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How to get your first 10 hosting customers
blackwebhosting
Member
in General
Cold calls: Find an area where businesses are located. Walk in and ask the owner if they would be interested in getting a website or having work done on an existing website. Build the website for the customer. Get two per week and you have 100 new hosting clients.
Comments
$7
you mean for free? because even for free, what we mostly hear is the likes of "um, no, we're good"!
spamming on LET
Giveaway
How many customers do you have?
Thanks for sharing your valuable wisdom. Please consider adding more topics like how to brush your teeth, how to close a door etc.
Bad advice. You will be banned forever in 69 seconds.
Please move this to Tutorials.
you can call every business in Barbados, call every day until they agree, at the end of the month you will have more than 100,000 customers and become a millionaire
No not for free stating price 500 dollars, start by saying I will do your website for 500 dollars with 100 dollars down and 25 dollars per month, now any business owner would pay 100 dollars for website work or facebook work so on, make sure you brush your teeth before you talk to customers, this is not spam that comes in a can, you could call one client Rihanna while in Barbados and she could pay you 1 million dollars to manage her website.
whoa there buddy. 10 customers is some serious overselling.
nice, new username!
Make sure your family is big enough before starting your hosting business.
Hire Snoop Dog.
When I went freelance in 2005, I started by calling random tradesmen in my town and asking if they had a website. I would then offer to meet them at a coffee shop. I would build them a website and host them on a reseller hosting package I had at the time.
This got me a good handful of customers until I started getting jobs by recommendation.
A lot has changed since then but still, to this day, I have my very first customer.
make countless threads about your competitors while never addressing your broken servers and network.
Everyone will have different experience. I absolutely fcked up when I first started by running poorly thought out ad campaigns with the worlds worst ROI. I cant give a winning reciepe, and what I am about to say is not 100% accurate for all, but I can give you some ideas. I think it also pays to understand your target audience.
Lets say group 1 are people with hosting already, you can break this group into sub groups. Such as group 1a, are 90-100% happy and will not switch unless you have a feature that is unique. Advertising to this group requires something different. For example easy backup solution, or license + hosting bundles.
Group 1b, are people maybe 50%-90% happy with their current host, they will switch if they think you can offer better services. This may mean having 24/7 phone, email, live chat support. But they also want confidence that you going to be around and that their data is safe. If its your first day on the internet, marketing to group 1, is a challenge. If you stuff up, your reputation will take a hit and you are done for. And yet, this is the group many new people aim for, thinking cutthroat low pricing is the key, when im happy to pay double for the same product if I think the company behind it is more reliable.
LED possibly has alot of people in group "1c.". They have hosting, and may be here to look for something else they need, like a reseller account, or vps, in specific countries.
Group 2, may be people that are actively interested in having a website and not sure where to start. Marketing to this group, you could be promoting ease of use for webuilder software. Or even promoting cpanel, softaculous, 1 click installer, have wordpress installed in under 60seconds.
Group 3, may be businesses that do not have a website. The issue is that often people in these groups actively do not believe they need a website, so you have this resistance.
One example in one of the marketing books was people cold calling a restaurant about making them a website. the restaurant is so busy they might have a massive que outside, phone calling non stop for orders, they might have people calling in advance for reservations, so why would they need a website.
In that example, you dont say you can make them a website, you should be saying, that you can simplify their ordering process so that the staff can focus on making the food, or serving customers and not taking orders over the phone. Or to another small business that is struggling with low sales, I can say that I can make them a website, nothing to pay for 30days, and I guarantee them at least 1 sale in 30 days, AND I can deliver on this promise.
If I fail to deliver, no harm no foul. I delete the website and they dont need to pay me anything. Now both of the above are 2 different conversations, one for a busy business and another for a quiet business. Understanding what they need is crucial to delivering the right product. The first product may even be "$5k" the second "$500", dont approach with a one size, one price fits all.
All that said, if I approach them at their business, its like talking to a brick wall. You know why? Because we are not in sales. We do webhosting, we make websites, we provide customer support, we aint sales. But if I can meet them at a networking event, and walk up and say "hey, Im Matt, and I help small businesses in the area to grow" hand them a card and then move on to a different topic, and the key here is to meet and make connections with at least 4 people - NOT SALES. Make that your goal, to meet 4 different business people at these events, not make sales. Thats the key. You can find networking meetings on FB, just search for "business network", and if they have lunches, GO.
Black web hosting is an interesting name. Dark web hosting?
nice, thanks for this insights.
No it's an all black team. Like the all gay host but black.
This book was legend...14 years ago. Copyright 2009. Didn't Hostgator used to give it away for free when you bought one of their reseller accounts? I bet @KuJoe or @jar would remember.
Probably. Oh man, the good old days.
Is it just a bunch of pages saying to oversell and take your support budget and spend on advertising?
In 2009 HostGator wasn't EIG.
Offline self marketing and email spamming works best compare to online paid advertising in google you spend $2 to get $1 business
you mean this?