My new reseller program offers accounts starting from
$4.85 (50MB space, 1GB Transfer, FREE Setup). Usually
$9.25.

Is this considered generous enough? Maybe not. Should resellers make more than 50%? Does anyone know of hosting businesses offering better deals?

Any feedback would be appreciated. This is an interesting subject well worth discussing.

To be honest, I don't think that I've ever seen a plan that offers better than 50% off. But remember that there are different types of reseller accounts out there.

Go to http://www.recellar.com or http://www.resellerinfo.com for more information.

How do I list my reseller info with your site?

MikeA is correct. There are very few resellers out here offering more than 50% discount on their prices. I have only seen a handful after doing tons of research.

As it is, your pricing at $4.85 is decent enough because you are offering 50 MB of space. But what other useful features you are offering at this price will be equally important too when resellers decide to sell your services + what kind of server you are running and the quality of its connectivity to the net.

Learner

MikeA,
I was hoping you could contact me to get us listed in your directory. Or if you decide who to put in then can you stop by and check us out. Our reseller pkg is very nice and in fact it is the bulk of our business. We should have named it Jaguar Reselling :)

I'm hoping to have that feature online shortly. I'll post a public message when it's available.

For those interested, I can still use the help, if anyone wants to contribute anything. :)

What do you need, we would like to offer our help.

What platform are you interested in? NT or Unix or both. On the NT side I've seen deals better than 50% on Unix I've yet to see it.

Ben

What are the most important other features you recommend resellers offer at this price?

You are right. It's the whole package that is important.
Service and support being a priority.

...you may also want to read one of the earlier threads here which was started by MikeA. He had desired to conduct a sort of "Reseller Survey". Duster, Chicken, Asadx and me have already posted a lot of relevant info there... so do read it.

Here is the link to that thread:

RESELLER SURVEY: http://www.webhostlink.com/showthread.php?threadid=1509

Now to answer your question as to what are the most important other features i would recommend resellers offer at this price?

For about $5, I think offering these would make a very attractive package to resellers... I would like to leave it for the experts in this forum to do the math and advise whether these features can be offered for this price at a decent profit to resellers.

Setup Fees - NO set-up fees at all
Monthly Rate - about $5 (in three, six, twelve month blocks)
Instant Account Setup
30 Day Money Back Guarantee (even for resold clients)
Virtual Name Servers - at a low price per month, better if free)
Domain Name (with and without "www" as a prefix)
International Domains as well
Domain Pointers - between $10 to $15 as a one-time setup charge only
Storage Space - 50 MB at least
Bandwidth Traffic - a least a couple of gigs a month
Email Accounts - at least 50 POP accounts
A "Catch-All" Email Account
Email Forwarding/Aliases - unlimited
Auto Responders - unlimited
Mailing lists - at least 1
A nice customise-able Web-based Control Panel
FrontPage 2000
Well Defined Site Statistics
Access to raw log files
Unlimited FTP Access
Anonymous FTP
Password Protected Directories
Real Audio/Video
Secure Socket Layer
Server Side Includes
PHP
MySQL
Good Connections & Uptime
Daily Backups
Own cgi-bin
Pre-made CGI scripts
Search Engine Submission (via control panel) - just to attract clients
Web site creation software built-in - just to attract clients again!
Archive Manager
A well documented FAQ
Prompt support to resellers.

Er well... these are the basic things a reseller would love to have in a $5 per month account (I think)!

I may have left out some and I hope the others fill in the blanks so that your purpose of this thread is achieved.

I wish you luck, Stephen.

I, on the other hand, would love to find out whether giving these features would be financially viable, and if so, how much money could a hosting company retain as profits (approximately).

Learner

[Edited by Learner on 09-09-2000 at 12:45 AM]

Originally posted by jaguar
What do you need, we would like to offer our help.

Articles and content. Take a look at the site and if you see something that you could write or do (even doing graphics) let me know. We give credit where due.

I have been watching this forum for some time and have finally decided to register and post.

A higher payout in a resller program is not always good...especially if you want to keep your own customers as a reseller.

Whether you are looking to be a reseller or looking for virtual/IP-based hosting, be careful of companies who:
1) seriously discount their rates; or,
2) offer high reseller commissions.

These companies end up taking a loss, so to say, and it will seriously impact their server upgrades, customer support and technical support. Also, funds become limited for upgrades to newer versions of software and other server enhancements.

If you find a program that pays decent (around 25-30%) and offers legendary customer service/tech support, your own customers will not only be happy, but your future ones will too.

In my experience, I have learned the following formula:

dirt cheap = getting treated like dirt

And I can give you a long list of those "dirt bags"!

Well said, MichaelK!

There is a lot of wisdom and long-foresightedness in what you said.

And now, Stephen, to add something I forgot to mention in my earlier post above.

2 or 3 FREE subdomains
Customiseable 404 Error Page

Learner

Originally posted by Learner
Well said, MichaelK!

There is a lot of wisdom and long-foresightedness in what you said.

And now, Stephen, to add something I forgot to mention in my earlier post above.

2 or 3 FREE subdomains
Customiseable 404 Error Page

Learner

Thanks, Learner! :-)

I was just talking to a guy that started in on a reseller program, by some miracle had 11 customers in waiting for services and, in the end, lost them all within the following two weeks because the reseller's hosting company finally responded to his tech support e-mails and calls about 3 weeks later. (The sad part is that the problems that needed support on the server were the result of the hosting company's misprogramming.)

So, for chasing down a measly $15-something a month hosting company, this guy lost the potential of even hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

[Interetingly, the hosting company gets rather good reviews around here even though their customer service/tech support plummeted in recent months.]