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The total population of Internet websites is increasing at a very sharp rate. However, majority of these websites are either owned by small businesses or newbie website owners who are trying to build a source of online earnings.

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The Internet as well as computer industry is full of technical jargon and acronyms. The moment you start dealing with web business you are bound to come across the technical side of it. Start building a website and very soon youll face a new word from computer dictionary, i.e. FTP which stands for File Transfer Protocol. Its a no-brainer that many would prefer using the acronym. Anyone who has ever developed a website and uploaded it over a remote web server understands …

Reselling Domain Names
September 2005

You offer web hosting services. Or web design services. Or both. When your clients need domain names for their websites, do you want to send them to another site, possibly to a competitor, to register one?

Of course not. That’s part of why domain name registration is a popular service to offer. Reselling domain names provides an additional service to attract and keep clients as well as another source of recurring revenue. You can offer domain name registrations on their own or bundled with other services you provide.

Features of domain name reseller programs

When you are a domain name reseller, your clients register domain names using the service accessed through your domain name reseller account. The domain name company bills you, and you bill your clients. Or possibly the domain company handles the billing.

You decide on the retail pricing, and you market your services. The wholesale prices you pay before you add your markup depend on your sales volume and on the domain name reseller program you choose.

All of the domain name reseller companies compared in this article offer a reseller API (Application Programming Interface), which enables you to use the features provided with the domain reseller program. When your clients register domain names or update records at your site, the API communicates with the domain name reseller program system. With an API at your website, you keep the appearance and branding of your site when you resell domain names.

Two of the domain name companies compared here offer website creation tools for resellers, which means that you can be in the business of reselling domain names within minutes of having your account set up.

Many domain name reseller programs require the domain name reseller to pay and regularly top up a deposit for domain names. By doing this, the domain name reseller is paying for the domains in advance while making a profit from them when they’re registered.

Domain name companies compared

The starting prices listed are the highest current wholesale prices for .com domains. Some other extensions may be higher, and the prices typically decrease with volume pricing.

See the company websites for more details about what each domain name reseller program offers.

BulkRegister

BulkRegister’s Domain Pilot tool allows domain name resellers to provide their clients with a unique URL and access code to make changes to the Whois data for their domains. Resellers can control which of the fields to provide their clients with access to. Registration can be automated or manual.

Resellers become BulkRegister members and are invited to take part in discussions about product ideas, upgrades, and updates. A $50 Overture advertising credit comes with the first year of membership.

- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: $99
- Deposit required: No
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $12
- Website creation tool for resellers: No
- SSL certificate: Yes

eNom

If you resell domain names through eNom, you choose between two eNom tools:

- Automated Registration Software (API), which allows your clients to register and manage their domains through your site
- PDQ, a site that you customize and eNom manages they handle the billing, and you earn commissions

As an eNom domain name reseller, you can also offer your clients web hosting, web monitoring, SSL certificates, and other eNom products as a reseller.

- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: $99 if you use the PDQ website tool
- Deposit required: Starts at $199 for 199 eNom points
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $9.95
- Website creation tool for resellers: Yes
- SSL certificate: No

Tucows

A website builder, blogware, SSL certificates, and email services are among the services you can resell as well as domain names.

- Setup fee: $95
- Annual fee: No
- Deposit required: No minimum payment, but they recommend prepaying one month of credit in advance
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $9.85
- Website creation tool for resellers: No
- SSL certificate: No

Wild West Domains

Owned by The Go Daddy Group, Inc., Wild West Domains offers several reseller packages. They also offer other products to resell in addition to domain names, including hosting, website builders, email plans, SSL certificates, and merchant accounts.

- Setup fee: No
- Annual fee: Starting at $99; $249 with the API
- Deposit required: No
- Starting wholesale pricing for .com domains: $7.75
- Website creation tool for resellers: Yes
- SSL certificate: Yes

About the author:
Joey a Technical Executive Writer form http://www.micfo.com

Real Estate Website Scams
Many still say the Internet is like the Wild West. When it comes to the proliferation of scams, this is certainly true! As webmaster for over two dozen legal, real estate, and other business oriented websites, we receive a lot of email and phone solicitations. Often our clients ask our opinion on an Internet service or software product. We have researched and found the majority of offers directed toward real estate firms are what I call the half-truth variety.

It is interesting that these offers directed at small to mid-size firms are like live Internet viruses, they seem to mutate over time. The core remains, but, the exterior packaging (a.k.a. sales pitch) appears totally different.

One of the most enduring of such Internet scams is the offer to list your real estate site in an Internet real estate directory at what appears to be a huge savings over a legitimate real estate directory. The perpetrators of such scams provide impressive traffic figures, and in many cases, even show that their directory is listed on the first page of a major directory.

Looking at one scam in detail revealed the following facts:

A. Traffic figures can be manipulated. For about $50, anyone can purchase traffic directed to any site. The way this traffic is generated is the problem. The majority is machine generated overseas, or funneled through MLM /porn/music sites. In either case, your site will register visits but no business will ever be generated.

B. For placements on the first page of major search engines, there are two highly used methods. The first method, usually just makes the statement that the site has page one placement. Ask further and it is usually the name of the directory that has page one placement. The directory name might be www.real-estate-intercontinental-directory1.com and a search for real estate international directory1 could appear on page one of many search engines. However, how many potential real estate clients in Houston, Texas, will be likely to type in this exact directory name into their search engine? What they may use will be phrases like: Houston real estate, Houston TX MLS, Houston Texas agents, etc.

The other method used is bidding on popular real estate phrases on the major pay-for-click search engine programs. The problem here is that these sponsored ads have to be differentiated from the real or organic results. Once spending limits on the bids are reached, or the bidding program is terminated, the standing vanishes. After all, these standings were only achieved by cash payment, not a properly designed and optimized real estate website. Another factor to consider here is that current webmaster opinions suggest 50 to 70% of searchers skip over such sponsored listings in favor of the organic listings.

Almost any high school student can create a real estate directory with an impressive sounding name like www.professional-real-estate-advice-directory1.com, but do you really want to be listed there? Believe it or not, many naive agents have taken the bait. I asked one such agent what results he had achieved during almost a year with the listing. The reply was NO BUSINESS, and he believed they never received any phone calls. I then asked why he chose to advertise with this firm. The reply was because they only charged $49 for a full page ad for one year.

A far better investment for a real estate website would be a top website submission program such as the one at: http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com/url-placement-search-engines.htm

The old adage of You get what you pay for really applies here. Be careful out there, very careful!

Copyright 2005 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved.

About the author:
Bob Schwartz runs 4 real estate sites. At http://www.brokerforyou.com/real-estate-partner-sign-up.htmcan tade links w/these sites. His main site offers web hosting - domain registration & Internet software. http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.comImprove your sites creditability w/Free web site awards: http://www.web-site-award-winning.com

Linux vs. Windows web Hosting, does it make a difference?
One of the most confusing decisions someone new to web hosting will have to make is which platform their server should be on. There are a number of different choices out there but the main two are Linux and Windows web servers. There are also a lot of sources of information about hosting, but the majority of them are tainted by the author’s biased personal opinion unfortunately confusing the issue. Having just put in some solid hours researching the topic I have come to the conclusion that in general it quite probably does not matter which server you use. For the majority of people it will be far more important to choose a really good web host than to worry about the server-type that they implement.

Microsoft developed and owns the Windows operating system. Linux is open source and generally free. This means it can often be more expensive to set up and run a Windows server. However, this fact doesn’t really affect you unless you are actually setting up a server for yourself and if you’re reading this article then I’m guessing that it’s safe to assume you’re not. This article is going to offer information for those trying to decide which hosting company to go with. The cost involved in running a server does not affect the cost of a web-hosting package as much as you may think. Despite the general opinion that Windows servers are more expensive to run, buying a Windows hosting package can often turn out to be just as cheap or even cheaper than an equivalent Linux hosting package.

Some people naturally assume that because their PC runs Windows they need to buy a Windows hosting package. This isn’t true. Access to your web account will most likely be through FTP or a control panel and both servers support these methods. The main difference is that some of the FTP commands are slightly different between Linux and Windows and some FTP programs will be designed with one or the other in mind. This means you may occasionally find that when you try and get your FTP program to do something it returns an error message, but it won’t happen very often.

Your choice of server platforms should be dictated by the use to which you intend to put it. The majority of web features run fine on both platforms including PHP, mySQL, POP3 etc. If you intend to create your site using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. There is limited support for a number of these technologies in Linux, but they can be expensive and are usually lacking in features. It is probably worth considering the fact that if you use server specific technologies and then change hosts you’ll have a much harder time of it than if you use technologies that can be run on any system. Having it run generic technologies removes the need to focus on specifics and allows you to focus on the quality of service itself.

The reliability and stability of the different platforms have been the topic of many long arguments. The main reason that Windows is seen as being insecure is that it is the most widely used operating system for home PC’s. People spend more time looking for flaws in the most common system. With Linux being the most common server type, it has a surprising number of successful hack attempts made on it. In the end the security of both platforms comes down to the competency of the system administrators. If you are security minded then you’ll do better to make sure that the hosting company is reputable and highly skilled than to worry about the server they use.

In terms of performance there’s not a huge difference between the two servers. Linux reportedly performs faster because Windows (as usual) attempts to offer an ‘all in one’ package instead of the extendable Linux implementation. You’ll generally not notice a difference but if performance is of utmost importance to you then maybe this will influence your decision.

I’ve come to the conclusion that unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server. Developers are constantly improving both Linux and Windows so they should be fairly close in terms of features, security, and reliability for a long time. It’s the people implementing them that you should be basing your decision on.
About the author:

Daniel Punch
M6.Net Web Helpers
http://www.m6.net

Daniel Punch is a writer working at M6.Net: ‘The web-hosting company for humans.’ M6.Net is working hard to help humanity experience the power and freedom to develop their own part of the Internet, to share their information and connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Finding a Web Hosting Provider Posted By : MattR
The sharp rise in the demand for web hosting services has also resulted in the emergence of a large number of web hosting providers. Not only has this widened the choice of companies available for the customers, but this ample choice has also made it a very hard task to choose a reliable web hosting provider.

Is It Time For Changing Web Hosts Posted By :
At one point in time or another, during the course of the career of a webmaster they are going to have to take on the task of changing web hosts. The reasons for this are many and ultimately determined by the individual webmaster and can range from the current host providing poor service to the need to upsize. Changing the current hardware or software platform is much more painless than changing hosting company. It doesn’t matter whether you own your own hardware that is …

iPhone Games and iPhone Downloads
Since the Apple iPhone came out having a smartphone was pretty cool. What lacked was the support games and downloads to those phones. I am glad the iPhone came around because now there are options. I love playing games when waiting at the doctors or sitting in airport. I was looking into the available options […]

Microsoft Patch Management for Home Users
With easy access to Broadband and DSL the number of people using the Internet has skyrocket in recent years. Email, instant messaging and file sharing with other Internet users has also provided a platform for faster spreading of viruses, Trojans and Spyware. Being on the Internet without proper protection is like walking in the rain with no umbrella - you’re gonna get wet no matter how fast you run.

With so many computers installed in home offices it becomes critical that home users install the latest Microsoft patches when they become available. Older operating systems like Windows 98, Windows Millennium, Windows 2000, or Windows XP prior to Service Pack require the user to initiate the process of checking for security patches. Windows XP Service Pack 2 has changed this and the default settings are now notifying the user of available updates automatically. This has increased the level of security in some areas, but there is a very large number of users and computers that do not install security patches or hot fixes provided by Microsoft.

How should home users actually handle the task of patching their computers? As businesses home users should do some research about the patches that are being installed. Just installing them and walking away will work for a while, but sooner or later home users will run into an issue that a patch breaks something and eventually renders the system useless. So, what should home users do when new Microsoft patches become available? First of all - patches are usually released the second Tuesday of every month. Often these events are commented in the news and other media. Users should also signup for email alerts or MSN Messenger alerts at Microsoft’s security website at http://www.microsoft.com/security to be aware about updates.

Once patches are available Microsoft recommends installing them immediately. Depending on the confidence level of the user this should be done fairly soon after the patch release. If a user has several systems available it is recommended to test the patches on the least critical system first before updating all machines. Only one machine at a time is recommended to keep track of things and to be able to fix problems. In Windows XP it is also recommended to create a restore point first so that the system can revert back to the existing state before patching. Home users should closely follow the media about virus outbreaks and updates. Waiting a few days with patching a machine can make sense if some critical work is done on the computer an important deadline needs to be kept. Nothing is more annoying than having to fight computer problems with limited time at hand. Speaking of time - never install patches without having enough time at hand. Users should allocate 60 minutes of time just in case. If something goes wrong time pressure is the last thing you want to face when troubleshooting a machine that is down.

About the author:
Mr. Christoph Puetz is a successful entrepreneur and also an international book author. Websites of Christoph Puetz can be found at Web Hosting Help and at Highlands Ranch Colorado.

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Cheap Web Hosting - Free Hosting Services Posted By : Arthor Pens
If you need cheap web hosting and are not sure if you want the commitment of yearly plans, but you dont want the limitations that free hosting will impose, there are a few options available for your consideration.

Mozy Online Backup Discount Coupons
2008 is a good year to think about storing your websites and data offsite. What would happen if your computer crashes and all the data is lost? Have you backups on DVD or an external hard drive? What would happen if your house or apartment burns down or gets broken into? Is your data safely […]