Never Pay for Premium Web Hosting Again

When I first started thinking about writing this post I had so many titles in head that I wasn’t sure what the best thing to name it would be. I am still not sure that this is the best title, but it is the one I went with. Here are some of the other titles I was considering:

“Make Money Online Starting Your Own Hosting Company”

“Why Pay for Hosting When You Can get it for FREE”

“Starting Your Own Hosting Company Is Easier Than You Think”

“Become a Web-Hosting Reseller and Get Your Sites Hosted For FREE”

There were a bunch more, but I am sure you get the idea.

So is this about you starting your own web hosting business and getting 1000’s of clients? Absolutely not! I would not start a large hosting company myself, unless I was extremely “Server Savvy”, which I definitely am not. Starting your own full blown hosting company takes A LOT OF WORK and you have to offer some sort of 24/7 support (Yuk!). Way too much work for me… but if you have the skills and dedication, I have known people that have made a TON OF MONEY doing it. It’s just not for me.

What this post is about is something I have been doing for many years now and it has literally saved me thousands of dollars in hosting costs. What I am talking about is getting yourself a “Reseller Hosting” account and having your family, friends, and associates pay for it. Now doesn’t that sound cool? Well it is easier than you think.

For those of you that don’t know, let’s first talk about what a Hosting Reseller account is. Most hosting companies nowadays offer a few different levels of hosting services; Basic Hosting, Reseller Hosting, and Dedicated Servers. For details on Basic Hosting and Dedicated Servers (since that is not what I am discussing) you can read more about them on HostGator’s website. I am using HostGator as an example as they are one of my favorite hosting companies, but not the only one we use.

A Reseller Plan is more like having your own dedicated server, but on a smaller scale, as in reality you are just renting a section of a larger server. The cool thing about a Reseller Plan vs. a regular Hosting Plan is it comes with WHM (Web Host Manager) which is a control panel that allows you to easily create, edit, and delete individual hosting accounts with a few strokes of your keyboard. You can also set-up all sorts of customized packages for any domain you would like to host. You can even set-up “Email Only” accounts, which I have done for several friends. If you don’t already have a Reseller Account you will be amazed by all the cool things you can do with the WHM.

So you are saying to yourself, “All that’s cool, but how do I get it for FREE?”  Well it takes a little bit of work (as all good things do), but not too much at all. If you order a starter Reseller Plan (which is all you probably need) it will cost you $24.95 per month with no set-up fee if you go with a company like HostGator. You can find companies that might be a little cheaper, and many that are much more expensive, but as far as uptime and customer support, I have found HostGator to be my favorite. Once you have your reseller account setup, you will need to find someone to pay the 25 bucks each month.

There are many different ways you can do this, but here is what I do. I find 5 friends or associates that would like to start their own blog, or maybe would like to have their own personalized email account. Then I setup whatever they want up for them and charge them five to ten dollars a month. It literally only takes a few minutes to setup a blog or email account for someone, and those type of accounts take hardly any type of support whatsoever and don’t use too much of the server’s resources. If they want me to customize their blog and add a bunch of plug-ins… of course I would charge more for that. Plus, I usually charge them for the entire year in advance so I can just pay my account for the year and I don’t have to worry about billing anyone. It is very basic stuff.

We have several personal “Reseller Accounts” with a couple different hosting companies and (fortunately for us) don’t pay for any of them ourselves.

For those of you thinking, “Why would I need to host more than the one site I own”, you are probably not looking at the big picture. If you are hoping to start making a lot of money online (which I assume you are, since you are reading this blog), you will eventually need to expand your network and build other sites. I don’t want to go there with this post, as I just wanted to show you how to get your hosting paid for, but we will go over that in future posts. Let’s just say it is really convenient to be able add an account whenever you like and to have it paid for is icing on the cake!