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Starting a web host?

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syanet

New Member
I'm plan on starting a free web host for sites dealing with gaming, cars, sports, etc. Two part question here:

1. Making money - Other than the standard banner on their page deal, what else can I do to make money? I've thought of e-mail newsletter with advetisments and seach programs, but they just don't appeal to me. Short of selling my own advertiment, which I plan to do if this idea is popular, how else can I make money?

2. Promotion - Where, besides the search engines, can a free web host promote? I spend alot of time at most of the popular forums and will submit to http://www.freewebspace.net , but where else can I go to promote my service, other than link exchanges of course.
 
As far as I've heard getting signups is not a problem for free hosts. You will get more signups if you offer better things obviously, but that part shouldn't be a problem. It's more likely you will have a problem with too many signups. :)

Your first question is where you might find a lot of problems... If you don't have a clear idea on how to get advertisers it will not work. Targeting a special community (for instance game sites) might be a good idea since advertisers will be willing to pay more. But competition is tough especially among gaming sites.

My advice would be to go for CPA campaigns (for instance cj.com). Can be used for text ads aswell. And for banners some CPC network (for instance Valueclick). I don't think you will be able to get a CPM network or your own CPM advertisers until it's really big. Also take a look at the ad revenue forum for more ideas on how to get ad revenue.
 
You sound pretty convinced I'll get alot of requests. I'm still not sold on it. Since I'll only accept sites from a certain genre, the content and design has to be approved by me first, this way I should be able to avoid to many signups. Hopefully accepting only a such a targeted group will help me get a good CPM in the longrun. I think the biggest question lies in how to promote. I'll submit to all the search engines which is a given and to this directory, but where else can I get people to find out about it?
 
I think I have income strightened out, at least for now. But what about promotion? Other then seach engines and host indexs, how else can I get noticed?
 
I'm dedicated from starting from scratch and doing it on my own, so co-branding isn't even an option. I just need some good promotion tips.
 
I moderate another forum at a site called sitepoint.com which deals mostly in promotion. Maybe you'll find something there that will help. Promotion is NOT something that people can give a one word answer to. If it were *that* easy, then we'd all have popular sites.

Since you offer a free product (easy sell, heh), you might want to think about how you are going to support your community (technically speaking). I don't run a FWP, but I'd imagine that you'll get more of a newbie to web hosting crowd (and the questions that go with this type of clientele).

I'd suggest you do a bit of research first. Anyone can hook up a server to a line (well, not everyone, and that's another concern), but running the FWP will prove to be more difficult. Get in touch with some people who have done it. Help ensure your own success.
 
Heres a few tips -

1) - Your on a cobalt server - Dont whatever you do overload it.

2) - Do not be afraid to boot resource hogs off your server. Allowing them to stay will only cause you problems.

3) - Remember who owns the server dont give into users requests all the time. They will try get all the features of a paid host if they can.

4) - Dont go overboard with features.
 
Good idea's. I decided to elimiate PHP/MySQL support last week since it will be to time consuming. I'll only put 50-60 sites on the server, or less depending on usage.
 
To setup an account with php and mysql isnt all that time consuming really. Just dont setup php in safe mode. This makes php defualt like cgi access is.

Mysql accounts take all of 30 seconds to create.
 
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