Hi,

I've been trying to understand the domain reseller industry for a while now. I'm trying to figure out what is the best domain reseller option for me but had some questions. Who are the Big Fish in this industry?

From what I understand Enom, OpenSRS, Networking Solutions are the big players? Is everybody else a reseller of these big guys? Doesn't reselling for Enom and OpenSRS require a substantial investment and assume a lot of business? Where does ICANN fit into the equation? Just a verifier or also a reseller?

There seems to be so many that it is difficult to know what is what.

For somebody looking to offer domain registration only as an enhancement to webhosting and webdevelopment (Perhaps as few as 10 registrations in a year but one never know maybe more), who do I resell from? I was going to go with dotster @ $12 but I've seen prices as low as $7. I'm not looking for the low price leader, just something established with a control panel or something like that, that makes domain management simpler. Dotster still a good choice in this regard?

Are most small webhosts reselling domain registration from other resellers?

Ex.
Enom -> Small Domain Reseller -> Me

or perhaps even

Enom -> Small Domain Reseller -> Littler Reseller -> me

Thanks for any advice. :D

I have personally used *********** and enom, and they are both fine registrars. However, in terms of the technology used, enom is (from all that I have heard), the leader in that respect. Their structure and control panel is amazing. Another I have heard about is opensrs, although I don't know too much about them.

I can't tell you about other web hosts becuase I am not one. I think there is another post I made in this forum which you can take a look to learn more about enom. You can also sign up for a free account to test out their control panel on enom.com. If you need to demo the reseller account, contact a enom reseller.

(Sorry if I didn't answer all your questions; I couldn't quite structure my reply to answer all of them, since there are so many of them. If there is a specific question you want an answer for, just ask and I am sure someone here can help.)

Peter

<edit>rephrased to comply with forum rules.</edit>

Wow, I didn't know they got banned. Shame on them, I guess its time I move all the domains to enom.

Peter

Originally posted by ckpeter
Wow, I didn't know they got banned. Shame on them, I guess its time I move all the domains to enom.

Peter

They were banned because allegedly they posted too many times their URL in here. Nothing wrong with their services. I use them all the time.

Originally posted by jizz
Enom -> Small Domain Reseller -> Littler Reseller -> me


That's how eNom works. eNom sells reseller packages to anyone. And then those people can create their own reseller accounts for others.. who can create their own reseller accounts for others, etc...

It does NOT require a huge investment to get started with eNom at a great per domain price. if you'd like more info about how the reseller accounts at eNom work [ask on the forum].

Cheers!

They way the whole thing works is not too complicated when you lay it all out.

At the top of the heap is the US Department of Commerce. Yes, even though the Internet is global, the DoC is currently running the show.

They have created a governing body called ICANN, which is sort of a regulatory agency for the industry. ICANN and IANA work together to determine the delegation of both generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs like .com, .net and .org, etc) and Country Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs like .cc, .tv, .ca., .us, etc).

Each TLD has a Registry that sells domain names and makes the policy for each TLD; who may purchase, for how long, naming conventions, etc.

Each Registry sells to licensed Registrars. Most Registries require a registrar to earn ICANN accreditation before they will grant them a license to sell domains for them.

Many Registries set up programs for other people to sell domains on their behalf. These people are known as resellers. Reseller programs may require extensive up-front cash or not, depending on the Registrar and his rules and business policies.

Some Resellers also offer sub-reseller programs. These can be very cheap to get into as far as up-front cash is concerned, but you have added another layer to the mix.

Some Resellers offer affiliate programs which pay you a commission and let the reseller handle the transaction on your behalf.

How you with to deal with the registrar (ultimately they may be the only one who can help you with a problem) should help you decide how you want to play in this market - reseller, sub-reseller, affiliate - each with less influence at the registrar and none at the registry.

If you want to know who the "players" are, you have to define what that means. If you are talking about pure number of domains registered, as of the May State of the Domain Report, the top registrars and the total domains they have registered in the CNO Zone (com, net and org domains) are, in order:

Verisign 9,5M
Tucows 2,8M
Register.com 2.7M
Melbourne IT 1.4M
BulkRegister 1.4M
eNom 911k
GoDaddy 896k
CoreNIC 575k
DotRegistar 554k
DirectNIC.com 545k

Everyone is currently growing except Verisign, Register.com, BulkRegister and CoreNIC.

Good luck,

-t

Great, thanks for the info ;).

@thewitt: Thanks for the breakdown!

I guess I'll look into enom instead of dotster. Only thing is they don't post their prices for resellers so I'll have to email them first.

I have posted the pricing info in another thread in this forum. Read that to get a better sense of the pricing.

Peter

Originally posted by jizz
I guess I'll look into enom instead of dotster. Only thing is they don't post their prices for resellers so I'll have to email them first.

I think they do that because they know they'll never be able to compete against their own resellers. If you get a reseller to create your account instead of going directly with enom, you'll get a much better price.

eNom is using "viral marketing" to spread, and it works great. The problem is that now they can't really deal directly with the end-users since their own resellers can and do undercut them.

Do a search on the forums here for enom resellers and you'll find a variety of great pricing that is below what enom will give you.

Cheers!

I think enom is the best solution for anybody who is interested in reselling domain names. Just my 2 cents...

It will be interesting to see if eNom's business model can continue. I've done a preliminary financial analysis based on the volume of names they have registered and it looks to me like they are losing money...

I predict they will have to increase their costs soon - or at least as soon as they run out of venture capital...

-t

That sounds interesting. Could you post your calculation for us?

Peter

Originally posted by thewitt
It will be interesting to see if eNom's business model can continue. I've done a preliminary financial analysis based on the volume of names they have registered and it looks to me like they are losing money...

I predict they will have to increase their costs soon - or at least as soon as they run out of venture capital...

-t

Your calculations are basically based on your own opinion unless you happen to have a copy of their busienss plan and financial records.

I would like to see your calculation, too. I find it interesting that anyone can say a company will or will not fail without really even knowing their business model and seeing their business plan.

I'm sure others will be interested in your calculations, too.. so how about posting them here?

I already have in another thread.

It's fairly easy to take the State of the Domain report and get the total number of domains they have registered, take their cost at $6 per domain and add to that ICANN accreditation costs and the variable costs associated with the registry based on how many domains you hold, plus their costs of processing credit cards for a segment of their membership and come up with a rough estimate of total revenue and direct costs.

Take a rough stab at how many employees they have and a cost per employee, and you can draw your own conclusions.

We have seriously studied the costs of running our own ICANN accredited registrar business, and it's non-trivial.

It's not a case where you can simply profit $0.50 on each domain name and then make it up in volume. Overhead is simply too high.

Of course, I could be entirely full of crap - which is why I say it will be interesting to see if their business model can survive this strategy, or if it's just a way to create a large profile of domains before they raise their prices.

Either way, I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation.

-t

Originally posted by thewitt
I predict they will have to increase their costs soon
Originally posted by thewitt
Either way, I'm not making a value judgement, just an observation.

You did make a judgement, which is why I was curious as to how you made it.

Thanks for your post, it is interesting read. Can you point us to the thread you mentioned where it is discussed?

I will back up thewitt a bit. It's really hard to make a good profit on selling names for $6.95 because the profit is almost 0. But they are _LUCKY_ because there are a lot of resellers that are small or medium and usually buy domains $8.95 per year for a domain.

Support, Sales, $6 fee per domain year to Versigin, servers, bandwidth, custom software development, fraud - that costs and it's not FREE.

I don't say they are losing a lot of cash or are not profitable, but I agree that there are some things we do not know...

ps. I wonder where Register.com high-profile domain resellers will do - they are raising their prices...!

I'm not sure where I posted the detail - it was not, apparently in this forum; but I'll find it.

Another forum member replied off-list and added a further source of funds to the eNom model that I had not previously considered. I was only looking at domain names registered and not money from their "viral marketing" program itself.

In order to get their $6.95 domain price, the reseller at the top of this particular reseller-pyramid needs to pony up $7000 before selling even one domain. I don't know how many of these reseller-chains exist, but that certainly has the potential for considerable float.

I have not seen anything that details whether the bulk of their 100k domain registered in May were by domain users or domain speculators, but it will be interesting to see what happens to their volumes in their second year - and see how many of these domains drop because they were "junk" and did not sell in the speculation market.

They do have an interesting business model.

-t