May 30, 2009 at 12:29How I started and ended up hosting
I sold hosting for several years, and during that time I gained invaluable experience in communicating with clients and server administration. Now I want to tell you how it was :)
It was a long time ago, I was much younger and hosting services were more expensive then. And one fine day, I discovered that there is such a service - reselling, which allows you to sell a place to others. In addition, having bought a gigabyte of space for several people, it was possible to take a place for a site two and a half times cheaper. I immediately wrote about this to a friend, and we agreed that he would take 200 megabytes, a friend would take 300, I would take 100 and I would be looking for the rest of the buyer.
According to the law of the genre, it turned out that I got all the gigabytes.
I did not refuse and cancel the order, I found a person who for hosting and some money would make me a design, write texts and make a website. I found a pirated billing, set it up and went to look for clients on HostObzor.
I immediately honestly said that I was a reseller (Anyway, in the second or third post, they would have figured it out and not very well presented). Subsequently, I was always honest with the customers and said if something went wrong.
Until May, everything was going well enough, I even remained in a small plus. I bought a billing license and did the most stupid thing that I could have done at all - I left for Ukraine in places where the Internet has not been accessed at all.
Several times a month I went into ICQ from my phone and checked my mail. By the way, customers knew about this.One fine day, I was informed that the client sites were not working, and a little later I found out that the hoster was sold to a larger one. I went to an Internet cafe and asked what needs to be done to make the sites work again. It was necessary to change the DNS records for my domain, and then everything would work. I did not have time and gave the technical support passwords, they did everything for me. Then it turned out that the sites still did not work, because they were crookedly transferred. I'm going again, talking with support. After a couple of days, the sites started working, but it was too late - almost all the customers left.
In August, I returned to Moscow. I looked at the new control panel (There was DirectAdmin, became cPanel), I corrected the links on the site. I decided to transfer the technical support of clients from ICQ to the ticket. By the way, they even wrote a couple of messages in it, and all the questions all the same went to ICQ. The situation was not very good.
So it was until I accidentally met one person. We got into a conversation and he suggested that I design a website for him for a free virtual dedicated server with a panel. Did, got the server. With another panel - IspManager.
Here began to gain real useful experience. I learned how to install this panel and rearrange it again, because something must have gone wrong. When everything worked more or less, I manually transferred clients. Made a new site. The panel quite often produced inexplicable glitches, I could not get some sites to work. In addition, rested in memory. Increased memory, I bought a license for DirectAdmin and installed.
The third time it turned out cool - I liked everything, nothing fell, instead of mod_php there was a more secure suphp, there were no errors and everything worked. I installed a firewall, migrated clients, everyone was happy and happy. Sites worked quickly, sometimes I turned to the owner of the server for help, everything fell only once. New customers began to come.
There are new acquaintances, I again began to communicate with the owner of the first hosting. And the owner decided to go to the company, which sold the first one and gave them the same node. At the same time no one wanted to post me. As a result, I took a new VDS in Moscow at a discount and the ability to pay when the money appears. And so they lived.
He left for Ukraine again, but now there was inexpensive internet. He began to work remotely as a php encoder to pay off debt. Redeemed. I discovered that you can place a php mirror on your own, wrote that I can do this.
Already in Moscow, the answer came to me - well, do it, it will be cool. And so I began to host a site that made 300 gigabytes of traffic per month and almost did not load the server. In gratitude, they put on my site a pass-through link from the mirror and a link from the site’s mirrors page (And there was PageRank 7, by the way). So they lived, PageRank grew to four.
Everything was cool until I had no money left to pay for the server. Since there were not very many customers, I just gave them for thanks and did not even ask for money. They are happy with my choice of buyer :). Now I work in the technical support of a medium-sized hoster. I have no regrets about the time and money spent, I gained invaluable experience in communicating with clients and setting up servers, I met interesting people.
PS Moral: Always keep customers up to date with what you are doing. Never leave customers for more than three days (Even this is a lot). Do not experiment on live clients. Do not go to a higher level (From reselling to VDS or from VDS to Dedic) if the first one does not pay off and there are resources.
PPS I can write about what is necessary in order to start providing hosting, but I can only cover the technical side. Is this interesting?
It was a long time ago, I was much younger and hosting services were more expensive then. And one fine day, I discovered that there is such a service - reselling, which allows you to sell a place to others. In addition, having bought a gigabyte of space for several people, it was possible to take a place for a site two and a half times cheaper. I immediately wrote about this to a friend, and we agreed that he would take 200 megabytes, a friend would take 300, I would take 100 and I would be looking for the rest of the buyer.
According to the law of the genre, it turned out that I got all the gigabytes.
I did not refuse and cancel the order, I found a person who for hosting and some money would make me a design, write texts and make a website. I found a pirated billing, set it up and went to look for clients on HostObzor.
I immediately honestly said that I was a reseller (Anyway, in the second or third post, they would have figured it out and not very well presented). Subsequently, I was always honest with the customers and said if something went wrong.
Until May, everything was going well enough, I even remained in a small plus. I bought a billing license and did the most stupid thing that I could have done at all - I left for Ukraine in places where the Internet has not been accessed at all.
Several times a month I went into ICQ from my phone and checked my mail. By the way, customers knew about this.One fine day, I was informed that the client sites were not working, and a little later I found out that the hoster was sold to a larger one. I went to an Internet cafe and asked what needs to be done to make the sites work again. It was necessary to change the DNS records for my domain, and then everything would work. I did not have time and gave the technical support passwords, they did everything for me. Then it turned out that the sites still did not work, because they were crookedly transferred. I'm going again, talking with support. After a couple of days, the sites started working, but it was too late - almost all the customers left.
In August, I returned to Moscow. I looked at the new control panel (There was DirectAdmin, became cPanel), I corrected the links on the site. I decided to transfer the technical support of clients from ICQ to the ticket. By the way, they even wrote a couple of messages in it, and all the questions all the same went to ICQ. The situation was not very good.
So it was until I accidentally met one person. We got into a conversation and he suggested that I design a website for him for a free virtual dedicated server with a panel. Did, got the server. With another panel - IspManager.
Here began to gain real useful experience. I learned how to install this panel and rearrange it again, because something must have gone wrong. When everything worked more or less, I manually transferred clients. Made a new site. The panel quite often produced inexplicable glitches, I could not get some sites to work. In addition, rested in memory. Increased memory, I bought a license for DirectAdmin and installed.
The third time it turned out cool - I liked everything, nothing fell, instead of mod_php there was a more secure suphp, there were no errors and everything worked. I installed a firewall, migrated clients, everyone was happy and happy. Sites worked quickly, sometimes I turned to the owner of the server for help, everything fell only once. New customers began to come.
There are new acquaintances, I again began to communicate with the owner of the first hosting. And the owner decided to go to the company, which sold the first one and gave them the same node. At the same time no one wanted to post me. As a result, I took a new VDS in Moscow at a discount and the ability to pay when the money appears. And so they lived.
He left for Ukraine again, but now there was inexpensive internet. He began to work remotely as a php encoder to pay off debt. Redeemed. I discovered that you can place a php mirror on your own, wrote that I can do this.
Already in Moscow, the answer came to me - well, do it, it will be cool. And so I began to host a site that made 300 gigabytes of traffic per month and almost did not load the server. In gratitude, they put on my site a pass-through link from the mirror and a link from the site’s mirrors page (And there was PageRank 7, by the way). So they lived, PageRank grew to four.
Everything was cool until I had no money left to pay for the server. Since there were not very many customers, I just gave them for thanks and did not even ask for money. They are happy with my choice of buyer :). Now I work in the technical support of a medium-sized hoster. I have no regrets about the time and money spent, I gained invaluable experience in communicating with clients and setting up servers, I met interesting people.
PS Moral: Always keep customers up to date with what you are doing. Never leave customers for more than three days (Even this is a lot). Do not experiment on live clients. Do not go to a higher level (From reselling to VDS or from VDS to Dedic) if the first one does not pay off and there are resources.
PPS I can write about what is necessary in order to start providing hosting, but I can only cover the technical side. Is this interesting?