Proxies are increasingly popular network elements that help users be anonymous, quicken & secure their access, or monitor network activity. Although these can’t be achieved by a single type of proxy, they all share a similar fundamental design—forwarding the request through one or multiple servers.
Given their popularity and focus on privacy, a huge number of tech enthusiasts and entrepreneurs are taking interest in making their entry into the proxy industry.
However, most of them lack the necessary tech knowledge to build their own proxy servers. Therefore, a new business model of proxy reselling has developed.
The Business Model of Proxy Reselling
There are three major elements, excluding marketing, in a proxy reselling business.
Developer or Provider
The proxy provider is the one who has the necessary knowledge, team, and infrastructure to sustain proxy servers and a huge number of IP addresses. They build the proxy servers depending on the requirements and distribute it among the resellers or directly to the customers. In most cases, they also take the necessary actions to make the services white-label to help the resellers. In easy words, they make their product untraceable to customers.
Reseller
The reseller, you, are the one responsible for marketing and selling the proxies to the customers. Depending on the provider, you may need to fill out forms and prove your worth before they can offer you the opportunity. Also as the providers often stay anonymous, providing customer support and acting as a buffer falls on you.
Customer
The customer is the one who uses the proxies. They may use it for data scraping, staying anonymous, or anything else. But if you’re selling to a customer as a reseller, guiding them with the best proxy for their purpose is your responsibility.
However, the customer can also source their proxies from the provider directly or through affiliations.
Why Resell Proxies
A genuine concern presents itself when starting with proxy reselling. Why would anyone want to buy from you if the providers are already selling?
The answer lies in the requirements of the customer. More often than not, the providers fail to present the benefits of their proxies for the particular requirement in a transparent way.
Resellers leverage this lack of information to sell to the customers with whom they have an influence on. For example, if you’re in the sneaker coping business, your fellow sneaker coppers may need trustable proxies to beat the competition. Proxy reselling is a viable alternative to offer them services at a discounted price.
Types of Proxies to Resell
A number of proxies are available for you to resell. The most viable ones include:
1. Residential Proxies
Residential proxies are connected to legit physical devices that advocate for the legitimacy of the requests. Most organizations use this for data scraping, SEO, and content-unblocking purposes.
As a reseller, you can market these proxies to businesses that are struggling to track their competitors and market trends. You also can include them as a service that you provide.
2. ISP Proxies
ISP proxies allocate session-wise IP addresses to the users. A user can use a single IP address throughout the whole session to avoid facing any technical hurdles like logging off or being blocked.
Resellers often market these proxies to customers who are required to maintain multiple social media profiles for their businesses.
3. Data Center Proxies
Data center proxies are upscaled servers that allow businesses to run wide-scale operations. These proxies also follow the same fundamentals as any other proxy, in addition to allowing businesses to scale as much as needed. You can resell data center proxies to scale businesses to sustain their scraping and social media operations.
Tips to Resell Proxies
If you’re thinking about reselling proxies. Here are a few tips about the business and the provider that you should keep in mind.
1. Great Support
Be it you or the customer, sustaining a proxy business requires great support. It’s inevitable that your customers will stumble upon technical issues related to the assignment of IPs or specific websites. Make sure that your provider offers top-notch support to the resellers and the customers equally.
2. Direct Providers
It’s critical that you source your proxies from the developers directly. If you aren’t, then you’re paying a premium for the same products that are available for a discounted price.
Ensure that your provider has a great presence in the industry and can cater to the user’s requirements.
3. Custom Solutions
Every user has different proxy requirements. From the combination of IPs to the websites, each customer may have a different use case than others. If your provider doesn’t offer customizability for every user, they aren’t the one.
4. Provider Confidentiality
Make sure that your provider offers 100% white-label services. From the emails to the product, not a single element of the cycle should have their name on it.
Your customer shouldn’t know who you’re sourcing your products from. This is to sustain your business. As proxies are widely available and most developers also sell them directly, you need to make sure that your customers can’t reach them easily.
5. Customer Data Safety
This is one of the most essential components of any proxy business. As proxy servers are collections of various devices, if you aren’t being careful while choosing a trustable provider, they might sneak into the customer’s requests and steal their data. Always ensure that you’re buying a proxy from a trusted supplier.
6. Product Availability
Depending on the requirements and the scale of operation, you may need to source various types of proxies.
If your provider doesn’t have enough products or customizability options, you may find yourself in shallow puddles while working with them. Verify their portfolio before taking the first step.
7. Pricing Liberty
Does your supplier have any pricing constraints? Do they allow you to go as aggressive or competitive as you like with pricing? If not, they aren’t the right ones. As you will be reselling the proxies, you must be allowed to set your own price for each product and customization.
8. Custom Dashboard
Most proxy sellers offer a basic dashboard to the resellers to track their progress and request features. Make sure that your supplier is equipped with APIs to allow you dashboard customization.
The Bottom Line
Proxy reselling is a lucrative business if you have influence over an industry. The business can also be built from scratch with an effective marketing and sales budget.
However, ensure that the provider is capable enough to offer you pricing liberty, custom dashboards, white-label products, and security.
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