Back in 2007 we leaked a company email from Brent Oxley, then HostGator CEO, to our blog. Since that time we’ve grown by leaps and bounds (to the tune of 610%), became the 21st fastest growing company on the Inc. 5000, added a new office location in Austin, TX, and are over 450 employees strong. With those feats, we’ve had our fair share of challenges along the way, however we’re all ready to bring HostGator to the next level. Below is the bulk of an internal e-mail from Brent Oxley sent on Nov. 18th, showcasing some big changes going on at HostGator.

Hello Fellow Gators,

I want everyone to read this so I’m going to start off with some fireworks…

Every single Gator in the Houston office is getting a 10% raise starting immediately.

This raise will be reflected on your next paycheck and will not take the place of any upcoming reviews, bonuses or other compensation you have coming. A while ago I sent a news email stating that once we had more automaton in place every employee would receive a raise. We don’t have the automation yet, but we are nearly there with the new billing system so I’ve decided to give part of it in advance. I believe through automation we will become 22%-30% more efficient with staffing. I’m really hoping this 10% raise is just the start and I hope to pass along every penny we save from automation to all of you. While remaining understaffed, HostGator is completely bloated at the same time. What very few of you understand is that some of our most underpaid employees are making over $100,000 a year while some of our most overpaid employees are making $30,000 a year. There are a few of us that perform on such a low level that if everyone did likewise the company would end up bankrupt. Likewise there are other employees that do the equivalent work of four or more of their peers. At HostGator, the sky really is the limit to what you can make, but in order for this to be the case you must always be learning and growing. You truly do create your own destiny at HostGator.

Free Lunch for Everybody

…

Many will remember “Billy the Human Billboard“, who we covered in our previous blog post after he received a HostGator tattoo on the back of his neck. Billy’s HostGator tattoo has sparked a range of responses from: people asking to get this done, outrage, and even proposed boycotts.

Someone even went as far as to compare HostGator with human traffickers as you can see in the video below:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXSJUu8-zkU

Billy has gone on to receive additional tattoos from other companies (27 and counting), moving him closer to his goal of having the most tattoo advertisements in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Since then, Billy is no longer “Billy the Human Billboard”, as he has legally changed his name to “Hostgator Dotcom”.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6R6O7uqPSc&feature=youtu.be&a

Hostgator Dotcom’s driver license:

Hostgator Dotcom’s certificate of name change: …

Our Reseller Hosting clients might be happy to hear they have a new feature awaiting them in the form of over 400 brandable, support video tutorials.

For awhile now, HostGator has been using similar video tutorials to assist us in supporting our clients. Now our resellers will be able to access these tutorials in their Web Host Manager (WHM) and be able to:

The videos cover many different topics to assist your own web hosting clients including:

Whether you’re a new reseller hosting customer, or an existing one, you can take advantage of these tutorials for free, no charge whatsoever.

To get started, please login to your Web Host Manager, click “Plugins”, and then click “Client Tutorials”.

You can get more information on how this works from the following video:

We will update these videos with newer versions as they become out-of-date at no additional charge. Video updates will be automatic and will not require any effort from the reseller. In the future, we have plans to expand the library to include more topics, a female narration option for each video, and more themes. We also plan on releasing packages tailored for our VPS and dedicated customers as well within the upcoming months. …

It looks like GeoCities, the Free Web Hosting service owned by Yahoo!, is officially ending service to website owners today. I’m sure many of you have used their service at one point or another, so it’s kind of sad to see them go down with all of the web sites they hosted. My first web site was on GeoCities, complete with a looping, low-quality instrumental midi file, and animated graphics. Many other free web hosting services like GeoCities have risen and fallen over the years because the free hosting business model just doesn’t seem sustainable.

It’s amazing how many web sites with no business model or profitability sunk during the .com internet bubble. Internet businesses, like any other company, aren’t immune from the age old philosophy of “you need to make money to stay in business”. Now there are a few exceptions to this rule. It’s still possible to come up with a great idea for a web site and receive funding from a venture capital firm (read: Twitter), but for the everyday web business owner, they understand the need to make a profit.

Many GeoCities refugees have migrated over to HostGator, and we want to welcome you all with open arms. We can assure you that HostGator won’t have the same fate as GeoCities because well, we’re a profitable company.

If you have a site with GeoCities and need a new home, post a comment and we’ll try to throw you some free months worth of Hosting at HostGator. …

Inc. Magazine just ranked HostGator #239 overall on their prestigious Inc. 5000 list of the fastest growing privately owned companies in America. Here’s how the companies that make Inc’s list are ranked:

The Inc. 500|5000 is ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2005 through 2008. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by the first week of 2005, and therefore able to show four full calendar years of sales. Additionally, they have to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independent — not subsidiaries or divisions of other companies — as of December 31, 2008 (a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired since that date). Revenue in 2005 must have been at least $200,000, and revenue in 2008 must have been at least $2 million.

Additionally, HostGator ranked #6 in all Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown, TX (Greater Houston area) companies, and #20 out of all companies in our category—Business Products & Services.
HostGator has managed to grow over 896% within the measured 3 year time period. We’ve nearly doubled in revenue from 2007 to 2008.

In 2008, HostGator was ranked at #21 overall. Although 2009’s rank was lower than the previous year’s, we’ve nearly doubled our revenue between the two periods. Despite the job market shrinking across the U.S., HostGator has also created 100 positions for highly qualified technicians and systems’ administrators in the Houston area over the last year.

I think I speak for everyone at HostGator, when I say we’re all really proud to be a part of this company and what we’ve been able to accomplish. The growth simply comes from doing what we’ve always done: providing our clients with reliable web hosting service, 24/7 support, and by offering as many features as possible.

Huge thanks goes to our clients and employees for our continued success. …

**CONTEST HAS EXPIRED** Follow us on twitter @hostgator for future contests.

HostGator has teamed up with one of our customers, BlogertizeWorld.com, to give away 30 free iPhone 3GS’s in the form of a Twitter contest.

The rules are simple and this contest is open to everyone. Click here to re-tweet the details with the hashtag #HGBW, and get entered for a chance to win. There’s no limit on the number of tweets you can submit with this hashtag, so the more submissions, the better your odds.

Don’t forget to follow @hostgator on Twitter! …

It seems like no matter what business industry you’re looking at, there’s always room for shady activities. Web hosting and the domain industry are no exceptions. However, most people are totally unaware of one such practice known as domain tasting. Domain Tasting is essentially when a someone buys a domain name for the sole purpose of seeing whether or not it can generate ad income. The domain registrant puts ads on the domain, and if the ads don’t make any money, the registrant has five days to request a refund.

There have been many big companies involved with Domain Tasting, and since they can pull off the above example on a much larger scale, they have been able to reap insane amounts of profits. This had affected us and our clients because millions of domains were getting tied up by ‘tasters’ and would appear unavailable when someone actually went to register their domain name.

To help curb this problem, since April of this year, ICANN has made their $.20 domain transaction fee non-refundable. So if a company wants to sample 50,000 domain names, for instance, then they’ll have to shell out $10,000 in registration fees even if they get a refund for the domains within the five day grace period. This change hasn’t eliminated the problem altogether, but it’s certainly helped.

Obviously domain tasting wouldn’t have gotten as out of control as it did, had it not been for the huge profits that people were reaping in. At HostGator, we don’t have that many domain registrations, since we specialize in web hosting. However, it’s still evident that there are major profits to be earned with a decent domain portfolio. One such way to monetize domain names, that we’ve explored recently, is via domain parking.

When you first buy a domain, the domain will be using the default name servers of the registrar generally. The default page you see, usually with ads all over it, is a good example of a parked page. What most people don’t realize though, is that even if they aren’t going to develop the domain right away, they can still make money from the domain while it waits to be developed.

The company we’ve been using for domain parking is DomainSponsor. Basically we use their name servers on inactive domain names in our account, and all traffic gets pointed to a domain parking page where relevant ads are displayed, giving us a percentage of the revenue made from the ads.

So just how much money can you make with Domain Parking? We were pleasantly surprised with the results.

The above check was for the month of May. We’ve been using Domain Sponsor for the last 3 months, and are consistently getting over $25,000/monthly with the domains that we have. Now these results may be unique since we do have roughly 12,000 domain names in our DomainSponsor portfolio, but many domainers have much more domains than this and can stand to make much more money. …