Want to provide a domain registration service?

I was asked in PM for suggestions on providing domain registration services at an affordable rate. You can become an ICANN accredited registrar and be your own boss, but you need to pay like $10,000 and have proof of having $70,000 in cash. No small business owner or startup would dream of matching these obligations, so what's the alternative?

The professional choice is using a reseller program. With a reseller program you can provide automated domain registration at a fraction of the costs of becoming an accredited registrar. I've found 3 reseller services so far:

http://www.wildwestdomains.com
http://resellers.tucows.com a.k.a. OpenSRS
http://www.enom.com/resellers/ (DollarDNS's choice)

Mini-review:

WildWestDomains
This costs the most to operate with the ~$99/year fee. However, registering domains is the cheapest of the 3 resellers (with the *possible* exception of enom) with a base domain registration fee of $6.25 if I remember correctly. I do not know what methods of reselling they provide. Too expensive for me to really consider.

Tucows OpenSRS
OpenSRS is a great service with an API that will allow your website backend to interface with their registration service via perl modules to register domains. You don't have to use the API, you can also let people login to OpenSRS for their domain and edit its details. They require only a one-time fee of ~$69 if I remember correctly. However, domain registrations are typically $10 each.

Enom
Free reseller account setup! All you need to do is sign a contract agreement. Then you prepay a certain amount to get the registration savings you prefer. The more you pay up front the bigger your discounts. On the first payment you get no additional fee. With later payments you pay a 3% fee on whatever you paid. Enom also offers an API so that your website can handle the front end, and make automatic domain transactions with the enom registration service. If you don't want to design a front end that's fine too. You can also link your website to their registration process pages so that they do all the work, you provide support and make the profits.