----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim McAtee" <jmcatee@mediaodyssey.com>
To: <discuss-list@opensrs.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:28 AM
Subject: Brave New World?
> Do anyone else get the feeling that the days of profitably being a domain
> registrar's reseller are quickly fading?
Not really.
Our biggest challenge at the moment is the US$ being at 1.82 to the pound.
This means our income from our US business is worth very little by the time
it
is converted to pounds,
BUT
we atract a lot of hosting business in through the domain registration side
so it
really is vital to our whole business.
I have spent the past month examining pricing.
I even got as far as deciding to sell domains at a loss in conjunction with
our cheap hosting brand to bring in some hosting business, but in hindsight
I don't think it woul dmake much difference.
The reaearch I did reading forums frequented by people who look for very
cheap deals is that it would need to be sub $6 before they would consider
moving supplier and preferably around $5
They also want DNS and forwarding services.
My calculation was that if I could convert 1 in 50 customers to hosting
customers ($48 per year)
I could afford to lose $1 per domain and still break even, but there was no
way I would ever break even at
$5 per domain unless the sign up rate for hosting was a lot lot higher.
I think the fundamental difference between Tucows resellers and some of the
other domain registration services
is that most of us are woner managed businesses.
This means that we can provide better support but we also mostly operate
within cash flow. i.e. we dont just need to make enough to pay the interest
on bank loans from several years ago
The fact that most of us make real profit is good for the customer because
we are stable businesses and not likely to go out of business.
Thats my tak eon it having spent a couple of weeks thinking about it.
Regards
Gordon Hudson
Hostroute.com Ltd
www.hostroute.net
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