I'm a reseller and up until now haven't really worried about domains. Up until now I've just sent my clients to NameCheap or Enom to get their domains.

But as I'm looking at ways to improve my service, one of the things I'm looking at is how I can approach domains.

I know I'll make little or no money with them... I looked into becoming a reseller with enom and another that integrate with ClientExec), but it just confuses me. :eek:

At first I thought I had to pay 100s or 1000s to get set up.. then I have to deposit money? Then I found out you could go through a web reseller or clientexec and not have to do that, but then.... I'm still confused as to how it works and my brain is currently fried and thought I'd take a break and post here. :D

The question is... Is it perfectly exceptable to refer visitors to get their domain names at a registrar and then come back to get hosting? Is this done? To me this is a risk as they might not come back, but from what I'm gathering it seems to have much less hassle from my end..

I thought, I could sign up as an affiliate at Enom and send traffic that way.. maybe even get a nice banner to display. :cool:

What is everyone else doing?

Thanks for your input!

Grab an enom, wildwestdomains or resellerclub reseller account and register the domains for your customers. If you want a free acount you can get one from an enom technology partner, and the domains will cost you $8.95/year. If you want cheaper domains then that you can usually buy a $6.95 enom reseller account for a couple hundred dollars from other users who have them.

If you want to go directly with enom I believe it costs thousands of dollars to get started last time I checked.

Enom is probable the best way to integrate doman names into your signup process. It may seem like a lot of work now but your clients will appreciate it in the long run.

If you can't figure out how to do it you can probable make a post in the advertising forum on WHT requesting somebody else to help you out. It shouldn't cost you much since it is a relitively easy task for somebody that knows what their doing.

On the other hand I would say the majority of clients that signup already have a domain name. Because of that you may not need to integrate a domain register and it may be find to just send your clients some where else. The choice is really up to you.

If you are just going to send them to another registrar, then you might as well take the affiliate route, but you do run the risk of losing their business.

By far, the best reason to offer domains yourself is to make it less confusing for your customers. Domains tend to confuse them a lot, so the more you can integrate that the better.

But please, please, please, whatever you do, follow the rules. As a host, you have absolutely no right to hold anyone's domain for ransom. Make sure you put the customer as the administrative contact, not yourself.

Hosts that do these sorts of things give all of us a bad name. IMO, they should all lose their right to offer registration services.

(sorry to bring this up, I know you didn't ask, but since you are starting out in this regard, I figured I would encourage you to follow the right path.)

:D Thanks.

Actually I was just looking at GoDaddy's Wild West.. That seems pretty cool. $99 a year I can swing for starters and it looks like i can customize and integrate it right into my site..

..I think.

-Matt

for a quick-easy fix, check out enom's registry rocket system

I've heard that GoDaddy.com's Wild West Domains contacts your domain name customers with other services they provide, as well as email them directly for domain name renewals.

Yeah a nice way to build someone elses list.

I currently do not offer domain registration services [through Hosting-Q] and wonder if it really makes a big difference to those needing web hosting?

When I first activated [qisoftware.com] -- I used a separate service than the web hosting provider.

I have read too many nightmare stories about domain names and I wish to forego the headache.

Q...

If you use Wild West Domains, you may risk losing customers because they are bombarded with GoDaddy services. GoDaddy wants you to resell all of their services, even if you provide separately. Registering them manually after being received is a risk because there's a delay. Do you really want to contact a customer saying their domain name was registered during the time they submitted it and you registered it? Are you on call to reg domain names 24/7?

Offering domain names via your own website is the best way to keep and hold customers. There are too many distractions if you use a 3rd party and manual registration could lose a client and your reputation if you lose a domain because you weren't fast enough to register it for them. There are plenty of good softwares like AWBS, WHMCS, MB, and others that integrate Enom along with hosting/client management.

Hope that helps.

I currently do not offer domain registration services [through Hosting-Q] and wonder if it really makes a big difference to those needing web hosting?

When I first activated [qisoftware.com] -- I used a separate service than the web hosting provider.

I have read too many nightmare stories about domain names and I wish to forego the headache.

Q...

Enom's PDQ Reseller website gives you a branded website to sell domain names, or any of enom's products, set at your own prices. It works great because it gives customers a place to login to their accounts and buy names anytime. It completely automates it. After a few years, you start collecting hundreds of dollars in commission from your account, every month. For a simple $99 per year investment for their PDQ website, it makes an enourmous amount of profit once you have thousands of names registered. I've had customers sign up and register $1000 in names in one night, because it was "convenient". That's what it buys you!

You need to find an enom reseller who can give you a good discount on names and a PDQ website at wholesale. It's well worth it and works much better than Registry Rocket. You don't need to be the lowest priced register to get hundreds of domains registered every year. Customers will stick with you because they "want everything with the same host".

You might want to check Stargate's offer (http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=533950) : good deal there :)

Spectacular Marie! Thanks for the heads up! :cool:

Enom's PDQ Reseller website gives you a branded website to sell domain names, or any of enom's products, set at your own prices. It works great because it gives customers a place to login to their accounts and buy names anytime. It completely automates it. After a few years, you start collecting hundreds of dollars in commission from your account, every month. For a simple $99 per year investment for their PDQ website, it makes an enourmous amount of profit once you have thousands of names registered. I've had customers sign up and register $1000 in names in one night, because it was "convenient". That's what it buys you!

You need to find an enom reseller who can give you a good discount on names and a PDQ website at wholesale. It's well worth it and works much better than Registry Rocket. You don't need to be the lowest priced register to get hundreds of domains registered every year. Customers will stick with you because they "want everything with the same host".

And thank you Todd for your thoughts. I think I'm thinking along the same lines as you are now. Even if I had to wait a bit to get this set up, I think it's the best route.

You make excellent points! I think it's a great long term strategy. And yes, the money may not be great on an individual bases, but accumulative.. not to mention the cross selling opportunities to your hosting and other services if you can have it under your roof.

Thanks for all your thoughts. You guys rock! :gthumb:

-Matt

Can you explain a bit more on the costs involved with the PDQ type?

I am currently using the Registry Rocket system.

Stargates offer looks good. Gonna take a closer look at it :)
Thanks.

Can you explain a bit more on the costs involved with the PDQ type?

I am currently using the Registry Rocket system.

The cost is $99 per year plus your registration cost of $6.95 to $8.95, plus their credit card processing fee that depends on a percentage of your sale price.

If you're using RR, then you've already been setup for enom's credit card processing services. You need an available domain name, different than your hosting site. For example, look at serversanddomains.us, our PDQ registrar website. Just buy it from your account and they add some tabs under "Resellers" for PDQ, Edit Site, Account, etc..

You can edit the colors, content of the home page in HTML, and the frame in XML if you know how. Add your logo and set your prices. It takes about an hour. ;) You can even edit the META tags and keywords to your own preferences.

You can also select which products you want to offer. WORD OF ADVICE: If you already offer hosting on your own servers, then DO NOT enable their hosting for sale in your PDQ settings. Because once you turn it on, you can't turn it off and people will buy it and you will have to support it. The hosting is okay but it confuses existing customers who buy that, expecting our other control panel. It's not the same. But after 4 years, we certainly do host a lot of websites there and they allow adult hosting, which comes in handy once in a while. :blush:

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I guess, the benefit is that you get your own website which you can customize?

As opposed to RR, where you are restricted.

Resellerclub are very good company you could get a reseller account from them and create infinite nb of resellers under you,
if you dont want to put about $ 200 as deposit you could get areseller account from a second reseller

Thanks for the detailed explanation.

I guess, the benefit is that you get your own website which you can customize?

As opposed to RR, where you are restricted.

RR puts the name in YOUR account, giving your end users limited access to features available that you can sell. PDQ creates a new sub-account for each customer and gives them a control panel with the Web Site Creator Lite, the DNS tools and a nice customized interface. Not a cheezy single page account. It is much nicer.

Also, you can have resellers under you and resell PDQ like we do, though we sell it at cost and make a few $ on names instead, because we know you will sell more names with it than without it.

You must really consider Enom's PDQ Reseller account for $99 per year. Once your customers got their domains from your reseller website or through you, you know that it the long run, the small income per domain adds up and can pay all your domain name registration. After that, the extra money to be made is yours.

Try it for a year and you'll see.

Hope this helps. ;)

Hello. Can anyone here tell me more about enom's reseller?

If you open an account with Innohosting they have multiple domain resellers. One of them being NetEarth One on their $6.95 slab. They also offer a plenthora of TLDs, so it might be worth it to go with them.

I'm not sure if you can just use their domain reseller accounts without a reseller hosting account, though.

Good News! I went to the uk2group's website and found:
http://resell.biz/reseller.php

They have an awesome backend that beats the pants off our current system. We started out almost 10 years ago with Dotregistrar who sold a couple of years ago to MyDomain, who I recommend you stay away from.

They started sending notices to our customers to renew their domain name at the MyDomain website, instead of ours. It's like they have no clue what resellers are.

This resell.biz site has amazing reseller features. The only catch is that to get the $6.95 pricing you have to send them at least $500. For us that's well worth it and we'll be implementing their system ASAP.