How big is YOUR company?

[iLLuSi0nS]

I just wanted to start a thread about the success of our hosting / domain / web design / other services

 

How big is your company? How many clients do you have?

How much profit has WHMCS brought to you since you have been using it?

What was your most successful advertising campaign?

 

Just wondering how the rest of the world is doing

[dreamcon]

Just started would like to know aswell ...

[Daniel]

I don't think you'll find many people wanting to give away their secrets

[JasonO]

The first 2 questions might get answered, by those few people.. IF your lucky.

 

The last question.. meh - as Daniel said it's a big secret. That's one of the biggest things that gets the company the money, and makes them unique. If everyone was advertising the same they wouldn't stand out.

 

Although we are all good friends here, you need to remember we are also competitors to each other.

[Zorro67]

Methinks some-one has IP envy,

 

Bet mine is bigger than yours

[uberhost]

[iLLuSi0nS]

Lol, well, I kinda assumed I wouldnt get any responses. But Im not looking for answers, nor am I looking for advertising secrets, just a general idea of how big I can get.

 

Here let me break the silence.

 

I have 2 clients (one of them being myself) and I have made a profit of $20 so far

 

I dont advertise yet, but soon will

[Troy]

There isn't necessarily a limit to how big you can get. I've been pretty much a 1 man shop for 7 years now, with outside help from time to time, and have grown to 28 servers and about 2K customers from all over the world, in a niche market.

 

I wasn't the first to serve this niche, but through good SEO, excellent service and word of mouth, I don't have to spend anything on advertiing to grow steadily (and slowly, the way I like it), and we're one of the most popular providers in our space.

 

There are thousands of web hosts out there, but you can set yourself apart by excelling at customer service and support, and carving out some sort of niche for yourself, even if it's just the niche of better service and support.

[Zorro67]

jokes aside, have to agree with Troy.

 

first step - do a business plan.

second step - do a business plan.

3rd step - do a business plan.

 

Not talking about some 30 page dissertation, just 3 or 4 pages about the 'gap' in the markey that you want to fulfill, who your (prospective) customers are, what you do for them, what are your strengths & weaknesses (objectvely), and what you want to achieve by servicing your customers (sales, profits, no of units etc),

 

This short 'midmap' should give you some real insight into your direction, and help to propell you forward without necessarily spending one cent on advertising.

 

And if you don't have an idea about a plan, PM me & I can send you a 4 pager that we give to our clients to help focus their objectives.

[dreamcon]

This seems to be working now....

 

I am in the initial stage of my Business, Would love to get your help ZORRO

 

Thanks

[iLLuSi0nS]

Troy and Zorro, that are some nice words thanks

 

Troy, you are exactly right. I am a one man show as well, hopefully one day I can be as fortunate as you and have a successful online business.

 

My niche is, I host and provide web services for people that speak my language here in L.A, since a lot of them have businesses and cant speak english very well and only trust their own kind, I come in handy, now to find a way to reach everyone in my community.

[Troy]

What language? I ask, because I have a good friend whose wife is from Venezuela and has a successful business doing Spanish translation and voice over work. You'll hear her voice if you choose the Spanish option when calling many large companies. She's done work for Disney, AT&T, and other big names, as well as a lot of other smaller companies.

 

Often the second impression you get to make on a prospective client, after they've seen your website, is by phone. For a guy just starting out, it may be cost prohibitive, but at some point you need to project a professional image through your phone system. Use a good virtual pbx service, (I'm using phone.com), and have an auto-attendant menu done professionally by a good voice talent. I can put you in touch with this friend and she can do a wonderful job for you. (I don't think she'd charge that much, but then I've never had her do anything directly for me, either.)

 

Even if you're a one man shop, having an auto-attendant and a couple menu options can project an image of a larger, busier organization, and make customers feel you're more legit.

 

I have a good friend in the radio business who does excellent voice work, and did our phone greetings. The enthusiastic, energetic friendly voice that he projects makes an instant impression on callers that says: professional, energetic and friendly. It really sets the proper tone for the caller - assures them they've called someone who knows what they're doing.

 

Perhaps it's another language, there are bound to be so many in use there in L.A. We host the site of a large Chinese Church in L.A., could be another source for language specific folks and ideas.

 

It sounds like you've got a natural Niche there - so exploit it for all it's worth

[cpickering]

We've only just started to use WHMCS.. It's going to be a billing system for Hosted Exchange and Blackberry.. I won't be using the DotNetPanel provisioning tho, it doesn't work very well for us..

 

However, our firm has been going for, 2 years as a hosting company, 10 years as a linux provider..

 

We sell VPS's and now HEX.. I have 27 Dell Blade Chasis, with 10 servers in each, (do the math) all of which host 20 VPS's and I'm 60% full at the moment..

Most of our business comes from word of mouth and from a small bit of advertising we did.. tbh, hosting is hard to break into with advertising, you have to excel on something..

 

Ours is a great service, and excellent support and we strive to help anyone with their needs/requirements..

 

Staff wise, we have 6 people..

[handsonwebhosting]

Here's a brief rundown on our company;

 

Almost 200 servers (all operating through The Planet - one of their larger customers. We're also one of their featured Customer Videos). I have about 80 servers on hand hardware wise as we pulled from our local place. If anyone wants to buy servers cheap, drop me a note, They're just collecting dust at this point.

 

Hands-on Web Hosting has been in the business since 1994 under a different name at that time. Initially a design shop, hosting became important by 1996 and we only hosted our designed sites. By 1999 we opened to the public and began taking orders from people we didn't know.

 

During that time we were a one man shop. In 2001 I hired in one other person (who is still here), in 2003 I hired another, and in 2005 two more. All 4 are still here at Hands-on.

 

The key strategy will be alliances and niches. We were a 100% word of mouth company until this year, when a few ads were purchased on Google, but even that advertising budget is less than $50.00/month.

 

Live help is key. Quick response times is a necessity. Less than 4 hours is mandatory, and less than 1 hour is ideal. Ourselves we work 7 days a week, however our live help is online only Monday-Friday 9am-6pm PST. A solid ticket system is required (WHMCS is good, we use Kayako also). Decent billing system (Modernbill convert), and automation.

 

If you have to do a job more than 2 times - automate it! Shell scripting is a life saver - no need for college and classes - you can learn everything from the web through google and support forums.

 

As for the final results of our company - we have ZERO debt, and almost ZERO profit Our employees take a share of what the company makes. They are paid an hourly wage (or salary), however as we grow, raises are made. There is no desire to turn the company into a multi-million dollar company or grow big as that leads to headache and lack of personal touch which our clients love.

 

Pick a niche, commit 1000%, forget about vacation, limited life outside of the computer world, and enjoy your job. Happy employees mean loyalty. If you don't enjoy your work, you need a different field!

 

Hope that helps inspire someone.

[iLLuSi0nS]

Wow, you guys are great. Thanks for sharing such personal information with me. Troy, I actually am very professional when it comes to things like phone systems and sales support. I have a virtual PBX (packet8 ) and as for the voice, its me for now, but I met this really good looking girl who has a great voice, I asked her to do my phone systems voice and she agreed for free.

I am not selling any sort of language translation or anything, In my community, there are a lot of people who cannot speak english, so they only purchase products and services from other people that are the same race, so a lot of my clients are people who speak my language and trust no other, and luckly out of the 300,000 of us here in Los Angeles, there are maybe 2 or 3 hosting/website designers of the same race.

 

I am not to interested in hosting or domain names. These are just requirements to have in order to project a professional image in the website design industry. Id rather sign them up myselves and have them pay me for domain names and hosting rather then having them sign up themselves and give me their information. I use WHMCS because I am also a OnSite Technician who uses WHMCS amazing billing system/invoicing. It made my life so much easier (once I learned how to fully use WHMCS)

 

I wish all of you guys the best of luck, even though we are all competitors, we are all great minds and great minds think alike, and i wish all of you prosperity and success

 

Thanks for sharing.

-Sean

[jai_edwards]

Hey Guys,

 

I started by just designing sites, and referring the couple of customers I had to an ISP that offered Hosting services.. I got to the stage of referring 5 clients, when i hit them up to discount or give me my own hosting that had been with the with the guy (was just a 1 man operation in NSW) for some time. I'd spent most my life working in ISP's at various levels, when he declined, i knew that hosting was just money for jam for an ISP so decided to get my own reseller hosting plan though a company.

 

Started up with 5 hosting customers that i moved from the ISP to my hosting, named it "Corryong Online Services", my home town that had a population of 1100 people, despite actually living 5 hours away in Melbourne. I planned to market the hosting to have every business that had a website in the town to be with me..

 

As I started to get more customers from word of mouth, client requirements become different with Australian hosting, added a second server as a premium server. Managed all my invoicing manually through excel spreadsheets up until i had about 30 paying users (all on the same "plan"). At this time I had users all over the country, so went through a process of stream lining everything bit by bit - rebranded as YourName.net.au, purchased WHMCS, introduced PayPal/Credit card payments, brought in a range of plans, got a 1300 number, changed to 1 domain registrar (not yet integrated with WHMCS thou!) and moved to genuine premium reseller with uptime guarantees.. Best thing I ever did!

 

Since then I've now got 70 paying users (most original clients moved to other plans than their original), with all customers happy. No churn to date.. and.. as much as people emphasize business plan, I still don’t have one...

 

Biggest struggle I suppose I’ve experienced (which no doubt is the same for most), is growth. It’s a very slow process, and you can only stimulate and encourage so much word of mouth. Advertising seems to not get me anywhere – even when I sell my domain names at under cost price to attract hosting clients, I still don’t see the results.

 

So, I'm no business by any means - nothing to skyte about, just another small player in a big pond, but very proud of what I've acheived from nothing.

 

Currently going through the phase of looking for other local web hosting providers here in Australia that may be in the same position of being not big enough to sustain a fulltime wage, but too small not to have a fulltime job, who might be interested in selling..

 

Hope this helps!

 

Jai.

[Lucas]

Here's a brief rundown on our company;

 

Almost 200 servers (all operating through The Planet - one of their larger customers. We're also one of their featured Customer Videos). I have about 80 servers on hand hardware wise as we pulled from our local place. If anyone wants to buy servers cheap, drop me a note, They're just collecting dust at this point.

 

Hands-on Web Hosting has been in the business since 1994 under a different name at that time. Initially a design shop, hosting became important by 1996 and we only hosted our designed sites. By 1999 we opened to the public and began taking orders from people we didn't know.

 

During that time we were a one man shop. In 2001 I hired in one other person (who is still here), in 2003 I hired another, and in 2005 two more. All 4 are still here at Hands-on.

 

The key strategy will be alliances and niches. We were a 100% word of mouth company until this year, when a few ads were purchased on Google, but even that advertising budget is less than $50.00/month.

 

Live help is key. Quick response times is a necessity. Less than 4 hours is mandatory, and less than 1 hour is ideal. Ourselves we work 7 days a week, however our live help is online only Monday-Friday 9am-6pm PST. A solid ticket system is required (WHMCS is good, we use Kayako also). Decent billing system (Modernbill convert), and automation.

 

If you have to do a job more than 2 times - automate it! Shell scripting is a life saver - no need for college and classes - you can learn everything from the web through google and support forums.

 

As for the final results of our company - we have ZERO debt, and almost ZERO profit Our employees take a share of what the company makes. They are paid an hourly wage (or salary), however as we grow, raises are made. There is no desire to turn the company into a multi-million dollar company or grow big as that leads to headache and lack of personal touch which our clients love.

 

Pick a niche, commit 1000%, forget about vacation, limited life outside of the computer world, and enjoy your job. Happy employees mean loyalty. If you don't enjoy your work, you need a different field!

 

Hope that helps inspire someone.

 

I agree a lot on your ideas and thoughts, except one. Why make a successful business if you're never going to get anything out of it, at least a vacation once in a while, it's part of life. We all have lives, and happier selves make better companies. Just my thought.

[goddess_dix]

what an interesting thread! it's cool to read about other people's stories.

 

i'm still a "small fry" in the hosting world; most of my 30 or so hosting clients came from web designs where, like many folks, i started hosting the sites i was designing as a matter of convienence for my clients (and myself: easier troubleshooting when i know the host stuff well). i got my dedi about a year ago, for my clients and for one site i was taking over for myself at the time that needed the power.

 

my niche currently is definitely on the service side, as my clients know and trust me to help them navigate the issues and make sure their sites are operating properly as well as advising them on making decisions about various things they want to do. currently, i'm moving out of the design/consultation side and want to build my hosting business, so i'm setting up whmcs to get a better setup for a "real hosting company."

 

anyway, thanks for sharing your thoughts, folks. very informative and some new stuff for me to think about...

[handsonwebhosting]

I agree a lot on your ideas and thoughts, except one. Why make a successful business if you're never going to get anything out of it, at least a vacation once in a while, it's part of life. We all have lives, and happier selves make better companies. Just my thought.

 

Oh Believe me, I get plenty of vacation time now, but in the initial growth of the company there's limited time for that.

 

Up until last year I was playing golf 4 times a week, but that's all changed now. I've left on vacations for up to 5 weeks at a time with limited phone connection with employees - everything runs exactly as it should.

 

If you work hard enough in the beginning, get a good solid foundation of employees, then the sky is the limit.

[Lucas]

Oh Believe me, I get plenty of vacation time now, but in the initial growth of the company there's limited time for that.

 

Up until last year I was playing golf 4 times a week, but that's all changed now. I've left on vacations for up to 5 weeks at a time with limited phone connection with employees - everything runs exactly as it should.

 

If you work hard enough in the beginning, get a good solid foundation of employees, then the sky is the limit.

 

There we go, exactly my thoughts. Good luck with it, I am sure you will keep it well.

[allstatecomp]

Wow great thread! It's nice to see where everyone started and where they are today.

 

We're a small coompany in Jupiter, FL. I initially started trying to do just web hosting. Got a couple customers via word of mouth, but for the most part the company was spending more than it was making. It wasn't until 2003 when I purchase the computer company I now run that I started to see some profit. We expanded our offerings from just computer sales/service and networking to add web desing/hosting as well as remote data backup. I haven't really been pushing our hosted services until recently. We're up to about 60 clients. I realize thats not much be we just started pushing it and are signing on average 2-4 clients per week up.

 

A lot of you are talking about using service as your niche. Unless you have a vertical market, design hosted apps for a specific industry, there really isn't much that can set us apart from the big boys (1and1, godaddy, etc) except for service. If you want to get into this business find the customers of these big guys that are tired of the run around. Most people will pay more for the service and when price is an issue, ask your clients what they pay for their yellow pages ad per month (probably around $400), then tell them you can host them for $XX.XX / month. They can do a whole lot more with a website than they can a 1/4 piece of paper in a 1000 page book. Traditional advertising is rediculously expensive compared to what we do. Whats annoying is this industry used to get that kind of money, now thanks to all of the wal-marts of the hosting industry, you can get 10TB of space for $2.00 (obvious exaggeration), but we have customer service and they don't.

 

Well thats my rant, hope it was helpful for someone.

 

Brian

[handsonwebhosting]

now thanks to all of the wal-marts of the hosting industry, you can get 10TB of space for $2.00 (obvious exaggeration

 

Sadly Brian, it's actaully fairly close to the truth I do get tired of seeing the "unlimied" hosting offerings, but when you offer that kind of setup, you get a certain type of client (not one that we're after).

 

For the most part, with us, we see a lot of our clients coming from "one man shop" type hosting, and staying with us as they want to avoid the LARGE places that treat clients as Dollar Figures rather than customers.

 

1&1 was a company designed to LOSE money so that it could be a writeoff for the print advertising company that was their overhead company. This is why in years past you'd find 10 page spreads in Computer Shopper and other industy magazines. They DID change their tone, but their advertising budget is insane.

 

As for comparing hosting to yellow page ads, I agree. Heck, some people have only ONLINE businesses and still don't want to pay more than $5/month for hosting. If they had a storefront they'd have a minimum of $1000/month rent plus extras. It still astounds me with companies making $50-80k/year and NOT on a VPS or Dedicated Server. With 100% of the income from online stores, and then sharing your site with other stores on the same machine (hoping somone doesn't spam, blacklist your IP, overload CPU, or hack through a vulnerable script) - many of those clients should be on isolated machines or VPS machines for their own business protection. $600-$1000/year, investing 1-2% of the annual income of a business should seem like a no brainer.

[dreamcon]

pretty cool guies....thanks to one who started this thread.

 

This thread looks like disclosing in's and out's of the business, which seems to be really helpful for a 'small fish' like me in the ocean with 'sharks' fighting for the survival

 

Started with the Website designing business in 2007, for d start I use to work for couple of software development company where i achieved a decent experince. Having no idea of how will I establish it,left the job with a small amount of savings in hand. slowly, learnt that I will need to have a business plan with the targets on paper which will actually help my company grow. I really worked hard in the beginning keeping lot of patience in this competitive market-

Tough clients were my teacher and to reach targets were my exams

 

My Father (My GURU) said me when I started it "Give 1000 days to your business and after that your business will start giving you and you won't need to look behind"

 

I still remember his word it is just 1.5 years and I have xxx number of clients from which I have regular income for hosting and maintenance services on top of regular flow of customers generated through different marketing strategies. which generates a decent revenue flow for me and my staff to survive in this business

 

:oops:Keep scribbling guies....

:idea:Have a great journey to success....

 

Rooch

[redwood]

Founded a small webdesign&hosting company back in the days (1999) and in 2002 sold it with about 600 customers and over 2000 domainnames. After that i've been doing some other things like having vacation, buy some real-estate and party more then was good for me i've started this year(jan 2008) again with design and hosting. And now a half year later the company has 5 employee's. 10 colocated servers, 15 managed client servers and about 400 clients. We also are active in ICT and then mostly Windows networking solutions, Panasonic/Axis IP-cam security and hardware retailing. Not a really big company, and not making lot's of money. But i'm doing fine for myself, payed off the mortgage on my house and no not have the "want" and "need" for any more employees and customers. And now i'm going to sit in the sun with a cold beer and some ribs straight off the BBQ.

 

Don't we just have the greatest jobs in the world?

[matty]

i have imitation jwellery where 20 ppl are working atm