Sell Trustwave SSL and Win an iPad 2!

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Sell Trustwave SSL and Win an iPad 2! Posted: 26 Jul 2011 07:53 AM PDT Between August 1, 2011 and September 30, 2011, we’re giving our Resellers a chance to win an iPad 2 and some other great prizes as part of a fantastic Trustwave SSL Incentive Program. Here’s how the Incentive Program works: Sell at least one Trustwave-branded SSL certificate during August or September, and you’ll automatically receive an entry into a random drawing for the Grand Prize of an Apple iPad 2 from Trustwave and OpenSRS! Each Trustwave SSL certificate you sell earns you one entry, so the more you sell, the better your chances are to win! Everyone who sells an SSL certificate from Trustwave is automatically entered to win – there’s no signup required. More Chances to Win If you’re a first-time Trustwave SSL reseller, we’re going to give you even more chances to win! Sell your very first Trustwave SSL certificate in August or September, and we’ll give you an extra entry! And for early birds, we’ll have a few surprise drawings sometime in August and September for those who get started selling right away. Stay tuned – we’ll be announcing those surprise draw winners through the OpenSRS Reseller Blog. We’ll announce the Grand Prize winner of the iPad 2 in early October. Good luck to everyone!

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OpenSRS Reseller Advisory Council. We’re Listening.

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OpenSRS Reseller Advisory Council. We’re Listening. Posted: 20 Jul 2011 02:19 PM PDT How often have you spoken with somebody and you can just tell that they’re not paying attention to what you’re saying? Their eyes look away for only a second, but that’s all it takes for you to know they’re just waiting for you to stop talking so they can blurt out whatever it is they want to say. It can be frustrating for those with something to say because conversations are as much about listening as they are about talking. Listening is silent. It doesn’t surprise and it will never shock. Perhaps that’s why talking has been so popular; It’s easy to keep a person’s attention while we’re making noise, isn’t it? By listening, we can hear all about the challenges, the pains, frustrations, joys and successes of those we care about. We can empathize by listening and show that we care about all the little (and big) things going on with the people in our lives and the customers we talk to. Recognizing that we wanted to become better listeners at OpenSRS, a few months ago, we launched a plan that would see the formation of the OpenSRS Reseller Advisory Council. It’s an initiative that begins tomorrow and it’s aimed at getting some of our smartest, creative, engaged Resellers to talk, while we listen. What is the goal of the Council? We created the Advisory Council with a specific purpose; to equip an underserved segment of our Reseller base with a voice that we can listen to. We plan to solicit their thoughts and benefit from their experience. We think we all have a lot to gain by doing this. We’re going to listen to what the founding members have to say and do our best to tie what we hear to real business outcomes. The current plan is a conference call each quarter, with access to a private forum to continue the conversation after the calls. We may, depending on the needs of the group, create smaller committees to discuss, debate and come to the larger group with recommendations. In the end, we’re going to move forward. It might be an inch forward, and not a mile to start with, but it will be a step forward. The topics for the agenda were created from comments and answers given in the Advisory Council application form and we’re also crowd-sourcing additional topics and voting on the ones most important to the members. You can see the most popular agenda items at the right. We don’t get to choose what to talk about, the members do. How were the Council members chosen? It started with an email to a couple thousand already engaged Resellers, inviting them to complete the application form. We had over 100 Resellers apply. From there, we identified a group of 40 individuals, the majority of them senior executives, or company founders working at companies that have  100 to 1,000 domain names under management with OpenSRS. If you completed an application form and did not hear from us, we’re sorry about that… you will soon. It’s not that we haven’t approved you, it’s just that we’re taking things a bit slow as we get started and another Reseller may have been a better fit this time around. If you’re a reseller outside of North America, we’re running a separate Council (at least in the beginning), so we’ll be touching base with you to get the ball rolling. We’ll also be sharing what we learned from the first Council meeting. Do you want to get involved? Super! Let us know in the comments and we’ll follow-up as we run additional recruitment efforts. Be warned though, membership in the Council is not a free ride. There’s work involved and we’ll have high expectations of you if you’re accepted. Here we go! We’re really exciting about this initiative and it is our hope that the founding members of the Advisory Council will play a critically important role in helping us become better listeners as we continue our efforts to build the world’s most reseller friendly, super-focused provider of Domain Names, SSL and Email services!

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OpenSRS Email Now Offers 5GB Standard

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OpenSRS Email Now Offers 5GB Standard Posted: 19 Jul 2011 06:10 AM PDT Starting today we’re upgrading all OpenSRS Email Service mailboxes to 5GB of storage at no additional cost. There are two phases to the upgrade: Effective today, new accounts you provision will automatically have 5GB of storage. For existing accounts, beginning today, we’re going to start upgrading them from 2GB of storage to 5GB of storage. Getting all accounts upgraded might take a day or two, so feel free to tell your customers and users about the new storage quota, but please let them know they may not see the added space right away. Share the News You don’t need to do anything – the upgrades will happen automatically, and without any downtime or interruption in service. Do enjoy the extra space and, by all means, let your customers know about the good news. Feel free to take all the credit, if you want. We don’t mind.

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Important news about the OpenSRS Status Dashboard

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Important news about the OpenSRS Status Dashboard Posted: 12 Jul 2011 09:01 AM PDT Today, we’re very happy to announce that we have rebuilt the OpenSRS Status Dashboard with superhero powers! Many of you are aware of the OpenSRS Status Dashboard. It’s our primary communications channel to tell you about upcoming maintenances and report (in realtime) any issues affecting our services. For those of you not familiar, you should really check it out. Go ahead, we’ll wait. There was just one thing that bothered us about the dashboard: we hosted it on our own infrastructure, using our own DNS. So while everything generally chugged along without issue, there have been a couple of instances where issues with certain parts of our infrastructure would take the dashboard offline. For example a network event within a data centre, a problem with our DNS infrastructure, or even a failure to email would mean this dashboard might become unavailable, or cut off communications during the times when we most need to let you know what’s up. Here’s a quick rundown of the main changes to your new dashboard: A new domain name has been registered (opensrsstatus.com) that uses independent DNS services for resolution. The webservers, data centre and all related network infrastructure is out-of-band and no components or services rely on our infrastructure. More update options! In addition to the dashboard view, updates can be received via email, RSS and Twitter (via @OpenSRSStatus) Since we launched the integrated Status Dashboard a few years ago, it’s become an integral tool for us to communicate with you during important events and we’re really excited about these changes. Please take a moment to update your bookmarks to reflect the new domain name. We currently have a redirect in place so that status.opensrs.com will bring you to opensrsstatus.com, but if you don’t update your bookmarks, you could find yourself without status updates when you need them most. Now, for the last time, go update your bookmarks! You’ll be glad you did.

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.CO Renewal Season is Here

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.CO Renewal Season is Here Posted: 11 Jul 2011 08:17 AM PDT It’s been almost a year since the launch of the .CO domain extension. That means registrants who bought their .CO domains in those first few weeks and months are starting to see renewal notices and the earliest .CO registrants are already renewing their domains. As with other domain extensions, getting over that first year renewal hump is hugely important in keeping that domain for the long term. Renewal rates on domains more than one year old (in other words, domains that have been renewed once already) are considerably higher than the renewal rate for first year domains. Boost your Renewal Rates There are some simple steps you can take to boost your renewal rates for .CO domains as we move into this period of high activity: Make sure your renewal messages are setup: OpenSRS sends out renewal messages to registrants automatically. Double check to make sure that you are sending renewal emails out at 90, 60 and 30 days in addition to the notices that go out closer to expiry. And take the time to customize those templates with contact information so your customer knows where and how to renew their domain. Those templates and settings can be found in the “Renewal Management” section of the Reseller Web Interface. Consider adding renewal reminders to your homepage or interface: A simple banner ad or notice inside your control panel might be all it takes to convince or remind a customer to renew their domain. Don’t overlook any opportunity to remind your customers to renew for another year, or more. Send out a renewal email campaign: We have some great .CO marketing materials you can use to create a quick email reminding customers to renew their names. Point out the increasing value of .CO domains and make sure you build the case for them to hold on to their domain for another year. And don’t forget to encourage customers without a .CO domain to visit your website and search for a .CO domain that might be an even better fit for their business. .CO Facts and Figures CO Internet, the .CO registry operator, passed along some interesting stats about the first year of offering .CO domains worldwide. .CO sites are being used: .CO domain growth is very similar to the growth seen in active sites under .CO domains. This is a very good trend and shows that registrants are getting .CO domains to use them. A key factor in renewal rates is whether the domain resolves to an active site, so seeing a high rate of usage for .CO domains indicates that renewal rates and customer retention amongst .CO registrants will be good. .CO registrants are spread around the world: While about 48% of the .CO domains were registered in the US, countries like the UK, Canada, Australia and Germany are all in the top ten for countries where .CO domains are registered. .CO resonates with domain buyers around the world, in many langauges. .CO is one million domains strong: As of last month, there were more than one million .CO domains registered and that number continues to grow. The launch of .CO domains has been one of the most successful domain extension launches in recent memory.

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goMobi v1.4 Update Coming with Analytics, New Icon Sets and more

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goMobi v1.4 Update Coming with Analytics, New Icon Sets and more Posted: 07 Jul 2011 12:21 PM PDT On July 10, 2011, the next version of the goMobi mobile website builder will be released. There's nothing you need to do either as a reseller or an end-user – the update happens automatically across all goMobi accounts. Existing sites will be unaffected by the changes, but you might want to let your goMobi customers know about some super new features that are part of the 1.4 release. Major new features: Analyze traffic with complete site analytics Create and print a QR Code-enabled marketing flyer Upload images to a new hosted image gallery Enhancements to existing features: More icon sets Support for multiple locations and coupon codes Ability to connect with popular location-based services (foursquare, Facebook Places, Google Places, Yelp and Gowalla Better social network support (especially on higher end devices) Improved color choices for backgrounds and text/titles …and many more fixes and enhancements. You can read more about the changes on our goMobi features section, including screenshots for some of the new features. Available in Test Environment Today The Horizon Test Environment is connected to the goMobi Test Bed system which has already been updated to v1.4. You can log into your OpenSRS Horizon Test account and see some of the new features of the Site Builder first hand. Log in with your usual OpenSRS credentials here.

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Boosting Sales by Adding SSL to Your Product Line-up

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Boosting Sales by Adding SSL to Your Product Line-up Posted: 29 Jun 2011 06:07 AM PDT Last week I had the pleasure to host a webinar with one of our new Trust Service partners, Trustwave. In that session, Dan Marfione, Trustwave’s Partner Sales Director, SSL, gave resellers some background on Trustwave and talked at length about how adding SSL to your product line up can help boost sales and help your bottom line. Some of the key things Dan pointed out during his presentation: SSL isn't just for banks and big business: there's a real need for SSL to provide encryption right across the spectrum of Internet users. End-user confidence in Internet data security is not good right now thanks to some recent high-profile hacks. Whether your customers are mid-sized businesses with an e-commerce website, or just a small business that has a small mailing list and collects a little customer data, the transmission of that data needs to be encrypted in order to instill a sense of confidence in customers. Higher-end SSL products like Extended Validation (EV) certificates aren't just for the big guys anymore: Extended Validation certificates provided end-users with peace of mind. Not only is their data encrypted, but they know who they are sending it to. Again, that’s key in providing confidence to end-users and customers that they can trust who they choose to deal with online. Customer Education is Key When Offering SSL When it comes to offering SSL to your customers, Dan pointed out that it's important to ensure they know what is involved in the process. Whether it's an Easy Trust domain validated certificate, a Premium SSL organization validated certificate, or a Premium EV extended validation certificate, you need to make sure your customer knows what to expect during the validation process and what documentation is required of them. Dan did a great job explaining the process from start to finish for each certificate type so you can be sure to not only make the initial sale, but also make sure that your customer gets that certificate validated and issued as quickly as possible. To help you understand the buying and provisioning process, I showed you how easy the new Trust Manager in the OpenSRS Control Panel makes it to provision a new SSL certificate. I went step-by-step through the process of ordering, validating and receiving an Easy Trust domain-validated SSL certificate and showed you the emails that go out, and explained the process that your customers will go through to have an SSL certificate ordered and in their inbox in minutes. On-demand Recording Available If you missed the presentation, we've archived the session for you on OpenSRS.com. Click here and you'll be able to view that recording on-demand, at any time. For more information on Trustwave and the full line up of Trustwave SSL products available through OpenSRS, including the lowest cost DV certificate we offer, visit the Trustwave SSL product page. Congratulations to Our Winners We also want to pass along our congratulations to three lucky attendees. Thanks to Trustwave, we gave away an iPad 2, an iPod Touch and a $25 iTunes gift card to three attendees in a random drawing following the webinar. Jason Klien was the winner of the iPad Doug McIntyre won the iPod Touch Arvind Parmar will receive the iTunes gift card.

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