Other Uses for Your Web Hosting Server - Hosting Services
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Since you have already purchased a server and completely outfitted it for hosting websites, there is no real reason that you cannot easily extend your services to general website hosting. No additional software is required, though you can look into it to make your life a little easier if you are going to be putting a significant amount of time into your website hosting services.
Generally, professional website hosts will provide numerous features to their customers, such as individualized control panels, FTP access, and many other logins/features. Unless you are actually planning to make a significant profit from your website hosting and expanding to additional services, it is probably not worth it to you to go this route.
Instead, what you can do is use the hosting services to host websites for other people. For instance, if your company works with website development, then you can offer your clients the option of hosting their website at a discounted rate on your server. It does not really cost you any extra money, but you do gain some extra profit just for offering the service. You are doing your clients a favor and making a little money for yourself at the same time.
If you do not have clients that need your website server space, then you can look into forming a close bond with a select few website developers. Although these developers are not directly affiliated with your company, you can offer them discounted website server space for their clients. Although you will not offer as many servers as a professional website host, you can offer a significantly discounted rate.
You have to remember that you are just making an effort to recoup some of the expenses associated with owning and operating your own server. Ideally, you would like to turn a profit. Realistically, you should just strive to break even. If you can make up the cost of owning a server, then you just have the benefits without the down side of cost weighing them down. This was discussed in the first article of this series.
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