You offer web hosting services. Or web design services. Or both. When your clients need domain names for their websites, do you want to send them to another site, possibly to a competitor, to register one?
Of course not. That's part of why domain name registration is a popular service to offer. Reselling domain names provides an additional service to attract and keep clients as well as another source of recurring revenue. You can offer domain name registrations on their own or bundled with other services you provide.
Features of domain name reseller programs
When you are a domain name reseller, your clients register domain names using the service accessed through your domain name reseller account. The domain name company bills you, and you bill your clients. Or possibly the domain company handles the billing.
You decide on the retail pricing, and you market your services. The wholesale prices you pay before you add your markup depend on your sales volume and on the domain name reseller program you choose.
All of the domain name reseller companies compared in this article offer a reseller API (Application Programming Interface), which enables you to use the features provided with the domain reseller program. When your clients register domain names or update records at your site, the API communicates with the domain name reseller program system. With an API at your website, you keep the appearance and branding of your site when you resell domain names.
Two of the domain name companies compared here offer website creation tools for resellers, which means that you can be in the business of reselling domain names within minutes of having your account set up.
Many domain name reseller programs require the domain name reseller to pay and regularly top up a deposit for domain names. By doing this, the domain name reseller is paying for the domains in advance while making a profit from them when they're registered.
Domain name companies compared
The starting prices listed are the highest current wholesale prices for .com domains. Some other extensions may be higher, and the prices typically decrease with volume pricing.
See the company websites for more details about what each domain name reseller program offers.
BulkRegister
BulkRegister's Domain Pilot tool allows domain name resellers to provide their clients with a unique URL and access code to make changes to the Whois data for their domains. Resellers can control which of the fields to provide their clients with access to. Registration can be automated or manual.
Resellers become BulkRegister members and are invited to take part in discussions about product ideas, upgrades, and updates. A $50 Overture advertising credit comes with the first year of membership.
- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: $99
- Deposit required: No
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $12
- Website creation tool for resellers: No
- SSL certificate: Yes
eNom
If you resell domain names through eNom, you choose between two eNom tools:
- Automated Registration Software (API), which allows your clients to register and manage their domains through your site
- PDQ, a site that you customize and eNom manages — they handle the billing, and you earn commissions
As an eNom domain name reseller, you can also offer your clients web hosting, web monitoring, SSL certificates, and other eNom products as a reseller.
- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: $99 if you use the PDQ website tool
- Deposit required: Starts at $199 for 199 eNom points
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $9.95
- Website creation tool for resellers: Yes
- SSL certificate: No
Tucows
A website builder, blogware, SSL certificates, and email services are among the services you can resell as well as domain names.
- Setup fee: $95
- Annual fee: No
- Deposit required: No minimum payment, but they recommend prepaying one month of credit in advance
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $9.85
- Website creation tool for resellers: No
- SSL certificate: No
Wild West Domains
Owned by The Go Daddy Group, Inc., Wild West Domains offers several reseller packages. They also offer other products to resell in addition to domain names, including hosting, website builders, email plans, SSL certificates, and merchant accounts.
- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: Starting at $99; $249 with the API
- Deposit required: No
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $7.75
- Website creation tool for resellers: Yes
- SSL certificate: Yes
About the author:
Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for http://www.websitesource.com and http://www.lowpricedomains.com
Sunday, June 19, 2005
Reselling Domain Names
12 Steps to Creating a Business Online
by: Jim Edwards
(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
=====================================
"E-commerce"
A word pervading our society, making headlines around the world, and causing the stock market to rise and fall with
startling ease.
It seems every business news story centers on some technology company’s "DOT-com" or "DOT-bomb"!
With all the positive and negative hoopla, business owners of any size company can throw up their hands and feel the "E" world has left them behind.
Every business owner, salesperson, or professional asked one of two questions in the past year, either "Am I using e-commerce correctly?" or "How do I effectively get involved in e-commerce?"
You can buy hundreds of books and pay thousands in consulting fees to analyze and debate the answer to the first question.
To answer to the second question just follow these 12 steps.
Step 1 - Buy a domain name (your own DOT com). Go to www.NetworkSolutions.com and research names. Can a customer easily spell and remember it?
Step 2 - Write down your online goals and prepare a time and money budget.
How soon do you want your e-commerce site up and running?
How much will you spend?
How many hours will you devote to the site and when?
Step 3 - Surf the web to find other sites you like and dislike. Learn from others’ successes and mistakes by taking the best of what their sites offer and adapting it for your own use.
Step 4 - Design your site on paper. Define elements, look, feel, colors etc.
Step 5 - Hire a professional to set up the graphics and navigation, but with the intention of you or your staff maintaining the site’s day to day operations, communication and updates.
Step 6 - Invest in a digital camera and web publishing software such as Microsoft Front Page or Adobe Acrobat to keep up with the site’s maintenance.
Step 7 - Maintain, change, and update your site at least once a month. (The one exception to this rule are those one- page, sales letter websites. Once you have one of those that performs well and makes sales, don't change it!!)
Step 8 - Promote your site at every opportunity. Tell people about it. Put your web address on your business cards and in all your ads. Some companies even advertise their web address when they put you on hold on the telephone.
Step 9 - Give people a self-serving reason to visit your site. Coupon savings, discounts, special incentives, free information, and free newsletters represent excellent enticements for attracting visitors to your site.
Step 10 - Concentrate on obtaining an email address from every customer and potential customer.
Obtain permission to send periodic, value added malings to your database.
Use a list server to organize and maintain your mailing list.
Step 11 - Always look for and use the simplest solution or option.
Whether adding a shopping cart, database or other option to your e-commerce operation, seek out and use the simplest answer for your needs.
Step 12 - Become educated and stay current in the world of e-commerce.
Learn the marketing and sales techniques of the online world.
About the author:
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com
Domain Registration
Why You Need Private Whois Service
by: Stanley Spencer
Privacy is the control of one’s own personal information, control over what others know about one, and control over how others may use or exploit the personal information. Policies and practices for protecting privacy aim towards minimizing the collection of personally identifiable information. Therefore, the basis of privacy is anonymity, where no personally identifiable information is collected. Making compulsory, the disclosure of personally identifiable information, as under current WhoIs policies for domain registration, cause privacy to be undermined
For free speech, privacy is critical. For instance, if people are forced to disclose their identity, they are reluctant to fully express their ideas on account of fear of persecution.
The protection of anonymity further enhances the one-to-many characteristics of the Internet through which an individual's speech can reach a global audience.
Privacy and data protection laws may apply to domain registrars' WhoIs services and registrars' participation in thick registry WhoIs services in various countries, particularly in the European Union's member states.
Current ICANN regulations require that the Private contact information (WhoIs Info) of each domain registration be included in a publicly accessible Database.
The WhoIs database is the collection of information gathered by a domain name registrar from domain name registrants.
The purpose for which the WhoIs system is accessed includes:
1. To find out whether a specific domain name is unregistered and currently available
2. To identify the person or organization responsible for a domain registration or website on the Internet
3. To support technical operations of Internet Service Providers or network administrators, including assistance in tracing sources of Spam or denial of service attacks
4. To collect names and contact information for the purpose of marketing
5. To aid government law enforcement, other than intellectual property
When a WhoIs search is conducted, the information that is currently available about the domain name registrant leads to the name and address of the domain name owner.
However, when a domain name is registered, the personal contact information such as name, address, email address, and even phone number might be made freely available.
The domain registrant would not know who collected his/her WhoIs data, the reason for which the information was collected, and how the collector is likely to use the information
This implies that the private information is displayed and made available to whoever wants to see it, at any point of time.
Now it is possible to protect one’s private WhoIs information by switching the "public" domain registration to a "private" unlisted registration through a private whois service.
A private whois service protects the private information and shields against its misuse. Hence, one is protected against:
- Spam,
- Identity Theft,
- Data Mining,
- Name Hijackers,
- Etc.
It works in a similar way to having one’s phone umber "unlisted" and it prevents people from gaining access to one’s address, phone number and other such private information.
A private whois service works by:
- Protecting the private information
- Relaying important communication
- Providing greater control
Protecting the Private Information
This implies that the private contact information is not exposed and is held confidentially, and protected by the Domain Privacy Protection Service. Instead of the individual’s contact information, their contact information is displayed to provide with the highest level of protection against spammers and identity theft.
Relaying Important Communication
Without a private whois service, those involved in spamming can obtain email addresses through harvesting and then use these for sending spam mails and redistribution to marketing firms. The email addresses can stay on record with various spammers and marketing firms for several years. With a private whois service, the visible email address is constantly changing, so it will change within a specific period of time and the previous address will not work for the spammer. The Domain Privacy Protection Service secures and maintains the real email address on record so that important information regarding the domain is received.
Providing Greater Control
The individual or organization subscribing to the private whois service retains full legal ownership and control over the domain registration. It is possible to sell, renew, transfer and change settings to the domain name just the same as otherwise. The domain control panel provides real-time access to easily manage the domain name.
About the author:
Copyright © Active-Domain.com's Domain Registration (http://www.active-domain.com) Service. This article may be freely reprinted provided this resource box remains intact, and an active link is made to us at http://www.active-domain.com
Public Domain - Internet Gold Mine
With the advent of the internet and the ease of which information can readily be downloaded and compiled you would think that more people would realize that the public domain is a source of wonderful wealth that can be tapped into for huge profits.
I have spent the last 4 years "discovering" little known secrets of this information that is readily available to those who know where to look. Or should I say "prospect". That's exactly what it is. It's Mining. When you mine the internet, you are not mining little rocks in a quarry or dredging a cold river looking for that elusive nugget of gold. You are searching for the gold of the future, and of the past. Information becomes your ore. You now become an information prospector. A "Millennium-Age Gold Miner."
The tools of your trade are much different today than in the days of old. Your "pick-axe" has evolved into your mouse, and your "gold pan" is your hard drive. Your computer is the dredge and your internet connection is your "claim". In the old days when a prospector found gold he would drive a stake in the ground and this would become his claim. You are doing the same thing when you sign the contract for your internet connection. You are staking a claim to the largest source of wealth in the world. Public Domain Information.
You transcend the boundaries of the physical world by entering a realm in which it is possible to find riches in the deepest recesses and crevices of the web. The public domain is the undiscovered country of the information age. It's mysteries are deep as oceans and it's knowledge as expansive as the universe. The public domain now becomes ultimate natural resource.
Information has always reigned king since the beginning of time. There are millions of us who know not the sheer power and value of the information that is freely available to anyone who knows where to look.
The new millennium, and the information-age is very much like the GoldRush of 1849 in which hundreds of thousands of people rushed westward in a stampede of gold seeking pioneers. Some were young, some old, some in between, but all sought a common goal. Gold. Only this time it is different, the gold we seek in this age is information, and it's not mere thousands, but hundreds of millions people who are on this new quest blazing new trails and forging great new paths to wealth.
Information is abundant and widely available. You can mine this gold at anytime, from any place in the world. You do not have to travel vast distances facing the perils of the land to stake your claim. All you need is a computer and a connection to the web. From anywhere in the world you are able to seek out, find, download, and refine your treasure from the warm and cozy comfort of home.
Never before, in the history of man have you been able to procure such wealth so quickly. You are able to locate information on any subject in an instant, and your results are displayed before you faster than you could have ever imagined.
Your "gold pan" quickly become full of the valuable information-ore. Each time you find a nugget it motivates you to find more. You become entranced with the new found riches and it almost becomes obsession. The desire to find more pulses through your veins like a hot drug, steadily increasing your craving for more. The more you find the more you want. It the realization becomes obvious that you have "Gold-Fever" and now you can't stop searching for more information.
This is what the public domain is. It's an internet goldmine chock full of free information ready for the taking.
Stake your claim!
Eric Wichman is founder of PD Times a public domain resources site specializing in free resources for web content and references for webmasters, researchers, marketers, and businesses alike. Be sure to tell your friends about this great new resource for businesses using the public domain
