I want to start a web firm and provide a ‘one stop shop’ for my customers when they come to me for a website. I don’t want to ask my clients to go to godaddy and fill out their forms to purchase a domain. What is the best practice for registering a domain name for a client?

I assume this means paying for the domain name with your business CC# and then billing the client the cost of the domain name and a service fee. Who owns the domain? Who is listed as the administrative contact, technical contact, and registrant contact? If your company is listed, what is it legally responsible for? For instance, is it responsible for the site’s content? Later they decide to go with another company, what happens with the domain?

Get a reseller account at:

- http://enom.com
- http://resellerclub.com

Good luck!

I'm at resellerclub.com for that reason, and like it. I have a small hosting business that grew out of other hobby related interests, so my customers are a pretty tight knit group of folks.

Go to resellerclub.com and check out the pricing. You can configure it to offer whatever services you want to offer; to see one with all the services they offer, my site is at www.HOSTkabob.com. Its pretty much the default set up.

They provide the payment gateway, so you can use nearly any credit card processor. I use Paypal and good old fashioned paper invoices and checks. If you have a customer who wants you to put in the order for the domain name, you can. Just have them register (or register for them), and fill out the on-line order forms. You can have them as the Registered, Technical, etc. contacts. I have done it for several customers who still don't give out their credit card numbers on the 'net. You have to pay for the domain name registration, then when you get payment from them, you apply it using their software. Its pretty well self contained.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask here or email me.

Thanks for the tips. I quickly looked at resellerclub and will read about them in more detail.

The type of customers i would be dealing with want to give me the money and not be bothered with any details. They don't want to fill out website forms, they expect me to do it. In this type of situation, is it common to use their CC# or use my CC# and then send them a bill? Should he be listed in any of the contacts?

My personal opinion is that you would use your credit card number and bill them. I think in order to use their credit card number you would have to be using your own credit card processor (which you could do, but last time I looked, using a credit card merchant account would cost about $200 a month in expenses, which was too rich for my little business). Also, last time I checked, the on-line credit card processors that were cheaper than your bank is required the card holder to complete the transaction on line.

You can use the resellerclub.com account to pay for the domain names yourself, send the customer an invoice created in your resellerclub.com account, and when you get paid clear that invoice. In effect, you are using the resellerclub.com account as a kind of payment tracker. There's more info in their knowledgebase at http://manage.resellerclub.com/kb/servlet/KBServlet/cat83.html

What we do is handle the domain registrations and renewals for them and bill them for the service. Most of our customers have us manage the domain for them. They like to be able to just worry about the site.

As for contacts, the registrant and administrative should be them, technical could be you since you are managing it, and billing should be you since you are the one paying for it. We let the customer request any changes they want and choose the contacts, including private by just having our contact info in the domain records.