I have been exploring business opportunities where I can sell something where a client makes recurring payments, however small that may be but I didn't want to invest too much time and money into it. After working as a developer for many clients in the past, I have a lot of contacts who trust and value my work.
I had previously thought about selling webhosting services several years ago but my IT friends talked me out of it saying it's a very competitive business and there's really no scope for a newcomer. I sort of agreed with this assessment and never ventured into this.
One thing led to another and recently I talked to an old client who didn't know how to install an SSL certificate. I told him hey, how about I just take care of your SSL renewals for a yearly fee and I convinced him to pay $135 a year for me to manage free LetsEncrypt certificates. I've already set up to auto-renew by itself so I don't need to do anything else from here on and I'll keep getting a fee yearly forever.
It's not much but it got me motivated enough to pursue more opportunities like this. Since then I sold a web application (sorry, I don't want to give away the name of the application) that I found on GitHub, to a different client. I told them it's licensed under the GPL and that I'm not the original developer. I will only host and maintain it but won't do any custom development. I've convinced them to buy support as extra from the original developer and I'll charge an additional "coordination fee" to talk to the developer and apply the fixes they recommend. The developer is aware that I'm making money off their application and they seem cool with it. I'm billing the client $150 per month just to host it. They immediately agreed after I quoted the price and I realized I undercharged, but it's okay. I know what to do next time. I should be able to host more clients on this same server.
Since then I also sold WordPress hosting for a client at $65 per month for a very low traffic website.
The servers I'm using are basically used laptops I either bought for dirt cheap or were thrown away by the owners, and are now running out of my DIY rack. If I face any issues, I can move them to Google Cloud immediately. Everything is in Docker containers with storage volumes mounted. Otherwise I'll wait until I have more clients, but for now, there are no monthly costs except my internet bill.
I have not provided a dashboard or any self-serve platform for these clients. Everything is currently being done manually and I plan to host more low traffic sites on the same server to increase margins. I have a backup script that runs regularly and uploads encrypted backups to S3 and there is also a script that checks the website's uptime and it sends me a notification incase something goes wrong and I can perform any maintenance tasks as necessary. As long as the client's websites are up and running, they're happy.
I have a registered company through which I send professional invoices to these clients. I create the invoices in LibreOffice Calc. The company has basically no monthly expenses.
Besides my word of mouth clients, I'm not sure how far I can push this. I doubt running ads will be of any use because it's not every day where a client will spend so much on hosting. Sometimes even I feel like I'm overcharging but seeing how these clients don't seem to be bothered at all by the price, I think it's okay to seek more clients like this. They are happy that they have somebody to call and get an answer immediately if there are any issues, and they see value in that.
TLDR;
*** Sold a free SSL certificate at $135 per year
*** Sold a free web application + hosting at $150 per month
*** Sold WordPress hosting at $65 per month
*** Everything is hosted out of a DIY rack with a load balancing router and power backup at my house. Will move to cloud when there are more clients.
*** Looking for advice to make this a sustainable business
[link] [comments]
