It's days like this…
Wed, 12 July, 2006 – 9:50 pm
When I seriously consider giving up running a business. I started the day on a positive note. I had some work I needed to get done today, couple of hours max, then I could get back to my other work that I was doing yesterday. Of course that wasn't to be the case.
I won't go into details but today has been a very bad day as far as I'm concerned. I've had a couple of hosting issues with different clients, one of which is very major. A few months ago I was all set to get my own dedicated server to host my clients on and perhaps sell a few minor hosting accounts to help with the profit off it. However I've now made a decision that despite selling hosting and domains is 99% easy money when I don't have the time or knowledge to sort issues and I'm stuffed if something goes wrong.
My profit off the hosting used to be 20% of my income, which was a lot, but now it's less than 10% and not worth my effort any more, so I've decided to pack it in and pass it on to another business. I could offer it for sale, perhaps make a year's worth of income off the sale, perhaps more, but I'm not interested in that. I just want to get rid of it all and concentrate on my work.
To be honest it feels like a slight weight lifted off my shoulders. Of course I've still got to inform all of my hosting clients however with no changes whatsoever to their current setup, besides a change in invoicer then I can't see any of them having any complaints.
Here's to a future free of hosting (except my own of course!).
4 Responses to “It's days like this…”
Sarah,
Chin up… from the look of your bio you are the kind of girl who does take things lieing down. What you need to do is find a better provider, someone who will help you when something goes wrong.
A friend of mine does something very similar and uses monitors to check the sites are all up and running. At first the paranoia of having the server down was driving him nuts with the constant checking. After spending a lot of time talking to the provider he has built up a good relationship and sleeps a lot more easily.
You need to do the same. Get a fairly local provider and build a personal relationship with them. Then things will be far easier in the future.
The only other tip is: It is better to inform the customer than have them tell you when you've failed. All about perception.
By IT Consultants on Jul 22, 2006
Ooo not sure how to take that one! Heh, regardless the whole situation made me realise that I don't have the time or care to deal with hosting and domains. It doubles the paperwork for invoices for my accountant, it causes hassle getting clients to pay up (and bear in mind most are web design clients so there's a more business interest that just accepting their money and not caring so to speak), and the questions and occassional hassle I have to put up with. Well losing a day to fixing an issue which now doesn't even seem to be mine or the server's fault but in fact their Exchange server, well I just don't have the time for that whatsoever.
I'm running a web design/development business, not a hosting business
But thanks for the comment 
By Sarah on Jul 22, 2006
Sorry abou the typo, you know what I meant.
The hosting thing is easy money most of the time and if you can take a slice of the money with only having to do one days work.
Well, is that not easy money ?!?
By IT Consultants on Jul 29, 2006
Ahhh I didn't realise it was a typo!! Heh nevermind
Hosting is easy money but it does still cause work, invoices for small amounts, chasing payments for small amounts etc. It's fine for someone starting out and prepared to work harder for their cash, but I'm not at that stage where I'm not wanting to take the hassle.
The trouble was the days work in question (although it's more than a day, this day just happened to be the worst one) was exceptionally bad causing a major amount of stress due to various thoughts going through my mind etc. And it's frustrating when you don't know why something is going wrong. At the time the person who could have helped me or advised was not really able to due to other reasons, which left me on my own. Whilst I fixed the problem the backlog that it's caused is still on my mind over 2 weeks later.
However the hosting has been given to someone who copes with stress better than me and is still just starting out in business so hopefully it'll give him that step he needs, plus give him the business interactivity he also needs.
Anything for a quiet life
By Sarah on Jul 30, 2006