If
you operate several websites, each with its own domain name,
signing up of separate hosting accounts can be an expensive
proposition. Even if your hosting company offers the add-on
domain feature (which will allow you to add different domains
to the same hosting account) you will be charged a monthly fee
for each domain you add, sometimes costing almost the same as
your full hosting fee. The solution is to open a reseller
account.
Reseller accounts were created to allow web
designers to offer hosting services to their customers so that
they can become a one-stop-shop for all their web design and
hosting needs. However, you don't need to be a reseller
to buy a reseller hosting plan.
Reseller accounts are usually slightly more
expensive than regular hosting accounts, but they will allow
you to many different domain names without incurring in the
add-on domain fees, making more efficient use of your space
and bandwidth.
You want to choose a reseller account that
offers:
- no limit to the number of domains you can
add.
- the possibility of hosting your main
website free, without using any of the space and bandwidth
in your hosting plan. If you are a reseller, your main
website will be your business website, and the space and
bandwidth will be reserved for your customers. If you are
not a reseller and just want to manage different websites,
you can designate one of your domains as your main website
(Tip: select the largest website and/or the one with most
traffic).
- the possibility of upgrading to another
plan without any penalties or fees.
To find out how much space and bandwidth you
will need, first determine how many sites you are likely to
host, how many pages each site will have, and how many visits
will those sites most likely receive. If you plan to
host 10 sites with 20 pages each, at an average of 50KB per
page and 100 page views per site per day, you will need 10MB
of space (10 x 20 x 50KB) and 1.5GB of bandwidth (also known
as data transfer rate) per month (10 x 100 x 50KB x
30).
As far as pricing is concerned, there are
reseller accounts costing as little as $10 / month up to
several hundreds (or even thousands). It all depends on
your requirements and the hosting company you choose, so shop
around to get the best possible deal in terms of cost and
reliability.
Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest
( http://www.theinternetdigest.net
), an online collection of web design and Internet marketing
articles and resources. You can freely reprint his
weekly articles in your website, ezine, newsletter or ebook.