What am I Worth

At times we taken a broad and almost academic approach to examining some of the hosting industry issues, but in recent months we been giving added attention to the kind of practical and applicable advice aimed at smaller hosts and resellers, which reached a high point with last issue blueprint for building a small web hosting company.

This issue carries on with that point of view, asking, in our cover story, am I worth? It a complicated question without a clearcut answer aside from a glib, you can get someone to pay and with a thorny answer in many parts. Inherently, this is information for the smaller provider. The public company knows exactly what it is worth on a moment to moment basis. But the smaller hosting provider may not have a sense of its own value without actually engaging a broker and courting a sale.

But wanting to know what you worth isn necessarily the same thing as wanting to sell. In business, a valuation like that is one of the few yardsticks for success. To you, am I worth? might mean something more like, am I doing? in the cover story that asks that question, am I worth? regular contributor Dennis McCafferty attempts to provide the small hosting provider with a loose formula for creating a doityourself valuation, discussing some of the basic metrics for the most common types of hosting operations, and dissecting many of the variables that can either add to, or subtract from, that valuation. In doing so, he provides not only a means of selfevaluation, but a lot of practical, actionable advice for making your small hosting business more valuable to a potential buyer.

Bring that same point of view to a somewhat different subject matter, Wayne Epperson, another regular WHIR contributor, offers up a simple recipe for building a hosting superpower. And, while most of us lack the exact ingredients, the examination reveals some valuable insight about the companies that have them, which may be worth noting for hosting more information providers thinking they might make for suitable acquisitions.

And continuing the add series of features that has become perhaps the best ongoing manifestation of that practical, smallhost point of view, WHIR regular Esther Bauer contributes a feature on the value in adding security monitoring services to your hosting operation.

I know firsthand that am I worth is a common question in the most populous segments in the hosting market. And it exciting for me that this issue of WHIR magazine should serve as a useful tool in answering that question.