It is bound to come up sooner or later. Your friends, colleagues or clients know what you do, and they are dying to have you take them under your wing and host their sites for them. They don’t have a hosting account of their own, and wouldn’t know what to do with it if they did. They are trading on your expertise to help them get online the easy way. Let’s take a quick look at why this is usually a bad idea and the situations where it would be okay.
First let’s take friends. It’s all too easy to say to your friends that you’ll help them out and get their site up on your hosting account. They may not have even asked, but out of the softness of your heart wanting to help them out you’ve offered to host their site for them. Bad idea (usually). First, if you are doing this for free you’ll have established that this type of service is nothing too difficult, and they’ll likely feel free to draw upon your services to help them design, install scripts, monetize and further market their sites.
This is not what you bargained for. You wanted to help; not be a slave webmaster for them! Then, it becomes difficult to beg off, or, if you need to change web hosting, you have more problems. Also, friends are unlikely to learn what they need to do to become proficient at setting up and using their own web hosting. Never mind that you’re probably doing this for free!
Hosting sites for your family can be even more problematical. You are expected to help, and who’s going to refuse their mother who is itching to become the best blogger on the block! Just tread carefully, and let them know that this is your business, your livelihood, and needs to be respected as such.
Hosting for clients makes a bit more sense, but only a little. If you’re doing this for profit, then having control over your clients sites can be a nifty little stream of passive income that you basically have to work for once, with a bit of maintenance here and there. If you are doing marketing or SEO work for them anyhow, it may even prove to be a convenience to have the sites at your fingertips. It may even turn out to be a good lure for people to use your services, the ability to have their sites hosted for a bit more.
Some of the downsides of this type of arrangement usually occur when either party wishes to move on. For whatever reason, the client may feel as though they no longer want your services, or your hosting for that matter. You may have done a lot of work for them, and are now being ditched. You may have proprietary software or scripts that they are using, and you’re reluctant to let them go. They, on the other hand, may not have any of the expertise necessary to move it on their own. All of these scenarios are sticky and unpleasant.
Some of the situations where it may be a good idea are when the persons involved understand your business a bit, or at least are willing to listen. There may be situations when putting up a public service site could offer you some nice publicity for a small amount of goodwill. And then of course, be sure not to turn down your mom and her blog!
All in all, unless you are in the web hosting business, tread carefully when offering hosting to clients, family and friends!
