Snapnames ends reseller program effective July 13

[armstrong]

from http://www.dnjournal.com/lowdown.htm

SnapNames.com has pulled the plug on their reseller program. Effective Tuesday, July 13, the drop catching company stopped taking new orders from partner sites like Snaps.com, CheapSnaps.com and FastSnaps.com. Any subscriptions that are still open in early August will be moved to the main SnapNames site. The affiliates had offered a lower price than the main site but allowed only 3 Snapback exchanges per order (the full-priced subscriptions at SnapNames.com come with unlimited exchanges). In a letter to their resellers SnapNames said they had actually been losing money on every order and should have discontinued the program some time ago...

Does anyone have a copy of the email from snapnames about this? Please post if possible.

- Apollo

 

[suthra]

I think they are closing down

 

[pelican]

i cant place order at reseller snap site now..
no more reseller snaps....

No official news from any of them. They should have at least inform us.

 

[Raf]

Aww, that sounds like bad news for resellers out there that used SnapNames Resller Program.

 

[Riceman]

even at 35.00-39.00 wholesale, how can they lose money?

 

[QBert]

i would happely pay the 69 for a domain that i realy like, i guess the way they see it, all the snaps are being taken, if its good and expers in like a year then its taken, why not charge more, they will still sell allmost as much, makeing more money for less work. sounds good

 

[aww]

per your request armstrong (better late than never?)

I have some unpleasant news: SnapNames has decided to suspend support
for our API in the very near future. The decision was not arrived at
easily, as both we and our resellers have put significant effort into
creating, maintaining, and implementing the API. However, the market for
expiring domains is such right now that SnapNames is actually losing
money on the majority of orders we fulfill through the API; in fact,
we've continued to support the API well past the point of profitability
for us, hoping for a change in circumstances, but we can wait for the
change no longer.

We plan to cease accepting SnapBack orders via the API at 5:00 pm
Pacific on Tuesday, July 13. All other API functionality will continue
to be supported for several weeks after that, so that existing orders
can still be serviced. At some point in early August, for any still open
SnapBack orders that were sold by any of your sites, we will set up an
account in our normal system for your customer with the name in it.
Blake will be in touch tomorrow to discuss the data we'll need from you
in order to do this. Also, we'll of course refund you any funds that you
have in your PAM account right now -- another detail to work out with Blake.

We still think that WLS will be launched eventually, and when it is, we
will resume our support of the API. I'm sorry though that maintaining it
is untenable for us now. I will have some additional info for you in
another day or two.