For local businesses, you don't really need to have a ton of disk space or bandwidth because in all reality they aren't going to get traffic like Facebook or Google does.

With that said, I would recommend giving them 1,000 GB of monthly transfer and 100 GB of storage. This will be more than enough for web traffic and e-mail. If they grow to where they are using more than that then you can just upgrade them to another plan.

Another option besides being a reseller is to just sign up as an affiliate and you can earn an affiliate commission on signing them up for hosting (and a commission on the monthly recurring) and then you don't need to worry about all the plan sizes-- you can just resell the plans that are already in existence at other hosting providers.

I hope this helps!

-Ben

Hi mate

You can just clone what small (but honest + reliable) hosting companies do and offer same type of package, same space and bandwidth, etc.

I personally buy a new server (2GB space, email + traffic unlimited) and customers pay me annually their hosting fee from 150$ year. Each customer on their hosting plan. It cost me less then 60$ year and they have plenty of space for everything, no problems whatsoever with bandwidth, etc etc.

Oh and the local directory idea... Kudos. It's a neat way to get you going, trust me.

Personally, I wouldn't make it an issue. If they don't even have an online presence and you start talking about bandwidth, I think you'll just confuse things.

Just charge monthly hosting fee. Unless some site hits the stratosphere, the odds of them using much bandwidth or space is pretty remote.

My angle is to offer them a 'free site' as part of my monthly fee (after the initial research, design and build cost-plus making sure you have a profit on your fixed costs). This will have high perceived value plus it makes it harder for someone else to creep in the back door and steal your client. I wouldn't scare them with anything technical, you can always offer to 'upgrade' their space if traffic starts flying - have a look at competitor sites, assess from Google External Keyword Tool an 'idea' of search volume and explain these things take time to establish themselves and settle down to produce steady traffic. Good Luck!

First, there is absolutely no way I would ever sign a small local business up for 100gigs of web space, and 1 terabit of bandwidth. I don't use that much with my Affiliate sites, and I have lots of them (Close to 100).
Second, there is no way I would refer them through my affiliate link. Why would I want to get paid one time for a customer that I might be working with for the next 1-10 years? $125 (If you sign up 21 people per month)... Or, I could sign them up for say $20 per month, and make a huge profit if they stay longer than 6 months (Which they should or I'm not doing my job properly). Also, I am not 100% on getting 21 clients per month, which means I wouldn't even make $125...
Third, most Web Hosts will cancel your account if you sell webspace without a reseller account. In another thread, someone posted part of the TOS from Hostgator (which I use frequently) and it reads as follows...

Thanks for all the advice that has been given. I'm going to continue contemplating this, and checking busy websites I already own in order to estimate what a small business might need for space.

I was actually surprised at my potential clients knowledge of webspace rental costs. In some cases they didnt even know what a webhost was but they knew they are not going to pay more than X dollars a month or year for it. Ask a couple owners, they'll tell you sort of the going rate.

What I do is tell them $25/mn whether they have a host or not because I am adding a few updates with that $25 (or i say "google analytics" reports for free with it -- anything that adds value.)

Teravel: It's not the space you need to be concerned about. It's the bandwidth in case a big boy tweets them or something like that.

I have my clients get their own hosting at HostGator.com. The reseller thing isn't as good as it sounds for a variety of reasons.

I usually set them up with 500 mb of space and 2 gig of data and most local businesses will not go over this. You can upgrade it any time.

Remember your monthly fee is not just for their hosting it will be also for upgrades to their site like upgrading wordpress and plugins if you use that system, doing a offline backup for them, adding value like google analytics etc, managing their email accounts and so on.

Quentin

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I go with websiteme.com they have great speed and service. they're support is first class and they helped me setup my reseller account literally on the phone for 5 hours. Also their domains are the cheapest I've seen for reselling - godaddy has some too, but they set it up so that my clients can order domains etc through my site which means i make a nice buck on it. If you need a resellers account, pm me and I'll see if i can dig up my old promotion code. but yeah - resellers accounts are big $$$$ if you do it right!

Wow, Alen should make it so people can moderate threads they start. I am guessing a few people didn't read the original post...

Really? Pay attention, or go spam on Digitalpoint.

Quentin, I was actually thinking these exact numbers last night. Thanks!