ChannelLife New Zealand - Industry insider news for technology resellers
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Fri, 1st Dec 2006
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Proven strategies to grow your business’ profits. You’ve invested hard-earned money and endless hours establishing your business and client base.  You’ve based it around what you know and what you do best.  You’re starting to see a payoff from your labour of love and have imagined how nice it would be to see a greater return from your business. And yet the prospect and added expense of hiring more staff and spending additional money on infrastructure seems a bit daunting.  So what do you do?  Do you take the risk of added investment or do you look into other options such as reseller and affiliate programs or simply upselling to your current customers?WebFarm has thought long and hard about finding a solution for businesses just like yours and have come up with a few options to create additional revenue without the burden of capital expenditures.

You might consider becoming a reseller…WebFarm offers a reseller program with an ongoing revenue stream of over 60% in margins.  There are no set up fees and it’s so easy anyone can do it.  You can gain greater ongoing profits from your existing customers and new clients by offering Windows & Linux hosting, e-mail, domain names and online tools such as SSL certificates, eCommerce and more.  With the convenience of outsourcing you’re freed from purchasing servers, dedicated data rooms, stand-by air conditioning and generators, multi-tiered firewalls, 24/7 security, disaster recovery and more.

WebFarm provides resellers with flexible plans that allow you to mix and match disk space, e-mail and traffic according to your client’s individual needs.  In addition resellers have the advantage of the WebFarm Solutions Manager to manage all accounts in one place and the bonus of an Ensim control panel for branding. All WebFarm servers are New Zealand based - meaning that your support is local and more importantly, in your time zone so that maintenance isn’t done during critical business hours. Visit www.webfarm.co.nz to find out more. 

Or maybe an Affiliate…WebFarm’s Affiliate Program, on the other hand, allows affiliates to get paid a commission (versus the reseller who keeps 100% profit and provides all associated services for their customers) for domain names, e-mail, hosting and eCommerce products through a link.  Through the trusted brands of 2day.com (Windows) or Freeparking (Linux) you can earn commissions up to $720 for every customer that purchases through your site.  It’s as simple as putting up a banner and allowing WebFarm to handle the order, deliver the product and answer customer enquiries.

To become a WebFarm affiliate your domain and/or hosting account must be with Freeparking or 2day.com.  There are no fees to join and no minimum number of sales required.  You simply need to go to www.affiliatesales.co.nz and fill out an application.  Upon approval you will receive an affiliate ID to register products directly from 2day or Freeparking or by using the search box code generated for you.  You are then paid a commission for each account ordered and receive payment on a monthly basis. Multiple domain extensions and online shopping options are some of several ways to up-sell to your current database as a reseller or affiliate and make money.

Why not try up-selling???For those customers who already have the basics, it might pay off to review their accounts and see if they could benefit from additional products.Domain ExtensionsAdding additional domain extensions will allow your customers to secure their brand identity.  So instead of just having joeblogg.co.nz, they could also have joeblogg.com and joeblogg.biz so that someone else isn’t able to take their business name and use it on a similar domain.  As a reseller this means an additional profit of over $10 per domain and as an affiliate an additional $2.50-$5.00 per domain.

Online ShoppingFor customers considering selling products online, a shopping cart might be in order.  All Linux reseller hosting accounts come standard with WebFarm shop, as do most Freeparking hosting accounts.  Alternatively for Windows hosting products or for Linux customers wanting another option, you can add Miva Merchant.  Miva Merchant provides advanced catalog, customer & order management systems and complete store design.  Resellers can make an easy $50 per Miva Merchant account sold.

You might have customers who have an online store, but currently process all their transactions manually through their merchant account.  A simple solution for their business might be to add an online payment service such as WorldPay.  WorldPay works in conjunction with shopping cart software offering multi-currency payments in real-time transactions with several payment options, the latest security measures and an online customer management system for your customers to track their sales.  Resellers receive a whopping $150 rebate per WorldPay account created.

Or alternatively your customer might want a secure way to accept credit cards while keeping their merchant account.  An option for them would be Secure Card which allows your web site order form to link to a secure server to accept credit card details from your customers.  You then log in to the secure server to collect credit card information to process through your merchant account.  Resellers can make an ongoing profit of $36 per year, whereas an Affiliate would receive a commission of $6 per account.

Secure CertificatesMaybe your customers are looking to protect their online transactions with their customers.  An SSL Certificate might be the answer.  When an SSL is installed it can be used to create secure links to protect transactions, passwords, personal details, etc.  Resellers can make up to $25 per certificate and Affiliates $7.50 per certificate.

So what are you waiting for?Whether you’re looking to increase your offerings or simply adding a banner to your site and reaping profits as an affiliate, there are several quick, inexpensive ways for you to enhance your earnings.  Check out the reseller site at www.webfarm.co.nz and the affiliate site at www.affiliatesales.co.nz to see if one of these might provide the extra cash to swap that beloved Lada for a roaring Maserati.