I have waded through tonnes of posts on the internet about startups, business launching and entrepreneurs and realized that there’s a few things lacking. Time and time again I’ve read about business plans, infrastructure, lines of credit & divvying out stock, but I’ll dish out the real secret sauce to launching a hosting company that very rarely has been told.

Pick a name!

The first thing you’re going to do when launching a hosting company is choose a name. Consider first what’s in a name, glance at a couple examples and perhaps gain some inspiration from them. There’s various ways you could do this — some companies simply add an ‘s’, like fused networks did, for example: fused networks (now defunct, though acquired). Or you could acquire another top-level-domain for a company like the lovely fused hosting did. As much as this can get you in legal heat later on little consideration should be put into it as you can simply pick a new name later & start over.

If none of these options suit your needs, you could always combine the word ‘host’ with a random animal. Though many of the common ones are taken, there’s still a few available like ‘swamp rat’. After googling around a bit further I’ve found that every other type of animal is taken: You’re out of luck, so try one of the previous methods. (Even ‘parrot hosting’ is taken)

Remember the best way to duplicate success is to copy someone precisely.

Pick a mascot!

Every company has to portray an image and if you’re anything like myself & have a face for radio you best get a mascot. Considering you’ll be launching your company on dreams, hopes & blood sweat and tears, I suggest you go for a realistic mascot like a unicorn. The now defunct ‘hostingpuppy’ would easily still be in business had they chosen a unicorn to represent their company financially: Trust me, everything is better with rainbows and unicorns — particularly bankruptcy filings.

Here’s a tutorial you can learn how to draw a unicorn if you’re unable to source an image from google image search: Walter Foster’s how to draw a unicorn.

Livechat

If you’ve browsed enough web hosting sites you’ll quickly note that something consistent with a great deal of them are livechat pop-ups. The easiest way to convince someone to sign-up with your hosting company is to initiate a chat with them each time they wander to a new page on your site. Leaving clients to read the pages on their own without a pop-up every few moments is just bad form. I suggest setting up a timer that automatically pops up a livechat request every 15 to 30 seconds. It doesn’t hurt to cover your site with pictures of pretty representatives who don’t actually work at your company either, it leads us to our next point…

Sex sells!

If superbowl ads tell us anything, sex sells. Though I can attest I’ve never purchased anything that was the direct result of sex. If you do intend on utilizing sex in your advertising just don’t don’t forget to cover all of your potential markets like these fine chaps do:

A slogan!

Last, but not least, every company needs a tagline. If you ever intend on your company being advertised on late-night television in between cardio workout video infomercials & blenders, you’ll need a slogan. You will never amount to much unless your company can eat up the competition so I suggest a slogan that’s easy to remember like “Always low prices, always low quality” to ensure customers keep gobbling it up…

I could go on, but in all honesty.. as much as this post was written in slight jest: launching your own company can be extremely rewarding and such a fantastic learning experience: I highly recommend getting involved first-hand with something you’re passionate & love. In the end, do what you love and love what you do

No animals were harmed in the making of this post. Hosts, maybe.