Before you Begin
Before you launch your web hosting company, you must bring yourself up to speed with reality. Launching a business is not child’s play, and even if you have prior business launching skills, starting a web hosting company is a difficult and unique experience. Here are just a few things which you need to consider before starting a web hosting business:
1) Money:
Of course, money tops the list of things you should know about before starting your own hosting service. Remember, you cannot host your service on your laptop or your desktop PC, because running a hosting service requires loads of space and power. Even if you can get free software to do the hosting for you, the hardware will cost you. You will need to get some extra computers, maybe multiple internet connections, and after a while an employee or two, way before you start getting any clients. And then there is marketing and promotional ads on other websites which again require money to work. So you need to analyze whether you even have the money to make it work or not.
2) Time:
Remember, you will need time to start this business of yours. Even though at the moment it may seem like a walk in the park, just a couple of hours in front of the laptop screen might not be enough for your business. Make sure your job is flexible enough to allow you to give a couple of hours of absolute focus to your hosting service.
3) Technical Know-how:
This is crucial! This does not mean that you should know the programming of your website or the hardware architecture. You need only know the basic terms involved within the computer like servers and disk space etc. A bit of such technical knowledge will help you in getting the right equipment. However, if you are not confident that you have the knowledge necessary to start-up an online business, it would be best if you hire a professional to help you.
The Next Step
The first thing you need to do is to get your company registered just like any other operating business. You only need to know about your company name to get yourself registered, even if you are not running any operations as yet.
The second thing you will need to do is investment in servers. Servers are sort of super computers which run at blazing speeds, and will perform the function of handling the traffic on your website. All the data of your website will be accessed via these servers, and one server can handle a limited number of hits at a time. Initially you may get only one server, and that will suffice. But for a hosting business, if you host two or more websites, you will need to get many servers. How many servers you need depends upon the need of the hour, which you can judge easily with a little know-how of how the system works.
The third, and the most important thing, is space. Now, you may limit the size the websites you host may use, say 10GB max, but for a bigger hosting service, you will need bigger storage. The more storage facility you offer, the more business will be attracted by it. So think about your finances and your business prospects before making this decision.
Conclusion
A hosting business is no different from any other business for that matter. Finance is the decisive factor, so try to keep a lot of money on the side in case you need to expand in a short amount of time. It will be best if you hire a professional in networking to handle all the technicalities, to ensure all your money is being spent wisely.
Author bio:
Brian Parker is a 39 year old network technician at Microsoft. He got his BSc in Computer systems and networks from the University of Plymouth, UK, and graduated top of his class. He is currently working on a project to improve the iPage review list system.