XeonServe said:
How on God's Earth are real proper hosts meant to make an honest living when you have complete idiots coming along and providing this?
Firstly, how do you define a "real proper host". Everything is pretty much relative... a shared host with rented dedicated servers would seem less real than a host with his own cage... A host with his own cage would seem less "real" than a host with their own datacenter.. Very relative
The truth is that if you are offering web hosting services on the internet, you are by defintion a web hosting provider, whether real or unreal.. regardless of how many upstream providers you are dependent on.
Now.. do you really have to worry? i would be worried if its very likely that a customer visiting my site was also visiting the site of a competitor that offered a better product... But the fact is, given the "vastness" of the internet... and depending the source of traffic to your website.. it is unlikely your potential clients are going to end up visiting your competitor with the better product. This of course depends on where you source your traffic from.. and whether your competitors are sourcing their traffic from that same location.. If both of you source traffic from the same place, the potential client will compare you. if you source traffic from a different, untapped source.. in all likely hood you'd be the first and foremost choice for the customer as long as you meet all their requirements.
So the trick to being successful in this competitive industry is broadening the source of your traffic, and looking for unique.. untapped sources that haven't been exploited by your competitors.. These sources don't have to be sites with alot of traffic, but any source with suffient traffic that may have an interest in your offerings..
I've talked to the owners of alot of successful web hosting companies and most of them admit that their real breakthrough came when they found an untapped source of traffic that they exploited. Our early sucess too came from finding a couple of untapped sources and exploiting them.. And we still are always on the hunt..
