There is a way to do free reseller accounts so that the reseller can sell web hosting, SSL, and domains.
You set a base price one what you have to have to run your business. At that point you give the reseller an account to access and resell your services/products. You make the difference between what your cost is and what you are charging them. None of their customers get access to anything until you are paid.
Think about all these larger hosting companies paying out $50-$75 per sale for a hosting account. They could drastically reduce their expenditures just but allowing someone a free reseller account and following the same business model.
All of you are running affiliate programs I am sure. Some are paying up to 30% maybe even more.
So there is no huge difference in the affiliate program and the free reseller. The big difference is however that the reseller is building his brand name. And they will be able to set their own rates that the customer sees. So they get to make what it is they are wishing to make while at the same time not having to spend money on servers and maintenance costs.
They may or may not have to provide support that all depends on your decided setup. You can opt to provide support as well to them and their customers via a white labeled support mechanism. You may or may not charge extra for this it all depends on how you wish to set it up.
You have to think about it like this. You are already pressed to try and bring in customers which is already a hard task especially with all these bogus I will do anything for a dollar companies that we see come and go all the time. You are actually offsetting your advertising to others so they are spending their money while you just take a backseat and let them worry about sells.
You will no doubt get tons of signups and many will not make it much at all. You will no doubt up your domain registration is they opt to get a domain that is not free like a .COM/.NET or some other TLD.
So you are going to up your domain sells most likely.
And a certain amount of them will actually make it and boost your sales.
So you are taking your marketing efforts and growing them exponentially without the added effort on your part.
All this really only costs you the time to answer the questions of the reseller for the most part and what small amount of resources it takes to store all those signups you get for resellers.
The reseller will have to think like a smart VAR to make their business grow and prosper.