Effective today, we’ve lowered the price on some VeriSign-branded SSL certs sold through OpenSRS. OpenSRS resellers automatically get the benefit of these lower prices which went into effect today, March 11th, 2010.

Sell the most trusted brand online

VeriSign SecureSite, SecureSite with Extended Validation (EV) and SecureSite Pro SSL certificates were reduced in price anywhere from $10 to $90 depending on the specific certificate and term length.

The full OpenSRS SSL Certificate price chart has been updated to reflect the new costs.

Did you miss our SSL webinar last week? Then you’ll definitely want to read on.

We were really pleased to have Bob Angus, Product Marketing Manager at VeriSign join us via the web to present “Get the Sale: Overcoming Four Common Objections When Selling SSL”.

Bob provided some really good, practical tactics and strategies that will help you sell smarter and move more SSL units.

He covered everything from how to figure out whether the potential customer is ready to buy, to how to use some basic stats and resources to sell EV and other higher margin SSL products.

Based on the lively Q&A session that followed, it was clear that our Resellers are hungry to sell more and are looking for the tools that they can use to do just that. Bob’s presentation provided some of those tools and tactics, and attendees went away equiped with at least two or three things that they could put to immediate use to counter competitors and tackle those common questions buyers might have.

Archive Video is Available Now

We did record the entire session including an informative question and answer session. That video and the accompanying PDF of the presentation slides is available now.

→ View the archive

(if you registered for the event at GotoWebinar, you should already have received the link to the archived version via email).

Looking to supercharge your SSL sales? Look no further.

One of the things we hear over and over again, is that it’s nearly impossible to sell SSL certificates in the face of companies like GoDaddy who seem to be more interested in moving as many units as possible, at the expense of the bottom line. But it’s simply not true–with the right information and techniques, you can effectively sell SSL by easily countering some common objections customers might have.

2010 is fast approaching and now is the time to start thinking about how to energize your SSL sales. And don’t forget that our GeoTrust $199 Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificate promo is coming to an end soon as well. End 2009 with a bang and kickstart your SSL sales activities heading into the new year.

Get the Sale!

Bob Angus, Product Marketing Manager, VeriSign, will present “Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL.” Bob will address the four most common objections that you’ll face when selling SSL certificates, provide you with the information that you need to address each one head on, and help you make the sale.

He’ll cover everything from objections over price, to how to handle questions about technology from customers who may have bought into some common misconceptions about SSL. In short, Bob will arm you with information and tactics that you can use when selling SSL to even the most sceptical of customers.

This is a free event for OpenSRS Resellers.

Details:

REGISTRATION IS FREE
What: Get the Sale! Overcoming four common objections when selling SSL
When: Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 A.M. EST (16:00 UTC)

Extended Validation (EV) SSL Certificates for $199? Yes, you heard correctly.

Through the end of 2009, GeoTrust True BusinessID with EV certs are just $199 from OpenSRS. That’s a little less than half of the regular price for a GeoTrust EV cert.

This exceptional price will be in effect through the end 2009 and applies to new cert orders and renewals.

There’s a huge opportunity here to bring EV certs to your customers at a price that is not much more than a standard, non-EV cert. It’s also a great time for you to add the green bar to your own website and lead by example.

By the way, if you are an OpenSRS Reseller and you haven’t been selling digital certificates, this is a great chance to make a splash with your customer base by adding a full range of SSL products to your lineup along with a huge deal on EV SSL from GeoTrust.

More to come

We rushed this promo out the door so you could start taking advantage of the huge savings as soon as possible. Over the next little bit, we’ll be pushing out some marketing materials for that will help you when selling these EV certs to your customers.

There’s more details in the SSL section of our website, including a complete product list with pricing.

Last Thursday, Jay Schiavo of VeriSign joined us for a webinar about how to position and sell SSL certificates. Jay has been working with OpenSRS for a long time and has a very good understanding of our business and the needs of resellers like you.

For those who missed the webinar, we had intended to record and archive it for viewing, but thanks to a technical snafu, that recording failed, which absolutely stinks because it was probably the greatest webinar ever given (well, maybe not the greatest). My deepest apologies to those who were counting on that archive.

We do have Jay’s slides available as a PDF download, as well as a package of seven SSL whitepapers that VeriSign has put together for your use in marketing SSL products to your customers. Those whitepapers are brandable by you – all the information on what you need to do is contained in the download.

SSL – For more than eCommerce

Jay made some excellent points during his presentation. He explained the value of SSL from a security perspective, and highlighted some of the use cases for SSL. One of the points he made from a marketing perspective was to make sure that you point out that SSL certificates are applicable for more than just e-commerce sites. Anywhere that there is a login (including forums, blogs, customer portals, wikis) can and should be protected by by an SSL cert.

Three brands, pick two

Jay also broke down how to market the various brands of certs available through OpenSRS. We recently launched new SSL products, including SSL certs from VeriSign, thawte and GeoTrust.

Jay pointed out that it’s best to offer two of the three brands – choose between thawte and GeoTrust (for those customers looking for a lower cost cert) and then add VeriSign for those customers looking for that higher end brand.

When choosing between thawte and GeoTrust, it really comes down to a few points. First, if you are already offering GeoTrust, stick with it and just add VeriSign to your mix, if desired. Jay says that thawte has a strong brand presence in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, thanks to its South African corporate heritage. GeoTrust is well known in North America and parts of Asia.

Use and offer EV

Jay also talked about Extended Validation (EV) certs and the importance of both using EV certs for your own sites, where it makes sense, but also about the increasing recognition of the “green bar” that EV facilitates amongst Internet users. The EV cert offers a level of trust to Internet users that is a step above a ‘normal’ domain or organization validated SSL certificate.

We thank all those who attended the webinar, and we hope you found the content useful and applicable for your own business. Thanks also to our friends at VeriSign – and specifically Jay – for putting together such a great presentation.

Verisign SSL Webinar Slides

Last month we significantly expanded our SSL Certificates lineup to include more of the Internet’s leading SSL brands, and a full range of SSL certificates including code signing certs and Extended Validation (EV) certs. With 16 different options, you might be wondering what the best approach is to achieve the best results when selling these SSL products.

To help you out, we’ve arranged a free webinar with Jay Schiavo, Senior Manager, Product Management for VeriSign titled, “Understanding How to Effectively Sell SSL Certificates.” Jay has a very good understanding of the specific needs of OpenSRS resellers and during the session he’ll help you make sense of it all, explaining how to position and sell multiple brands and types to your customers.

We’ll see you there!

Details:

REGISTRATION IS FREE
What:Understanding How to Effectively Sell SSL Certificates
When: Thursday, June 4th, 2009 at 11:00 A.M. EDT

And don’t forget about the other free webinar announced last week and coming up on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 – Web Hosting Solutions that Work for ISPs.

GeoTrust, thawte, VeriSign brands and Extended Validation and Code-signing certs added

Starting today, OpenSRS Resellers can now sell 16 different SSL certificates from three of the world’s leading SSL certificate providers. We’ve added a range of products from both thawte and VeriSign in addition to the GeoTrust-branded products you could sell through us until now.

On top of the new brands, we’re also adding some new types of SSL certificates, including Extended Validation (EV) and code-signing certs to the mix. Full details and pricing is available on our website. As with our GeoTrust products, Resellers can take advantage of the super pricing we’ve negotiated with these certificate providers.

Are you Selling SSL Certificates?

If you aren’t yet selling SSL certificates, now is a great time to add them to your product lineup. These days security is top of mind with businesses and consumers alike, and SSL certificates bring that peace of mind to consumers, allowing them to complete transactions and share personal information with confidence.

A long-standing misconception around SSL certificates is that they are only really needed where financial information is being passed between computer and webserver. But the reality is that an SSL certificate is a must in any application where valuable data is being passed. That includes everything from forum logins, to email servers, to ecommerce and control panels. If the data on the other side of the login has value (and it probably does, or it wouldn’t be protected by a login), then that data should be encrypted and protected by an SSL connection.

Reseller Webinar

We’re planning a webinar for our Resellers in the next month or two with our friends at VeriSign. They’ll be bringing you some great information on how you can integrate SSL certificates into your product lineup and how you can maximize your sales. Expect to hear more about that shortly.

Along with domain names and email, all OpenSRS Resellers are able to sell a range of GeoTrust SSL Digital Certificates through OpenSRS. Many, but not all, of our Resellers are taking advantage of the opportunity that selling SSL provides. I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a primer on how SSL Certificates work in advance of some pretty big news that we’re hoping to be able to talk about later this week and early next week. You’ll want to keep an eye on this blog and your inbox.

A lot of what follows comes from Verisign (who own GeoTrust, our current SSL provider). Both the Verisign and GeoTrust websites have extensive information available for you to better understand, and therefore sell SSL Certificates.

What SSL Certificates Do:

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology protect websites and make it easy for visitors to trust websites in three essential ways:

1. An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions.
2. Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner.
3. A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of the certificate owner when it is issued.

Who needs an SSL Certificate?

If you, or your customers fit into any of the following categories, then an SSL Certificate is a must:

• Operate an online store or accept online orders and credit cards
• Offer a login or sign in on your site
• Process sensitive data such as address, birth date, license, or ID numbers
• Require compliance with privacy and security requirements
• Value privacy and expect others to trust you.

How SSL Encryption Works

Imagine sending mail through the postal system in a clear envelope. Anyone with access to it can see the data. If it looks valuable, they might take it or change it. An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel between the browser and web server enabling encryption of the data during transmission. Encryption scrambles the data, essentially creating an envelope for message privacy.

Each SSL Certificate consists of a public key and a private key. The public key is used to encrypt information and the private key is used to decipher it. When a Web browser points to a secured domain, a Secure Sockets Layer handshake authenticates the server (the website) and the client (the web browser). An encryption method is established with a unique session key and secure transmission can begin. True 128-bit SSL Certificates enable every site visitor to experience the strongest SSL encryption available to them.

How Authentication Works

Imagine receiving an envelope with no return address and a form asking for your bank account number. In the case of organization- or Extended-validation certificates, every SSL Certificate is created for a particular server in a specific domain for a verified business entity. The validation process for EV certificates is quite extensive and provides fuller information about the website owner than a standard certificate. When the SSL handshake occurs, the browser requires authentication information from the server. By clicking the closed padlock in the browser window or certain SSL trust marks (such as the VeriSign Secured Seal or GeoTrust True Site Seal), the website visitor sees the authenticated organization name. In high-security browsers (IE7/8, Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.2+, Chrome and Opera 9.2+), the authenticated organization name is prominently displayed and the address bar turns green when an Extended Validation SSL Certificate is detected. If the information does not match or the certificate has expired, the browser displays an error message or warning.

A Matter of Trust

At the end of the day, SSL Certificates are all about trust. If you want to develop and instill a sense of trust with website visitors, an SSL Certificate is the way to do it. An SSL-protected site gives users the confidence to share personal information without having to worry about whether that data is safe as it travels around the Internet. And, the SSL Certificate provides further peace of mind to web users by offering verification that those in control of the web server are who the web surfer thinks they are.

If trust is important to the end users of your customers – and I’d venture a guess that it is – then they need to know that one of the best ways to build that trust is to secure their websites with an SSL Certificate along with a prominently displayed site seal that end users recognize and trust.

A few weeks back, I blogged about the presentation that Bob Angus, from Verisign gave at WebhostingDay in Germany. Bob had some great tips for how to drive sales through SSL digital certificates.

For Resellers who are already selling SSL certificates through OpenSRS, there was some great information that you can use to drive sales in your customer base. For Resellers not selling SSL certificates yet, have a look at that post and then ask yourself why you haven’t offered them to your customers yet.

What an SSL Certificate Does

You may be under the impression that SSL certificates are only for ecommerce sites, or banks and your customers aren’t Bank of America or eBay so you don’t need to offer SSL certificates. That kind of thinking can lead to you overlooking a huge potential market for SSL certificates that’s just waiting to be tapped.

SSL certificates really do two things:

• First, an SSL certificate provides security by encrypting the data between the browser and the web server. Obviously, data encryption is important for financial transactions or other situations where websites are requesting sensitive data from visitors. Without that SSL certificate, and the little lock icon in the browser, most web surfers won’t provide that data.
• Second, SSL also provides identity verification, primarily through the new Extended Validation (EV) certificates. You’ve probably seen EV in action – sites with an EV certificate will cause the address bar on Firefox, or IE to turn green, and you are able to view information about the website that will help you to confirm that you are dealing with who you think you are dealing with. I’ve grabbed a screenshot of GeoTrust’s EV certificate in action on Firefox that’s shown above.

Applications Where Encryption Matters

Think about that first use for SSL certificates for a minute – encrypting and protecting data – and then start thinking about all the cases where you, and especially your customers, might want to have an encrypted connection between the browser and the server. I’m thinking about web forums, blogging platforms, webmail, web server control panels, company intranets, corporate wikis, VPNs, customer portals, etc.

The list of potential applications for SSL certificates is nearly endless. Now ask yourself this: “Do my customers do any of those things?” The answer is most likely, “Yes.” Now ask yourself again “Why haven’t I offered them SSL certificates yet?”

By the way, you’ll want to keep an eye on the blog over the next few weeks. We’ll be talking a bit more about SSL certificates and why now might be a very good time to start selling through OpenSRS if you aren’t already.