Hosting and design or one or the other?

IMO it would be much, much more fruitful if you decided to split the two ventures apart. Some people want hosting, some want designs, some want both... not everyone wants everything. Regarding banners2go's reply to the thread - why on earth would you be so lazy? Ok, so it might be easier for you as an individual to keep your two services together but have you considered the potential advantages of marketing both brands separately (if you can afford it both monitarily and with available time). There is no reason on earth why you can't co-market both services but each must be a recognisable, individual brand (IMO) if you want the best out of the situation. What happens when you want to diversify into yet another area?

Starting a network of co-marketed yet individual brands is the way to go (again totally my opinion!) - you could even start a "2go" group! This way, each brand gets their own client-base but the whole network benefits from cross-advertising.

It's just an idea. The same goes for the thread starter. It is fine to run the two services side-by-side but at least try to use two different web addresses.

- Salathe

I have to agree with Peter. I can't think of any instance where it would be a good idea to offer two different services under the same website.

I can't think of any instance where it would be a good idea to offer two different services under the same website.

I gave you all the perfect example, banners2go.....we offer banners and traffic the two services go side by side. Why is it not a good idea to have two different services under one domain? So far about 10% of my customers who i have made banners for have purchased traffic.

I'm with Peter here, I had a friend speak to me asking about the same situation, well it was a client actually.

INX-Gaming.co.uk hired me after a long talk about whether or not to keep their gaming server clients seperate from their dedicated server / colocation clients. I suggested this because having a different website, different billing system and a different brand for it would make it a hell of a lot easier to manage the clients and correspond them into a seperate client group (i.e, Dedicated , Game Server , Colocation, IP Transit).

The cross marketability of both brands (INX-Gaming and INX-Network) is a very high factor. For example game server clients may fancy starting their own game server company after renting a games server from INX. All they have to do is rent a Dedicated Server or CoLocate their own server with INX-Network, and begin the server administration process.

How Handy eh!

Originally Posted by stoavio I have to agree with Peter. I can't think of any instance where it would be a good idea to offer two different services under the same website.

I take that back. I can think of some instances where offering two services that correlate well with one another would work very well. If you have a loyal client base for one service, then it's likely some of the same clients will also find your other service beneficial and relevant. I just gave it some second thought

Some things should be seperated, but I think web design and hosting, really fit together under the same roof, if someone gets really good service for web design and he's looking for hosting, it may give him the idea that they probably give the same good service for hosting.

In the end, you see what's better for you and I think you had a lot of opinions and facts from both sides to get your own idea.

It would be great for you to do this! One of TemplateMonster's partners which offers hosting and design services contacted me to be one of their lead designers (lol) and they never returned my call. Turns out their designs aren't exactly good, so please out-do them as much as possible:P

TM is a very profitable company though :x