Case Study 11. Hosting Turnaround, From Loss to Recurring Revenue
Industry: Managed Web Services and Business Operations. Timeline: 2024 to Present.
The Problem.
A portfolio of client websites had been left to drift. The sites were still online and still costing money to host, but the billing behind them had lapsed. Hosting fees were going uncollected, maintenance was passive at best, and licensing had stopped being charged for at all. The technical side had been neglected just as badly: sites carried unlicensed and abandoned plugins, outdated PHP, and inconsistent configurations, and nobody was monitoring them for security. It was the worst of both sides of the ledger, a book that cost money to keep running and brought almost nothing in.
The Solution.
I took the portfolio over and rebuilt it on both sides at once, cost and revenue.
On the cost side, I consolidated the hosting onto a right-sized managed account and shed the capacity the portfolio was paying for but not using. That cut the main hosting bill by roughly half.
On the technical side, I audited every site, removed unlicensed and abandoned plugins, updated PHP, and standardized security configurations. Because no one had been watching, I found at least six sites that were actively infected, including one compromised through a pirated plugin, and cleaned them up. Ongoing monitoring replaced the previous absence of any oversight at all.
On the revenue side, I turned billing back on and put it on rational, repeatable terms. Hosting moved to annual agreements across the paid sites. For maintenance, I replaced a passive, only-if-they-ask model with proactive quarterly outreach, a standing check-in that keeps the sites current and reliably surfaces the work clients actually want done. For licensing, my wife and I replaced an arbitrary, made-up price with a real formula: the annual single-site license cost plus a defined management markup, applied consistently across the whole book.
Then I put the commercial structure underneath it, recurring billing through Square, annual contracts, and defined service scope, so the entire portfolio ran on the same clear terms instead of ad hoc, case-by-case arrangements.
The Outcome.
A portfolio that had been running at a loss, costing money to host while collecting almost nothing, became a structured and profitable recurring-revenue service. The hosting cost came down by roughly half, and three revenue streams that had lapsed, hosting, maintenance, and licensing, were rebuilt on defined, repeatable terms. Clients now know what they are paying for and why, the sites are monitored and kept current, and the book generates predictable recurring income instead of quietly draining money.
It also became a template rather than a one-time rescue. The same approach, take an unmanaged and unprofitable book, cut the cost, rebuild the revenue on clear and repeatable terms, and put real operational discipline behind it, is now a defined, productized service.