resller

1. resller

   #1

   It sounds like we are all in agreement. To put a finer point on it, it sounds like we all think that it is a good idea to do this reseller thing.
   
   Let’s get down to business:
   
   I don’t think it would be worth any of our time to host the site ourselves. Why should we worry about uptime, updates, viruses, or any minor/major connection problems when we can pay just a little money to someone else to do it? I am not sure of the terms (I still haven’t done any research yet) but I think what we are looking at is setting up a virtual host (should mean more than one domain name on a single computer, or not having a dedicated server). I can’t see it being worth our time/money to run the servers until we start looking a leasing quite a few dedicated servers and then still maybe not.
   
   If we are looking at charging people then we should take steps to protect our selves and get a small business license. I think that they are only $50 to $200. That way we are sheltered from any litigation that a client may bring against our company. Plus if we charge people then we have to consider the taxes.
   
   I like the way they do it at go.to, kind of. What I think we could do is find our freebees and host them similar to go.to (e.g. dnd-extraordinary.ourdomain.com, shadowrunners.ourdomain.com). We should also require a minimal link to ourdomain.com. However, if we actually resell an account then we just host them with no link and they just get there names servers to point at us.
   
   Problems that I see:
   
   As of now when I want to change my password then I have to login to strolen.com with the one and only password associated with strolen.com. So setting up freebees would have to be limited, maybe ftp access only. I would like to be able to assign permissions levels, preferable group permissions to restrict access to specific areas. So we need a reseller account with software that allows this.
   
   We need a name for the site. I like rpgcitadel but it may limit us to hosting rpg sites. We can, of course, always buy another name like nethost, myhost, hostme, netme, netfreak, netgeek, geekme, etc or any of the aforementioned names with hyphens.
   
   We need a name for the business. Dan inc. has a good ring to it. We could of course always go with the site name for a business name too. Would we be Inc. or corp.?
   
   If we charge people and maybe even break even or draw a profit, then I think we should (get a business license) set up a business bank account to handle the charges for the reseller account (under the business name). We could all start a small allotment to it and set up automatic charges for the monthly fee.

2. resller

   #2

   There are many types of resellers. Some you get an account they give you so many 100s of MG and you can sell it as you will.
   
   I am partial to my current host at the moment because
   1-Have been with them for years and never had any problems so we know they are reliable and offer a good service.
   2-Tech support is awesome and FAST. Even inquiries are answered fast
   3-Their reseller program:
   Pros
   ---get a reseller account you sell as many or as little as you want. They are created as you need them with no limit.
   ---Each customer gets the complete setup like we have with the CPanel.
   ---Can get our own nameservers so the customer has no idea that we are resellers. (like NS2.rpgcitadel.com or whatever)
   ---We provide complete support but they are more then happy to answer any questions and then we go onto the customer.
   ---They have a VERY loyal following on their own forums that will and can answer any questions as well as the actual host themselves.
   Cons
   ---Not the most feature rich packages for the price nowadays
   http://resellers.hostmatters.com/rcompare.html This is how much we get charged for each account we start. We can charge anything we want.
   
   Definately need to shop around for a good reselling options. Just don't want to get stuck with some flybynight service that sucks once you join. There are a lot of nightmare stories of crappy hosts.
   
   I wonder if base legal know anything about this kind of stuff. Be nice to get a lawyer opinion. Maybe some books from amazon.com. Will look into it myself as well.
   
   Personally, my first thought was to only rpgsites, maybe at a discounted price compared to others or something.
   
   If rpgcitadel is a agreed on name, then we can start there. Once we get an account it is free to host as many domains as we want on th eaccount (pretty much) so if there are more names and we want to spread out, that would be very simple to do. Maybe once it starts working out we can branch out. Being optimistic :-)
   
   ------
   For free hosting sites.
   They will ONLY get FTP access. With a subdomain a CGI-BIN gets set-up and they have full access to PHP and all the other goodies. No mySQL database though, only have one left and for more they are $3 a month.
   
   I already host two sites like this (kate.strolen and alchemy.strolen) and, for a free account, they don't need any other access and are more then happy. If we wish to give out some POP3 accounts I have come across a CGI script that will allow POP3 password changes if they require. We have to put a password in initially for them from the CPanel.
   
   Your last paragraph makes sense, but I am ignorant so I don't know how it works. I actually am not even sure what goes into charging on line. I know paypal works, but would rather go with the normal credit card stuff.

3. resller

   #3

   I have this thought.
   
   Since webhost2.com is so damn cheap. $50 a year with unlimited everything pretty much AND they have a 30 guarantee AND they refund any unspent money if you cancel. My vote is this.
   
   We go ahead and buy rpgcitadel.com (unless you have a better one. I am wide open)
   
   We get a package from webhost2.com
   
   We concentrate on hosting rpg sites for awhile.
   
   Write up a no guarantees cause since we know nothing about the webhost except that we will try and hook them up when we move hosts or something.
   
   (I wrote them and got a response that offering free sites the way we want will be acceptable as long as they don't eat too many resources....and anything we host will not, even if they are super busy.)
   
   ---------
   Just going to add notes for myself to check at work
   These guys look pretty good too actually. $4 an account one time fee for resold accounts up until we run out of space. Little more expensive to start with though...
   
   http://www.remarkablehosting.com/hsphere_resellers.html
   
   Need to look harder at this one!!
   
   http://www.hostexpress.com/var.html

4. Setup pricing

   #4

   My points on reselling.
   
   1. I think we should do it.
   2. We need to purchase a buisness license.
   3. We purchase rpgcitadel.com
   4. We focus on rpg sites
   5. We stay with the current hosting facilities until we determine the feasability of this venture. Because:
   A. Little hassle in setting things up
   B. We know the service is good.
   C. We don't have to worry about moving strolen.com
   
   If this venture proves feasable I feel we need to look at hosting certain aspects of this ourselves. I have looked into the cost of hosting the service ourselves and they are.
   
   Connections:
   Time Warner cable connection -- 1 static IP address 1.5 MB download 384MB upload 159.00 month
   
   Time Warner cable connection -- 5 static IP addresses 1.5MB download
   384MB upload 209.00 month
   
   Ideal Technologies -- 20 static IP addresses T1 line 1500 month
   
   Each service has a 99.0% uptime for these connections. For the cable I am near a hub if we sign a 18 month commitment they will give us a buried line since I am close to the hub.
   
   For the T1 I am not that close to the hub but they do guarantee the connetion will not be down more than four hours or they pay us for lost income.
   
   Then we would have to purchase the servers and some other items.
   
   Yes this is a lot of money, but if we can show some profability and feasibilty with this I know certain venture capitalist that are willing to throw money at solid internet based buisness plans.
   
   I personally think and have been told by several people that we have an awsome product in this ideal guild. However, it needs to be fine tuned and more items need to be added to it. (i.g. The world building and other such items) Before, it could be a marketable product.
   
   As for the SSL connection for credit cards. I am going to make some phone calls to contacts I have at Versign to see what we need to to do to set up a digital certificate and to setup a public/private key. By the way SAIC owns Verisign and I have dealt with guys there alot for my job.
   
   Anyway, I think we should stay put try to build things around our current platform and see how things progress over the next six months.

5. resller

   #5

   1. I think we should do it.
   2. We need to purchase a buisness license.
   3. We purchase rpgcitadel.com
   4. We focus on rpg sites
   5. We stay with the current hosting facilities until we determine the feasability of this venture. Because:
   A. Little hassle in setting things up
   B. We know the service is good.
   C. We don't have to worry about moving strolen.com
   

   
   
   Sounds good. We will own the site by the time you read this most likely.
   
   Hosting with hostmatters. They may not be the cheapest for what they give, but they do offer A LOT of freedom with the accounts whereas many other people don't allow you to give away free pages and such.
   
   The accounts come with SSL just for gee whiz.
   
   I suggest we buy a seperate reseller account and I still just maintain strolen.com on a seperate account type basis. That way we will have all the resources of the reseller account available to us instead of trying to sort it out with what I have. With that we can even purchase some other accounts for real cheap if we want more space and want to expand at the beginning.
   
   I think we should hold out on getting the reseller account for now. What we need to do before that from what I gathered from the conversations in a somewhat order.
   
   1. Get a business license seems to be the decision. We have to figure this out. Make a name for it and whatever else we need to do. Does anybody know anything about this or should we all start researching. I would be willing to get a couple books on it. Probably have to be Bob that is the contact or whatever for it since he has a permanent stateside address? Ya think?
   2. Decide on a theme and get Kate to design us some graphics. I think we should offer to pay her, although I am positive she will turn down the money.
   3. Design the website and everything associated with it so that it is completely ready when we unveil it.
   4. Get the reseller account and bring it all up.
   5. I say we set it up to charge from the get go but have a offer something like "Free hosting for qualifing websites." or something like that. Then sites can try and apply for the free hosting and we review their site and see if we feel like it. They may lure some more views just because we offer something for free. We also go and search for worth while sites at the beginning. Maybe something like that anyway to start getting some exposure. Thinking less and less about finding somebody to host for free, might to better just selling our service and figure out how to market the 'free for qualifying' later to attract attention.
   6. On this site I think we should have banner exchanges. There are three or four rpg based banner rotations that are free with 1:1 exposure.
   
   It will probably take more then 6 months to get where we want to be with the services we are going to do.
   
   For us getting the server and such...I am still very cautious about thinking too hard about it. First, I have no idea what goes into it. Nimble is confident and that is good enough for me. Things we need to find out about that as well is.
   1. Cpanel or whatever interface we will use to allow customers to manage their accounts.
   2. Venture capitalists: If we get to the point we are ready to move to our own servers, the $200 a month should be almost taking care of itself at that point. Any other investment for a server or whatever, I am certain between the three of us, we can come up with whatever we need to do that, especially if we are already to the point where we are ready to get our own servers. I don't mind eating the cost if we know we are on a successful trend. More interest is negative interest as far as I am concerned...unless it can be better explained the benefits of it. I am ignorant of all this business stuff so enlightenment would be welcome.

6. Company X

   #6

   The quote:
   1. I think we should do it.
   - we all agree
   
   2. We need to purchase a buisness license.
   - we all agree again
   
   3. We purchase rpgcitadel.com
   - I disagree strongly. I do NOT think we should limit our possible clientele. Why shouldn’t we host dog groomers.com if they want to pay us? Pets, groceries, porn, or rpg sites are all money to our business. Now if you guys want to limit our exposure, and not host porn sites then I am fine with that. I say we write out a code of conduct that we will tolerate on our host anyway, something legal and binding that must be agreed upon before any money or web space changes hands (maybe go to geocities and recreate something close to theirs). Now I have said my piece about STRONGLY disagreeing with hosting rpg sites only to start with, but we are, presumably, equal partners so if the two of you want to limit us then I must accept that. Although, I strongly urge both of you to reconsider limiting us to such an extreme on who pays us.
   I therefore do not think that rpgcitadel should be our company name. That is not to say that we start our company (call it “Xnet/xnet.com� for now) and also go by the name of rpgcitadel.com. But I think we should start open and create pseudonyms to appeal to subsections of the market place.
   
   4. We focus on rpg sites
   - see above
   
   5. We stay with the current hosting facilities until we determine the feasability of this venture. Because:
   A. Little hassle in setting things up
   - I go with Mike’s expertise
   
   B. We know the service is good.
   - I go with Mike’s expertise
   
   C. We don't have to worry about moving strolen.com
   - I go with Mike’s expertise. On the strolen.com note, strolen.com is Mike’s private thing and should remain separate from our company. At least officially, that is not to say that if we are resellers that strolen.com (and all its sub domains) would not be welcome at our virtual host (for free of course).
   Here are some of the things my parents do:
   Together they own a company, Gelin, that owns the building that my father’s company, Kestrel, and one other tenant rents space from. My mothers company, Inlin, rents from someone else entirely. The point is that all three of their companies are always treated as separate and distinct companies (as they should be) like we should treat strolen.com and our company. If my fathers company, Kestrel, goes belly up it will not affect Gelin or Ilin or his personal holdings (i.e. his house). Everything is pretty well protected from liability. Like we should be, I am sure Bob would not want to lose his house if our company gets pinched for something stupid.
   I will check with my mom about what she did to get a small business license and see if there are any non-obvious things that may get missed by newbies. I still think we should do our own research.
   
   
   As far as running our own servers, I do not think that would be beneficial for us for quite a while to come. One reason is that we should keep our company separate from our homes. So running our servers out of Bob’s house is not a real good idea. Plus if we are going to contribute equally then having servers go down and Bob do all the upkeep is too hard on Bob. If we are reselling then we have paid other people to do all the back-ups and making sure we have all the up-time we paid for. We should draft a good model for what we will pay, what we will charge and at what point it is cost effective to rent a building buy the hardware (and maintain it), but the software (yes BUY.) As far as the Time Warner thing goes, my cable company, Adelphia, out right says in the contract agreement that users can not hook up to a server of any kind (and then they specifically mention WWW, FTP, PPP, SMTP, etc..) to their back-bone (which they are renting from some other parent company) not even the business account can hook up a server of any sort, they must rent one. That does not mean that Bob’s company won’t allow it, only that it requires looking into. Still reselling sounds like a good way to start out and we can look at getting our own servers and T1/T3 line after we are in a position to hire employees to help with maintenance.
   
   Another quote:
   1. Get a business license seems to be the decision. We have to figure this out. Make a name for it and whatever else we need to do. Does anybody know anything about this or should we all start researching. I would be willing to get a couple books on it. Probably have to be Bob that is the contact or whatever for it since he has a permanent stateside address? Ya think?
   - sorry about two lists, but for the answer to this question see the first list
   
   2. Decide on a theme and get Kate to design us some graphics. I think we should offer to pay her, although I am positive she will turn down the money.
   -Paying Kate to do the graphics sounds fine to me. Hell, bring her in as an investor...
   
   3. Design the website and everything associated with it so that it is completely ready when we unveil it.
   - I absolutely agree. Maybe we should all brain storm a list of thing that the website should contain and post responses by next Friday, 3 Jan 2003. I will start with this assumption and submit my thought unless I see a disagreement to this idea
   
   4. Get the reseller account and bring it all up.
   - I agree
   
   5. I say we set it up to charge from the get go but have an offer, something like "Free hosting for qualifying websites." or something like that. Then sites can try and apply for the free hosting and we review their site and see if we feel like it. They may lure some more views just because we offer something for free. We also go and search for worth while sites at the beginning. Maybe something like that anyway to start getting some exposure. Thinking less and less about finding somebody to host for free, might to better just selling our service and figure out how to market the 'free for qualifying' later to attract attention.
   - I agree charge a fee that everyone will want to pay.
   
   6. On this site I think we should have banner exchanges. There are three or four rpg based banner rotations that are free with 1:1 exposure.
   - I disagree, unless this is done strictly on rpgcitadel and that rpgcitadel is a daughter company to our company.
   
   
   Things to do (sort term)
   1. Research small business license.
   2. Brainstorm web site content
   3. Agree (majority rules) on company name, if anyone agrees to have a parent company name different from rpgcitadel.com
   4. Check into company bank account.
   5. Come up with company policy for customers (i.e. what we offer, what we will accept/not accept). I think we should offer free web (only web pages) if we can get paid advertisers on some sort of a banner. Otherwise I do not think we should offer free webspace.
   
   Things to do (long term):
   1. Register company name.
   2. Buy domain name.
   3. Get small business license.
   4. Get company post office box.
   5. Start company bank account.

7. resller

   #7

   
   3. We purchase rpgcitadel.com
   - I disagree strongly. I do NOT think we should limit our possible clientele. Why shouldn’t we host dog groomers.com if they want to pay us? Pets, groceries, porn, or rpg sites are all money to our business. Now if you guys want to limit our exposure, and not host porn sites then I am fine with that. I say we write out a code of conduct that we will tolerate on our host anyway, something legal and binding that must be agreed upon before any money or web space changes hands (maybe go to geocities and recreate something close to theirs). Now I have said my piece about STRONGLY disagreeing with hosting rpg sites only to start with, but we are, presumably, equal partners so if the two of you want to limit us then I must accept that. Although, I strongly urge both of you to reconsider limiting us to such an extreme on who pays us.
   I therefore do not think that rpgcitadel should be our company name. That is not to say that we start our company (call it “Xnet/xnet.com� for now) and also go by the name of rpgcitadel.com. But I think we should start open and create pseudonyms to appeal to subsections of the market place.
   

   
   
   This is so simple to take care of and I think you implied it at the end of that statement.
   
   First. The company name can be anything. Doesn't matter. Could Be Dr. NimbleStrole Or Danmikob or whatever. Business name is inconsequential and really won't come into play (or does it have to? I don't think so, maybe a small statement somewhere on the policy page or something)
   
   I think we have a better chance of getting customers if we actually have a target. Not to say RPGers are our only target, and they are a small market, but if we just start generic hosting then we are just one of a million other resellers and webhosts. By being roleplayers, have strolen.com associated with it we show that we are one of them and can show that we want to support the community. So I definately want to target roleplayers as a primary start. After all, that is actually why I wanted to do this.
   
   BUT, and that is a BIG BUT, we can simply host another domain right on top of that and make it more generic to aim for anybody just to cover everything as you want to. Easy. For instance I am currently hosting www.reunionhomepage.com on my strolen.com account (my other pipedream that I am still working on and might be another thing we all want to look into, check out http://www.reunionhomepage.com/nileswest/ and http://mhs.strolen.com maybe we can do that too ?????!!!!!!!) But the point is the hosting is seemless, transparent and we can sell from the same account targeting different customer bases. We can basically take all the work we do on rpgcitadel.com and reword/write it to target the anybody customer and work it off of two sites. No big deal at all.
   
   Don't think that we have rpgcitadel.com that we can only host rpgs...although on that site that is what I would like to do, but we can have as many domains selling to whatever we want and it doesn't even matter. I dont' have a problem doing it this way. The cost of a domain name is chickenfeed, we can get dozens if you like (not that we will or should). iogre.com can target our ogre audience for instance and we can set up a seperate webpage for that.
   
   The host agreement will be dictated by our host, and we can take hostmatters.com hosting agreement and plagarize it (they said we can) and that should satisfy all that.
   
   I agree with keeping strolen.com sort of seperate. I think it is a strong selling point for the rpg hosting site though and can be used as an affiliate...or a site hosted by rpgcitadel, or something like that and use it as a selling point. On strolen.com I will have something pointing to rpgcitadel as well. I think we should still use it, but sort of a partner/affiliate type thing.
   
   Excellent thoughts on the liability type stuff. Sounds like we have some good experience with your parents and their advice would be very welcome.
   
   Brainstorming on what we need is a good idea. Need a new thread for that one. :) Going to search some other webhosts and just make a list of things they have.
   
   The banners would most definately only go on the sites that are targeting those type of clients.
   
   The free webhosting would require some sort of banner/text link back to our site definately, but I want this to be as tasteful as possible. Maybe just a text link at the bottom of each page or something. Argue with me on this one :)
   
   (I think we are getting somewhere though!)

8. Price plan

   #8

   I did not feel like creating a new thread, I hope you guys see this message.
   
   I sent each of you guys a spreadsheet that has a possible price plan on it. I did not see a way to attach the spreadsheet here so I sent it to:
   
   strolen@strolen.com
   nimblefinder@strolen.com
   
   See what you think, give me you feedback.
   
   Dan

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