New on LowEndTalk? Please Register and read our Community Rules.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
All new Registrations are manually reviewed and approved, so a short delay after registration may occur before your account becomes active.
How do you start outside of the LowEnd Market?
Hey guys,
So right now, I've been developing a non-LowEnd solution that I know nobody here will pay for.
I've been wanting to properly enter the VPS/management industry for quite some time, and to be honest I know that if I'm not selling at $1/mth, nobody will buy it.
Please give me some advice, and don't take this the wrong way. I love you guys (heck, I've stayed around for a year and learnt so much).
Thanks,
0xdragon.
Comments
Advertise on WHT?
@0xdragon, You have to stand out.
If what you have is CPU/RAM/DISK than people will compare this with CPU/RAM/DISK only. Do you get what I am trying to point out.
There are few people here like @RyanARP who have been able to standout and have made their own customers who love to stay with them and trust them for most of the critical nodes.
I will say the following can help :
A lot of market on LET is hobbyist. For more serious stuff when you do safety, customer service etc means a lot. If you can trust a provider you will earn respect over here and everywhere else slowly, it is a slow game but a steady one. Else people will be leaving you the moment they have better plans available in terms of resources because honestly 99% of customers here are not even going to full utilize the 512MB ram plan so they end up never realizing the difference between a fair allocation and unfair. They think XXX amount of Sold Ram in ZZZ price - the ratio only matters. For more sincere and real projects - people look for production capable nodes and providers. You can be one of them, increase your knowledge and build better servers.
Well, there could be more detail about the project, but OK.
I guess it'd be a bit hard, since there probably are big competitors doing what you'll attempt. So competition could be a problem. But I guess what you should do is to invest some money into it if you really believe it. You should properly incorporate, open up your website, (if the idea is original get patents or trademarks) work on some selling points, and than start hitting some start-up occasions where start-ups compete for funding etc.
So without funding, probably not so easy.
If you're not in the US, even worse.
This is my worthless opinion at least, I'm not in anyway experienced in the subject.
Don't forget about local market. Look around. Random companies, institutions, etc... around us are often prepared to pay for long term IT solutions and management more than some random forum folks. It's also way to build reputation and representing portfolio.
This, you can undercut many Aussie businesses doing this and still make a large profit. IT companies here charge a lot of money for small thigs, undercut , be more professional, offer services they don't, offer the quality most of them don't.
Being a one man band can certainly help you more as it will feel like a more personal experience for the customer.
You may not need to be LEB to be competitive in Australia.
Being so far away from the rest of the world we usually pay more for our services. If you have the service based in Australia and can match standard (Non-LEB) US prices you would already be far ahead of over services here.
@0xdragon
Dont make the mistake of focussing primarily on what @darknessends says, it's not bad advice but it's worthless without customers. If your focus is not LET then keep it away from LET and don't lower the bar just to pick up a few customers from here.
Listen to @vRozenSch00n and adopt the approach @Spirit suggest.
It's like what you already know. Offer a service dirt cheap, get dirt cheap clients and end up like GVH.
If it's a premium service you need to spend 80% of your time marketing and 20% fiddling with equipment nobody is using yet.
Local is always king if you are starting out trying to charge $20 instead of LET where others are charging $2 or WHT where everyone charges $3. Only a reputation that precedes you will help you get clients willing to spend money on WHT.
Never fall into the trap of offering free trials, money back after 14 days if not happy but always charge up front.
Who are you targetting? Geeks? tell them what hardware you use on your homepage, non geeks? Don't fill your page with crap they will not understand like Xeons and DDR3. Put that on a page they can find but don't focus on it. Make sure you appeal to the market segment you are trying to attract.
Use tools such as Google Analytics, you don't need people to critique your site, honestly used correctly the visitor engagement tools tell you all you need to know about whether your site is doing well and what is putting them off. It's so much more than "how many visitors am I getting".
Aside from the I am tired and probably not making sense
Thanks, but it seems WHT is on the race to the bottom too!
Thank you for taking the time to write that, I really appreciate your advice!
I'm going to be building a backup service (rsync backed) and production VPSs on some pretty great hardware (with partnerships) and worldwide (US/EU/AU).
I will also be doing management at cheaper rates than what most companies will do, so that will be quite competitive.
Great advice! Thank you so much
I've got the capital and the interest to keep this going. Local businesses are a great idea and I'll definitely explore that. Anyone know any Aussie businesses who want this sort of thing, or where to find them?
A partner is also a good idea, I think if someone was willing to help me out, that'd be amazing. Advice is worth more than gold to me.
Hmm... Here in Australia there aren't very many ways to market this sort of product. I shall put some time into discovering some though
Can you point me to some Aussie businesses?
Thanks a heap! I've noticed that when it comes to Australian servers, prices here are extortionate for very little. I'll see what I can do, but I can only get 500 IPv4s per company (please correct me if I'm wrong?).
Good idea!
Got to find those locals first
Excellent advice, thanks!
Something to think about, that's for sure.
Thanks for the heads-up with Analytics.
Thank you!
Everyone who has commented so far, I thank you. Advice has been given here that I think will help me to make the right decisions going ahead, and it's worth more than gold to me.
Thanks,
0xdragon.
This could be a good plan since service parts of a business are places where you can generate value out of thin air, it's the essence of capitalism. That acutally might be profitable. However, I'd like to point out that some providers like TMZVPS who were primarily selling managed products (with much cheaper prices in comparison to professional counterparts) seem to have changed their focus to dirtcheap ovz deals with 90% off etc, so I'd like a look into the profits of the cheaper managed services market if I could. I wonder if it'll be sustainable. As I mentioned in the beginnenig, this is an important part to capitalism, you can always outsource management to countries with cheaper labour and overwork your employees, or slow down management requests via automated responses or knowledgebase pop-ups etc. That takes a good planning with costs and income analysis etc.
Who manage IT infrastructure for small local sport clubs, churches, charity organizations, etc..? At beginning it will be mostly about building reputation to show some results, not so much about big money.
And then come bigger contracts, schools, local hospitals, and so on. There's money!
Of course not over night, not with big contracts on beginning, but it's needed to start somewhere. Everyone, including your not yet recognized local rock stars need own piece of internet. Where do you think they get it? At some forum like WHT? I doubt.
(take this just as brainstorming)
This is why I started HighEndTalk with @dediserve :P
I'll join once my ABN and registration go through
It's $550 for registration and an ABN number.
w00t w00t!
You need to define what makes your company unique and gives people an advantage or something they really need/want. This means innovation or one-upmanship in terms of service quality/offering -- NOT price competition.
Competing on price only guarantees one thing - no real profit, unhappy clients, unhappy owners, and in the end failure or company sale.
Almost all the providers you will find on LET are not doing any of that.
They are simple VPS providers doing the same damn thing every other "company" is doing.
If you are able to use a "homepage+subpage" design package for your website and only pay $100-$200, then you most likely are not doing anything special.
A company with a real product will need to have customized pages for almost every page -- because they have something to describe and feature that won't fit into a generic "subpage" blank page design.
I have next to no experience in the hosting business but speaking as an end user I agree with what @W1V_Lee and @Spirit has said. I think it would be especially beneficial for you to offer your services to nonprofits in your area like those Spirit mentioned. Not only is it a great way to start building up a portfolio/reputation, those tend to be good places where you can start building a network of word of mouth recommendations.
I've seen some local webdesigners discounting as much as one-third or more off their usual prices for nonprofits, which not only attracts people who take up that offer but will also appeal to others who see it as a very nice gesture on your part.
If you're going local, offering support by phone will also be a huge game changer for you. A lot of folks tend not to be tech savvy and would much prefer having a real person they can talk to when they have problems as opposed to writing emails and waiting for replies that they might not even understand.
Wow.. Where are you going through?.. i got my ABN and Business Name Reg for Under 150$
Really, where?
http://www.register-abn.com.au/
They did everything for me.. problem is though a lot of online styled businesses get deferred for manual checking.
Thing is you don't NEED to Register for GST Unless you are earning over 30,000 a yr from it i think.
Mate, you just saved me a whole lot of money! Thanks!
You're welcome
Just note: the Manual Checks can take up to 28 Days, but this is the same if you go Direct through ASIC etc.
I know someone in Oz, an ex naval officer who started a consulting firm with a help from his wife (who also an ex naval officer) back in 2001.
He expand the business with his side of family and his wife's family, and now he has successfully expand to international market and the service offered is not cheap.
The key to his success? Good reputation, good contacts, and good marketing.
GST registration is actually only required when your projected revenue is above or at $75,000. Save yourself time and money until you forecast revenue for the financial year goes over that point.
REF: https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/GST/Registering-for-GST/
If you're just registering as a sole trader it will cost you nothing to do it direct apart from the $35/year fee to register a trading name.
If you need any help or advice please PM me.
Is this different than just starting a company like an LLC?
LLC is US? He's AU based.