Continue reading »]]> I have just posted a blog on Matthouldsworth.com about blogging in the bath. It then hit me that it would be a good name for a blog. Surely the domain name would be taken though?

Well it is now! Blogginginthebath.com and bloginthebath.com were both free so I registered them!

I am think I will use those domains as a prize to a competition. The details of which I need to come up with, but check back here soon to see details of how you can win those domain names!

Continue reading »]]> As a follow on from the last post about using domain names that you have parked. I have been running through my portfolio of domains, in doing so I came across a domain name I have been holding onto for several years Broadbandlocal.co.uk.

While with most of my portfolio of parked domain names I have being simply adding a couple of adverts, I decided that Broadband Local would be perfect for a quick exercise to see how quickly I could put together a very simple affiliate site. The result was Broadband Local. A very quick site I have put together to compare broadband prices in the UK.

I chose a template from OSWD and modified it to suit a broadband site, then created a simple database with two tables, one for suppliers names and one for offers, with relationship between them based on supplier ID.

Then in the PHP page i created a simple SQL query joining the two tables getting all the offers and formatted the results in an easy to view HTML table.

The I signed up to some broadband merchants and entered the details of their offers into the database, and hey presto a working site.

All in all this took about 2 hours including finding a template, modifying it, setting up the database, writing the php and entering the data into the DB.

One could argue that this is not the greatest site in the world, it does not automatically update its self, but for 2 hours work I am pleased!

I will not be heavily marketing the site, again this is not one of my main affiliate projects, I will concentrate my efforts on those, but I will submit broadband local to search engines and I will create links from my Web Design company and Web Hosting Company websites, all I need is one sale and that is better than having the domain parked doing nothing!

Have a look at Broadbandlocal.co.uk

Continue reading »]]> If you have been in the Internet business for as long as I have I am sure like me you will have built up a whole range of domain names that you have parked away.

Some will have been bought for that brilliant idea you just haven’t got round to as yet, some will be domains you have bought speculatively in the hope they might be worth something, some maybe ones that clients no-longer wish to continue with and you have decided to keep hold of.

Perhaps more embarrassingly if you are like me some will have been bought when surfing while drunk, you wake up in the morning and that brilliant idea you had last night after a couple of bottles of wine just does not seem so good in the morning, but when you check your email through the fog of a hang over you can just about make out that invoice for the domain name you bought for your not so brilliant idea!

In all seriousness, I have built up a portfolio of domain names reaching into the thousands, some good and some not so good, most of which are just parked, so I thought why not make these pay? Even if that is only a few pounds per year at least they would pay for themselves covering the registration costs. This got me thinking about possible ways to monetise them, so here are my ideas, if you have anymore please do post a  comment. Indeed if you have a funny story about one of those not so great ideas please do post those too!

 1. Sedo or other Auction site – The option that sedo provides is actually a way of selling domain names, however many people use it simply as a parking service, you see you point your domain at sedo, add some details about a price you are looking for and then Sedo put pay per click adverts on the domain name, you get a cut of that revenue. The service is intended to sell the domains, however you can simply reject any bids and earn from the PPC. If that great bid happens to come in you can always decide to let it go.

2. Create your own ppc or affiliate landing page. Simply creating one static html page, put some PPC adverts or banner adverts related to the domains subject and leave it alone. You may want to track with Google analytics to see what people are searching for and custom your banners to them, but all I am doing is setting up those pages and leaving them. The aim of this is not to generate myself extra work, but to do something quick and simple that might drip some money in.

3. The final option that I can come up with requires some additional work but not much. If you have a merchant that provides a product data feed related to your domains subject, grab yourself a copy of AffiliStore (setup takes minutes), setup a data feed from a URL (which updates automatically). This will create an online store with all the products of the merchant. This advantage here is you are more likely to make commissions, but the disadvantages are that it takes a little longer to setup and also takes up more server resources if that is an issue.

With all of these I have decided to simply setup the sites or holding pages. I will not market them in anyway other than submitting them to search engines (which in most cases is already done). Then I will leave them until such a date that I decide to use the domains for something more productive.

In the mean time if each domain earns £5 per year, and yes my expectations are very low, then on the 2000 parked domains I have this will earn  10,000, this will cover the domain registration fees. If they earn any more then that will be great.

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks

Continue reading »]]> Having a mini-clear out of domain names and website, I am selling GpCare.co.uk by auction on SitePoint

This is a great little domain, well aged as first registered in 2001, but been parked for the last few years.

Domain could be used for a site directed at Doctors or perhaps you have another idea for it.

Either way if you are interested go over to SitePoint and bid:

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks

Continue reading »]]> With the growth of the internet, the market for web hosting is ever increasing. However this does not mean that their is easy money to be made, there is a huge amount of competition in this sector from the huge multinationals to the small guy who sells space on his own server.

This does not mean however that there is no money to be made. Over the last 10 years one of my companies Quill Internet has built up a huge client base of over 2000 customers for its web hosting packages. This article gives you some of the secrets of running a successful hosting reseller company and how you can get yourself a big slice of the pie without having mega money to buy servers and infrastructure.

As a proviso to all of this, you do need to have some knowledge of how web hosting and domain names work and of course as I always say you need to be interested in the subject and be motivated to put in the time and effort needed to make it work. It will not magically happen overnight with no work, but if you do put in the time and follow some of these tips you can make good money.

The basic formula here is as the title to this article suggests Re-Selling.

What is reselling?

Reselling is where a web hosting company allows you to sell on their products under your own brand to your own customers. Generally you are in control of the price and what packages you choose to sell.

You are also in charge of setting up the hosting and managing your customers, billing, technical support and ensuring their quality of service is maintained.

How to of reselling web hosting

The reselling business is much like the Drop shipping business, however you do have to be a little more hands on in your management of your business. As the reseller you do not have to buy any hardware, Internet connections (apart from one to connect to your admin console) or any other heavy investments. The idea is that you are able to buy a companies  existing services at a discounted rate and then sell them on to your clients at a profit.

You are in control of the price that you sell on at, but remember that you must stay competitive. You will also need to keep in mind that there are already thousands of other people in this market, however if you find a good angle that you can exploit you will do well.

In the early days of my reselling, the angle was create basic packages without all the bells and whistles, why should your customers pay for something that they will never use? This then allowed them to select the exact facilities they wanted, statistics packages, front-page extensions, email virus scanning, spam control and the like.

When you have your angle, you will need to sign up for a reseller package with a hosting provider. I would advise sticking to the big names in the industry, that way it is easier for you to guarantee levels of services for your customers. I have listed some of the providers that I have personally used below.

Reseller providers

Over the years I have used a number of different providers, the current one and the one that I would recommend if you are in the UK is Fasthost. They are the larges provider in the UK and have a very simple web interface that allows you to setup and administer your hosting packages.

There are other providers including:

1&1
Fasthosts
123Reg
HostGator

Getting Started

Once you are signed up, you will be given access to a web portal or control panel, this allows you to access pricing details and thus you can start pricing up the packages and services that you are going to offer. Get to know both these prices and your way around the control panel. Once the orders start to come in you will need to be efficient, you will need to know where everything is and how to setup all the services you are going to offer. Learning on the fly is a bad thing and will only serve to keep customers waiting and potentially lead to mistakes.

You will need to develop yourself a website, if your design skills are not too hot, OSWD have free open source web designs that would suit a hosting company. Remember the golden rule that I always bang on about on this site, content is king, don’t simply copy and paste the content from your provider, write your own, write it in a language that your customers will understand, cut the techno babble.

How to Earn Money

Making money is what it is all about. This question is answered quite simply, make sure that you get to know all the prices of each individual product that you can provide, work out your other costs, such as the monthly reseller fee, costs of running your website and any marketing you might do, then build this in to come up with a price.

At Quill Internet I simply took several products, brought them all together and sell them as packages. The idea behind this is that these are simple packages or starting points that will cover most peoples needs, you can then increase the sales per customer by adding optional extras to the package if they want it, statistics packages are a good example of this.

You should also remember that once you have built up a customer base, this is a market that you have very easy, direct access to and to whom you can sell other related products or services, such as SEO, Search Engine submission or even broadband connections.

Marketing your service

At Quill Internet I was in the advantageous position that I already had a small but already bought in client base through several of my other businesses, it was here that I started, if you can do something similar it gives you a great head start, try a mail shot, email news letter or just get on the phone.

If you are really starting from scratch it will be harder for you but not impossible. Start local, target small local companies with your marketing, your strength here is the very fact that you are local, they will feel that you  are better able to support them. Make sure you present a friendly face, again don’t baffle them with science, find out what they want and give it to them, generally they don’t care about php, asp, .net, Apache, windows 2003 and the pros and cons to each. They want somewhere to host the website that someone has created for them. It is your job to give them something that will suit.

Once you have a few clients, build on them, continue your marketing on and off line and your business will grow.

Tips From Quill Internet 

The first and foremost tip that I can give from my experience is to make sure that you keep good records, and if possible a system similar to the one that I produced that manages your records for you, alerting you to re-bill customers, automatically checks that all sites are up and working, allows customers to login and create email accounts and review records and even order additional features from you.

It may seem all too simplistic to say that keeping on top of your records is the most important thing, but unless you know when to re-bill you will surely not make any money.

In terms of re-billing, I now use the professional version of Paypal that allows you to automate re-billing. Each of my customers pays through Paypal and unless the cancel their contact with Quill Internet they are automatically billed at the end of the cycle be that monthly or yearly.

Also make sure that you have an air tight set of terms and conditions, remember that you too have to satisfy the terms and conditions of your provider, therefore those should be built into your terms, and you should ensure that your customers are not breaking them as that could mean your reseller account being canceled. If your web hosting reseller provider does not allow adult content for example then you must ensure that all your customers adhere to this rule.

At Quill Internet I have over 2000 customers, you too can archive this given time and dedication. Imagine 2000 customers paying £4.99 per month… you do the math. Remember that is before you build in extras and other related products.

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks

Continue reading »]]> A quick post… I have just purchased the domain name makedoshonline.com from eBay and had it transferred to my account. I found it on eBay while looking for something quite different and thought it was something a little different.

Not sure what to do with it yet, I may give it away on here as a competition prize sometime in the future if I can dream-up something interesting!

Useful links:

Web Hosting

Fasthosts Internet
1&1 web hosting
123Reg Domain name Registration

Affiliate networks

TradeDoubler
Affiliate Window
Affiliate Future

Text and Banner Advertising (for affiliates and publishers)

Text-link-Ads – free $100 worth of advertising for signing up
AuctionAds – $25 for simply signing up!
Bidvertiser - $20 in free clicks