Selling a Start up

[dibby]

I've been playing with this idea in my head for a fair while and I thought I'd see if anyone has any opinions.

Basically, I'd like to take the idea of a private label reseller a bit further and sell it.

The client would get:

A complete website design

Merchant account setup

Backend including shopping cart for the site

Ticket system for online support optionally outsource the support to us for a by volume fee.

Optional tall free or low-call number

A server with control panel software to kick off with

DNS and mail services mirrored externally to the point doing a whois or arin/ripe search will bring back nothing but the clients details.

Setup an interface to a domain name service like opensrs or bulkregister

Develop packages and pricing - wether they wanna go the unlimited route or fair resources for the buck/quid

Work on a sustained marketing strategy, be it using every trick under the sun to crank search engine listings or going offline.

Pretty much the whole shebang, for the first time reseller/webhost whos got a bit of a budget.

Provide the ability for anyone to come in, get a decent startup and concentrate on sales and hopefully avoiding the most common pitfalls of the process.

Is there a market? What would you have done differently when you started up? What would you add?

Thanks for reading,
Dibby

[wowewo]

Sounds like a franchise system. It could definetly work. If ya had caught me back in 98 when I was starting out I may have signed up with you.

[akashik]

There's no reason it wouldn't work, though you'd have to explain in detail exactly why people should spend more money for that (as it will cost more to run at your end).

You'd need to pick a target market too. Web savvy users wouldn't be interested, but small to medium businesses with little interest in how the web works (as long as it *does* work) could be nice pickings.

The only issue I can think of is that it might be better suited to the end user, rather than a reseller. Resellers can get a cheaper wholesale rate and just go out and build that kind of extra service on their own (if they so choose).

I think the reason you don't really see it from the top end, is the server administration and setup tends to take up enough time without the added weigh of all those extras. Resellers, who don't have to handle that much resposibility for the hardware are offered the time to go and add to the service (hence the name value-added-reseller), which the end user then benefits from.

Greg Moore

[logicready]

I have been doing that on e-bay,

If your a good designer you can make really good money. I thought about putting on all those services, but they did not sell too well.

I use this system:

-WHM ( its easy to modify and add accounts)

-Complete Site design

- support ticket E-mail system

- third party knowledge base(check TOU first)

-propay or paypal for merchant

-optional domain interface



and a few other little things.

I personally think that you have some good ideas on what your doing. Good luck with it. I would reccomend maybe knocking off a few of your services(unless optional) to avoid the price being to high for starters. I would reccomend auctioning them, its worked well for me. I have a site I am working on right now dedicated to complete reseller hosting, but mainly used for my e-bay clients. You can always make plans to fit all budgets aswell. maybe make a few low cost templates for lease(after all they are reselling for you so you will still make a profit). I would offer toll-free service too http://www.pngcomm.com .

Best of luck,
KT