How to Start a Domain and Web Hosting Company

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When it comes to making money online, there are ample opportunities available to you. You simply need to choose one that suits your skills and take it from there.

Here at ShoutMeLoud I have shared various techniques to help you earn money working online.

In today’s post I will add to these techniques a method that I have been using for the past five years, which will help you to start a serious online business, your own domain and web hosting business.

In particular, if you are a web developer or a company that offers services such as web development, you should consider selling domains and hosting under your own brand. If you are looking for a new online business option, the web hosting and domain business is an excellent way to go. You can set your own price for the product, and earn money from it.

Three years ago I started my own domain selling business under the brand ShoutMyDomain, and it was particularly targeted for Indian users who had issues making payments via PayPal or any other method. My reason for starting my domain business was to ensure better services for my clients, as I could easily manage their domains and hosting, and help them to get things done.

The easiest way to start a web hosting business is by becoming a white label reseller. There are many services like ResellerClub and GoDaddy which allow you to create your own white label hosting business, and in the back-end you get all the support from the main reseller company.

In my research I found ResellerClub to be the cheapest, as I could start with no investment at all. They do require you to invest 4500 INR ($99), but all the money can be used to buy domains and hosting packages later.

In this article, I will provide you with a step-by-step guide to starting your own domain and web hosting reseller business. In upcoming tutorials, I will explain how you can promote that business. For me it was just a side-business, so I have done very limited marketing, but one could easily make this his full-time work.

Let’s have a look!

Features of the Reseller club:

Following is a list of some of the features of the reseller club, which will help you to understand more about their program, and what options you will be getting with your membership:

• Sell domains under your brand
• Sell hosting under your brand ( U.S. servers, U.K. servers, India servers)
• Set your own pricing
• Add sub-resellers
• Access to special promotions (example: $1.99 .in domain names)
• No setup fees
• Their pricing works on a “slab” basis. So the more domains you sell, the more money you have the opportunity to earn. You can learn about their pricing model here.
• Complete white label branding
• Easy to use interface, along with documentation.

There are many more features as well.

Since they have their pages optimized for all countries, you don’t have to worry about your geo location. Their support is excellent, and after using them for three years myself, this is a service I feel comfortable recommending to you.

This guide will help you to setup your reseller account, use your domain name as your hosting business, and offer other suggestions which will help you to get started.

Step-by-step guide to setting up your own web hosting reseller business:

I will add a video below which will help you to understand how to use your domain name for white label branding, and the rest of the images will help you to understand the procedure.

They have a landing page for every country, so you don’t have to worry about localized language or payment options. To get started with your own web hosting company, click on this link and on the reseller club home page, then click on “sign up”.

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Once you are on the sign-up page, simply fill in the form.

Here are a couple of things which you will need to keep in mind:

• Selling currency: Set this according to your target audience. If you’re targeting a global audience, you could set US dollars as the selling currency. If you are targeting any specific country, for example India, you could set INR as your selling currency.
• Accounting currency: This one you can set according to your own location. For example, if you are in Europe, you could select EURO as your accounting currency.

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After filling in the form, click on “sign up”, and the next page will be the payment page. All you need to do is add funds to your account to activate your reseller account. The minimum amount that needs to be added is $99, and you can use this money later to sell domains and web hosting. So – this money is simply added to start your web hosting company, and is money that you will ultimately be using for your own benefit.

They offer various payment options such as:

• Pay.pw: INR credit card payments via Visa/MasterCard
• WebMoney
• Skrill (formerly MoneyBookers)
• PayPal [Amex/Discover credit cards/ Paypal account]
• ALiPay
• WebMoney

On this page you can see the payment options based on your country. Since I’m in India, I used the bank transfer method in an effort to avoid any kind of transaction fees.

Once the money is added to your account, you will be able to log in to your reseller control panel (super site control panel).

The first thing you will be doing is branding your reseller account. This includes adding your logo, and adding the domain name which you will be using to sell web hosting and domains. For example, ShoutMyDomain.com.

Branding your reseller hosting account:

At this point you have purchased your reseller hosting account, and now it’s time to do the branding.

Looking at the panel in the image above, you can see that from this panel you can do many things such as changing the look, adding your logo and configuring the rest of the options.

Let’s have a look now at the process of setting up your reseller account on your white label domain name:

Once you are inside your reseller panel,  Click on Products > Domain registration > Check availability. From here you can search for the domain name you want to use. I came up with the domain name BustADomain.com.

So — check for the availability of the domain name, and buy it.

You now need to create a customer account in your name from the same page. This will require about ten seconds of your time.

At the point of final payment, you will see a page like the one in the image below. Select “Execute the request(s), but cancel the invoice(s)”. Next click on “Execute the above requests without receiving a payment”.

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You have now also purchased the domain name which you will be using for your web hosting business.

All that is left to do is to make the changes under settings > Branding settings > Super site and partner site > Fully branded name.

You will also need to update the A record of the domain name, which is quite easy. I have explained this process in the video below:

Once you have added the A record, it will take 1-24 hours for the propagation.

Along with this, all you need to do is update the name server for the domain. Go to Settings > Branded settings > Name servers, and here you will find the name servers that you need to use for your domain.

Go to domain settings, and change the name servers to one listed in name servers page.

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Once done, you will be able to access your domain and web hosting reseller account under your branded domain name.

In between, you can again go back to settings > Branding settings and add various other things.  For instance, you can change your logo, add tracking and stats scripts like Google Analytics and so on.

Even if you have no technical knowledge, with the easy-to-use control panel, you will be able to do everything you need to do. If you have skills like CSS or you have a designer on your team, you can change the complete default look, and brand it according to your needs. You could also consider hiring people from Freelancer.com to do the customization work for you if you so desire.

You can integrate any payment gateway, including PayPal. I prefer Paypal for taking payments from foreign clients. For Indian users, I take payment directly into my bank account. They have a knowledgebase which will help you to learn everything you need to know. I highly recommend making SEO changes, adding separate meta-titles and descriptions for your selling pages.

Start your own web hosting business

When I started, my initial purpose was to manage my own 20+ domain names under my own brand. Later on, I expanded this idea by selling domains to my clients. Since this is not my main business, I never bothered with selling web hosting, but I still have one blog cydiaguide.com running on the reseller club hosting, and performance is good. So I can say that you can sell web hosting without worrying about the quality.

Over all, this offers  good business potential, and with a solid plan you could use it to earn a handsome income for yourself.

I will be writing more about promotional techniques for your domain and hosting business in upcoming articles. Should you have any questions before then, feel free to ask via the comments section below.

If you find this tutorial informative, do consider sharing it on Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. It could help your friend or colleague to start an online business of his own!

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