Domaining.com - Well Worth the $10

[DomainingCom]

@Adam

Thanks a lot for this unexpected but very appreciated post.


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@David

It's not nice to poluate Adam thread with something unrelated and more when I already responded you, but I am going to do it again:

You wanted to have your portfolio listed in this top menu that runs in our domain sites.

As you may imagine the space available to list portfolios is limited while the demand has no end.
To solve this situation I decided to ask a single time setup fee for have a site listed for ever (in fact while the listed site continue showing our Domaining.com award).
Now come the problem of how much should I charge for this service?
I certainly started asking $100 and have been raising this amount year after year while I noticed demand was sustained and there was still room for links.
I think there is now more than one year I am asking $500.
Is it cheap, is it expensive, ... I don't care while I have regularly domainers who estimate it worth the cost and that I personally think I am not abusing.
I run a business, NOT a charity site!

If you estimate the service does not worth a $500 single time fee then while be pesting here, don't list your portfolio that's all. The problem is you want the same benefit your collegues are having without paying the same price.

In a side note, as you were persistant I kindly offered you a way to lower this setup fee by advertising Valuate.com in your site for a while. But you never responded.


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@ The others

I will come back further to clarify.
Many think I am asking $10 to receive our newsletter when it's not exact.

[David G]

It's not nice to poluate Adam thread with something unrelated and more when I already responded you.

Not so sure it was completely unrelated or off topic since this is a discussion forum and your service was being discussed but I will delete my posts.

Nevertheless, I still maintain $500 is a steep price to pay for a link - which someone else reported in this thread had just 8 visits in a month.

Thanks for the feedback. I won't address the issues you raised so we don't go more off topic.

[DomainingCom]

David, thanks to become more reasonable.

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The trader plan Adam is introducing here ($10 single time lifetime fee) was created ~3 months ago to try to secure the cax.com marketplaces by stopping crap.
And that works!

This plans offers:
- Appraise at no charge up to 25 domains daily at Valuate.com
- Have up to 10 domains listed at the same time in our Cax.com marketplaces, 10% sales commission.
- Get a DomainPortfolio.com web page to can present all your domains for sale under the same roof.
- Minimum level to can bid or buy domains.
- Receive the daily Domaining.com newsletter.

This last point was only added a pair of weeks ago to isolate domainers from curious, it was needed due to the huge amount of subscribers we have now.
Pay one time $10 is NOTHING! But paying it we know you are interested to receive each day the domaining news in your mailbox, if no then probably you was rarely opening the newsletter, so for you the new FREE weekly newsletter we launched recently should be more than enough.

[DomainingCom]

I did not paid Adam for the post (nor Adam will never accept such paid endorsement), as I said it was an unexpected post.
In fact it's him who paid me by paying the Domaining.com "Trader" membership he is talking about.
You know, forums must not be only places to pest or complaint but also sometimes places where you share with others a service you appreciate.
If thousands domainers already paid this plan it's certainly because they find it of interest, nobody is obligated.
Now I understand some don't find our services usefull, it's normal.

[KING dot NET]

Or Google Reader

I used reader and namebee, domaining is ok but sometimes people blogging the same topic and linking to the same source. I will stay with google reader.

[katherine]

This plans offers:
- Appraise at no charge up to 25 domains daily at Valuate.com
- Have up to 10 domains listed at the same time in our Cax.com marketplaces, 10% sales commission.
- Get a DomainPortfolio.com web page to can present all your domains for sale under the same roof.
- Minimum level to can bid or buy domains.
- Receive the daily Domaining.com newsletter.

No offense François, but here is my own breakdown:

1. access to an automated appraisal tool that is worthless (only newbies really take such tools seriously)
2. having to pay to list on your marketplace even before a sale is made, while other, much larger established marketplaces are free
3. nice, but many members are already using domainportfolio script or similar. Also, I understand people prefer to keep control of their own portfolio listings.
4. see #2
5. as for the newsletter, I understand bandwidth is not free, but I am under the impression that the newsletter is automated, maybe you spend a few minutes per day in editorial selection. But it's nothing more than an aggregator.

If you have a subscriber base that is huge I wonder why you're not able to better monetize it using affiliate links or promotion for revenue-making services.
Adam mentioned the newsletter only, so I presume he's not really interested in the other features either.
And even the daily headlines are available through different channels.
I don't think all domainers are cheapskates, many would gladly pay ten times more for compelling stuff.

[DomainingCom]

These are your own arguments Katherine (each one is a world and you may appreciate or no our services) but most don't share your point of view and my number of paying members are here to prove it.
We already have few thousands paid members and I can tell you they are rarely newbies as you think (it's the same for Estibot).

[keyser]

I did not paid Adam for the post

(indirectly) thru consistent advertising campaigns maybe ?
Kudos to Adam for the new template !

[CureCancer]

These are your own arguments Katherine (each one is a world and you may appreciate or no our services) but most don't share your point of view and my number of paying members are here to prove it.
We already have few thousands paid members and I can tell you they are rarely newbies as you think (it's the same for Estibot).

thousands of paid members, congrats on your success, at the rate your going you should be the leading player in the game. As far as it goes with me, I would never be a paid member, everything is already available for free. As a Domainer your success is based on how little you spend! The only money anyone should be spending is on domain names!

If your going to charge people, I hope you give them the option of disabling all your ads, Domaining.com was at one point clean and slick. Now it's flooded with so much that it's hard to navigate with out being distracted.

[Tia Wood]

If your going to charge people, I hope you give them the option of disabling all your ads, Domaining.com was at one point clean and slick. Now it's flooded with so much that it's hard to navigate with out being distracted.

LOL. What are you talking about? I see a total of 4 ads on Domaining.com?

[Raider]

Francois, please don't object to what's being posted from your critics, don't make the mistake of taking it personally... Constructive criticism is always good thing, It tells you what your visitors are really thinking and helps in the improvement and advancement of your web site.

I like the News Headlines and the way you dd the Closing Auctions.. If it were mine and I wanted to make improvements I would change the Top Domain Sales to "Recent Sales", I would also change the navigation bar so it stands out, Your navigation bar which is quite small is sandwiched between my browser tab and that annoying scrolling marquee... What I would do is put that marquee on the bottom or get rid of it altogether because I think it's a huge distraction, I would also increase the size of your navigation bar and font size, both are way too small.

And I noticed when a visitor clicks on any of the external links on the drop down menus AND the news links, it navigates the visitor AWAY from your web site rather than opening a new window... These serve as nothing but exit doors for your customers, I don't think you want that.

I disagree with "Hope" about the number of ads you have, 3 or 4 is not overbearing, but what is overbearing is the size of the ads, I would reduce them in size and place them in more strategic locations on your web-site. Bigger is not always better.

Hope you don't mind my input... If I didn't like you I wouldn't of bothered.

You have great business model going and I wish you the best of success my friend.

[David G]

Hi Francois, Just noticed something real interesting when visiting domaining.com. Somehow you have a record of my IP address so when I visit there are unknown to me 2 different displays based on my IP. When I use private IP my own blog feed is not there but the other blogs are; however as soon as I stop hiding my IP my own blog feed appears in the list of normal posts from the aggregator feeds and with an added clickable option within the post, to pay $150 for 1 day of sponosorhip which is not there when you don't have my correct IP since I was blocking it. Why is that done? Just wondering.

With that technique it appears you can get any blog owner to think you are actively using their blog in your news aggregator feed for everyne to see when in fact you are only doing it for the view of the blog owner exclusively (and yourself if they do a spnsorship of their post) and who will not have any idea it's invisible to everyone else. Is that correct? Also don't see how you got my real IP since I have never logged in, paid for membetship, the ezine or ads. Did you get my IP from some 3rd party perhaps?

[DomainingCom]

@Hope

"... The only money anyone should be spending is on domain names! ..."
Someone who don't want to spend $1 for anything and just want accumulate profit is not the definition of a penny pincher (without want to be rude)?

---------- Post added at 10:39 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:13 AM ----------

@Raider


Top Domain Sales to "Recent Sales":

First, as the owner of Domaining.com I think I have some obligations, one is try to promote our business outside our industry as best is possible.
Most people have no idea domains can be valuable, what better proof than show them the top sales?

Second, as most will confirm, Ron is doing a terrific job at DNJournal.com presenting each week the sales of the week.
I don't find any reason to compete with him.


Navigation bar:

I think you are talking about the top menu, it's an original ad, not the navigation bar of the site.
This bar runs in all our domain sites except Cax.com but should be also added soon.

The ticker is new, few weeks only, I am still unsure if I will maintain or no.
What I can told you is as strange it can be, it was really more intrusive at bottom (tested the first days).



Clicks don't open in a new window:

It's personnal but I estimate if a sponsor paid to be present in your site then you must accept your visitors may left your site to visit his site while offering to the visitor the best possible browsing experience.
Links that open in a new window are often blocked by popup blockers, are often annoying as they multiplicate opened windows, people may be lost ...



Big ads:

The idea is offer sponsors a way to show more engaging ads and for that size is critical (sorry men!).
Look at BoxCar who is currently showing his auctions in one of these bid ad spaces, and imagine if he could do it in a 125x125 banner ad.

Thanks a lot Raider for the feedback, and yes they were constructive criticisms.

---------- Post added at 10:46 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 AM ----------

@David

We allow any domaining.com member (you forgot you signed +6 months ago) to specify his own RSS feeds in our site.
This ways he can uses our site as an RSS reader and not only as a source of domaining info.
This way when the member is logged he can see the latest headlines of all the feeds he wants read.
But when the member is not logged (for example blocking IP) then we cannot show him the headlines of the custom feeds he added.

In your case, you probably logged the last time using the smart logging:
http://www.domaining.com/login/
This is why you continue logged each day without having to enter your login details, and we are able to serve you the custom feeds you specified.

Looks logical, no?

Now if you have a domaining blog you want I consider for inclusion to all readers drop me a note, but I already tell you it's not free.

[Tim Schoon]

I did not paid Adam for the post (nor Adam will never accept such paid endorsement)

Right, so why was my question post removed? hehe..

Anyway good luck with the service. I admire your endurance and the amount of work you do on all your sites.
I have to say it's an impressive imperium you're building.

[biggedon]

I admire your endurance

i can agree with that


but...

if the majority of the bloggers listed on domaining.com were still posting and contributing to discussion threads here at dnf


would you still need to read domaining.com?