A founder recounts launching a reseller web hosting business in 1998 with little money, a simple website, and a focus on marketing, customer support, and reputation. Early growth came from forums, search engines, and word of mouth, while the business emphasized helping small or difficult customers.
As revenue grew, the company upgraded infrastructure, moved to cheaper and faster colocation in Los Angeles, and later formed a partnership that became DWHS Inc. The post closes with advice to start slowly, keep services simple, and prioritize customer relationships over flashy presentation.
Starting a new business can be daunting. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed or like you’re not accomplishing enough. I can remember starting my first web hosting company back in 1998. I had a simple reseller account with no customers, just the hope that I could quit my 9-to-5 job someday.
A reseller web hosting account really opens your eyes to how much starting a business has to do with marketing. With only $29.99 in overhead for the services I offered, I was left with a lot of room to build my name. Even then, it was really hard to find a good domain name. I didn’t have the money to buy one, so I registered advancedwebhosting.com. It explained what I offered, had relevant keywords, and wasn’t too long.
My goal was to help people who needed more support and might have trouble hosting with a big hosting service like Yahoo, where more complicated customers could be dropped over some obscure TOS issue. We wanted those customers: the CPU hogs, the personal sites that were a little shaky, and the people who had to call every day to be reminded how to check their email. I knew it would be more work, but I was ready to help, no matter how small the margin was.
The second step after choosing a domain name was building the website. If I remember correctly, I didn’t even know how to use Dreamweaver yet and relied on FrontPage to build my masterpiece. I wish I had kept a screenshot for the sake of humor.
I remember clearly that I didn’t care about flashy buttons or heavy graphics. I wanted something that loaded fast and helped customers get where they needed to go easily. In fact, the first version had no buttons at all, just text links. I paid a service $75 to build a logo, had business cards made, and started submitting my site to search engines like AltaVista and Lycos. This was before Google.
I then started joining forums and adding my link to my signature. I knew even back then that spamming was bad, and I was fortunate enough to understand how important reputation is on the Internet. It took time, but I picked up some new customers through conversations on forums and ICQ. Skype wasn’t around back then either.
Every customer took time, but I was honest and genuinely willing to do whatever it took to earn their business, even if it meant spending hours helping someone with a low-priced account. I believe you should treat every customer like your best customer and not favor the bigger ones. It may sound like a sales pitch, but that belief helped build my reputation.
In less than a year, I outgrew my reseller plan and was able to upgrade to a dedicated server from the same company. I even had a couple of dedicated-server customers who wanted to join, so I was able to sell those services through the same reseller hosting company.
Unfortunately, the company that had started out being just as helpful to me as I tried to be to my customers seemed to lose interest. They stopped replying to support tickets promptly, and at times server outages lasted for hours. On one occasion, they even told me that if I kept asking for help, they would suspend the account or charge me more.
I was shocked. My company was paying them hundreds of dollars a month, and as a new reseller with limited system administration experience, I needed their help.
It became evident that it was time to take a leap of faith. I was still working part-time selling appliances at Sears, but I had managed to save some money and started looking for colocation and technical help.
I was living in Santa Barbara at the time, and the only colocation facility available there was expensive. Still, I always believed that if you want to be successful, you have to believe you will succeed regardless of the obstacles. I remember everyone thinking I was nuts for putting so much of my time and money into the business.
I was impressed that Sony was in the same building, and I even met some of the Sony team there. I felt like I was playing with the big boys, and I definitely paid for that image. Eventually, I landed a large account with FIFA and another account with Sony while continuing to grow steadily with smaller websites.
It took about two years to pass $2,000 a month in revenue, just enough for me to quit my job at Sears and put all of my effort into Advanced Web Hosting. That was an amazing feeling I will never forget.
After a year, my lease was up with the data center in Santa Barbara, so I started looking for a new facility. That’s when I began what would become a lasting partnership with BlackSun. We still partner with them at our data center in Downtown Los Angeles to this day.
Once we moved our colocation to Los Angeles, our costs were about half as much and the connection was much faster. Driving an hour to replace a hard drive was a nightmare, but it was well worth the extra money I could put back into growing the business.
It was around this time that I met the person who would help solidify my place in web hosting: James Gardner, not the actor. He owned a mainstream hosting service with far more customers than I had, but he was still looking for an edge.
We met over sushi in Hollywood and decided to partner under one company, DWHS Inc. (Domain Web Hosting Service). In 2001, we finalized the partnership agreements and incorporated the business. It’s hard to believe how much time has passed since then.
It was never easy, and it still isn’t, but we love what we do. We have always tried to support our customers, big and small, the best we can.
My main advice to anyone starting a reseller web hosting service is to take it slowly and focus on marketing above all else. Don’t worry about being flashy. Focus on talking to people, building a good reputation, and keeping things simple for your customers.
I wish you the best of luck in whatever you build. I know firsthand how hard it can be.