In this post, I am going to address starting a webhost. Now, yes, a hell of a lot of people do run a website hosting business. However, there is a lot of room in the market for a quality host. Most of the companies out there are "we-are-cheap-so-give-us-your-money-and-we'll-go-away-and-come-back-as-a-different-name-and-take-your-money-again" hosts.
You can set up a webhost on a minimal budget, but the bigger your budget, the higher chance of survival - but the larger the investment lost if at all goes wrong.
You have to market straight away! All the time you do not have clients, all the time you are losing money. Flyers, business cards, web promotion, word-of-mouth, radio adverts (if you can afford them) and more - you have to market!
As for running the company, most reseller providers will give you WHM / CPanel for your admin CP and many give you something like ClientExec or WHMAutoPilot for billing. Others, such as Hostgator, give you a FREE eNom Reseller Account.
For support, there are lots of ticket systems on the market, Cerberus Helpdesk, Kayako eSupport are two well-known, good ones. And Kayako offer a LiveHelp system for live chat between clients.
While you are small, you could probably get away with just offering ticket support, but once you get above, say, 100 - 200 clients, then you will have to put up FAQs, implement LiveSupport, get a phoneline running and, if possible, make your support 24 x 7.
There are profits to be made in the industry, the Internet is always growing! Sometimes, it is best to charge higher prices. People are starting to realise that "you get what you pay for" relates to the hosting industry! You pay peanuts, you get monkeys, as they say.
Oh, before I forget, write a business plan!! I cannot stress this enough, a business plan could make or break your business. Plan for the worst situation that if it does happen, you know how to handle it!
If you do it right, make everything above-board, always stay in profit, then you should survive the dream (or nightmare depending on whether you did it right or not) that is Website Hosting!
Finally, I will just say, that it is possible to make it in the industry and to make your millions. There are people over at WebHostingTalk who have like, 600 clients in just 6 months - and then there are others who have just 8 in 6 months. It depends entirely on how stable your business "backend" is!
Hope I helped our budding webhosting entrepreneurs!
Will.
So with that, ive gotta earn my own money now. and ive found myself rather poor. whyle supporting myself, im also trying to save for a trip to the uk later in the year. 
