i am looking into domain reselling industry. i need to know how does a domain reseller works. say, if i were to be a reseller for enom:

1) can i setup a website to sell it?
2) can i sell it as my own brand?
3) does my site need to be able to support the purchase process, from searching for a domain to payment, or does enom provide me with a mechanism?
4) when it comes to support to registrants, will i be providing support, or will support be provided by enom?

this whole domain/hosting services is kinda new and fresh in my country, and providers are providing the services at ridiculos high prices. thought i could get some shares with a lower price.

please advise.

1) can i setup a website to sell it?
2) can i sell it as my own brand?

For the above, you can use their API. Some resellers have private label applications for your use.


3) does my site need to be able to support the purchase process, from searching for a domain to payment, or does enom provide me with a mechanism?

Often, you have to pay a prepaid amount to the domain name registrar. You bill the customers at your own price directly. You set your own prices.


4) when it comes to support to registrants, will i be providing support, or will support be provided by enom?

Depending on the domain name registrar, but more often, most registrars do also provide support for accounts under your reseller account. However, clients generally would prefer to liaise with you as you are the seller.

3) does my site need to be able to support the purchase process, from searching for a domain to payment, or does enom provide me with a mechanism?

Often, you have to pay a prepaid amount to the domain name registrar. You bill the customers at your own price directly. You set your own prices.

4) when it comes to support to registrants, will i be providing support, or will support be provided by enom?

Depending on the domain name registrar, but more often, most registrars do also provide support for accounts under your reseller account. However, clients generally would prefer to liaise with you as you are the seller.


so does this means that i have to have my own ecommerce capabilities (payment mechanism, paypal etc)?

also, if registrant requires support over technical or over things that may relate to their accounts, will i have admin rights to their accounts or do i need to revert back to my registrar?

yes. Unless you opt for an affiliate program where you get commission for every domain name signup.

I may be wrong though.

For enom, there's 2 schemes. API and PDQ. PDQ will will support your billing for you. API is more customizable. There's pros and cons for both. I believe in PDQ, you may not be able to set your own prices.

from what i could gather of PDQ, i could set my own prices. however, the transaction fee charged is ridiculous!

$99 annual fee, and $0.95+3% for each transaction. ouch.

hmm.. interesting. Learnt something new as well. :) We currently use a domain name reselling program where we have access to a reseller control panel, which is a pre-paid based account. No setup fee. They charge us by wholesale prices. They provide us with API and an option for using the private label control panels (for customers). However, the downside is that the cost of the domains are slightly higher than enom.

many thanks for the information that you have provided. if i may ask, what is overselling? i read thru the some of the threads, and some advises to go for host that allows overselling.

i know that "overselling" is termed as selling more than you have, but why would this need to be allowed? since i am on a reseller account, how would anyone know if i am overselling or not?

many thanks for the information that you have provided. if i may ask, what is overselling? i read thru the some of the threads, and some advises to go for host that allows overselling.

i know that "overselling" is termed as selling more than you have, but why would this need to be allowed? since i am on a reseller account, how would anyone know if i am overselling or not?

I have no idea domain wise but hosting wise overselling is selling more than you have. So hosts that say they offer unlimited bandwidth are over selling because its impossible. When people are looking for their first web host they think unlimited really is true. So the host gets more customers at the hope they won't use much of the space.

many thanks for the information that you have provided. if i may ask, what is overselling? i read thru the some of the threads, and some advises to go for host that allows overselling.

i know that "overselling" is termed as selling more than you have, but why would this need to be allowed? since i am on a reseller account, how would anyone know if i am overselling or not?

well hosting overselling is like offering 10gb space when the average user user uses less then 500mb space. Im not sure about domain overselling.



Someone just beat me to this reply

Overselling is selling more than what you have, for example:
Imagine you are hosting 200 customers on a server that has a 100GB hard drive. The hosting plan these customers signed up for gives each of them 1GB of space. You have now oversold your services, because you've promised to deliver 200GB of storage capacity, but your server only has 100GB.

By itself overselling is fine, and sometimes required to turn a profit. The problem is when you are oversubscribed.

In the example above, if 10% of your users used all 1GB that was alotted to them, and the other 90% used 256MB, then you would not be oversubscribed (disk space usage would be 65 GB). This situation would be fine as long as you monited the usage and stood ready to add additional capacity as needed.

noted. thank all of you for the explanation.

since i am planning to go down with the reselling route under my own brand, i am just wondering how do resellers sell their product. i am thinking that when faced with queries like "so, where is your datacenter?", "what's your server specs?" etc.

do i, reply or publish on my site that i am reselling, or reply in a way that my servers and its location is situated where my host is?

my current plan is to go with a reseller account that provide end-user support, so that i could focus on marketing and selling. maybe when i have a greater client portfolio with a steady income flow, i might provide support myself.

noted. thank all of you for the explanation.

since i am planning to go down with the reselling route under my own brand, i am just wondering how do resellers sell their product. i am thinking that when faced with queries like "so, where is your datacenter?", "what's your server specs?" etc.

do i, reply or publish on my site that i am reselling, or reply in a way that my servers and its location is situated where my host is?

my current plan is to go with a reseller account that provide end-user support, so that i could focus on marketing and selling. maybe when i have a greater client portfolio with a steady income flow, i might provide support myself.

Questions like server specifications, datacentre.. these information should be obtained from your web hosting provider. Use them to sell. Also note the advantages of the provider, and use them for your own promotion as well.

In your case, you may not want to publish that you are reselling.

say my current provider is in UK. when asked "where is your data center?", its ethical for me to say that "our datacenter is in UK"?

Telling clients where your servers are based, i.e. US, UK, SG, etc... I would say is mandatory. The datacentre does not mean the web hosting provider, unless the web hosting provider owns the data centre facility as well. If a client was to ask me, I would provide the exact name of the data centre. Clients feel more assured that way. More so, if the data centre is a top or good one.

for now, i need to work on costing for my financial model.

to the resellers here, what are the major and minor cost involved? apart from advertising and reseller acount cost.

for now, i need to work on costing for my financial model.

to the resellers here, what are the major and minor cost involved? apart from advertising and reseller acount cost.

Time is the biggest cost.

ok, next up, is to get my site up. any software that is suitable for this type of business? actually, i am only familiar with wordpress, as i am using it as a blog and photo gallery. is it a joke to use wordpress as a commercial tool?

ok, next up, is to get my site up. any software that is suitable for this type of business? actually, i am only familiar with wordpress, as i am using it as a blog and photo gallery. is it a joke to use wordpress as a commercial tool?

Wordpess is just a tool and can be used for whatever you want it to do. You just have to modify it accordingly.

Selling hosting and domains off a wordpress blog is definitely possible, but it better be clean and not confusing.

I actually saw a few free hosting related wordpress themes out there the other day. They aren't half bad looking either.

Wordpess is just a tool and can be used for whatever you want it to do. You just have to modify it accordingly.

Selling hosting and domains off a wordpress blog is definitely possible, but it better be clean and not confusing.

I actually saw a few free hosting related wordpress themes out there the other day. They aren't half bad looking either.


thanks! i'll work on wordpress then =)

Wordpress can be modified as per you want. That's the beauty of the software.
But I would suggest you install whmcs to handle your orders and design the website in HTML codes. Simple and sweet