

Why web hosting businesses work (vs doing a web startup) - mtw
http://blog.iweb.com/en/2008/12/top-9-reasons-why-web-hosting-is-awesome/1576.html

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bootload
_"... Why web hosting businesses work ..."_

Because _"anyone can do it"_ and because _"it has a business model"_ means it
becomes a cut-throat commodity business. Now if re-define this and pick other
types of processes that you can you can host, you might be able to apply the
ideas of hosting in new/novel areas.

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mtw
well, for the second part of your comment, dell did it for the PC industry,
which was viewed as a commodity business. for web hosting, just think what
amazon is doing these days

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lsc
uh, yeah. they can also fail just like "web startups" - it's just you have a
more obvious business model.

Me, I've been running a Xen virtual private hosting company for the last few
years. I sold backup space before that, and was utterly crushed by amazon S3.
By the time EC2 was in public beta, I had been selling Xen VPSs for some
time... they were cheaper than me for a while... but these days I'm rather a
lot cheaper. Still, the competition is fierce.

Sure, you don't need to get venture capital (one of the main reasons why I
chose it, also, because I already have an important asset: I'm a pretty good
SysAdmin, and I'm good at finding .) but there's no guarantee that you will
make money. Margins are pretty thin, and like everything else, people still
want to see you advertise.

I would argue that it's not something 'anyone can do' any more than writing a
webapp is something 'anyone can do' - either way, you need some technical
skill, or the money to buy some technical skill, along with business and
marketing skills.

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gaius
They thought this in the 90s too. I remember _acres_ of unused colo space when
the bubble burst.

