<<I'm doing pretty much the same thing as you. I completely agree with the upfront fee, I got burned my first two times and realized it just wouldn't work.
What I recommend is getting a PayPal account and doing your own hosting. For $100 a year you can get a reseller account at www.wildwestdomains.com (GoDaddy). That way you can be making profit on the hosting too.
Dont forget to register with the state too...
DBA's (sometimes called trade names) usually cost around 50 bucks
varies by state tho>>
--What exactly is a reseller account?
--How does a reseller account work?
--Does every site I make include an email address for my client as well?
--And what is a DBA (trade name) and what is that all about?
-A reseller account is an account which allows you to sub-license a set amount of space given to you by your host. Meaning that you pay your host, and your customers pay you. It basically allows you to become your own web host. Through this account you can also register domains, and do other advanced webhost features for your clients.
-It works as such.... You have an account, in your account you are able to create plans. A plan basically describes how much of what a user is allowed. Like how much space, bandwidth, etc. on their account on your "host". You can then get users to signup for your plans and pay you for the services they provide you. Also under your account you can modify the plans, and accounts you give out (suspend, change, edit, removed, etc.).
-Include emails...? Well that all depends on what you arrange with your host in the first place. If your host says with your reseller account you get unlimited email accounts, then you just log into your account and create all your plans with unlimited emails. But say your host limits you to 500 email accounts, you might have to limit all your plans to say 5 emails per. Now the other thing is when you say emails for your clients, you should realize that you must first register them a domain before they can have emails "@theirsite.org" and such. But once you register them a domain, they can have however many emails their plan (which was originally created by you remember) says they can.
EDIT - Now that I have looked into resellers and all that stuff it would make just as much sense to get a free reseller account... try this website.
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EDIT - I just noticed your edit, I'll check it out. What a big help, thankyou. If anyone else has any advice about resellers, please let me know! Thank you!
Does a DBA mean you own your own business? and thus must pay taxes as a business? and is a DBA like a license?
Yes, DBA means "doing business as," and as a business you will need licensing and you will need to pay taxes. You will have to look into what your local laws are because they vary from state to state (and country). For instance, I am "Karen Garvin, DBA Tangent Graphics," where Tangent Graphics is my company name.
Take a look at this for starters. Searching for "DBA license" will give you lots of leads.
ok there are a few free UK reseller out there but not many, it all depends how high a quota you need.
i run a UK based web host company (not my main income)
resellers are difficult to plot plans for as you have to consider how you want to limit the clients
one plan such as
15GB Disc Space
1TB Banwidth
unlimited host accounts
unlimited extras
includes cPanel
£10/mo
that is just a example of a package. if you are after a free reseller then you might want to do think about how many hosts you are going to need, what kind of websites you plan to host.
it is very rare that you will come across a free reseller that has higher than:
5GB disc space
15GB bandwidth
10host accounts
unlimited extras
usually they are like that but even if you plan to pay look around at different companies and see what they offer.
note. make sure you check about host accounts, and namesavers. some companies seriously limits you on this (ridiculous in my opinion.)
Does a DBA mean you own your own business? and thus must pay taxes as a business? and is a DBA like a license?
DBA means different things. I can only speak for companies in the US, but here it goes...
There are fundamentally 4 different types of companies in the US.
1) Sole Proprietorships - This is one and only one person running a company. Many web designers / developers are set up under this method. The benefits are that your business income is treated the same as your income, the cons are that all your personal assets are your business assets as well. So, if you get sued, that party can go after your home, property etc.
2) Corporations - These come in many flavors (S-Corp and C-Corp to name a couple). The primary benefit here is legal seperation between business and personal finances and assets. If you get sued here, they go after the business, not you. These are usually more expensive to set up (fees for my business were about $250) and have more reporting requirements for IRS purposes.
3) Partner ships - This is like a Sole Prop, except there is more than one person
4) Limited Liability Corporation (LLC or Ltd) - This is a hybrid between a corporation and a Partnership. The benefit of this over a partnership is that each member is only liable for their own actions. Meaning if the CFO embezzeled $50k, and the owner didn't know about it, the owner is indemnified usually. Where as in a Corp, or Partnership, all parties may be responsible.
If you set up anything other than a Sole Prop - it's going to be to your benefit to work with an accountant to keep all the legal requirements in order.
I woud'nt rely too much effort on hosting related.
There are so many hosting related company's these days, and like 10% of them is about quality. I'm sorry to bring it to you, but i can tell after a year of working in the hosting.
And there's is no such thing as 'free reseller' accounts lol.
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