"I try to make a habit of bouncing my eyes up to the face of a beautiful woman, and often repeat “not mine” in my head or even verbally. She’s not mine. God has her set aside. She’s not mine. She’s His little girl, and she needs me to fight for her by keeping my eyes where they should be."
it would be nice to see someone use other then redhat or suse on shared hosting accounts. Just because they're shared doesn't mean you have to skimp on extra goodies compiled into php and what not. Might wanna consider that if you find someone and they're setting some machines up
If you wanna get into hosting make sure that you find the best quality vs. cost balance and you will be fine. Remember don't just jump into anything, Do the math...
Originally posted by detoxed I said hosting, not bandwidth. Someone selling $5.95 hosting packages could easily sell 200 customers on 5mbps
And this is a viable business?
You and I obviously have different definitions of what a business is. I will elaborate on my previous comment and say that if you are looking to make real money, with real margins, there are better businesses to be in.
Your example grosses ~$1200, bringing that out to 20000 customers would be ~$120,000 gross... still not enough money to get into hosting for.
Originally posted by davidd And this is a viable business?
You and I obviously have different definitions of what a business is. I will elaborate on my previous comment and say that if you are looking to make real money, with real margins, there are better businesses to be in.
Your example grosses ~$1200, bringing that out to 20000 customers would be ~$120,000 gross... still not enough money to get into hosting for.
-dd
LOL my example was an example. I think getting 10,000 customers paying between $5.95 and $29.95 is a great business model. Its very little work that I would have to do, a few techs, customer service, automate almost everything. And with revenues and a customer base bigger hosting companies might try to buy it.
Originally posted by detoxed LOL my example was an example. I think getting 10,000 customers paying between $5.95 and $29.95 is a great business model. Its very little work that I would have to do, a few techs, customer service, automate almost everything. And with revenues and a customer base bigger hosting companies might try to buy it.
I posted in this thread to bring some reality into this discussion. I am one of the few people in this world who can say they have built hosting companies from scratch - up to the point of generating revenue in excess of $10mil a year. Hosting made me a lot of money, and I can say that my efforts benefitted a lot of people - from investors/owners, employees, and most importantly - the customers.
As to your above post, getting 10,000 customers is close to impossible. It should also not be the goal of any hosting company. 10000 customers is a support and technical nightmare. On a foundation side it is great, as your company would be composed of 10000 paying customers and would be close to impossible to hurt financially. Getting those 10000 customers would translate into a massive amount of marketing, etc and could not be maintained by 'a few techs'. No matter how much automation you have, hosting requires raw man power/hours that can not be marginalized by your comments.
Again, hosting is NOT an industry people should see as easy and a cash machine. Mindsets like this produce the scores of hosting companies that have appeared, failed, and caused major pain to unknowing customers along the way. The thing that none of these flash in the pan hosting companies ever cared about was the customers.
Originally posted by davidd I posted in this thread to bring some reality into this discussion. I am one of the few people in this world who can say they have built hosting companies from scratch - up to the point of generating revenue in excess of $10mil a year. Hosting made me a lot of money, and I can say that my efforts benefitted a lot of people - from investors/owners, employees, and most importantly - the customers.
As to your above post, getting 10,000 customers is close to impossible. It should also not be the goal of any hosting company. 10000 customers is a support and technical nightmare. On a foundation side it is great, as your company would be composed of 10000 paying customers and would be close to impossible to hurt financially. Getting those 10000 customers would translate into a massive amount of marketing, etc and could not be maintained by 'a few techs'. No matter how much automation you have, hosting requires raw man power/hours that can not be marginalized by your comments.
Again, hosting is NOT an industry people should see as easy and a cash machine. Mindsets like this produce the scores of hosting companies that have appeared, failed, and caused major pain to unknowing customers along the way. The thing that none of these flash in the pan hosting companies ever cared about was the customers.
-dd
How to solve the problem: lackluster customer support.
10,000 customers paying $5.95 seems pretty easy to me, but then again I have better marketing ideas than most.
Many years ago I worked for a workman's comp company, and I was selected to be on a team to develop our business plan for the future year. It was more of a statement than a drawn out business plan.
My thoughts for a business plan were pretty simple: "Make lots of money while providing good customer service while making sure employees don't get pissed off and shoot everyone".
The business plan on Lightspeed is very simlar, although we managed to fit in naked chicks.
Detoxed, I comend you for wanting to expand your investments, but you have no Idea about the hosting biz. daveD is a bit closer to knowing the ins and outs. There are HUGE upfront costs or debts, likr Bandwidth commitments, routers, switches, servers, rack space techs, customer support, accounting personnel etc.... thats just the tip of the iceberg. You're theory about getting 10,000 customers is funny because that's not going to happen in todays market to eaisly. Well I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. As daved said, go look to invest into something else as the hosting biz is no easy money at all.
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