The Hugeness of the Web Hosting Market

Its been rightly said (by me), that 'Presumptions are often the greatest tools of discovery'. One such presumption of mine was researching on the Web Hosting Market, which has seen a lot of growth in the past 12 months - more than 30% - most of which was driven by the usual trends of virtualization, business continuity services and security technologies.

Despite of the near recession status which is being successfully (?) evaded by the government in the US, the growth does seem nothing less than spectacular. Analysts at Tier1 Research (T1R) deduce that 'Rackspace, Savvis, AT&T and Verizon Business have been the biggest beneficiaries of this market growth, being the clear leaders in the managed hosting sector.' Rather than focusing on the technical aspects of the Hosting Industry and Statistical Analytics, I shall proceed on with some of the reasons which I find have been the leading factors for this growth :

1) Resellers: The term 'reseller' is being linked unthinkably with the hosting sector now, and mind you, there is a lot of logic behind that. Almost all leading hosting networks have special reseller plans for ambitious customers who want to start their own sub-version of a hosting company with their own set hosting plans and much fulfilling profits. Due to this upsurge of resellers in the market, people now, have so many places to choose from; little realizing that the ultimate source of the hosting is the main provider with much cheaper rates and much faster, well-appreciated technical support rather than the fairly expensive hosting resellers(they do need their profits!).

2) Affiliates: Upon delving into the depths of Affiliate Marketing, sooner or later, you realize that the most lucrative and high payout sectors for becoming an affiliate is 'Digital Products' (more specifically, 'Website Hosting'), Drugs, and Electronic Goods (prospect of growth). Almost every web host out there has an affiliate system, where affilates get paid huge amounts (sometimes in excess of $100) and they publicize the hosting site all too enthusiastically. Although, the ratio and proportions of affiliate marketing seems all too dizzy for me. The average hosting packages on a hosting site start from monthly subscriptions ($8.99/mo on average), to biennial subscriptions ($5.99/mo on average). These hosting sites pay about $75 on an average to affiliates for each customer that they refer. Say, a person takes a monthly subscription and leaves after a month, then the hosting company will face losses of $75-$8.99=$66.01. But, who cares about the losses that they incur, because, we finally have thousands of sites pertaining to : 'hosting coupons, hosting discounts, hosting reviews, top hosts, recommended hosts' etc, with all such sites containing affiliate links/banners of the hosting companies.

3) Features: Most of you, who have seen the features provided by hosting companies, would be mind boggled by the disk space and bandwidth that they claim to provide you. These range from 750GB-1500GB disk space and 750GB-15000GB bandwidth. If you notice closely, these offers are only on shared hosting (not on reseller or dedicated). The thing to think about here is, an average server which is loaded with hard disks, can at most contain about 1000-2000GB. And, the same server, is used for shared hosting of about 500+ clients. If you actually start giving 1500GB to each person, then the server would need a disk space of : 500(client)*1500(GB)=750000GB, or 750TB, which, in the real world, can only be possible in your dreams. I call this disk space as: Virtual Memory; Because, you will presume that you have this much space and will work on your site considering that you have lots of memory to burn. Now, if you are wondering about the tall claims here, then there's some news for you: They don't actually allow you to use the disk space. There are some restrictions mentioned in the terms and conditions, such as - Max use of 50000 inodes (number of files); Max use of 5GB for scripts, 5GB for images, 5GB for videos and so on, which results in use of no more than 25GB. Such restrictions, if not followed, result in termination of your account. So, I hope you read the TOS before you actually start believing.

In the context of Shared Hosting, I can think of a proverb: "What you see is 1500GB. What you get is 25GB. What you see is blazing fast servers. What you get is a slow normal site, but darn cheap hosting"

Ok Ok. This proverb won't exactly go down in the books, but it pretty much sums up shared hosting for you.

I expect to see the 1500GB increasing to 5000GB in the coming years. But, the facts will still remain the same. The Hosting Industry will see some terrific growth over time and let's hope for the best and see what happens in the years to come.

This article is written by Ritoban Chakrabarti, an analyst and reviewer associated with Hosting Site Reviews

All the source of content is either through research on the internet or through personal/social experiences.

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Do You Want To Host Web Sites?

Are you interested in what it takes to host web sites? Do you think that this could be a business that could make you a lot of money? If you answered yes to both of these questions, you may be onto something. There are many companies that host web sites for hundreds of thousands of people. As you can figure out with some simple math, this turns out to be quite the income each month. But of course this it not all pure profits. And on top of this, you need to consider the fact that there is a lot of competition among people and companies that want to host web sites.

If you are going to get started in this industry, there are quite a few things that you will first need. In other words, you cannot simply jump into hosting web sites and think that you are going to be a huge success. There are hundreds of companies that offer a great service, but when it comes down to it, the competition is smothering them because their name is not quite as big. With all of that being said, there is no reason that you should be afraid to move forward with this business idea if you are truly interested.

In order to host web sites, you are going to first need reliable servers. These are the machines that you will actually use in order to meet all of your clients needs. Keep in mind that as you grow, you are going to need to purchase more and more servers. And remember, these are anything but cheap. Of course, as you add more and more sites to your company, you are going to make more and more money.

In addition to servers, you are going to need to make sure that they are housed in the proper environment. If something happens to these servers, your ability to host web sites has gone right out the window. And in turn, this means that your client's sites are not going to be live. The second that you get the reputation for not being reliable you are going to start struggling.

Once you have at least one server, you will then need to have a web site of your own that sells your services. You will probably want to start putting this together as soon as possible. This is what you will use in order to sell your services to potential clients. Make sure that you know what most people want as well as the special needs of some webmasters. Also, take a close look at what your competition is doing before you decide on a set price and package levels.

If you want to host web sites you can get involved. This is not to say that you are going to have a low barrier of entry, but with hard work, you can become a player in the web hosting industry. It may take a lot of time and a good bit of money, but if you stick with offering a reliable service, you will be able to build a client base.

Bill McNulty writes about affordable web hosting at the web hosting directory, HostingRef.com