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Todd Holley

By Todd Holley
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Daersun Super Member

Daersun

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3MBPS is not bad, but the problem comes when

A) you need to burst higher then that

B) you have your next door neighbor downloading porn

C) Your power in your house goes out.

 

The facility I work for - http://www.gnax.net/atlantanap/about.html

Compare the facility there to what you have in your house. The reason people pay us to host their servers is because we are in world class facilities using redundant world class networks..

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Todd Holley Super Member

Todd Holley

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Network.swf has been immidiately removed by Codoriginalservers.com.Codoriginalservers.com is going to be deleted, since it really was just something I was learning with. And will soon be Plutoniumservers.com (please note that plutoniumservers.com now leads to my tcadmin control panel). I plan to use tcadmin on Plutoniumservers.

 

And I am very sorry Jordan. I did that about 1 month ago and I wish I hadn't. But I will now have the real thing (thanks to drgservers.com dedicated deals) . No more home internet! Thanks again for all your help guys, and I promise to make Plutoniumservers.com 100% legal.....

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Todd Holley Super Member

Todd Holley

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Well do you know of any other good dedicated server host? They were the best i could find. And when i pinged their servers i got a response in like 25 ms. Anyone else as good an cheap as them? I would go with defcon. But they are a little moer expensive. Could you give me a dedicated server in the central of us to ping?

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ECF Super Member

ECF

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I think you should first create a business plan, and price out what you need, and what your monthly expenses will be. Trial and error is good to learn, but if you trial too much you will simply end up loosing money.

 

I would say 99% of all startup GSPs fail wihtin the first year. Why? Because they don't plan, and don't realise how much work it is. Being a GSP is the same as opening a storefront. You need to plan it before you do it.

 

A few points to consider:

 

1. If you are using any other name for your business than your own personal name, then you will need to at least register to become a business. This includes going to your local city or town hall and registering under a DBA (Doing Business As) name.

 

2. Make sure that you fully understand any and all games that you are going to host. Most anyone can get a gameserver installed. But can you support the problems that your clients will have down the road? Example: Client installs a mod and now their server does not work. What do you do? Are you able to fix it.

 

3. What type of support will you offer? Phone, email, IM etc... Also, what hours will you and/or staff be availible to answer questions. Gamers are a hard bunch and they want instant satisfaction. Leave a ticket unanswered for a day and they will move to another provider.

 

4. What type of server hardware do you need? And how many games can you fit per box? A common mistake is people will order a box that costs them $200 a month, only to realise that they can only fit $150 worth of game slots on it. Common math tells us they will not last long.

 

5. When choosing a provider to host your servers, do not strictly go by price. You can search the net for hours and find numerous providers out there, but will those providers be able to support you properly, and will they be around in a few months? Remember, you get what you pay for.

 

6. Is it even really worth it? This is the biggest question of all. You now have started a GSP and have some clients. These clients start requesting support from you. On average you are spending 6-8 hours a day to support these clients, and you suddenly realise that you are making a whopping $100 a month from these game servers. Take that and divide it by the roughly 200 hours you have spent providing support/billing etc... to your clients. You are making less than $1.00 an hour for doing this?

 

These are just some of the things you will need to sort out at some point in your quest. I am not trying to discourage you, rather I am laying out what you will be facing in the future. It is NOT an easy business to get into as most people think.

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Todd Holley Super Member

Todd Holley

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Thanks for your help ECF,

 

1. If my business last more than 2 months I will

2. That is the reason I only host Call of Duty (for now) i have been playing and hosting servers for over 2 1/2 years now. And i understand almost every mod for cod, codfiles.com

3.Most support will be e-mail but i will have a phone (message box) available

4. I have done the math. With 10mbps and a Dual Core xeon i can make(look 1mbps=about 25 people)so 250 clients. I charge 2.00 a slot so $500.00 a month before i pay for my hosting. Getting those server specs cost around 300.00 a month. It won't make a lot of money, so i will have to host many servers.

5. Well you have defcon servers advertisements on your sites and i have checked out there site and pinged their servers. Ping is around 42 ms so looks like a good deal.

6. I enjoy seeing people have fun on something i have created, so it is definelty worth it. As long as i am making more than i am spending i am happy. Helping people is my idea of fun, or so it seems so.

 

 

====================================================

 

thanks for your help ECF and thanks for tcadmin. If i do fail i won't die. This business i am doing on the side.

 

Thanks, sorry for no caps but i am about to go to Atlanta.

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kalyse Super Member

kalyse

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I think you should first create a business plan, and price out what you need, and what your monthly expenses will be. Trial and error is good to learn, but if you trial too much you will simply end up loosing money.

 

I would say 99% of all startup GSPs fail wihtin the first year. Why? Because they don't plan, and don't realise how much work it is. Being a GSP is the same as opening a storefront. You need to plan it before you do it.

 

A few points to consider:

 

1. If you are using any other name for your business than your own personal name, then you will need to at least register to become a business. This includes going to your local city or town hall and registering under a DBA (Doing Business As) name.

 

2. Make sure that you fully understand any and all games that you are going to host. Most anyone can get a gameserver installed. But can you support the problems that your clients will have down the road? Example: Client installs a mod and now their server does not work. What do you do? Are you able to fix it.

 

3. What type of support will you offer? Phone, email, IM etc... Also, what hours will you and/or staff be availible to answer questions. Gamers are a hard bunch and they want instant satisfaction. Leave a ticket unanswered for a day and they will move to another provider.

 

4. What type of server hardware do you need? And how many games can you fit per box? A common mistake is people will order a box that costs them $200 a month, only to realise that they can only fit $150 worth of game slots on it. Common math tells us they will not last long.

 

5. When choosing a provider to host your servers, do not strictly go by price. You can search the net for hours and find numerous providers out there, but will those providers be able to support you properly, and will they be around in a few months? Remember, you get what you pay for.

 

6. Is it even really worth it? This is the biggest question of all. You now have started a GSP and have some clients. These clients start requesting support from you. On average you are spending 6-8 hours a day to support these clients, and you suddenly realise that you are making a whopping $100 a month from these game servers. Take that and divide it by the roughly 200 hours you have spent providing support/billing etc... to your clients. You are making less than $1.00 an hour for doing this?

 

These are just some of the things you will need to sort out at some point in your quest. I am not trying to discourage you, rather I am laying out what you will be facing in the future. It is NOT an easy business to get into as most people think.

 

 

 

I completely agree with everything you said. Its really good advice, would be worth stickying if it wasnt a counter pitch to TCAdmin.

 

I have seen so many GSP fail, to be perfectly honest, I am, I can't think of the appropriate word, not shocked or suprised, but eerily impressed that I didn't follow in their footsteps.

 

My initital business plan was the biggest oxymoron, planning just wasn't there, what was there was time. I pretty much spent the time planning everything after I had spent the initial $3k. About 6 months was taken up developing the site before I invested the later $20K. I'm still planning everything and often change things that I dont like. I think the biggest requirement, something more important then planning, is time. If you don't have an abundance of it, don't attempt to run a business.

 

I have read so many Pre-Sales questions in this forum where people ask if its difficult to install TCA because they are looking to make some extra cash. I think that anyone who has an idea that a GSP can provide 'extra cash' has already failed, its completely the wrong frame of mind. I think its difficult for anyone to survive if all they are making is extra cash because their profit margins will be so low, you need to pay for leases, so many control panel software licences and at the end of that you have no profit left. I only started to make a profit after selling out several servers. 2 servers maxxed out generates enough to cover all my licence fees, if I was only running on these two servers I wouldnt have any profit.

 

This was something that I didnt realise when I first started, I didnt plan for the fact that Im only going to make a profit after lets say the 30th server sold every month. I think thats why a lot of smaller companies get eaten up and gobbled away by the larger GSP, because they cant keep up with the initial costs.

 

To sum up my point (And I dont even know what the very first post in this thread was), make sure you have the time to put into your business, as ECF says, it might not be worth the effort spending 200 hours a month providing support, but even if it isnt you may have to if you want to get past the first few months. If you can input that amount of time, find a weekend job instead.

 

Good Luck with it all non the less.

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Daersun Super Member

Daersun

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My initital business plan was the biggest oxymoron, planning just wasn't there, what was there was time. I pretty much spent the time planning everything after I had spent the initial $3k. About 6 months was taken up developing the site before I invested the later $20K. I'm still planning everything and often change things that I dont like. I think the biggest requirement, something more important then planning, is time. If you don't have an abundance of it, don't attempt to run a business.

 

I cant tell you how much we followed this along.

 

I will be honest with you, when we started we fumbled along for about a month before I closed the doors realizing we were not ready to be a hosting company, after MANY months of testing and perfecting EVERYTHING. (and spending around 15k) We reopened our doors and have taken off.

 

Are we HUGE? Nope, but the TCADMIN guys will tell you, our licensed purchases have spiked recently :)

 

*cheers, merry XMAS, and heres to another great year*

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