[alecs890]

Hi,
My name is Alex and I'm a young entrepreneur, not very experienced apparently.
I've put the base of a hosting company in Docklands, London, a bit of a data centre, two racks with servers and an office in the same building. I had some engineers putting in place all the software and hardware, air con and UPSs. They ware 3 month late, and now I'm having trouble with paying the rent and internet because of their delay. Now I'm thinking of selling everything and move on to something else, partially because I don't fell the same drive as I did when I first started this.
All your suggestions and advice are welcome. Please bear in mind I need solutions, not problems. Thanks a lot. Have a nice one and be lucky in business and work hard.
Alex
p.s. the business is box4host.com

[The Stealthy One]

Hi Alex,

What was your original reason for getting into the Web hosting industry? What is your business plan? I took a look at your site, but I see no differentiating features that would make folks choose your hosting company over another company. Having been in Web hosting for 2.5 years now, I can tell you that you will definitely need some sort of differentiator.

Out of curiosity, how many users do you have?

[DrMoney]

I am with stealthy.

[ProLogic]

Jumping in to this wasn't a good idea. You should have started as a reseller first and if you prospered, You could of then transfered everything to your servers.

[gambit]

Whispher me if you needed helping setting up your business. What you did is a risk. You should have a lot of capital for the loss. Anyway, you did the right thing.

For the solutions regarding the biz, whispher me.

[Wowzerz]

Bail out - the hosting business is saturated and boring. The only thing you get from it is stress, you're never appreciated for good service and ridiculed without fail when the service is interrupted.

Sell the equipment and move on to something that makes you happy because it's obvious this doesn't due to the tone of your post.

[Cru_jo0]

Hosting is a tuff and boring market..
We took a good dig at it, after a two year long campaign and debts mounting we just gave in, and where then bought out by our host, who then sold us out to a advertising firm......my hosting company is now a open void.

If you wish to be in the hosting market target a nieche (spelling?) market, "i want to be a host is to genera" and this sounds stupid but dont go with a reselle rplan you tend to get tied up and we personally found it hard to make the move to a dedicated server, resellers are generaly low cost allowing you to relax and in most cases meaning you los eyour drive to generate revenue, plus resellers will earn you a rep for poor service.

Again to break thorugh target a market, be prestiege or very cheap, but if you want to be up there, you need huge amounts of capital, the hosting industry runs of people like us wanting to "try and break the ice" the big profiters are the people that got in early and now sit around in server centers, they profit by reselling there servers, which are then retailed again to the small companies which finaly filter down to people trying to start.

"I knw ill set up a home server" This will never work, huge capital to build the server and the software costs will kill you before you even start, then the conncetion will proberly cost more than it would proberly cost to rent a server.

Hosting is a industry for fools who which to sit on there Asses all day and get rich quick....

Its a common dream among us, many of us have tried and failed and many more of us will....

[alecs890]

Thanks a lot to Cru_jo0, Wowzerz, ProLogic and The Stealthy One.
To try and answer The Stealthy One I have about 20 accounts opened but they are only with Romanian people, as this was the market I intended to approach.
It has been a difficult decision to make, especially because my father has put some money into this and it feels like I’ve let him down. I’ve decided to sell everything and get a server somewhere to host the existent accounts. If there’s anyone out there interested in buying the servers, a portable AC and whatever remains of this business I will post a link to Ebay soon on this thread.
I should have done a more in depth market analysis and I should have kept a closer eye on the engineers + I should have had at least some inside knowledge about the industry before jumping in. I got carried away. I know begin to appreciate what a business man is and I can definitely say that I’m a kid.
Thanks again to all of you for the advice and hope I’ll find a new idea that will keep me going.
And Wowzerz man, you are right.
There are other things out there.

[Cru_jo0]

Hey lol, dont get down im only 15
At least you tried
And i assume you have learnt a lot....
But now your are like me in search of a new bussiness, I think you will find your self approaching a smaller industry, looking for more triviale profits.

I have an idea which i do not wnat to publicly share, which i think you may be intrested in, So feel free to pm me if intrested.

[buynick]

If you want to boost your sales, try selling Turnkey Websites on eBay and selling the hosting as a backend sale to your customers. Check out my signature line for a great package to get you selling on eBay!

[cswolf]

Hey, I'd be interested in the servers. PM me the ebay link if that's what you're selling them through.

I'd appreciate if reasons were given for why my post was edited. Thank you Bestmiler for handling the situation so grandly -_-