Web Hosting And Automation
By Ryan Bensen
If you're looking to make money in the web business, don't get scared away by how competitive it is. Sure the market is over-saturated and a new web company seemingly pops up every 5 minutes, but the market is also huge and growing. Everyone these days either hosts websites or needs websites hosted. You can claim your piece of the pie, grow your revenues and your business without breaking a sweat, if you keep one word in mind - automation.

Virtually every aspect of running your web business can be automated these days. Web Control panels such as Cpanel are standard fare with every web package. They allow your customers (end-users) to create email accounts and FTP accounts, check their stats, install software and more, often with just a few mouse clicks. Most of these control panels are based on a three tiered system, where the company has administrative access on the server level, while resellers can manage multiple domains at the reseller level, then all the customers of the reseller each get their own instance of the control panel to manage their own email, ftp, stats and more.

Generally, resellers are responsible for providing technical support to their end users, although some companies are now providing end-user support as well, freeing up the reseller even more to concentrate on marketing and growing his customer base. Automation at the control panel level is essential and the more tasks your end users can complete on their own, the better off you'll be and the more time you'll have to concentrate on marketing and other tasks.

Providing technical support to your customers can also be a challenge to those first entering the web business, You'll need to have some basic understanding of server administration and DNS or be able to hire someone who can help you. Again, there are companies to whom you can outsource your technical support needs and many of these companies operate through an automated web based support ticketing system such as Kayako E-Support or something similar. These systems will often allow for a mix of outsourced and in-house support reps while remaining transparent to the end-user.

Then there is the billing and provisioning aspect of your business. This too can be easily automated these days using software like Moderngigabyte's Modernbill

or WHMCS. Both of these systems will integrate with your servers and control panels (Cpanel, Plesk, Ensim etc.) as well as with many domain registrars and merchant card and payment processors such as Authorizenet and Paypal, to provide a complete end to end automated provisioning and billing system. These types of systems generally integrate some type of order form or order wizard as well, making for a truly complete automated system. When set up properly, a prospective customer will be able to view your packages and pricing options on your website, register for the plan he wants to purchase, register a new domain name, enter his contact and payment info and complete the signup process. Then the system will generate an invoice and email it to the customer, send the transaction to the merchant card processor (sometimes going through optional fraud checks on the way) and if approved, send the domain registration to the registrar, provision the account on the server based on the package and quotas that have been predefined, mark the invoice as paid and email that to the customer along with a welcome email detailing the login and password information they need to not only access the control panel and FTP for their new account, but for the billing interface as well. Generally these orders then get placed into some kind of pending queue, awaiting moderation and approval by you the admin, before the final steps are processed to guard against fraud and prevent those seeking to do harm.

So ultimately you have a complete end to end automated web system even at the reseller level that leaves you free to market and grow your business and to support your customers without having to worry about the repetitive tasks of provisioning accounts, setting up email accounts, billing etc. If you're truly looking to get into the web arena with the hopes of growing your business, then look for a host who can provide you with these kinds of automated services, so you can concentrate on your customers needs and marketing and growing your customer base.

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