I have a few names that pay for themselves parked for type-in traffic; and a few dozen names that pay for themselves with websites developed for Adsense, Amazon, and CJ links. I'm pertty clumsy at this, but they wobble along OK; and I've lots more names (hundreds actually) that could be developed that way.

But for some of them I want to try something that is new for me: selling annual subscriptions to redirect addresses in my domains to the subscribers' mailboxes.

I already use MyDomain.com and Redirection.net for myself, using their control applets manually, but to sell forwarding to others I need an API so I can have my customers do it themselves from my sites.

I want my customers to use my pages to check availability of the name they want within my domain, to subscribe and renew, to check their expirations, to pay, etc. And then the back-end API needs to set up the forwarding that the customer bought.

Do any of you have experience in this area? Who's got that kind of service, and who's best? Is there a webmaster toolkit/package for this somewhere that can get this up for me easily?

Thanks.

--- JLW

Have you seen the free email service at everyone.net ?
They call it 'sponsored email' and you get banner space. If users sign up for enhanced paid email sevice you get a commission. Very easy and customizable.

The problems with everyone.net are that its very heavily ad ridden and its hard to move away from them as they don't give access to any user details to allow a smooth migration unless you pay them a chunk of change. I've also been seeing a lot of error messages in their system lately.

I'm stuck with them on a bunch of my domains, but I wouldn't recommend anyone use them from the getgo if the idea is for making money rather than providing a free service with on real expectations of return.

to get the job done properly will require a coder as its integrating in with the server at a pretty low level to do it right and could cause all kinds of headaches.

Safesys, what do you mean about difficulty in moving away from them. Isn't it the case that you can discontinue the service at any time and leave any registerred users to continue on with them by logging straight into everyone's own interface via [whateveryourdomainwas].everyone.net ? And then you just need to recall your mx server settings and reset them to wherever you want. Everything is pointed at them so it's not as though they have control over anything other than the existing email subscribers accoutns, right?
That is, you might not be able to take all your email users with you (although you can always email them beforehand and tell them that from a particular date you'll be moving so they can switch on their own to your new service if you're inviting them to do so - or your your domain buyer's service as the case may be). Agreed that it is somewhat ad intensive but that is a bit mitigated by the fact that you get 50% of the ads space. It just seems that the advantage of everyone net is the simplicty of getting the service going and adjusting the templates and interface options.
And in presumably the ads encourage people to pay for the non-ad service so you have two ways to potentially earn.

If you want to operate it somewhere else you need to change the mx record - that means mail no longer gets routed to everyone.net so although the people can access historical accounts they don't get new mails and then you have the serious issue of continuity - if you move to another service and someone creates an account of the same name then they're going to get the mails intended for the original everyone.net user.

Don't forget that Everyone.net vets the mail broadcasts.

You don't get 50% of the adspace - you get 50% of the banner rotation is all. they then swamp users with popups etc (a recurring complaint I get from users).

I have mailplus turned off on my accounts because I don't want to have people paying for a service that I may wish to cancel at some point in time.

OK, it sounds like there's no easy solution so far. I see other sites doing exactly what I want to do. (e.g., EmailCommand.com) How do they do it?

Originally posted by safesys
Don't forget that Everyone.net vets the mail broadcasts.

All good points, safesys. The only thing I'd take issue with is the fact that while Everyone.net may vet the mail broadcasts, there is always the option in principle of taking the user list and sending a email (by listing the users in the BCC field) from another email account just to notify them of the change. That should arguably be fair enough to everyone.net, as long as it's a one-time communication for the benefit of the users.
So it's not as though you absolutely cant take them with you.

So it's not as though you absolutely cant take them with you.

that doesn't solve the problem of how you'd do the actual migration though - it's not moving accounts. The admin to approve that the people sigining up under the new service are the same as the old for hundreds of thousands of accounts just isn't viable.

OK, it sounds like there's no easy solution so far. I see other sites doing exactly what I want to do. (e.g., EmailCommand.com) How do they do it?

they can be using one of the third party mx redirect services like everyone.net or they may have set up their own code on the server to do it. if you have any intention of turning the email into a full blown business model I'd say get your own code and have full control over how it works and the revenue streams etc.