Reseller Hosting Business Alongside Your Full-Time Job

In an ideal world, you could just quit your job on the spot and start running your reseller hosting business full-time. But unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world. You can certainly do this if you're young and your parents are willing to let you stay at theirs, but as an adult, you have bills to pay.

While this is where many people let their dreams die, you should do the complete opposite. Building a reseller hosting business alongside a full-time job will be more difficult, but it isn’t possible. You just need to do some planning and ensure you have a tighter grip on your schedule.

We've put together this full guide with several useful tips to help you find the time to grow your reseller hosting business. By following these for the long run, you’ll eventually succeed if you continue doing the required work.

Commit to at Least an Hour Each Day

To be a successful hosting reseller while keeping your day job, you must carve some time in your schedule. A minimum level of effort is needed to build your dreams, and I suggest committing at least one hour each day to your business.

You can choose when you’d like to work on your business, but to be honest, I recommend doing so first thing in the morning. Doing so means that you can focus on your other commitments guilt-free for the rest of the day, and it also gives you a period where you can work on everything undisturbed.

Committing more time to growing your business is better, but an hour is at least an ideal starting point. Make sure that this time is deep work, too; don’t fall into the trap of checking your emails and other things that make you feel like you’re being productive but aren’t.

Find a Job That You Don’t Dislike

When you’re working on your reseller hosting business, you want to focus on learning how to actually resell hosting. Doing so will require significant mental bandwidth, and for this reason, you must eliminate stressors elsewhere as much as possible.

The type of job you have will significantly impact your energy levels. If you don’t like your job, you’ll find it much harder to sit down and work on your reseller hosting business. Conversely, working a job you like – while building your dream – can sometimes be a blissful experience.

If you already have a job you like, keep this while you’re building your reseller hosting business. But if not, you should strongly consider looking for something else.

Use Weekends to Your Advantage

The risk of burnout is significant if you’re working full-time while trying to build a reseller hosting business on the side. However, while you should manage your workload to avoid hitting a brick wall, you must also maximize your time to grow your business.

Weekends give you more time to focus on your business without worrying about your job, and for this reason, you must use them to your advantage. How you structure your Saturday and Sunday will depend on numerous factors, such as whether you have kids or a partner. Commit as much time as possible, but don’t worry if this isn’t a full day.

Start by committing 2-4 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. Ideally, these time slots should be in the morning before others in your household wake up. Frontloading your chores is also a good idea, and think about where you can save time (e.g., ordering groceries to your door).

You can free up your weekends once you go full-time on your business, but until then, use this time as much as you can.

Get a Hybrid or Remote Working Agreement if Possible

Even if you don’t want to earn income as a digital nomad, you should still leverage the internet to help you grow your reseller hosting business. If you have to commute five days a week, consider asking your employer for a hybrid or remote working agreement.

Having at least a few days when you work from home could be the best thing you can do for your reseller hosting business. You’ll save time and stress on commuting, but that’s not all. Rather than being in an office for eight hours, you can work on your reseller hosting business as soon as you finish your job obligations.

Your employer will be more likely to facilitate your needs if you prove that you’re a valuable team member. Make sure that you continue going above and beyond and showing that they can trust you.

Choose a Hosting Reseller That Makes Things Easy for You

You don’t want to waste time on technical difficulties and customer complaints. The company you buy reseller hosting from will play a huge role here, and you must pick a reputable one.

Rather than trying to get the cheapest option, look carefully through their offerings. Ensure that they have good server availability and resource scalability. It’s also important to read what others say about them.

By choosing the right hosting provider, you’ll limit technical difficulties. As a result, you’ll have more time to focus on the most essential tasks.

Create Clear Processes

Running a business full-time is challenging enough without processes, let alone if you can only allocate a few hours per week. Before you launch your services, you must build clear processes. Otherwise, you’ll constantly feel overwhelmed.

List your most essential tasks and outline how you’ll ensure that you complete these. Beyond that, it’s also worth thinking about everything that could go wrong and setting up contingency plans.

Keep all of your processes stored digitally in a Wiki; I personally recommend using Notion for this.

Reinvest Your Salary Into Your Business Where Possible

I can tell you from personal experience that growing a business is much easier if you’ve already got regular income from elsewhere. Besides paying your bills without stress, you can reinvest in your business and accelerate your progress.

Reinvest as much of your post-tax salary into your business as possible. This can cover numerous elements, such as:

• Hiring contractors

• Purchasing books and courses that’ll help you grow your business

• Improving your products and services

• Buying the best possible hosting plan

You can also use your salary to build a runway (ideally 3-6 months). Doing so will enable you to go full-time more quickly. After paying for your essentials, I personally would reinvest at least 90% of your income into your reseller hosting business.

Consider Other Ways to Increase Your Income

If your job doesn’t pay you a good salary, consider other ways to increase your income and fund your dream. Getting a better-paying job is one option, but you could spend the time you would on applications to grow your business instead. For this reason, I recommend looking at other options.

Many people offer freelance services based on the skills they’ve built. For example, you could pitch companies to see if they’re interested in web development, marketing, or copywriting. Consider taking 30 days to set yourself up as a freelancer and then reaching out to your ideal clients.

Make sure that you don’t pick too many things because you’ll otherwise become distracted from the main business. For example, if you’re going to freelance, pick a few high-quality clients and manage your time accordingly.

Consider Asking if You Can Reduce Your Hours

Once your reseller hosting business starts to make money, you’ll have proof of concept. More importantly, you can allocate more time with the confidence that you’ll succeed in enough time. At this point, it’s worth seeing if you can potentially reduce your hours.

Whether this is possible will depend on your job. It may not be possible for many knowledge work roles, but nonetheless, you should still ask.

You may also want to consider looking for part-time roles at this stage. Alternatively, if you were successful as a freelancer, think about picking up more work and then building your reseller hosting business.

Shift Your Priorities

When you work a full-time job, it’s very easy to start picking up shallow tasks that mean very little to your progress. You’re also prone to this happening in real life; for example, you may say yes to social events that you don’t really want to join.

Since you only have limited time to grow your business, it’s very important that you shift your priorities. When I started working for myself, I stopped going out every weekend and cut out a lot of habits that weren’t serving me. For example, after looking at my Screen Time statistics, I deleted most of my social media accounts.

Your reseller hosting business should be one of your key priorities if you want it to succeed. Go through what you're currently spending time on and get rid of everything that does not bring you joy or move the needle forward. You’ll probably find that you have more time than you think.

Set Tangible Goals Based on Your Circumstances

It’s very easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you must become successful quickly. However, most “overnight successes” you see have been working for at least a few years in the background. I would also argue that it’s better to enjoy slower success; in my opinion, it’ll be more sustainable, and you’ll actually know what to do when it arrives.

Be honest with how much time you can allocate to your reseller hosting business each week. Then, set goals and timescales based on this information. You may need to iterate a few times before you get things right, but doing so is worth the effort.

Since all wins feel the same, you should also celebrate the small successes. Doing so will ensure that you stay motivated for the whole journey.

Don’t Quit Your Job Until You Need To

Quitting your job will always feel like a risk, and it’s a necessity if you want to take your business to the next level. However, you should think twice about doing so before you absolutely need to. The extra money will give you more flexibility in building your reseller hosting business the right way.

But when do you know that it’s time to quit?

Well, here are a few ways…

• Your income has overtaken your full-time salary for 3-6 successive months.

• You have a good enough runway to take the leap and not struggle financially.

• You’re earning money from your business and feel like you don’t have any more time to commit without quitting.

Taking risks is important in business, but they need to be calculated risks. You’ll know deep down when it’s time to take the leap; until then, keep your day job and keep growing on the side.

Summary

Running a reseller hosting business alongside your full-time job is possible, but you must be smart with your time and plan accordingly. Prioritizing tasks is crucial, and you should also think about ways to get more flexibility or increase your income. Reinvest as much of your full-time salary as possible into your business, too.

Frequently Asked Questions