The overall benefit or goal of hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot at your location is being able to offer high-speed wireless Internet access there. In addition to satisfying the needs of connectivity for your customers and visitors, you and your staff can take advantage of having the Internet readily available.
Other benefits of hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot include these:
Attract people to your location
Generate additional revenue
Create a private network for your own use
Attract People to Your Location
Hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot, in any type of business, should attract new people to your location and entice them to return and stay longer. For retail stores such as cafés and bookstores, this access helps fill empty seats. For businesses such as hotels, having Wi-Fi Internet access available for guests might be essential to prevent losing potential customers.
Obviously, for people to find your hotspot in directories, you must submit your information. If you set up your hotspot to be part of a network, your information would likely be listed automatically in their directories. You can also submit your hotspot to universal directories that list any hotspot, free or fee-based, whether it is independent or part of a larger network.
The best way to attract users to your hotspot is to display signs advertising that you have a hotspot at your location. These signs could simply say "Wi-Fi Hotspot Here" or "Wireless Internet Access Available."
Generate Additional Revenue
While you are providing a convenient service to your customers and visitors by hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot, you might also generate some additional revenue for your business or organization. Here are ways that you can create some revenue:
Indirect sales of your products or services
Hotspot network commissions
Fees from an independent fee-based hotspot
Advertising revenue
Increased Sales of Products or Services
As mentioned earlier, hosting a Wi-Fi hotspot will likely attract many new visitors to your location. Getting more people in a store and enticing them to stay longer usually means you will sell more of your products or services. Thus, you should see increased revenue while hosting a wireless hotspot.
Estimating this potential indirect revenue is difficult for any business or organization. To start, ask yourself a few questions based on your particular situation:
Are your current customers or visitors the type who would sit at your location with a laptop and check e-mail or browse the Internet? If your answer is yes or even maybe, the hotspot will likely attract people. If the answer is absolutely no, you probably should not be taking all this time to set up a hotspot that no one would likely use.
How many people do you think this hotspot would attract? You should estimate the number of people, per month, that you think would visit your location just because of your Wi-Fi hotspot. Start by thinking about how many customers or orders you currently receive, and then estimate additional numbers.
Will hotspot users buy products and services? You could rely on most of the hotspot users to purchase products or services. If your hotspot will be fee-based, you do not need to worry about this as much, because you will be paid through hotspot usage. When it comes to giving away free access, you probably want only paying customers or members of your organization to use your hotspot. For instance, in businesses such as cafés and restaurants, it is usually socially incorrect for non customers to use their restrooms. Therefore, people who use your free Wi-Fi hotspot will likely purchase your products or services.
How much will your revenue increase by hosting a hotspot? By using information about your business or organization, estimate how much revenue you can gain from having a hotspot at your location.
Hotspot Network Commissions
Keep in mind that when hosting a fee-based hotspot, you obviously have the potential to earn more direct revenue from the hotspot than if you were giving away free access. If you team up with a hotspot network providers, you will receive commissions. However, also consider that when hosting a fee-based hotspot, you typically will receive fewer users than if you were to host a free hotspot.
When you collaborate with a hotspot provider, it takes care of all the payments from users; you just sit back and wait for people to connect to your hotspot. The wireless providers should take care of everything.
Advertising Revenue
You can still make some direct revenue from hosting a free-access hotspot by selling advertising. The advertisements could be placed on the splash screen web page, which users would see at least the first time they connect, per session. Selling advertising is not recommended for everyone, because it can be time-consuming to make deals with local businesses and to set up the advertisements on your hotspot.
If you think you will be accepting advertisements, you need to think about pricing and terms for potential advertisers. Then come up with a ballpark figure of the potential revenue your business could generate from these advertisements.
Ability to Create a Private Network
After setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot, you can easily create a private wired or wireless network for use by you and your employees. The private and public networks can share the same Internet connection. Of course, this will not concern you if you already have a private network set up at the hotspot location. In this case, you can share the existing Internet connection between the private and public networks. If set up correctly, the private and public networks will be independent of each other, and your private network will be secured from the public.
Setting up your own private wireless network for your business or organization has the following benefits:
Mobility
Secure Internet browsing
Shared files and printers
Use of wireless devices, such as Wi-Fi video cams, print servers, Point of Sales terminal, etc
Just like Wi-Fi hotspots, having a wireless network for your business enables you to have mobility when using laptops and other Wi-Fi devices. You can access the Internet and print documents from anywhere within your facility. In addition, with Wi-Fi, you can move your desktop PCs anywhere within the coverage area, without the hassle of running ugly Ethernet cables throughout the office.
You could use your own Wi-Fi hotspot to browse the Internet and perform online tasks. However, unlike private networks, Wi-Fi hotspots must be left unencrypted and unsecured so that the public can effortlessly connect to the hotspot. Anyone who has the right software and tools can see what you and others are doing on the web. People can also see passwords for services like FTP and POP3 e-mail. If sharing services are set up on your computer, people might also be able to browse your files and get into your computer.
On the other hand, people cannot easily see information being passed to and from secured websites such as online online banking and shopping carts, which normally use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption.