2014 Board Election

[Skinner]

This debate is moot, 1and1, host europe et al are set to become the new "bogeyman", the only difference is they will "tasting" names so have insider knowledge meaning they scoop a wider range of names, and massively deeper pockets increasing the range further.

Imagine this tag line in a movie voice over "This summer, Evil has a new face...".

 

[Hazel Pegg]

Why do you hate the domain community so much?

I don't hate the individuals Julian. I've met several and most are quite pleasant people. I just don't like the business model.

 

[Hazel Pegg]

not true, - I made you a good starting offer for it a long while back

So you did Julian. My apologies for forgetting that. I didn't take it seriously as it was never seriousloy for sale.

 

[Hazel Pegg]

This debate is moot, 1and1, host europe et al are set to become the new "bogeyman", the only difference is they will "tasting" names so have insider knowledge meaning they scoop a wider range of names, and massively deeper pockets increasing the range further.

Not a situation that I like. A cynic might suggest that the new Registrar Agreement is designed to take the secondary market world of domain name trading out of the hands of individuals and consolidate the industry in the hands of a few major players. IMPO this is not an improvement on the previous situation. I have tried and failed to find the public benefit in allowing Accredited Registrars their new freedom to become 'domainers''.

 

[websaway]

I can do that. It is a strong personal belief. I also have a strong personal bias against capitalism in general and members of the Tory party in particlular. None of which has ever prevented me from working with capitalists or sharing a pint down the pub with Tories.

I've long given up any hope of the secondary market disappearing in a puff of smoke. It appears to be a neccessary evil so I restrict myself to the hope that it can be kept in its box and not threaten the primary market on which it feeds.

It's ok not liking things if you have a sensible alternative.
You don't like capitalism, yet there is no feasible alternative.
You don't like the Tories and yet there has so far proved to be no feasible alternative and you admit, although not liking the secondary market that it is a necessary evil.
I can admire anyone saying what they think but how they think may be questionable.

 

[websaway]

In all fairness there is a big difference between getting a domain, building a site on it and then putting it up for sale / taking offers / selling it to manually registering thousands of obscure crap .co.uk's and slapping a £XXXX price tag on each in the hope of some hapless noob to come along and empty their wallets.

I find broad unqualified statements don't really help and if you look at what you are saying you may need to give it some more thought.
If someone registers "thousands of obscure crap names" and slaps a £xxxx price tag on them, then it's a recipe for disaster because it's costing thousands of pounds a year to renew them and there would not be enough hapless noods to sustain the model. So more to be pitied than disdained.

 

[Retired_Member42]

I find broad unqualified statements don't really help and if you look at what you are saying you may need to give it some more thought.
If someone registers "thousands of obscure crap names" and slaps a £xxxx price tag on them, then it's a recipe for disaster because it's costing thousands of pounds a year to renew them and there would not be enough hapless noods to sustain the model. So more to be pitied than disdained.

If only that were true. Unfortunately renewal costs are that cheap for tag holders it only takes ripping off a few people a year to fund renewals on 1k+ domains. People seem happy enough to do this and are happy to break even or make a 1-2% return. Sure, they're well with their rights to do this but I can see why people have an issue with the model.

You only have to look at how many domains get dropped that were previously for sale for £XXX - £XXXX. If you genuinely believe a domain is worth £XXX - you renew it. If you don't renew it, you don't think it's worth anything close to that which in my opinion is a borderline scam.

 

[Retired_Member42]

This debate is moot, 1and1, host europe et al are set to become the new "bogeyman", the only difference is they will "tasting" names so have insider knowledge meaning they scoop a wider range of names, and massively deeper pockets increasing the range further.

Imagine this tag line in a movie voice over "This summer, Evil has a new face...".

I don't think much will change to be honest. I can't see many people giving the registrars outright permission to take their domain name. But even if they do, I'm sure they'll sell at a reasonable price or go to auction which I'm fine with also. I don't mind paying market rate for any domain I'm after... It's much better than somebody catching it, slapping a £XXXX price tag on it and waiting 10 years for that one perfect buyer to come along.

Supposing some domain you wanted to develop is pending drop. Where would you rather buy it from? A public auction which will let the market determine the price or some drop catcher who will price you out of the market and wait around for somebody with deeper pockets years down the line.

 

[websaway]

If only that were true. Unfortunately renewal costs are that cheap for tag holders it only takes ripping off a few people a year to fund renewals on 1k+ domains. People seem happy enough to do this and are happy to break even or make a 1-2% return. Sure, they're well with their rights to do this but I can see why people have an issue with the model.

You only have to look at how many domains get dropped that were previously for sale for £XXX - £XXXX. If you genuinely believe a domain is worth £XXX - you renew it. If you don't renew it, you don't think it's worth anything close to that which in my opinion is a borderline scam.

There is an issue concerning the penguin thing and in that case millions of domains that had high keyword search values have become less valuable. You can not blame the owners who registered them in good faith trying to sell them before letting them drop.
Most that I see are selling them off for low xx to try to mitigate their losses.
One man's rubbish is another's treasure.
The secondary market has changed massively and it will take time to filter down, it took 15 years for some people to take notice of the potential of domain names, you are not going to suddenly re-educate overnight.

 

[Edwin]

There is an issue concerning the penguin thing and in that case millions of domains that had high keyword search values have become less valuable. You can not blame the owners who registered them in good faith trying to sell them before letting them drop.

Spot on. You only have to rewind a couple of years or so to find tips about securing exact match domains plastered all over the leading, reputable SEO advice sites. Why? Simple: it WORKED!

In those days, securing the right domain name was a pretty much sure fire way to boost your rankings, often catapulting you into the top few results for that search.

As such, exact match domains represented a great SEO investment for many companies, and domain investor portfolios (and prices) reflected that.

But things change, just like in any industry. And you have to adapt right alongside.

Domains that had pretty much all their latent value tied up in this SEO aspect naturally dropped out of fashion afterwards (as it should be) and have been actively scrubbed from many portfolios at renewal time.

That action (scrubbing the domains) doesn't say anything about the "historic value", only about the "now value". At the time, they WERE valuable. Now, they're not. It's just "change".

 

[Retired_Member42]

*Removed at Edwins request.

 

[Edwin]

Does that mean you're going to re-price your vast portfolio of keyword domains in accordance with the "now value"?

We already have, several times, and have dropped over 1,000 of the longer tail names that were mainly SEO plays. We will continue to evaluate each name at renewal time and will no doubt be dropping more. I've noticed many other large portfolio owners are doing exactly the same thing - which makes sense, since it's the LOGICAL thing to do. As I said, change comes to every industry - the domain industry's not immune.

At the same time, SEO is far from the be all, end all as far as generic domains go. It's worth skimming over the comments from successful business owners talking about their exact match domains to see just how few are SEO related...
http://www.webmastering.co.uk/domai...importance-of-their-exact-match-domain-names/

There's a lot there about credibility, owning the best name, punching above their weight, improving their PPC (unaffected by Google's treatment of exact match domains), securing investment more easily, etc. - and relatively little about SEO.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Spot on. You only have to rewind a couple of years or so to find tips about securing exact match domains plastered all over the leading, reputable SEO advice sites. Why? Simple: it WORKED!

In those days, securing the right domain name was a pretty much sure fire way to boost your rankings, often catapulting you into the top few results for that search.

As such, exact match domains represented a great SEO investment for many companies, and domain investor portfolios (and prices) reflected that.

But things change, just like in any industry. And you have to adapt right alongside.

Domains that had pretty much all their latent value tied up in this SEO aspect naturally dropped out of fashion afterwards (as it should be) and have been actively scrubbed from many portfolios at renewal time.

That action (scrubbing the domains) doesn't say anything about the "historic value", only about the "now value". At the time, they WERE valuable. Now, they're not. It's just "change".

That post makes a lot of sense.



But it seems ridiculous when compared to your portfolio of domains including 5 word emd's for £1250+ vat :lol:

 

[Edwin]

But it seems ridiculous when compared to your portfolio of domains including 5 word emd's for £1250+ vat :lol:

Why make it personal?

If you have a problem with me, please take it to the PM system. Don't clutter up what has been a relatively interesting thread with it. Thanks.

 

[Retired_Member42]

*Removed at Edwins request.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Why make it personal?

If you have a problem with me, please take it to the PM system. Don't clutter up what has been a relatively interesting thread with it. Thanks.

I don't have any problem with you or your domain sales, just the business model in general. But like Redemption says you're completely contradicting yourself with what you say publicly, and how you price your domains.

Either emd's are no longer worth what they were years ago, or offering [removed at the request of Edwin]/co/uk for £1250+vat is fair price.

You can't have both of them, so which of those statements is correct?

 

[RobM]

I have tried and failed to find the public benefit in allowing Accredited Registrars their new freedom to become 'domainers''.

Just look at who will benefit and who they are related to and/or friends with. Shouldn't be too hard to see why this has been pushed through. I doubt *public* benefit was ever a factor.

 

[Retired_Member38]

I would imagine registrars are far more likely to immediately push domains to auction - this is far better for end users than them being hoarded for years.

It seems to me that its a good way to process dropped domains? Unless you're a drop catcher of course.

 

[Hazel Pegg]

the penguin thing

Indulge an idiot and tell me what 'the penguin thing' is? A sentence or hyperlink will suffice.

 

[martin-s]

http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change