Sorry to be so short but I have to head to work in just a couple of minutes.
I was wondering how sites (like new web hosts for example) get to sell domain names?

Do you sign up under sites as a "domain reseller" or something? And if so, how much would -they- charge you? Because if they charged 9.99 for each domain, how would you make a profit? Because who would pay 14.99 for a domain when they can go to yahoo.com or some other site and get them for only 9.99?

Just a question that sort of came to my mind. Any help would be appreciated.

And yes... I'm sort of back, for anyone who cares.
Just been really busy lately. Used to do all of my web design stuff in middle of the night but with work and having to get up at 5am lately I've had to go to bed early :\ I'm sure some of you know how that is. It's okay though. W/ all the overtime I'm making, I'll be making a few hundred over what I make in a month in only 2 weeks

You have two options.

Option 1 is the most expensive option.

You must become an ICANN accredited registrar which costs a non-refundable $2500 fee initially, a $4000 yearly cost (before buying any domains), a variable fee of $1,200 to $2,000 per quarter and $0.20 for each domain registered. You must have $70,000 in business assets and $500,000 worth of insurance coverage.

You must then code your own website, control panel for registration, own API's etc which would also cost easily $20,000. Legal fee's and consultancy for filling out all of ICANN's tedious paper work, why not add on another $10-20k as well.

You need to buy domains from the people who own the extensions, for example VeriSign, Inc. own the rights to ".com" which is $6.86 plus the $0.20 ICANN fee stated above, so a total of $7.06 is what each .com will cost you. And you raised a point that some registrars only charge $10 for a name, leaving them less than $3.00 (add on payment transaction fee's etc) profit per name. Other registrars such as Register.com, NetworkSolutions.com, Enom.com etc do charge $15-30+ for a domain and they seem to do good business.

More information about becoming ICANN accredited is on this page: http://www.icann.org/en/registrars/accreditation.htm

Option 2 is the least expensive and reccommended for new businesses

Become a domain reseller. Existing ICANN registrars will let you sell domains on behalf of their service under your own brand. You don't need the expensive start up costs as you don't need to become ICANN accredited.

There are many reseller websites that exist online. http://www.resellerclub.com is the second largest (I think) reseller which allows you to start your own domain registrar within hours. The control panel and website is premade (albeit you'll need to customize it else it will look like thousands of other websites), payment processing etc is all done for you. You can sell domains from $7.69 (they're having a holiday sale) and their full pricing is here: http://resellerclub.com/pricing/#domain_reg - I must add however their control panel sucks and the usability is plain useless for even simple things such as listing domains you own.

Another one is http://www.wildwestdomains.com which is owned by the largest Registrar on the net GoDaddy. Not a fan of Godaddy, they are a pretty evil company.

I would advise you to utilize API's to differentiate your website from their default templates and to offer something a bit more unique else you will fail.

Very informative. Thank you very much, Jack, just what I was looking for.

Oops I also forgot about http://www.enom.com/resellers/ just to give you some idea they empowered NameCheap.com and I think they have the best API but worst pricing.

My facts about popularity may of been wrong, please see http://www.registrarstats.com/Public/Regis...tShareMain.aspx as it is an official stats site listing which companies have the most registrations (FYI Public Domain Registry is ResellerClub).

Yes ENOM is used by several hosts to sell domains. I am planning to get an account soon to sell domains.

I like the info too. Thank you very much.

In addition to what Jack said, one thing you have to take a note of is that all resellers have a minimum payment that you must make before you can even begin to start your service. About 2 years back when I sold domains, I registered with resellerclub and had to pay $150 starting fee that gave me about 20 or 30 domains. I believe they lowered the minimum cost but have also lowered the number of domains you get due to the inflation.

http://www.resellerclub.com/products/domain-registration/

199 i believe

If you purchase a whmcs license directly from whmcs (not for reseller) you get it for free with no deposit