Payment, not "Bonus"

@moretal, Sir Richard Branson has started around 400 companies under a Virgin brand in a life-time many of which are run successfully by Delegation.

2 Likes

I think the key word in my previous message was ‘want’. Sir RB wanted to do these things… so he did them. SH wanted to allow people to register domains to solve the problem of registration without compensation. Do they want to own a registry? My guess is… you can guess my guess. :slight_smile:

3 Likes

@moretal, Not being in the business of second-guessing other people’s motives, i’ll go straight to the bottom line. :slight_smile: The annual Icann cost for the privilege of being a registrar is 10, ooo usd per annum; for a domain name registrar the fees payable to the centralized internet agency for each name are 0.5 usd (compared to the usual 10 usd on a yearly basis as an average market rate, it’s only 1/20 of the cost… Next, how much could a parked name generate ? There are sites that answer that question by evaluating name- associated traffic with a ball park monetization figure for every searched name, with the lowest of expectations for the mediocre names showing actual earning estimates to be somewhere in the range of 30 usd per year minus a registration fee…

1 Like

My motives or SH’s? I’m interested in SH as what it is now- an awesome platform for creative contests. I have domains in a handful of registrars and unless SH will become a registrar that offers a ridiculously low price… I have no need for another registrar. If SH would want to branch out into that territory, then they should do it (with or without a cloning facility) as long as it doesn’t affect the main platform. But this all seems like science fiction. There are a lot of things that are financially worthwhile. But the entity or the person needs to be interested in doing them and personally I just don’t think it’s something SH would be interested in. It’s related to what SH has been doing up till now in a very remote way. Anyway… I’ll call it a day. G’night!

2 Likes

@moretal, As a registrar of names, The SH could potentially offer registration of names for free since they will be paying for themselves, as parked names, until sold at auction or through contests, with advertising income.

Parking income is dying. That’s not my opinion. It’s a well known fact in the domaining industry. Also, domains that are available in 2016 usually won’t attract organic traffic after being registered since they’re A. Mostly brandables and B. Can’t be interesting enough for parking since most of the natural commercial words and word combos have been taken long ago (unless the domains were once owned and then dropped). So… at least from my knowledge of the industry… it would be impossible to offer free registrations. And now… bed time. :slight_smile:

1 Like

@moretal, They have been saying the same about the dollar for years, but it’s still alive and well ! :slight_smile:

If you have a great aged domain with great commercial keywords- you might get income or even great income from parking (probably less than in the past though). But I’m sorry, you won’t get parking income from a brandable domain you register in 2016. I’d be happy to make a bet on that with you, but you might as well send me the money now because you’re going to lose. Anyway… we hijacked the thread so I suggest we’ll just end the registry discussion and agree to disagree. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

@moretal, In my above comment i referred to a mixture of domain names with a prime domain quality (common search words) as well as creative names (that don’t possess a parking income potential), with the idea of the former paying for the latter in parking income… To that i’d like to add that out of a database of 2 million names ever submitted to contests by the creatives over the course of years on the SH platform some might prove to be commercially viable.

Again, the registrar option should be viewed as a business strategy of must-haves - not wants- on the path of the SH ambition of expansion and making good on its goal of becoming big(-ger) and profitable. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Good debate, but just to chime in from SH perspective, we have no plans to become a registrar or get into domain parking business. We also do not plan to launch a domain marketplace. We have analyzed the opportunity, and do not believe it is something that we should take up at this point.

We are evaluating the possibility of building a more “formal” mechanism for creatives to submit their registered domains into the contests, as long as they are willing to transfer them to the CH at no extra cost. While we allow this currently, the creatives have to alter the submitted names to bypass the domain availability checker. We are looking into how to make this a simpler process and will share more details when we have update.

4 Likes

@Dan, Thanks, I saw an opportunity to capitalize on the yet unutilized resource of a reservoir of 2 million names the SH amassed in its life-time, nearly a quarter of which are rated, seizing it as if it were a data gold mine :slight_smile:

1 Like

@Vision It doesn’t really matter either way, but just to reply to your comment- the names that are submitted here are brandables. The fact that they contain keywords by itself isn’t important. They’re available for registration for a reason. Exact match domains are almost always the ones that get the traffic and make the money. There’s a difference between KitchenAppliance.com and KitchenFlare.com. The first one is estimated at $57,000. The second one at $0. Anyway… SH (unsurprisingly) isn’t interested in being a registry or making theoretical money from parking so we can all get back to the contests. :slight_smile:

@Dan, A solution could be registering an agreed-upon term that denotes both to the contestants and the CHs that a registered name is available for submission, such as AVAILABLE.COM, in so far as it corresponds to the requirements of the constraints in length domain names or could override them…

@moretal, My original suggestion spoke about the merits of non-brandables paying for the brandables, not vice versa.

I understand what you’re saying, but you don’t have non-brandable domains offered at Squadhelp because they’ve all been registered long ago.

@moretal, The history of my and info received from other contestants data on domain name submissions begs to slightly differ :slight_smile:

1 Like

Do you have an example? As you know, I’ve been here for many years, and I can’t even think of one exact match domain that I suggested. They aren’t available. And if they are available, they were either dropped and not picked up (usually for a reason) or they’re just not that interesting to begin with.

@moretal, I’d appreciate to present a list of them to you privately to respect confidentiality. Otherwise, we can only base our observation as to the kind of names that are in vogue at this site from winning submissions, leaving the rest behind the veneer of darkness.

1 Like

Sent you a private message. I think most CHs at Squadhelp wouldn’t use an exact match domain even if it was somehow available. They’re looking for names for businesses so they can brand themselves. ‘Kitchen Flare’ is probably a better name for them than ‘Kitchen Appliance’. Even though Kitchen Appliance is worth much much (much) more. In some cases, like one word domains it would be better to use the keyword. For example, a cookie company would really benefit from using Cookie.com or Cookies.com. That would be a better domain for them than CookieFlare.com. But good luck finding available dictionary words. Anyway… send me your options and if you’re right and you have gems I’ll be the first to admit it.

3 Likes

@moretal, Your data shows results correctly, as they are predicted and in no way in contradiction to my thesis, since KitchenFlare, unlike KitchenAppliance, is not a registered domain name. The sites that reveal info on a domain name capitalization value apply only to registered domains.