General Discussions

**njoker555** · 08-21-2006, 01:39 PM

i wanted to ask a question, i know there are many companies out there that sell domain names, meaning they register it to an user, i was thinking of doing something like that, a domain registerer, if thats what u call it lol, i wanted to know how much it will cost me, and a few info about it if some members of this community already does this, no better place to ask then here :thumbup:

**Lucas3677** · 08-21-2006, 03:03 PM

The proper term for it is a domain registrar. I think to become an official registrar it costs quite a bit of money (in the high thousands), hence the reason not everyone does that.

**Romestar** · 08-21-2006, 03:35 PM

there are two options:
1. Spend $2500 and become ICANN acredited
2. Spend $0-several thousand and become an enom.com reseller

There isn't must profit in selling domains, trust me.

**Sygon** · 08-21-2006, 03:51 PM

Domain buisness is very low profit and... is hard work

Its quite saturated.

**JDDunn9** · 08-21-2006, 03:52 PM

You could also become a domain reseller with certain companies, but the ones I've found charge you more wholesale than other companies sell to the public.

**njoker555** · 08-21-2006, 03:59 PM

hm..that sux, lol i dont have much money to spend on these things, and thousands is out of the question, what about web hosting? maybe i'll try that, i really wanted to get my own dedicated server and sell game servers for counter-strike and bf2 and games like that, but i dont have money to get started on that just now, i have to wait a while i gues, thanks for comments and making me understand how low profiting this is

**007** · 08-24-2006, 06:40 PM

None of these businesses are worth getting seriously into unless you are willing to get serious about it. If low thousands of dollars scares you off, then you are in the wrong industry.

Running a solid dedicated hosting company will cost you millions in upfront capital for hardware, techs, sales people, network people... a building.. yeah, and let's not forget advertising.

I'm sure you are talking about reseller hosting though. In that case, yeah you can make some money, but it's rarely worth your time. People expect a lot for $5 a month... You'll enjoy taking calls from the same people over and over, hour after hour. At least charge an hourly rate for tech support, or offer no tech support at all. Reseller hosting is hard to price competitively anyway since that market is saturated already. Companies like GoDaddy are offering cheap $10 a month hosting up to thousands of dollars per month in hosting for dedicated servers. I don't personally use them, but their prices are obviously attracting a lot of people.

As for becoming an ICANN registrar... $2,500 is only the application fee.. did I mention it's non-refundable?

Quote:

To be a registrar on one or more gTLDs, you must first become an ICANN accredited registrar. As of 2004-02-01, this will cost a few thousand dollars. ICANN publishes a list of "Financial considerations" here, and as of this writing it will amount to a minimum of USD 6500. You will note that USD 2500 are an application handling fee, so if you bungle your application, you will lose USD 2500 and you will not become accredited. If you want to be a registrar for more than one gTLD, you must add USD 500 per additional gTLD.

As well as paying upwards of USD 6500, you must also demonstrate to ICANN that you have USD 70000 in working capital.

Info quoted from: http://ketil.froyn.name/registrar/#icann

And besides, even if you were able to start up your own registrar for $2,500.. a website alone that could compete with the rest out there would cost you tens of thousands of dollars...

You'll have better luck buying a fast food franchise for a similar price. At least then you are going to have the backing of a major company brand name, and automatic customers without really any advertising on your own at all.