As you've probably seen already, the hosting market is saturated with resellers still, but since you've already been making a tidy income from promoting other people's hosting services perhaps you'd be able to successfully recycle all of the work you've done already and redirect traffic to your own branded hosting reseller account.
One of the problems with hosting at the moment is that there is such a LOW barrier to entry. Some resellers are so desperate for business that they'll give away reseller accounts under their own failing brands at stupidly low prices like 99 cents, or whatever. As you already mentioned with affiliate marketing, there's an additional loss of the element of control with becoming a hosting reseller. What happens if the servers go down for maintenance? Is there 24/hr support that you can use? Are your customers able to use them too?
On the other hand, there are plugins for most major reseller providers for turn-key solutions like WHMCS which makes life a lot easier.
Good points
Assuming you can position yourself well enough, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to make it work. The company I use only appeared a couple of years ago and are the best company I've hosted with... so far. You already have the sales experience in the field, so you're already ahead of most of your competition.
If you genuinely think you could make it work, bite the bullet and try. Even if it fails, it will teach you a lot. If it succeeds, well, then you've got yourself a new source of income AND you might learn something. Having us tell you to do or not do something is irrelevant. It's up to you, your gut and making your own mind up.
Good luck either way!
One of the problems with hosting at the moment is that there is such a LOW barrier to entry. Some resellers are so desperate for business that they'll give away reseller accounts under their own failing brands at stupidly low prices like 99 cents, or whatever. As you already mentioned with affiliate marketing, there's an additional loss of the element of control with becoming a hosting reseller. What happens if the servers go down for maintenance? Is there 24/hr support that you can use? Are your customers able to use them too?
On the other hand, there are plugins for most major reseller providers for turn-key solutions like WHMCS which makes life a lot easier.
Good points
- Easy to sell if you're already offering complimentary services like web dev/design.
- Relatively cheap to run.
- Plenty of cpanel plugins and customisations available.
- Plenty of specialist providers (i.e. I use a UK provider that specialises in optimised Wordpress hosting, as well as Linux and Windows servers).
- You already have a pipeline of sales links and methods you can divert to your own service.
- You don't have to manage any infrastructure.
- You can add personnel to manage customer service for you once you have enough MRR to support it.
- Low barrier to entry. ("Get started for 99c!")
- Lack of control - Server maintenance; Buying from a reseller, that bought from a reseller and one of them decides to close their account; ICANN domain prices change (I bought a .hosting domain for £75 one year, before being quoted £300 the next...)
- If their customer service is substandard then you've got no hope.
- If the shared servers are attacked or not load balanced properly, you've got no hope.
- The market is highly competitive.
Assuming you can position yourself well enough, there's no reason why you wouldn't be able to make it work. The company I use only appeared a couple of years ago and are the best company I've hosted with... so far. You already have the sales experience in the field, so you're already ahead of most of your competition.
If you genuinely think you could make it work, bite the bullet and try. Even if it fails, it will teach you a lot. If it succeeds, well, then you've got yourself a new source of income AND you might learn something. Having us tell you to do or not do something is irrelevant. It's up to you, your gut and making your own mind up.
Good luck either way!
