By Scott Bianchi
I am part of the growing population of people who are lookingto earn a living working from home on the internet. I amconstantly looking for new and better ways to earn some income.I participate in multiple forums having to do with affiliatemarketing and working from home. Very few people participate inreseller programs and I think they are missing out on somebig-time money.
A reseller program is as simple as it sounds. You become aretailer for a particular company. This is different from anaffiliate program because you set your own prices, in some casesyou even handle the billing of your customers and then you arecharged by the supplying company for what you sell. Let me bemore clear. You sign up for a web hosting reseller program forexample. That company will then tell you what you are allowed tosell for their products and how much they charge you for eachaccount. Then you create a website (in some cases) and you putthe products on your website. A customer signs up for theservice through your website and you take payment. Then you needto go to your reseller control panel and enter all thecustomer’s information and the supplying company then sets themup for the hosting program they chose.
I chose web hosting as the example because that is what I haveresearched and signed up for so far. There many otheropportunities however. Some of the hosting companies willprovide you with a website and all you do it build it to yourliking and set your prices. Others will just let you know whichof their products you can sell and how much they charge you,like I mentioned above. Then you need to go in and enter all thecustomer’s information when you make a sale. Some programs arefree and other charge for membership and a set-up fee. Iresearched the following:
iPowerWeb.com- They are one of the companies that require youto put their products on your own site and then you need toenter the customer’s information in your control panel when youmake a sale. They only allow you to sell one hosting package.So, if you want to give a lot of options to your customers youeither need a different program or use numerous programs, whichcan be confusing. There is no charge for this program. I got noresponse on one communications with them asking questions aboutthe program and a terrible answer on a second question. Thisconcerned me a bit because how helpful will they be if I have aquestion concerning a customer’s account.
Globat.com- This is one of the better programs I researched.They also do not give you a website, you would have to put theirproducts on your site. No charge for this program either. Theyhad very good prices on their programs. They also had a liveperson communicating with me via email to answer my questions.What I didn’t like about them is the fact you had to prepay forthe accounts. In other words, I would have to buy, let’s say 10,hosting programs before I even sold one. The more you bought thecheaper they were. They were running a special, if you bought 10you got 10 free. So, for 20 programs it would cost me $500. Thisis $25 each for a year. The problem is, they were only good forone year from the date of purchase. If I didn’t sell them allfor some reason I lost them and had to buy more the next year.
FatCow.com - On the surface a very appealing program. Theyclaim for a one-time set up of $99 you get a fully functioningwebsite. So, I signed up with them. That $99 got me NOTHING. Icouldn’t resell, I couldn’t even host my fully functioningwebsite. So, I called and found out I needed to spend another$99 for the ability to host the website. It sounded reasonableand I was assured this is all I needed to do. WRONG! I had awebsite now but still did not have the ability to resellanything. That was yet another “upgrade” and charge of $25. Iwent for this as well. I now had all the access I needed. Theyfailed to explain however that the 7 hosting plans they showpricing for in their initial sales pitch you do not have theability to sell. They only give you 3 options and 2 of them areeCommerce. For $225 I figured it was a good deal if I had accessto all 7 of the packages they offer. I have since requested myrefund and would not recommend this program to others.
Aplus.net- They have 2 plans. The most basic is their goldplan. This plan has a set-up fee of $149 and a monthly fee of$59. The plan only comes with one option for selling, their eProhosting plan. They offer a platinum plan as well. That onerequires a set-up fee of $995 and the same monthly charge of$59. It requires a minimum of 500 customers.
As you can see from the website, they have two packages. Thebasic for $99 a year and the Pro plan for $199 a year. The onlyreal difference is the amount you pay for the products. The Proplan charges less for the same products as the basic plan. Youhave access to ALL of the products GoDaddy offers. You candecide not to sell them if you want but you do have the option.It is a fully functioning website. You set the prices and theypay you the profits. Here is an example of the website you wouldget if you signed up for this program:
https://www.securepaynet.net/gdshop/rhp/default.asp?prog_id=329826
With the Pro plan you also get $250 credit toward GoogleAdwords. They also have arrangements set up with some of the topaffiliate programs if you would like to promote your sitethrough them.
Considering the ease, the wide range of products, and the facteverything they advertised in their program was true, unlikeFatCow, I felt $199 for a year is well worth it.
One other difference between a reseller program and anaffiliate program is the fact that when a customer signs up youhave access to that customer’s information. Now you can work tobuild your mailing list this way in addition to other ways youmay be using. As an affiliate you do not have this option. Also,if you are an affiliate you usually do not get residual income,as the reseller you do. All of the sites above offer bothaffiliate and reseller programs. After reading this email youwill hopefully see there is much more potential as a reseller,regardless of which company you go with or which product you gowith for that matter. To prove my point I wanted to do somequick math, using very conservative numbers.
Let’s say I sell just 5 hosting packages per month for 5 yearsand they are only the economy package. I have it currently onsale where I only make $3 a month profit.
The first year I will have sold 60 plans for a profit of $2160for the year. This does not include the domain names or anyadditional services they buy. After year #2 I will have sold 120plans for profit of $4320. By the end of year 5 I will have sold300 plans total for a profit of $10800 that will keep comingevery year as long as I don’t lose any customers. If I just keptthat same sales rate for 10 years I will have sold 600 plans fora profit of $21,600.
Now, $21,600 is not megabucks but I am assuming I will sellmore than 5 plans per month and I don’t think they will all bethe economy plan either. That figure also does not include theother services offered or any sales that will result from themailing list that will be built either. If I sold 50 per monthusing all the same terms for calculations I will have made aprofit of $21,600 in the first year and $216,000 in ten years.
You can play with the numbers anyway you want but I tried touse very conservative and achievable numbers for the firstexample and then used more aggressive, but still achievable, forthe second example.
Hopefully the article has shown there is a tremendous potentialfor earning a nice living using reseller programs over the morepopular affiliate options. If you are already successful on theinternet or you are deciding how to get started hopefully youwill now see the potential in reseller programs.
About the Author: Scott Bianchi operateshttp://www.best-internet-bargains.com . He writes on a varietyof topics. If you would like to be added to his distributionlist for his new articles when they are published just send anemail to articles@bestinternetbargains.com .