Directi Resellers questions

[trevor]

I don't understand the Directi resellers thing. I've looked at their site and still don't understand exactly what they do and the details.

Let's say you plan to spend $3,000 buying domains from a site that is a Directi Reseller. Would it be smart to sign up to be a Directi reseller yourself and buy from your own site?

Any insight would be appreciated.

 

[Shane]

Well it depends if you can afford the site as well as the domains. It is not a bad idea though.

 

[trevor]

Well it depends if you can afford the site as well as the domains. It is not a bad idea though.

I honestly don't understand much about the Reseller club from their site. I can't tell if you can be a reseller and buy from yourself. I can't tell what the costs and conditions are to have a site. They do a horrible job of explaining exactly how everything works. I was going to call them but I thought maybe I could get some answers here and avoid the call or at least be better informed when I do call.

 

[namodri]

I don't understand the Directi resellers thing. I've looked at their site and still don't understand exactly what they do and the details.

Let's say you plan to spend $3,000 buying domains from a site that is a Directi Reseller. Would it be smart to sign up to be a Directi reseller yourself and buy from your own site?

Any insight would be appreciated.

i m new to this biz.. but hve taken directi reseller a/c.. if u wanna buy domains for your self u shud become a direct reseller with them.. this is coz u wil get cheaper price if u r a reseller.. if u buy from other reseller, he wil add his margin to the price.

 

[nielsencl]

I became a Reseller club member last month. and I have been struggling with some of the same questions you have. I still don't have my site set up to sell domains or get resellers, but I do plan on doing that soon.

You can send me some questions via PM if you want to, but yes, if you are going to buy a lot of domains AND you want to resell them you may want to try Reseller Club. But if you just want to save money on your domains, there may be better options.

You have to deposit quite a bit to get a good discount for your purchases, AND YOU have to pay the PayPal fees. So if you deposit $100 you may only have about $97.50 in your account, something like that. Then you use that money to pay for domains.

The Partner site is where people can sign up as resellers under you, and the SuperSite is where people can open an account to buy domains. YOU ALSO HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT at your supersite to buy domains.

ResellerClub is going to take you some time to go through the materials they have. You will be setting up a REAL BUSINESS, so this is not unreasonable. But there are a lot of questions that they don't provide the answer to. So post messages here or contact their support department. Their support is pretty good, but if you call them on the phone you may run into some communications problems that I did, since they are based in India. Don't let that scare you, but realize that you may need to explain more clearly then you would normally. They have been friendly and helpful to me both in email and when I called.

One nice thing about ResellerClub is they don't charge you any fees like the Godaddy and other programs do. I have not tried it, but the program offered by NameCheap seems like it might be good and better for those that just want to buy cheaply and also function more as an affiliate then a real reseller. With Resellerclub you have to set up how people are going to pay you and have more responsibility for the billing. The flip side is you can set your prices and make more money. You can also sell hosting and other services to increase revenues.

Another option is to register and transfer domains at DomainSite.com. At $6.99 for the first year it's the cheapest big registrar that I have found. After the first year it's $7.99, but I keep hoping they will offer a discount for loyal customers, or customers with larger portfolios like me. NameCheap offers a discount code for anyone that has I think 50 domains or more, but you have to contact them to get it. Waiting for a sale and then transfering to a different registar can save you some money, but it can be a pain to take the time to do the transfers.

 

[trevor]

I became a Reseller club member last month. and I have been struggling with some of the same questions you have. I still don't have my site set up to sell domains or get resellers, but I do plan on doing that soon.

You can send me some questions via PM if you want to, but yes, if you are going to buy a lot of domains AND you want to resell them you may want to try Reseller Club. But if you just want to save money on your domains, there may be better options.

You have to deposit quite a bit to get a good discount for your purchases, AND YOU have to pay the PayPal fees. So if you deposit $100 you may only have about $97.50 in your account, something like that. Then you use that money to pay for domains.

The Partner site is where people can sign up as resellers under you, and the SuperSite is where people can open an account to buy domains. YOU ALSO HAVE TO CREATE AN ACCOUNT at your supersite to buy domains.

ResellerClub is going to take you some time to go through the materials they have. You will be setting up a REAL BUSINESS, so this is not unreasonable. But there are a lot of questions that they don't provide the answer to. So post messages here or contact their support department. Their support is pretty good, but if you call them on the phone you may run into some communications problems that I did, since they are based in India. Don't let that scare you, but realize that you may need to explain more clearly then you would normally. They have been friendly and helpful to me both in email and when I called.

One nice thing about ResellerClub is they don't charge you any fees like the Godaddy and other programs do. I have not tried it, but the program offered by NameCheap seems like it might be good and better for those that just want to buy cheaply and also function more as an affiliate then a real reseller. With Resellerclub you have to set up how people are going to pay you and have more responsibility for the billing. The flip side is you can set your prices and make more money. You can also sell hosting and other services to increase revenues.

Another option is to register and transfer domains at DomainSite.com. At $6.99 for the first year it's the cheapest big registrar that I have found. After the first year it's $7.99, but I keep hoping they will offer a discount for loyal customers, or customers with larger portfolios like me. NameCheap offers a discount code for anyone that has I think 50 domains or more, but you have to contact them to get it. Waiting for a sale and then transfering to a different registar can save you some money, but it can be a pain to take the time to do the transfers.

Thanks for sharing your info. I don't think I'm going to try and become a reseller myself. It sounds too overwhelming.

Good luck with your site. I hope you are successful.

 

[[email protected]]

Hi All,

Nice to see so many interested in Reseller Club. Nice, because I am also a reseller for them and have been a much satisfied customer! I am not trying to promote anything but my experience with them till date.

I own 300+ domains, 5-6 hosting accounts with GoDaddy and they have been cheapest (as the prices go) and very very effective service(Panels/discounts/events etc). But their reseller account is way too behind and do not suppport .in domains@

I own 20+ domains with Rediff, the services are improving from worse to better... far way to go even for individual accounts (leave apart the reseller part)

Coming back to DirectI, their Supersite & Partner site is very easy to integrate. Even adding a payment gateway, Change of any domain price, adding adsense to templates was so easy!

I have till now been using to register only .in domains with them and a small chunk - about 10-15 TLDs, but if i see the cost involved, it is much cheaper in a longer version!

THe actual cost when I saw for a .in domain really shcoked me! (not the promo price). I just started wondering, hey what i was doing for the last 9 years? Holding more then 350+ .in domains have recovered my entire cost in taking this account!!

Slowly, but only when i will be comfortable 100% with Directi, will be moving my other domains to it.

Cheers!

 

[aww]

I'm considering escaping the games that enom and godaddy play and moving a couple hundred domains to directi so I appreciate hearing any other experiences with them.

Any transfer nightmare experiences? How do they deal with domains that have just expired? Do they immediately put up an ad filled pay page like enom? If you change the registrant info, even for a slight typo, do they lock you into a 60 day no-registrant-change like godaddy? Do they lock down domains for a week if you do an internal push like enom? Do they put ads on the whois info like enom?

By the way, the deduction from paypal payments is "standard" in the wholesale business, enom does that too.

I suspect either Directi or a registrar like them is my future...

 

[nielsencl]

I can't answer all your questions, but I have started transfering some of my domains to my Supersite account at Directi and have not had any problems with the process. I think you do have the same 60-day hold with them as you do with Godaddy, who told me it's an ICANN rule and not a Godaddy rule...

I think domains do get slapped with a ad-infested page when they expire, but I was surprised that I was able to get some domains transfered out while expired, so that was a plesant surprise (I didn't allow enough time for the transfer to complete).

It's nice to know the PayPal deductions are normal, but those considering becoming resellers will be paying a fee when they transfer money into their PayPal account, AND a fee when someone pays them via PayPal! So if your prices are too low, you may not make anything. Then you are faced with how to price things so you can make some money, but also not scare off customers.

I have found it difficult to communicate with their support, but they are helpful and have called me directly as a result of an email I sent. This last time I wrote about the PP fees and also that while they tell you HOW to set up things like slab pricing, they tell you NOTHING about how this can affect things. Is one slab too few? Are 10 slabs too many? How should you set the pricing? Well, the answer is, it's all up to you...!

There are a lot of "traps" for new resellers, even those with experience (I'm a 56 yo Internet consultant). I looked around the system to find out how to replace the "your brand" logo with my own. I checked templates and settings, and looked though HTML code for headers and could not find it. During this last call I was walked through some steps where we created a new tempoary template. THEN one of the images was available that I will be able to replace with my logo.

It's a powerful system with a lot of features and options, but it's not friendly or well-documented as you work with it. They DO provide a lot of videos and help information, but there is so much to learn that it would be more helpful to include it in the system itself.

I think they need a user's group of some kind...

 

[aww]

You can transfer out "expired" (first 30 days) domains from any registrar based on icann law. I've done it at enom and godaddy without hassle. If for some reason you can't unlock it or get the key, just ask customer service and they are pretty much required to provide it.

I don't like hearing about the expired page, that would be a big reason to escape enom and sounds like it's no better.

The 60 day rule I was referring to at Godaddy was when I simply edited the whois info. I'm not talking about internal/external transfer, simply an edit. If that is an icann rule then enom is breaking it every time I do a mass edit to my whois info.

Thanks for taking the time to write that up. At this time since their prices would only be about 25-30 cents cheaper (I want the dns services) I'm deciding it's not worth the extra work.

 

[deu12000]

DirectI/ResellerClub is super solid in my opinion. Over the last couple of years I've been consolidating all of my domains there. It's not a popular registrar for resellers probably because transferring requires you to have an account under a reseller or you have to become a reseller, but it's a easy push. The pricing is great and once you get the hang of the control panel you realize you have power to do a lot of things.

I honestly don't understand much about the Reseller club from their site. I can't tell if you can be a reseller and buy from yourself. I can't tell what the costs and conditions are to have a site.

I'm my only and best client. :hehe: The way you set it up is you create a normal client account (with a different email than your reseller login) and when you purchase domains just execute without payment and without sending an invoice. It sounds complicated but once you're use to it, it's very easy.

The costs to have your own site is $0 you just need to make a deposit for whichever slab you prefer or can afford. If you want your site to be fully branded on your domain you have to create a couple of CNAME records on your hosting account (there's documentation for everything in the admin panel).

 

[aww]

I keep getting special offers to finish activating my account.
Anyone know if they are going to keep giving us specials?
Because that's a big tip then, don't fund your account right after you create it and just wait a week or two for a better deal...


ps. wtf just happened to namepro's very nice colors?

 

[deu12000]

They have specials every few months. Right now it's the birthday special or something like that; where you get best tier pricing for certain extensions. I know .info is pretty much ongoing and they have specials here and there. They also have specials when they introduce new extensions. .asia's are only $11.99 at DirectI. I think they beat just about everyone on pricing.

 

[nielsencl]

I think aww hit on a good tip. I too delayed the funding of my account and they contacted me with an offer. Make sure you use the link in the offer. I didn't and lost out on it.

About the forums here, I think NP either has a new advertiser or a new owner. I went to the guy's site and he seems ok. I signed up for his newsletter.

 

[aww]

They actually sent me two different offers a week apart (not talking about the birthday bash) and I kinda regret not taking advantage of it. There may be a few hours left on the last offer though - they aren't responding to my email questions however (been a few hours).

(I just want my old cool blue namepro colors back as a theme option at least - this bright red and oranges are killing my eyes)

 

[h3rm4w4n]

directi = publicdomainregistry ?

 

[nielsencl]

I think publicdomainregistry is the retail face for Directi. You can buy from them, but the prices are quite high and I think that is because they don't want to compete with their resellers... does anyone else know?

 

[lucas5504]

I have been debating setting up a reseller account on Directi but have been unable to get a clear answer to a sub-reseller question. I have searched the Directi Documentation and have made a phone call to them. I was unable to understand the lady that I spoke with and I don't think she understood my question. My question was: If I bebome a reseller and have sub-resellers under me what happens if a subreseller stops serving his/her customers? EX: goes out of business. The reps answer was that the sub-reseller is removed from you chain and his clients and sub-resellers are put directly under Directi's control and you no longer get any benefit from that sub-reseller line.

I don't see how this would be possible? What have you guys experienced that are currently resellers who have sub-resellers under them?

 

[nielsencl]

What you were told makes sense to me, but they may not have explained it clearly and this is common problem with Directi.

If you go to Reseller Club directly like I did and sign up you are not under any reseller. So a sub-reseller that lost the reseller above then would then just be a reseller like I am.

If you are going to sign up, you should do so under another reseller. Yes, they benefit from your sales, but you will also benefit (if they let you) from their volumn of sales and should have lower prices than if you just sign up on your own. No, I am not fishing for you to sign up under me because I do not have all my pricing setup yet. My main interest was to be able to pay less for registrations and renewals and not so much for selling to others or getting resellers under me. If you are interested I can try to find out the guy who wanted me to sign up under him. Him was offering me nearly the best pricing possible (one of the top slab pricings) for only about $200 initial deposit. I may still have his userid here, but he may also swoop in and post if he thinks he can get a new reseller.

 

[Stix]

I have been debating setting up a reseller account on Directi but have been unable to get a clear answer to a sub-reseller question. I have searched the Directi Documentation and have made a phone call to them. I was unable to understand the lady that I spoke with and I don't think she understood my question. My question was: If I bebome a reseller and have sub-resellers under me what happens if a subreseller stops serving his/her customers? EX: goes out of business. The reps answer was that the sub-reseller is removed from you chain and his clients and sub-resellers are put directly under Directi's control and you no longer get any benefit from that sub-reseller line.

I don't see how this would be possible? What have you guys experienced that are currently resellers who have sub-resellers under them?

Why should that not be possible?

Of course they can do that they have the full control over everything.

I'm with them for over 2 years now and have only good things to say about them.

I have a few customers but never managed to set up a site... just did some auctions when they have specials running.

I'm too lazy to read the whole "how to" so I'm my best customer :D