Turnkey Reseller Hosting Plan

How I Set up my Web Hosting Store

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there’s an option if you don’t have much cash to put into starting a reseller hosting business - get a free hosting reseller account.

If you want to get started straight away, you can get one from Resellers Panel

Signing up for an account

I’ve signed up for an account myself, and its a pretty painless process. No setup fees or deposits are required to start using the reseller hosting solution. But you can, if you want to, order a domain name for your new web hosting site at the same time. This is the option I took, and paid $8 to register the domain name www.ddwebsitehosting.com.

Remember - the domain name is optional - you can start straight away without it. If you don’t have your own domain name, your website will be given an URL on their domain automatically. You can also use an existing domain name if you already have one, you just need to change its nameservers to point to your new store and fill in the appropriate boxes on the setup form.

After the signup you will be provided with a web address that you can start using immediately. You can build your reseller website quickly using the control panel menu.

Customize your Store

You’ve already given your store a name, but now you’ll want to customize it. The first thing to do is choose a template for your new web hosting site. Resellers Panel offer you a choice of 16 templates - choose one you like as the basis for your site. I went with the recommended template (the newest one).

But you’re not finished there - you can upload a header graphic with your own logo, edit the metatags, add up to 3 link buttons (to you other websites?) and edit the header and footer (you don’t need to do it all at once - you can go back to it later).

Of course, much of the look and feel of your site will remain the same as the template you’ve chosen. If you have more knowledge of HTML, Javascript and IFRAMES, you have the option to design your own web hosting site, using Resellers Panels remote forms or their Resellers API. Remember that Resellers Panel will still handle all the support and billing details, leaving you free to get on with promoting your business

For now, I’ve stuck with the standard hosted option; at a later date I’ll investigate the more advanced options and let you know how I get on.

Set up Hosting Plans and Prices

After setting up your store, the next thing is to create your hosting packages and prices. Again - you don’t need to - you can start immediately with just the two included web hosting packages, the Business Package and the Corporate Package, which are both good value.

Assuming you keep the two included packages, this leaves you the possibility of creating up to 18 more hosting packages using the Liquid Plan Builder. The Liquid Plan builder is a great tool that calculates the wholesale price for you in real time as you decide on options for your plan, so you can easily try out different options and see how they affect the price.

Creating hosting plans is my only real niggle with the account - the two standard packages are such good value, that its hard to come up with other plans that come close. I tried fitting another plan in between the two (the Duo Plan if you look at my store) that offered people who need to host 2 websites an option between the single domain Business plan and the 10 domain Corporate

Unfortunately, the price worked out almost as much as the Corporate, and I would make less profit on it than either of the other two plans, so I had to juggle the prices of the other two plans about, and reduce the webspace allowance on my Duo Plan to get a reasonable selling price differential between the plans.

You can of course, create plans above the existing plans - you really have no limit on the webspace you can offer, because you haven’t bought a set amount of webspace to divide up, as you do with normal reseller accounts.

OK thats it for now - you can check out the site at www.ddwebsitehosting.com and keep an eye on the progress as I add more plans, and eventually investigate the more advanced features.

Get started with your own web hosting business - try out Resellers Panel now - there’s no cost and no risk!

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