The most difficult thing...

[hostpath.com]

What is the most difficult thing about being a Web host? Since I don't host for a living, I'd like to know what it would be.

[Living Media]

It all depends. Different people have different skillsets and skill levels, and different business structures.

I can tell folks what the most difficult thing is for me, but I don't know if that would hold for everyone.

For me, the thing that takes up most of my time is the learning. It's not always the most difficult, but it does take a lot of time; and depending on what I'm trying to learn, it can be a real bear.

Hiring / subcontracting can be difficult, because when I want to subcontract something I want to know that there's another customer-oriented person who's going to be providing the service. Every time I've left a host, or abandoned a particular service, it's because their customer service / support has "gone turnkey" or just simply never materialised. That said, hiring / subcontracting for me is timeconsuming, and possibly a bit more painstaking than it needs to be every time. Then again, I need to know the person who's going to be providing the service and feel that they're going to hold to similar high standards regarding customer service as I do.

Sorry. I'm not really providing you a good answer.

[hostpath.com]

How about trying to find customers? Seeking new business and such? Seems to me that could rank right up there, particularly for people who tend to be more technically skilled than sales savvy.

[Robert]

The hardest part is starting out. Getting those first few clients to "trust" you and "believe in you". Once you get past that hill, it's all easy after that.

[JeremyV]

From a smaller host's perspective, I would have to say the hardest thing to deal with is inconsistency. I don't have a huge staff to take care of everything for me, and I can't put in my 9-5 hours and go home at night and forget about things.

Like I said, inconsistency is difficult to deal with. Whether it is with sales (15 signups this week... then the next 3 weeks you get 3) or with support tickets (20 a day.. or sometimes you don't hear from people for weeks), etc. You never know what to expect when you wake up in the morning, you could have a nightmare of server problems, or not a single thing may happen and you are bored to death.

But, at the same time this is sometimes difficult to deal with, I think it is part of the excitement that drives people to run their own business. I mean really, who wants to sit in a cubical from 9 to 5 everyday doing the same exact things for years? Some people do, but not me. Everyday is an adventure and you never know what to expect. So while this brings an added level of stress and uncertainty to your life, it keeps tings interesting :)

[thebyp2]

Originally posted by Robert:

The hardest part is starting out. Getting those first few clients to "trust" you and "believe in you". Once you get past that hill, it's all easy after that.

i would agree with that. the getting established with a number of clients who trust you is a good way to be.

[Living Media]

Finding my initial customers was easy. I had several friends who were interested in having their own sites, but didn't really know anyone in the hosting business. Once I opened the hosting doors, they signed up.

Seeking new business? For me, it's easy. Aside from selling myself to people I already know or have contact with, I have no marketing skills and don't care to take the time to learn them. I'm also an introvert, and proper marketing is a very extroverted skillset. I had a sales / marketing staff before I had additional technical support staff.

[Deb]

I found starting out quite simple compared to handling growth spurts after the fact however the most difficult thing I have to do is letting somebody go. This applies to both clients and staff.

I feel the pain for quite some time when we have to tell a client, usually a great a client, that they have finally outgrown our community servers and they need to either step up with us to a dedicated solution (we only have a limited supply right now for established clients) or move elsewhere. I feel the pain even longer when I have to let an employee go.

I've been lucky enough that we've always had excellent people on the team in that they do try hard, are honest, and are easy to become friends with. However, we are in an extremely demanding business and FutureQuest in general is even more demanding of its staff. Unfortunately even the most well intentioned individuals are not always able to successfully keep up with those demands and letting them go is by far the most difficult thing I've had to do in this business. I assume it's difficult for any business....

[thebyp2]

sometimes firing people is really, really easy. :D

[sprintserve]

Generally, I think it's getting to profitability. You can be looking for clients, you can be doing anything a startup needs to do, but if you never reach profitability, everything just becomes a bit unstable and more shaky, and investment capital just keeps running down...

nowdays to hit the point where you cover basic costs of course is a lot easier than when servers cost a couple of thousand a month for very little bandwidth...

[DirectAdmin]

The whole process of getting established is difficult. As all of you know, competition in the hosting industry is extremely fierce, and the number of startups that survive only make up a few percent of the total. In addition, you have some hosts making ridiculous offers -- I once purchased a 100meg space / 3gig transfer account for $10/yr. This was three months ago, and the account is still going strong. I have no idea how any profit is made.

The point is, congrats to those of you who have established themselves.

Mark

[Living Media]

There was something I saw mentioned in a book about small businesses once: the failure rate in the first year is something like 80%. This would definitely support DirectAdmin's statement that getting established is difficult. The causes of failure included lack of funds, lack of personnel, lack of drive (ie, the owner[s] just give up), sudden emergency that wipes out the business (especially for one-person shows), and so forth. Most of the things that caused businesses to fail in their first year point back to "lack of planning". It isn't really possible to plan for something like a tornado that wipes out your home and thus the business, or a life-crisis event like birth, death, injury, etc. that calls for the business owner(s) to redirect the majority of their resources (mental, emotional) very quickly. Most of the failure modes, though, were tied directly back to lack of planning. Lots of folks don't completely grok that starting one's own business isn't a game. They may have come from the corporate world, where the stresses are completely different.

[DirectAdmin]

Hello Lesli,

I would imagine that the failure rate for hosting company startups is far over 80%. In this day and age, almost anybody can start up a hosting company. The costs are small:

Domain registration: ~$10-$20/year
Reseller account : ~$20-$100/month
Promotion: $0 and up

The vast majority are one-man (or woman) shows, and these individuals operate from their home PC. Lack of planning may be a factor, but sometimes the best business plan fails (especially when the market is so fierce).

I think one recurring theme among the successful web hosts is time and reliability. They have been around for a while and have a solid reputation. Their prices don't necessarily have to be the lowest.

Thanks for your input Lesli, this is an interesting thread.

Mark

[rusko]

the hardest part, imho, is not getting to profitability. the absolute hardest part is getting to *success*. let me explain:

you may be making a few hundred dollars off of your rackhack/dedmoo/insertcheapproviderhere server, but is that success? success is being able to pay yourself a decent wage, hiring *competent* employees, expanding into new markets and adding to your offerings. success is also providing a service to your clients that they can be happy with; unless i hear a hearty thank you at least once a day from a satisfied client, i have to wonder what we are doing wrong.

you have to be innovative to be successful. if you have a lot of working capital, you have to excersize restraint in applying it. after all, no matter how much you research and plan, without having a bit of experience in and feel for the industry under your belt, your business decisions will be suboptimal. if you are low on capital, you need to find new, inventive ways of generating the best ROI from it. best could mean either fast, high or both. after all, $5k today may be more useful than $10k a month from now in certain situations.

you have to have the vision and the motivation to make it a reality. there is no success without ambition and being mediocre is a betrayal you can not afford. competitiveness is in the human nature, as a kid you never wanted to be second best, remember that? it is hard to forget about the restraints pragmatism put on you after you grew up. after all, how could you dream of competing against the likes of verio, rackshack and rackspace? it would be stupid, right? hell no; be a fool, be a moron, give them a freaking run for their money. (disclaimer: this means be creative in competing with them, david didnt go fighting goliath with a nightstick).

of course, none of this is unique to hosting. in fact, this is what i learned from building two successful businesses from the ground up with $100 as startup capital.

come to think of it, the above isnt even the hardest part. the fact that there is a gazillion other things i can think of that i havent mentioned is the hardest. have you ever seen a math competition where you are competing against time, complex problems and other individuals of comparable intellectual capacity? business is exactly like that, except the race never ends.

paul

[Robert]

Very Well said Paul.

Want a job? J/K

[rusko]

thanks for the offer, robert. i will have to pass on it though, my apologies =]

paul

[blue27]

Originally posted by hostpath.com:

What is the most difficult thing about being a Web host? Since I don't host for a living, I'd like to know what it would be.

The hardest part is explaining to my wife why I am sitting in front of this computer 20 hours a day.

[Chicken]

...and then trying to explain it to anyone else: "You know... web hosting. Hosting web sites. Something dubya dubya dubya dot com, like yahho.com. We would store the site's files so you could view the web pages." -and on and on, as they stare at you partially having no clue, partially nodding because they've heard of yahoo.com.

[net-trend]

Originally posted by Chicken:

and on and on, as they stare at you partially having no clue, partially nodding because they've heard of yahoo.com.

Tell me about it, everyone seems to patronize me when I tell them what I do...they just smile and nod and seem to understand everything i tell them..but later ask the same questions again...sigh...

[James]

what I am finding very hard at the moment is to gain new clients, I have a base of 10 clients right now that are on time and every thing but im not making to much. (that reminds me) I have people tell me , yes tell me, to beet this guys price and i will host with you. but all of my prices are very good for what i offer with them. I dont offer the world for 5 bucks a month, but thats what clients want.

and yes one of the other hardest parts is telling a client to hit the road as it were. but if there braking my tos or my providers tos(in that regards there all most the same) they got to go or i do.

thanks for the info paul very helpfull.
James

[stevec]

Hi,

Just found this thread and feel like I've read a mini-seminar. Would love to see if anyone has anything to add. I'm sure there are a lot of new forum members since that last post last June2003.
Steve

[GordonH]

Chargebacks
Fraud
Customers who wont read the documentation

[Adam]

Just tell people that you empower the Internet and then they'll be happy (and think your a gazillionaire).

[Brian S]

I think we need to collectively come up with some cool term for our profession. Telling people "I do web hosting" doesn't sound very cool.

I once read on WHT that a good way to explain web hosting is to compare it to real estate. Basically, we sell real estate on the Internet. So when someone asks me what I do, I tell them I do web hosting (blank stare), then I'll usually ask if they've ever heard of GeoCities (if still blank stare...), then I will explain that I sell real estate on the Internet. I give away some real estate, and sell nicer real estate for money. Seems to work.

Brian

[webmultitude]

Getting new clients and keeping them.

[GordonH]

Churn is a real problem if you sell annual plans.

You get to month 13 and find all your servers starting to empty.

We tackled churn by having a button on the renewal form which said "click here if this is too expensive".
This presents two options:

1. Renew as a smaller plan.
2. Switch to our budget brand.

Most of our cancellations at renewal were due to price and since we did this the number of customers not renewing for price reasons has reduced by more than 50%.

I also made a new cancellation form which asks additional questions if someone selects price or technical issues or feature not provided as the reason for leaving.
This is helping to tighten things up.

A few months ago I was getting very worried about the number of customers leaving.
We were losing more than we were recruiting for 2 months running.
Now we are recruiting the same number but losing far fewer so the business is increasin in size again.

Its well worth looking at every aspect of why people leave and try and plug those gaps.

Gordon