When you have been running your own Web site for some time and have got the hang of it, you may find yourself wishing you could earn money out of Web hosting. That's when you think about reselling Web hosting space. You can, quite easily. But, be prepared for lots of work. Unlike an affiliate scheme, you need to be behind the scenes, making sure the Web sites you host on your hosting space do not go offline or you will find your customers coming after you.

There's no need for you to spend millions of dollars on a data center. There's also no need for you to spend thousands of dollars on setting up a Web hosting company. Just become a reseller and capitalise on the resources of the Web host you are reselling for.

When you resell Web hosting, what you are doing is this. You are offering part of your diskspace to your customers for them to setup their own Web sites. You earn money by renting this space to them. Of course, you will have to ask yourself whether you want your prospective customers to know that you are only a reseller, that you do not own a data center. But, please don't be like some resellers who place pictures of the data center belonging to the Web host they are reselling for and then tell their own customers as well as prospective customers visiting their Web site that they own a data center. That's not right!

It's good to be honest outfront. Do not play with words - do not mislead others with wordings on your Web site. That's not ethical! While it is not right for you to make as if you own a data center, there's nothing to say you can't tell others that you are only a reseller. Just don't say anything.

Some Web hosts which let you resell Web hosting give you personalised nameservers so that you can disguise the fact that you don't even have a server - only some diskspace which you are reselling. So, when your customers update their DNS - which they have to, in order to move their Web site to your diskspace - they type in ns1.yourdomain.com & ns2.yourdomain.com. And they do not know that you are only a reseller without any servers to your name.

However, knowledgeable prospective customers can still find out that you are a reseller. They can look up your Web site's DNS at www.dnsreport.com. By typing your Web site's domain name into the search box available there, they can find out where your Web site is hosted - whether it is on another Web host or not. They can find out which main Web host is hosting your Web site. They can even find out the location of the data center on which your Web site sits. They can also do a TRACERT there to locate the whereabouts of your Web site. They can search Web hosting forums for information about you. There are other tools available.

What's really important is that you do a good job of looking after the customers' Web sites. As long as your customers are happy and satisfied, why is there a need for them to go around to dig up information about you? It is only when they are not satisfied that they get the urge to do all that.

So you start by reselling diskspace on your hosting plan. You will need a good control panel to help you do the job. Think of using CPANEL. When you are looking around for reseller Web hosting plans - of course you have to sign up for such a plan; do not resell your own diskspace without your Web host knowing about it; the very idea is wrong - look for CPANEL control panel.

Compare reseller Web hosts. Look for a Web host which offers you more diskspace and data transfer for the same amount of money. Forget those offering unlimited data transfer. There's no such thign really. What happens is that when your Web sites use up too much data transfer, the host will find some reason or other to kick you out or ask you to upgrade.

On the other hand, if the Web host specifically allots you so much data transfer, you know just how much you have to offer your customers. And if your customers go over their limit, you can charge them for additional data transfer used.

The CPANEL control panel lets you manage all your resources easily. You can at a glance know just how much resources (diskspace, data transfer) your customers are using and you can e-mail them should they come near their limits. By the way, with CPANEL or other control panels, such as ENSIM or PLESK, customers have access to their own control panel and they can manage their Web site using these personal control panel. It's just that CPANEL has more attractive and useful features for the reseller.

Before you sign up for the reseller plan, read the terms and conditions carefully. Find out how much you must pay for data transfers over and above your limit. Otherwise you might end up burning a big hole in your pocket. Better still, look for a Web host offering lots of bandwidth. When it comes to the crunch, go for plans with lots of bandwidth but less diskspace. You could always resell plans offering less diskspace.

Generally, most Web sites use less than 2 GB data transfer each month. More popular Web sites with 250,000 pages (not hits) served per month use up about 20 GB of data transfer a month. Use that as a rough gauge.

Create different plans on CPANEL. Give specific diskspace and data transfer amounts to each plan. You can always override such quotas on a Web site to Web site basis later on without messing up the plans you have set up. See, that's why CPANEL is so useful.

Remember, some Web hosts may not allow you to oversell diskspace. Others may not allow chat scripts, so read the terms and conditions carefully. Find out what is allowed and what's not allowed.

Just what is overselling? Here is an example. Let's say you are given 3 GB diskspace and 50 GB data transfer per month. You create two different plans, say Plan A (100 MB diskspace & 1 GB data transfer, Plan B (500 MB diskspace & 10 GB data transfer). So when you sell, say 4 Plan Bs and 10 Plan As, you use up your allowable 3 GB diskspace and 50 GB data transfer fully. How do you oversell? You do it this way - You create smaller plans on paper, say Plan A (50 MB diskspace & 500 MB data transfer) and Plan B (250 MB diskspace and 5 GB data transfer). But, when you resell the resources to your customers, you tell your customers they are getting, say Plan A (100 MB diskspace & 1 GB data transfer, Plan B (500 MB diskspace & 10 GB data transfer). You don't tell them about the actual plans created. You go into your CPANEL and adjust - manually - the diskspace and bandwidth for each Web site you create. That way, you actually create more plans and therefore you can sell more plans with the limited resources which you are entitled to. This whole thing doesn't affect the customers - they are in the dark about what you are doing.

But, you have to be careful when doing this in order to make more money. Make sure the Web host you are reselling for allows the practice. Then, hope and pray that the customers who have signed up do not use up the resources allotted to them. Because, if they do, you end up exceeding your diskspace and data transfer limits and you have to pay for the additional resources used. You can't very well charge your customers for these. So, in the end, instead of making money, you may end up burning a hole in your pocket.