it up and then standerd local hosting price per year which is a lot greater than standard Internet prices a year. I used mambo which is free and simply contracted someone to copy his site into the CMS and then I copied and pasted all the information across. Why was he willing to pay so much more.

Simply I offered a service which his current hosting company did not. It was costing him a fortune every time someone did something on his site. I simply charged what the other company was charging add worked out the time to install a cms, copy the info across and and buffered in some training how to use the CMs. Another very happy customer.

Tip Two – Add value to your hosting. Learn some of the more advanced systems like forums, CMS, photo galleries etc. Things that people may want. The third system is great for this as you can set up a test site and practice and also show them the finished product before it is all transferred across. Many of the added features can be auto loaded through Fantastico which is included in the third package. Other services you can add is streaming audio by using our product at http://www.mp3soundstream.com Take their audio and compile it for them and offer to embed in their page. This can be a great money spinner as most people still think it is only for big corporate sites.

Offer to take their brochures and convert to pdf. You can pick up an older version of Acrobat which will do it just fine for cents on the dollar at auctions etc. There are also some good clones around. Here is a good one http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/

Here is another great creator called Primo PDF

http://www.primopdf.com You can also add this tool as bonuse when they host with you. Build a package of tools for them to use.

All these additional services and tools mean you can increase the cost from very basic hosting to 10 and 20 times what you would get if you just sell hosting like everyone else. Learn how to stand out from the crowd.

Pdf995 makes it easy and affordable to create professional-quality documents in the popular PDF file format. Its easy-to-use interface helps you to create PDF files by simply selecting the "print" command from any application, creating documents which can be viewed on any computer with a PDF viewer.

Pdf995 supports network file saving, fast user switching on XP, Citrix/Terminal Server, custom page sizes and large format printing. Pdf995 is a printer driver that works with any Postscript to PDF converter. The pdf995 printer driver and a free Converter are available for easy download. http://www.pdf995.com/download.html

Tip Three – Find a local graphic artist. There are plenty of budding artists and web graphics people around. Universities, school children, at home mums that will do it for very reasonable prices and then you add on your commission. I have used a young uni guy I found a couple of years ago and we have developed a great relationship. I think I have almost paid for his uni course. He has also introduced me to some other great people.

Tip Four – Advertise in local places. I have found most of my customers locally. I did this through small ads in local papers, handouts to local businesses and as I started to get a few going they referred the rest. This has also given me other work creating eBooks and pdf documents for them. I am also now getting computer work that I use some of those uni students for. Businesses pay quite well for good service and advice. Find a good computer hardware wholesaler locally and do a deal for computers etc and add on your commission.

Tip Five – Offer spotters fees. Many of my customers have come through people just getting to know that I am local and offer good service. I offer a spotters fee depending on what product they buy. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising in this area.

Tip Six – Offer your new hosting package to your current customers. Many of you will already be selling other products etc so this is another service you can upsell to current customers. You may have friends with businesses so you could also tap into their data base of customers by offering to share the profits. If they do mail outs to their customers see if you can add a small brochure. It doesn’t have to be anything to spectacular.

Tip Seven – Check out the local competition. Look in your local yellow pages and find any companies offering the same sort of products. You will find they charge a small fortune selling what you can do for a lot less. They have probably ruled the local market for years. A friend of mine was quoted $7000 for about 10 pages and a few multimedia bits and pieces. It would also cost her about $50 every alteration etc and more for new pages. I told her to come around and I would have a look. We installed a mambo site for her and built her first 10 pages and now she does all the work herself. She has become a customer for life and pays her hosting every year. We saved her $6000 and she could not be happier. Naturally she has referred quite a few customers our way.

Tip Eight – Thinking outside the square. A great way to find customers is to use your local library or community centre. In many cases they will let you run free courses and have internet connections already set up. Our local library has a small room with 6 computers that will let anyone run a course and use their equipment as long as you do not sell anything.

Run a courses on web page creation. How to use goggle adwords and adsense. How to add graphics, audio or how to set up a family photo site. There are so many of these you could do for free and of course they will want hosting which you can provide. The secret here is not to sell the hosting but to offer it as a service. Again word of mouth will spread you name far and wide.

If you do not know how to do some of these things then learn them. There are plenty of free tutorials online you can copy or base your own courses around. You can then put the tutorials on a cd and give it to them for free with a link to your hosting page.

Tip Nine – E-Commerce. Find a couple of good ecommerce solutions and help your customers set these up. Most have affiliate programs you can use to make that little bit of extra income.

Summary – Providing hosting is a great revenue generator because it is recurring and in most cases if you keep up contact and provide training in your newsletters people will do most of the work themselves. Actually this is your aim to make them self sufficient except for your hosting which they will need.