The Magic 1 year mark!

[JJW]

So, to me it is kinda funny the moment you seem to hit one year is when you really start getting signups. You can spend a lot of money on website design, servers and advertising and still not even meet your server costs the first year. All the money i have spent out of pocket and the moment my company becomes 1 year old I start getting lots of signups (prior to my posting the anniversery sale). It just amazes me that if i had kept my origional company going i would have been open for 3 years now. I guess this is where my company starts to grow and I start really getting to a comfortable place.

How was your first year in business?

 

[Derek Flahost]

If you planned properly on your spending at the start, you will not need to wait so long for earn back the start up capital.
It is all about effort and strategy.

 

[Tyler]

It's funny you say this because we actually broke even and made a profit our first day.. then again, I'm sure the 200 followers on facebook had something to do with it (Thanks guys!)

But yeah, the reality of the situation is it can take a couple of years to break even depending on how much advertisement you do and how many people are interested in your product. Shared hosting is a beaten horse - - I would be surprised if you made profit even after a year with the current market and how many other hosts are competing with you.

It also helps if you're a registered business and have that plastered all over your website. It lets people know you aren't a "kid host" and you're serious.

So for BroHoster, our first year in business was terrible. It really started to kick off after the second year and although I won't go into specifics, we were making loads of cash until that Matthew crap. For Phoenixerve, I guess the amount of advertisement we had enabled us to not have to wait a year to break even. So yeah, I'm pretty happy about that

 

[JJW]

Well the only advertising we have done is through a few forums. We had been loosing quite a bit of money prior to this month. We still are not breaking even but it is a little bit easier on my own pocket book these days. We have had quite a few signups in the last 2 months which has been nice. This was not a thread to promote my company though more of a thread to find out how other people faired there first year.

 

[wswd]

If I recall, I believe the SBA says most businesses fail within 3-5 years, if I recall, so you aren't out of the woods yet, but it's definitely nice to be making money instead of losing it.

 

[Derek Flahost]

In hosting business case, most new host will not be able to survive more than 1 year.
If able to survive more than 1 year, means the host might have potential to stay survive.