Reselling questions

[Benj]

Hello,
I have some little questions about futurequest reselling.

1) People often talk about added service to justify the reselling. What kind of service do reseller provide ?

2) Can the CNC and all features be translated ?

3) How much clients on average resellers manage to gather ?

4) Can a reseller ask to host a foreign domain ? Lets say spanish, french, dutch...

5) Which software do resellers use to manage the billing of their client ?

Cordially,
Benj

[Deb]

1) People often talk about added service to justify the reselling. What kind of service do reseller provide ? The most popular extras include web site design, maintenance, programming, company promotion services, and domain registration. 2) Can the CNC and all features be translated ? This feature is not yet available... 3) How much clients on average resellers manage to gather ? It all really depends on the reseller and where their primary focus is. We have a number of resellers supporting themselves with the income, quite a few simply earning some extra spending money, while another large number of Site Owners simply maintain the reseller's status to achieve discounts on their own extra personal accounts. The range of sales literally goes from zero to over a thousand resold packages each and the resellers are spread all of the way through those numbers, though the number of resellers with more than a couple of hundred resold packages are much lower than those with anywhere between 1 and 150. Again, it just depends on what their own goals are as to how many packages they maintain.

Deb
- Some assembly required

[Benj]

Thanks for your answer :) . It seems I edited my post with two more questions while you were writing :). Can you please check them.

Do you plan to implement CNC translation capability soon ? I think it would be a plus for some int'l resellers.

Also, is futurequest equiped to support reseller growth ? This question may sound curious, but I know futurequest is a relatively small team, compared to other big host. And I understand this is a reason why your service is so good: because you focus on service instead of growing without enough support. If lots of resellers join your program, will the service will stay as good and fast :) ?

Cordially,
Benj

[Deb]

4) Can a reseller ask to host a foreign domain ? Lets say spanish, french, dutch... Sure. Whether resold or not, FutureQuest hosts many domains from many different locations in many different languages. 5) Which software do resellers use to manage the billing of their client ? I do not know what software they use however I believe some use QuickBooks. Others will be able to answer that better than I. Do you plan to implement CNC translation capability soon ? I think it would be a plus for some int'l resellers. We've worked on this a bit in the past but found some pretty deep complications in the area since we ourselves are not fluent in the various languages..therefore updates (even quick little ones) become more complicated for us to initiate. It is still something we would like for the future but I could not say it's going to happen "soon". Also, is futurequest equiped to support reseller growth ? This question may sound curious, but I know futurequest is a relatively small team, compared to other big host. And I understand this is a reason why your service is so good: because you focus on service instead of growing without enough support. If lots of resellers join your program, will the service will stay as good and fast :) ? We'll be just fine :) We continue to grow our staff as required, as well as the server farm :) If for some reason we are not ok with the growth then we will adjust accordingly to ensure those currently with us are taken care of (without hindering their own sales) while halting our sales personally to oblige.

Deb
- Editing isn't fair :P

[Randall]

while halting our sales personally to oblige Now that would take some guts. :eek:

Randall

[Benj]

Thanks for your answers Deb.
Reselling FQ's is definetely interesting.

Benj

[Monty]

I include DNS for my accounts that want it at no extra charge. One of the biggest reasons sites go down is forgetting to renew DNS and I even had one gent lose his domain to the porno types for this very reason. Being a reseller has been enjoyable for me and even when some of my accounts managed to get themselves as well as me TOS's, Terra was very nice about it and helped me work through it. For book keeping as well as keeping up with passwords, usernames, server names, ect, I use an excel spreadsheet. One of the things I normally do it keep all my resold accounts on yearly billing to keep the transactions down. hth.

[Jason]

Originally posted by Randall:
Now that would take some guts. :eek:


Deb can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember that FQ did this once before, many years ago. I think it was around the time of their first datacenter move (my God, have I been hanging around here so long that I actually remember when FQ had their server in ... erm ... can't remember name ... was it voltage.net or something similar?)

I could be wrong and I could be thinking of another company, but I'm pretty sure it was FQ that had to pause taking new signups for a short period of time to accommodate growth.

Deb? Confirm?

Jason

[Deb]

Deb can correct me if I'm wrong, but I do remember that FQ did this once before, many years ago. Yes we did... We put a hold on new account setups for about a week or two. I was THRILLED to see that during that time we actually acquired a waiting list! Upon feeling comfortable enough to begin setting up accounts again we had quite a few to do for people that actually waited the week or so to be setup and we still host them :D I think it was around the time of their first datacenter move (my God, have I been hanging around here so long that I actually remember when FQ had their server in ... erm ... can't remember name ... was it voltage.net or something similar?) Yes, you have been hanging around that long ;) No it was not a data center move and no we never colo'd with Voltage.net. This happened due to the server (note the lack of an S there!) being full and us having one problem after the next in trying to get a second server online. Rather than playing the sardine game we just stopped until we got the new server going. Voltage.net was a company we setup an arrangement with to work out some unique offsite backups and backup DNS serving. Ahh the g'ol days. We have never, however, had our servers so far away that Terra couldn't drive over and say hi to them ;) Voltage.net is in Arkansas... I could be wrong and I could be thinking of another company, but I'm pretty sure it was FQ that had to pause taking new signups for a short period of time to accommodate growth. On this part you are correct :) Deb? Confirm? What? That we've got guts or that we've done it before? In either case.... Confirmed ;)

Deb
- We put our paychecks down to backup our integrity - Roman Noodles never tasted sooo good!

[Jason]

Originally posted by Deb:
No it was not a data center move and no we never colo'd with Voltage.net.


OK, then who was the little company you colo'd with back when you had just the one server?

My recollection of things goes like this:

1) You originally colo'd with some small company in the Orlando area where you ran off a T1 line (possibly your own, possibly shared, I don't really remember).

2) You moved to a larger datacenter in the same building where you are now, but owned by someone else.

2a) Some weird and wacky hysterics ensued between 2 and 3 that no one even noticed.

3) You moved to your own datacenter in that building.

So... who was that original datacenter? And was there another datacenter between 1 and 2?

Man - my memory is mush.

C'mon Deb - give us all a history lesson ;-)

Jason

[Deb]

1) You originally colo'd with some small company in the Orlando area where you ran off a T1 line (possibly your own, possibly shared, I don't really remember). It was a heavily funded private company that had nothing to do with hosting but plenty of extra bandwidth within the building.. "plenty of extra" equated to 6 T-1 lines at the time. 2) You moved to a larger datacenter in the same building where you are now, but owned by someone else. The first company obtained even more funding to build a full fledged center but between all of the 'big wigs' taking forever to make decisions and figure anything solid out the 'smaller center' was closed down forcing us to find another company to colo with..hence the move to Orlando. 2a) Some weird and wacky hysterics ensued between 2 and 3 that no one even noticed. The company we moved to started making "changes" that were well beyond what Terra and I considered acceptable and around the same period of time the original company started to figure out what they were going to do with that mega funding and their first full fledged center build was being completed so we squeezed back in with them, even though they still never offered colo space and still had nothing to do with hosting in any way.

Suddenly, the DotCom bust came over us like a two ton heavy thing and all of that 'paper money' these investors and spenders were throwing around disappeared. Out of the blue (I mean TOTALLY OUT OF THE BLUE!) we get a phone call saying we have three days to "figure it out" because their doors were being closed and the bandwidth pipes being shut down. This is from a company that days prior were continuing to brag about expansion plans.

I'll never forget calling each member of the team and saying "I don't know if any of us will have jobs next week and I don't know how much this is going to cost trying to save our jobs so I don't know if I'll be able to pay you. I completely understand if you want to take the time off to go job hunting." most of all.... I'll never forget each team member's response. "You and Terra do whatcha gotta do and we'll be here to keep supporting the clients while you do it."
So we did. :QTthumb:

We hightailed it down to Qwest [insert a whole lot of other companies, phone calls, leasing agents etc here] and said "What do they owe? How can we keep it live long enough to buy us the time we need to 'figure it out'???"

We shelled out a WHOLE LOT of money to keep things going (admittedly learned what a 2nd home mortgage was).... found an available suite in the same building that was TRASHED because yet another "DotCom Bust Company" stripped it and trashed it upon their eviction/move out. The kids and I spent days in there scrubbing floors, painting walls, cleaning vents, laying new carpet and molding etc to make it "right again" while Terra worked to get power up to par, air conditioning going again, bandwidth brought in etc.... We weren't 'thrilled' but it would've worked for what we needed.

Literally hours prior to me posting a message to let the site owners know the move had happened, we got the call saying the suite we had been in with the other company was going to be available and that much of their stuff was going up for auction. So .... I didn't post :P

We worked our butts off to obtain the items we wanted out of the silent auction..and purchased their generator and UPS etc...Since they had more than one suite for the power items we also had to work to get all of that moved and hooked up into the suite we would be taking.. I again got with the kids and put yet another fresh coat of paint on the walls...had the signs moved etc, etc, etc, until we had successfully moved "back into the suite" that was now ours..and yes, that we had been in before... 3) You moved to your own datacenter in that building. Yes sir and if only.... oh if only... people could have "been there" in person to experience the struggles they would then understand exactly why FutureQuest is firm about being a cash-out business that likes to have "its own things" without worry about whether or not this or that company is going to make a bad decision that could pull the rug out from under a company that is dependent on them to do the RightThing(TM) and follow through with the contracts. It may cost more but at least I KNOW exactly what is happening with the things we have control over.

I don't mention names because we do honor our NDAs. FutureQuest didn't use "publicized colocation" companies. We always searched out private companies that were well connected with a "corner of space" available for us to lease. In this way, we never had to compete with hundreds/thousands of other hosts for the bandwidth et al within the Data Center. It was nice using lines that were otherwise under utilized by businesses. The epitome of win/win/win situations.

Unfortunately during the DotCom boom IT companies failed to realize the importance of financial planning since they were playing with an excessive amount of Monopoly Money while underestimating the risk of reality... I, on the other hand, grew up in a poor family, married at a young age, had three children by the age of 18, and then had to leave an abusive relationship without a penny to my name and three kids to care for. Monopoly Money or not, I try not to forget the importance of staying out of debt and spending wisely (hush about my vet bills and pet food costs :P). FutureQuest has been AWESOME to us and I'm just thrilled and thankful that we have been able to pull off what our clients depend on us for.

Deb
- When we were at the end of our rope...we tied a knot in it and learned to swing.

[dank]

Wow, that was quite the ordeal! We only caught glimpses of it in the forums.

When we were at the end of our rope...we tied a knot in it and learned to swing.
Reminds me of a similar "motivational" line. "When you can't fit any more on your plate, get another plate."

Dan