The reseller hosting model enables you to enjoy the best benefits of the highly profitable web hosting industry, without spending hefty capital investments on infrastructure or maintenance.
In this model, you buy web hosting packages from the main hosting company and resell them to your end clients after adding your profit margin.
You can sell the brands under your brand name while the infrastructure, maintenance, and support are provided by that web hosting company. Low thresholds and decent profits have attracted many people to the field of reseller hosting. The question is how to grow your business amidst such fierce competition.
In this post we will present some tips that will make it less difficult for you to gain a cutting edge, create brand value and grow your revenue as a hosting reseller:
As a reseller, your reputation and success fully depend upon the quality of web hosting plans offered by the parent host. So, be very careful while finding the right web hosting company to partner with.
What kind of hardware do they use?
What are the maintenance guidelines/routine?
What is the uptime guarantee?
What is the speed?
All these questions will help you make the right decision. Other must-have factors include seamless plan upgrading, reliable caching solutions, flawless security, and a reasonably small number of websites on shared servers.
Partnering with substandard hosting companies will affect the after-sales experience of your customers and eventually compel them to switch to competitors. Besides, you may find yourself in a situation where most of your day is spent pacifying angry customers rather than growing your business. So, make sure to thoroughly check the track record of the hosting company before joining their reseller program.
Prompt and precise customer support is absolutely important to succeed as a reseller. Big web hosting companies generally follow a specific support format that can’t be personalized beyond a point. That’s where you can step in to make a difference.
As a reseller, you have the opportunity to fine-tune the support format and provide fully personalized assistance. Integrating advanced technologies like AI-powered chatbots not only reduces manual workload but also makes your support extremely agile. Also, focus on creating a rich self-help zone for your customers by adding how-to videos, a comprehensive knowledge base, detailed blogs, FAQs, and more.
Not all customers are comfortable with raising tickets and waiting till the solution arrives. They prefer real-time conversation with a human being who can resolve their issue then and there. Using social media as your primary support channel will certainly appeal to such customers. It will also relieve you from unnecessary stress or complexities of the ticket system.
Speed, support, and transparency are 3 key requirements for a healthy support system. That said, some issues are too complicated to resolve instantly and a few of them might take a significantly longer time to resolve. In such cases, be transparent rather than making false promises which eventually irritate the customers and compel them to post negative reviews.
Design a mechanism that automatically loops in the customers and updates them about the live status of their queries. Also, invite satisfied customers to share their quick feedback or just star ratings that you can use as social proof on your website/ social media.
While many resellers are still limited to conventional methods like Google Ads, it's your opportunity to explore some innovative strategies to stand out in the crowd. Today we have the right set of advanced technologies to facilitate nuanced marketing strategies and directly reach (and exclusively) your niche audiences and most potential customers.
You can also multiply your reach and visibility with educational blogs & vlogs specially created with your targeted audiences in mind. Resolve the most pressing challenges and common queries of your primary audiences. Use the right keywords and optimize the posts for search engines while satisfying the user intent. This will bring organic high-quality traffic to your site. Most importantly, don’t forget the business factor. Use these educational blogs/vlogs to tell people about the latest promo offers, schemes, and discounts at contextual places. Offer them active handholding support to assist them in finding suitable plans. Adding a quick query form or live chat support further increases the conversion potential.
Creating educational and informative material in different formats like blog posts, social media posts, and youtube videos helps you build a strong presence across different media. It gets your brand noticed by the relevant audiences and over the period, positions you as a credible authority. All these factors directly help you to grow your business organically. Just ensure that you gently suggest to people your brand and packages at relevant places.
It is also a good idea to create a social media presence (apart from your business page) where you publish/repost the material that not only educates the audiences but also helps them unlock the business potential of a website. Most people start websites to earn revenue or expand their business and many of them struggle with lots of guesswork while others are possibly weighing the investment and revenue potential to find the commercial feasibility of starting a website. Here you can step in and resolve their concerns. Educate bloggers about monetization, educate them about the relevant strategies to connect and influence a conscious community, and share tips on finding relevant partnership avenues.
There are many tasks associated with managing business and clients that eat up lots of your time. By automating such clerical tasks you free up lots of bandwidth to concentrate on the activities that bring revenue and growth. For instance, repetitive tasks like bill preparation, follow-ups, and related updates can be delegated to applications like WHMCS- a leading billing and management software equipped with AI capabilities
There are several automation options available in the market and you need to first prepare a list of admin tasks that repeatedly distract your attention. Based on that you can find reliable tools to automate those tasks without compromising on accuracy. For instance, switching between multiple screens is one of the most common challenges that nearly every reseller struggles with. To resolve that you can use technologies like cPanel that packs all the business-relevant features and tools inside a single dashboard with an intuitive interface to speed up and streamline the different tasks.
To succeed as a web hosting reseller it is very important to provide a distinct value to your end clients and build solid marketing strategies. For that, you need to start with the basics and slowly graduate to higher levels. The post you just read offered you several tips, techniques, and tools that can help you find a reliable web hosting company, and build a well-planned business growth strategy for your reselling business. Based on this you can create a to-do list for succeeding as a web hosting reseller.