Building sites....hosting

chabsey

Quick question: Assuming you're in the business of building websites on a freelance basis, not as your main job but as a sideline gig. What do you do where hosting is concerned. In the past I've always explained up front that there's two charges involved in getting a site; the design/development which is paid to me, and the hosting which is done directly by the customer using their own credit card.

Otherwise, If I charge extra for hosting and organise it all myself, then my CC gets billed each year for the URL/hosting...long after the site is complete and online.

For larger clients this is no big deal, you work a standing yearly charge into the bill, but what about smaller clients? I've always found the "use your own CC" to be the best option but it never fails to make people nervous/curious about why they have to do it.

What do other people do/recommend for small nixer-type jobs?

Sposs

You can set up the hosting for your clients and simply change the billing contact details to your customer when finished.Meaning your customer gets all the hosting renewal reminders the year after.

m_stan

I personally bill to my cc pasing on the cost. I remind the site owner a few weeks in advance of annual renewal and if they dont get back to me or dont pay/commit to pay then their site goes offline. Simple as.

More serious is domain names since they can get snapped up by someone else. Hosting can be re-arranged if you have the site files.

mneylon

A small reseller hosting account would probably make it a lot easier for you to manage and also give you a recurring revenue stream

DJB

I'll agree with Blacknight there. You can get a cheap reseller hosting account with Hosting 365 for 40 euro per month. For your bigger clients, that may use databases and have more traffic/space requirements, you could charge 200+ euro per annum. For the smaller sites, maybe around 100 euro. You bill them directly for the service, a month in advance. And as stan said, if they don't pay or commit to pay, then just take their site offline. They'll be quick enough to pay after that if they still want their site.

If you did 1 nixer a month and got hosting for the following year at 100 each, You'll make 60 a month. The more you add to that, the more you make. You'll hit a stage where you will have to upgrade your reseller hosting. Hosting is a nice little earner for recurring revenue, especially with nixers. At one stage, I built up a nice recurring revenue of 15k per annum on hosting and only had 1k of costs to pay out.... nice easy money for a small operation. It wasn't the main bread winner but it still added to the bottom line that would have went to the hosting company directly.

Do check out the hosting 365 offers. They are quite reasonable. I'm used to H365, using them since they started trading and that's why I mention them. But Blacknight and others have packages too just not familiar with them.

Rgds,

Dave