Lack of Proxy Hosts - Thinking of Making My Own

I'm thinking of making my own small proxy host, I was planning on doing it in the past but I never really got a chance to.

I currently offer private proxy hosting, and so far I've only had happy customers. I'm thinking that I may make a small little splash page with plans and order links to a client area - not like a big, fancy proxy host.

I won't really be doing marketing, since this will be more of a side thing (but I will be giving full attention to support of course), so I will expect that any sales come from self-interest.

Who would be interested in hosting? I'm thinking my original plans will fit (and I won't overcrowd):

500MB Disk Space
50,000MB Bandwidth
$5/month

1,000MB Disk Space
100,000MB Bandwidth
$10/month

2,500MB Disk Space
250,000MB Bandwidth
$25/month

There's a lot to consider here.

First, count the price it will cost you for the resources.
Second, count the time and money invested (domain, website setup, promotion).
Third, consider expenses of WHMCS and cPanel licensing. (or whatever you decide to use.)

Do you think you can make enough to offset these expenses?
What if you get a support request you can't handle? A chargeback?

P.S. If you're interested in hiring someone to respond to support requests, I'm your man!

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Originally Posted by Kovich

There's a lot to consider here.

First, count the price it will cost you for the resources.
Second, count the time and money invested (domain, website setup, promotion).
Third, consider expenses of WHMCS and cPanel licensing. (or whatever you decide to use.)

Do you think you can make enough to offset these expenses?
What if you get a support request you can't handle? A chargeback?

P.S. If you're interested in hiring someone to respond to support requests, I'm your man!

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Thanks Kovich :) Actually, I have already worked all of these things out since I was soooo close to actually opening my own proxy host a few months ago. I had the website all set up, and then I decided that it would be best to start with a normal host.

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First, count the price it will cost you for the resources. ... Third, consider expenses of WHMCS and cPanel licensing. (or whatever you decide to use.)

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I can easily afford these. No problem for me.

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Second, count the time and money invested (domain, website setup, promotion).

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I have time to work on it, and when I don't I can get friends to help me out and man support and the such. I already have several hosting domains, I can use those (myproxyhosting.com will probably be used). Regarding the website setup, I said that it would be very simple (along the lines of WDServers.com), and I don't really plan on doing promotion outside of maybe a signature link or thread on NetBuilders and DigitalPoint.

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Do you think you can make enough to offset these expenses?

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I'm already offsetting my expenses with MyBBWebHost after only 3 months - and I expect this site to be much more successful.

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What if you get a support request you can't handle? A chargeback?

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What do you mean by this? Can I get an example?

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P.S. If you're interested in hiring someone to respond to support requests, I'm your man!

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I'll contact you :)

I would give it a go, all you need to do is promote your site here and DP. Because of your rep, you should do pretty well ;)

Give it a shot, if it doesn't work after a lot of advertising/marketing, then stick to old plan :)

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Originally Posted by Dondon

Give it a shot, if it doesn't work after a lot of advertising/marketing, then stick to old plan :)

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Well the idea is that I won't be advertising or marketing. I'm in no rush for clients.

At the moment, my current clients are enough to pay for half of the costs and the rest is easily payed by my proxies.

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What if you get a support request you can't handle? A chargeback?

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Well, I mean - assume you get a support request that tests your knowledge on something with which you are unfamiliar... it could be a business aspect, a technical aspect... I can't really think of something off the top of my head, but I think everyone, at one time or another, gets a curveball support ticket.

As for a chargeback, I mean something like a dispute with the payment processor you're using. Or a report of fraud - which happens a lot... look at the situation with TechFaq. Maybe you could implement MaxMind or something to help reduce the chances of being defrauded.

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I can easily afford these. No problem for me.

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Glad to hear it. :) I just noticed that most people (not you, but just in general) don't factor in the monthly fee on something like WHMCS when considering what they need to bring in to produce a profit.

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I'll contact you :smile:

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Looking forward to it. =]

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Originally Posted by Kovich

Well, I mean - assume you get a support request that tests your knowledge on something with which you are unfamiliar... it could be a business aspect, a technical aspect... I can't really think of something off the top of my head, but I think everyone, at one time or another, gets a curveball support ticket.

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In that case, I can get help from my server provider and get a response very very quickly.

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Originally Posted by Kovich

As for a chargeback, I mean something like a dispute with the payment processor you're using. Or a report of fraud - which happens a lot... look at the situation with TechFaq. Maybe you could implement MaxMind or something to help reduce the chances of being defrauded.

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I'm not really worried about this right now, I already have a small host and no issue yet. I'd only need to really install something like MaxMind once it got large enough that I couldn't handle it on my won.

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Originally Posted by Kovich

Glad to hear it. :) I just noticed that most people (not you, but just in general) don't factor in the monthly fee on something like WHMCS when considering what they need to bring in to produce a profit.

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Yea, luckily I make enough that my earnings from sites easily offset hosting costs so unless I suddenly got banned from AdSense, Adversal, Smowtion, xTendMedia, AND PayPal at the same time I'm fine. :p

There isn't a lack of proxy hosts, but good options are few and far between. There are just two quality proxy hosts in existence at the moment as far as I am concerned.

Hopefully you can bring that number to three. :D

There are enough proxy hosts at the moment, but there is a lack of good quality proxy hosts. Yours could be one, I'm a proud client of you for the past months and I'm sure this could become a success ;)

These prices seem to be alright, if you give out coupons. If you won't give out any 10% or 25% coupons from time to time, you should lower the prices. Definitely at the start ;)