One of the biggest problems I've seen people have when they first start a web hosting company is that they jump into a situation they are not ready for yet. If I could give one single piece of advice on getting started in this industry it would be to take all the measures you can to keep overhead down.

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The best way to do this is to avoid buying a dedicated server. Yes, they are great and there is so much you can do with them. The problem you have is that you have no customers, and targeting people for .00 per month can take some time to get your 0.00 or more that you would be spending on a leased dedicated server.

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You should probably start at a reseller account with a reputable company. The last two words, reputable company is the key though. I made this mistake when I first got started. I wanted to get the cheapest reseller account that had the most space. About three weeks after purchasing the reseller account, I had 3 or 4 clients and all of a sudden my website along with all of my clients websites went down. I tried emailing support but received no response. I was forced to give refunds, lose all of my clients, and start from scratch again. This was a lesson learned. If you buy a reseller hosting account, you should realize that you can only equalize the level of support and quality that your parent company offers. If they are slow to respond to your questions or take care of problems then it may delay your support and ability to get problems resolved.

Once you get yourself established, you can move clients to a virtual private server (VPS) or a dedicated server. But overall, it is extremely important to keep overhead low so that you will be able to stay in business through the growing pains of a very competitive industry.

Starting A Web Hosting Business

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