Hi All
With regret, DACr will be closing it's doors to public catching from 31st May. I've already put in place a limit on the time in advance that domains can be booked to 30days. All domains booked upto 30 April will be monitored as normal. Bookings will be stopped 1st May.
I will still be making available the subscription based parts of the site - bulk whois & droplists - both the web interface and the API. I have been expanding this over the last few months and will be putting more resources into making this a leading resource, especially the API. Prices for this will remain competitive.
I will also be providing an exclusive single domain full quota 'til dropped service by request.
Why you ask? A number of reasons:
The site was started late 2009 and was never meant to be an ultra-long term project. It's now run it's course. Over that time I've seen many (and I really mean all but a real minority) clients migrate to their own memberships/tags, and a few also providing their own catching services.
Despite having the best client-friendly interface the number of active users has been steadily dwindling - the primary reason being above. To be honest it's a dying segment of the UK domain market. Whether Nominet meant it this way or not is neither here nor there. Whatever, the number of active competitors for even b/c grade domains is now such that without a serious hike in caught domain prices multiple domain monitoring is pretty much dead in the water. I don't think that is a viable option.
This market is intensely competitive and extremely changeable. While the site has been running a number of services to provide hosted dac access have appeared as well as an increasingly active uk domain aftersales market. If DACr is to survive in one form or another it has to move with the times. I've already put in development work on DACr v2 and with additional work this could be migrated to provide the same multiple hosted dac access services with the same quality interface.
The domain aftersales market is now such that a single a/b grade domain can produce the same income as a full month of dacr catches. A bit of a no brainer really. While I won't be going down the shotgun route of selling lists of domains I will be making more caught domains available to the market.
I will be returning to private catching from June/July with a fully rewritten set of scripts & new server.
I have been working on a number of other commercial products -which will be detailed on AD in due course including DomainStudio - and these have been taking pretty much all of my time, and will for a while. I am also considering tendering out my php development skills to commercial companies after easter. I wish I could clone myself, but that's not possible.
In addition I will be moving more towards ecommerce solutions & affiliate marketing solutions as an area for the next few years. It would also suit my development skill set.
Regards
Stephen
Anyame & DACr
With regret, DACr will be closing it's doors to public catching from 31st May. I've already put in place a limit on the time in advance that domains can be booked to 30days. All domains booked upto 30 April will be monitored as normal. Bookings will be stopped 1st May.
I will still be making available the subscription based parts of the site - bulk whois & droplists - both the web interface and the API. I have been expanding this over the last few months and will be putting more resources into making this a leading resource, especially the API. Prices for this will remain competitive.
I will also be providing an exclusive single domain full quota 'til dropped service by request.
Why you ask? A number of reasons:
The site was started late 2009 and was never meant to be an ultra-long term project. It's now run it's course. Over that time I've seen many (and I really mean all but a real minority) clients migrate to their own memberships/tags, and a few also providing their own catching services.
Despite having the best client-friendly interface the number of active users has been steadily dwindling - the primary reason being above. To be honest it's a dying segment of the UK domain market. Whether Nominet meant it this way or not is neither here nor there. Whatever, the number of active competitors for even b/c grade domains is now such that without a serious hike in caught domain prices multiple domain monitoring is pretty much dead in the water. I don't think that is a viable option.
This market is intensely competitive and extremely changeable. While the site has been running a number of services to provide hosted dac access have appeared as well as an increasingly active uk domain aftersales market. If DACr is to survive in one form or another it has to move with the times. I've already put in development work on DACr v2 and with additional work this could be migrated to provide the same multiple hosted dac access services with the same quality interface.
The domain aftersales market is now such that a single a/b grade domain can produce the same income as a full month of dacr catches. A bit of a no brainer really. While I won't be going down the shotgun route of selling lists of domains I will be making more caught domains available to the market.
I will be returning to private catching from June/July with a fully rewritten set of scripts & new server.
I have been working on a number of other commercial products -which will be detailed on AD in due course including DomainStudio - and these have been taking pretty much all of my time, and will for a while. I am also considering tendering out my php development skills to commercial companies after easter. I wish I could clone myself, but that's not possible.
In addition I will be moving more towards ecommerce solutions & affiliate marketing solutions as an area for the next few years. It would also suit my development skill set.
Regards
Stephen
Anyame & DACr
