Domaining.com ~ Soon to charge you to READ..

[DotWeekly]

I have been a huge fan of Domaining.com and think it’s a GREAT site for not only people who are domainers and bloggers but helps get the word out to "outsiders".

Today in the Domaining.com newsletter Francois has made it clear things are about to change and it’s going to cost YOU and our Domaining industry as a whole.

Francois said:

"Time is come to generate recurent revenue to can at least help maintain this service.
It’s now clear the sale of advertising spaces is not a financing solution.

This is why Domaining.com should switch to a subcription based service within the next weeks.
Don’t panic, the cost should be something between $10 and $30 monthly (still to define).

As a postive note this will lead to major improvements:
- You could select the blogs you want to read.
- You could add your own feeds. "

I personally do not see anything "Positive" about this move besides killing a great service to the domaining community with Money getting in the middle. I really do not think the "money" part of this story is all that true as there just is not that much money involved with the site from what I can tell. The content is provided FREE, the design and software I’m sure is and was very low costs.

Francois has built a large base of "emails" adding in the login feature to read posts awhile back, so that list of emails alone imo is priceless. ExpiringDomains.com was brought to what it is Because of Domaining.com and the domaining industry itself has Grown because of Domaining.com which in return helps the value of Domaining.com itself.

Sometimes Money comes in other forms then the paper stuff all of us love in our wallet!

Charging the people who READ Domaining.com is not the right thing to do, no matter if it’s $1 a month or $30. I hope you reconsider this Francois as this will hurt our whole Industry.

As an industry, WE need to prevent this "charge" from happening.

I think the Clear way of doing this if Francois wants to Charge something is to charge the Bloggers who want their feed included, NOT the readers....

 

[-REECE-]

Yeah, my thoughts exactly Justin.. I really like Domaining.com as a site and saves a lot of time versus viewing 10+ blogs to see if anything is worth reading, but it's not something I'd want to pay for.

I certainly agree with Jamie on this one, that charging a subscription fee to sell someone elses content is silly. I can assure you I wont be paying to read the content and frankly, I see this move opening the door for a clone version which would be quite simple to build.

Another thing for Francois to consider is the Price of advertising on Domaining.com . Domainers are Cheap, but will advertise if the price is right. I will take $20 over $0 anyday.

(prices below are current ad prices on Domaining.com . Source)

Sponsored Headlines (which is Empty nearly everyday)

$100 per day or $250 for 3 days

Do a Reverse Auction and at least fill the spots each day/week. $20 is better then $0 in my book. Start the auctions on ExpiringDomains.com. You are buying a DATE. Start at $100 and go down to $20..

Leaderboard

$1,500 per week

Same as before! Something is Better then nothing...

Menu Listing

$2,000 annual flat fee (without Domaining mini banner)

Completely agree Jamie.

3 sponsored headlines @ $20/day would bring in $1800/month alone. I'd be willing to bet the leaderboard would sell @ $300-$500/week, bringing in a total of about $3000-$4000/month without needing to charge members to read.

 

[duceman]

Asking for a monthly fee is ridiculous. Most people agree that the service is convenient and appreciated. IMO a better solution would be to have a simple PayPal donation button where people could donate once in a while to keep the site going.

If you think back a couple years the only place to get info was to visit each forum and go to the section that you have interest in or read DNJ, Shilling etc. Now there are at least 20 full time domain blogs of relevance.

 

[bmugford]

I am not sure what is so special about Domaining.com that would compel me to pay them.

 

[gingeman]

Was already going to replicate a lot of the services of domaining.com on my new site in progress -this has just meant I will be speeding things up!

 

[homebuyer]

Charge

Was already going to replicate a lot of the services of domaining.com on my new site in progress -this has just meant I will be speeding things up!

If they're going to charge money, then just charge an annual fee of maybe $19 to $35. It's much easier to make a one time payment than to go into more monthly debt during these troubled economic times.

 

[Ross]

for anyone interested or wants to help, here is what i got so far http://www.socialdn.com

 

[lzy]

Why would anyone be compelled to pay for Domaining.com when you can do the same and so much more with all the modern online newsreaders (eg Bloglines)? :o

 

[gingeman]

If they're going to charge money, then just charge an annual fee of maybe $19 to $35. It's much easier to make a one time payment than to go into more monthly debt during these troubled economic times.

I won't be charging, ever- and you can quote me on that- I'm just tweaking it- working at incorporating it into my newsletter, which will be a combination of news and names for sale. It should be a worthy addition to my new site:- http://accuratename.com/blog

 

[cogger]

I think the Clear way of doing this if Francois wants to Charge something is to charge the Bloggers who want their feed included, NOT the readers....

You said it. Because I won't pay it, and yes in past I have visted his advertisers and sponsors

 

[Chef Patrick]

I am really torn on this issue. I don't know but don't envy the position Francois is in right now.

I love Domaining.com and do visit it frequently, would I pay, no. If anything he should really charge bloggers to list their feeds, myself included

I agree that advertising rates are through the roof, I would NEVER pay $1500 for a one week ad banner. If they were more reasonable, say $500 a month then maybe.

OK, now on the other hand Francois paid $100,000 for Domaining.com. That's not cheap, he has to recover his investment somewhere. He just really needs to find other places to do it.

I would bet money that he now has one of the largest email lists out there. Everyone had to sign up and confirm an email address. He could broker domain names either for a fee or commission.

That along with his expiring domain names which isn't do that well for him so far. He has only sold 18 domain names in 30 days with an average profit of $9, geez that's only $162. Lucky for me four of them have been mine.

Jamie, great article, rep to you for the article and the balls to post on top of Domaining.com for the day

Just so everyone else knows, there is another service out there very similar to Domaining.com and it is DNHeadlines.com.

 

[Giode]

OK, now on the other hand Francois paid $100,000 for Domaining.com. That's not cheap, he has to recover his investment somewhere. He just really needs to find other places to do it.

Really?? Where is it referenced that he paid 100k for Domaining.com? If true, that really surprises me.

 

[weblord]

no thanks, i'll stick with other means of getting news like the free ones. :td:

 

[joeyhavlock]

Really nice site, was turned on to it by this forum, but do not see what it provides that could not be found for free. $10 a month would not cut it, maybe per year, but even then it would be questionable to me. Seems like for a fee there should be some additional domainer services accessible for discounted prices such as domain registrations, hosting, exclusive news or insider information or something that would set it a cut above the rest of the domaining news sites out there. Like I said, really nice site, but what would justify the fee?

 

[snoop]

This is why Domaining.com should switch to a subcription based service within the next weeks.
Don’t panic, the cost should be something between $10 and $30 monthly (still to define).

People aren't likly to pay for a service like this, especially not $10 or $30 a month, it would be like trying to charge people to use a search engine.

Basically anyone can offer the exact same service domaining.com offers with probably 10 hours of programming, it isn't doing very much at all. I expect if they do charge people will just come out with the exact same type of site for free.

 

[notlikeyou]

Sage brings all my favorite domain reads to me & it's free.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/77

I think he might be a bit off on this business model.

 

[soggyindo]

another factor is that the domaining community is really pretty damn small, too. as much as we trump how mainstream it's becoming, a domaining site can't beat a site on just about any other topic - parrots, basketballs, ukeleles, you name it - for traffic.

add that to the fact that we all want our own great domaining name and our own great domain site to share our wisdom!

agreed that he'd be better off going for some other way of monetizing - than a tiny advertising (or even tinier fee paying) domainer market

 

[Jackie]

DN.vc ■ Domain Industry News - Coming Soon!

I recently bought DN.vc (only two letters!).
I was going to to set up a sales site listing my domain portfolio and the portfolios of some friends, but this inspired me to set up a FREE news aggregator & resource site for the domain name industry, that will be enhanced upon Domaining.com's features.

Domaining.com is a strikingly powerful domain name and if used to its potential can be a voice in our industry and a window for other people to see domaining for what it is. It is his site, and it is up to him to decide what to do with it, but :imho: the business model of selling links to other people's content that can be always be viewed for free won't work.

I'd like to make a site that allows more participation in it by the domain community, but I will see how everything pans out as the project moves along. I think I will have a winner, with the simple two letter domain name, just http://dn.vc/ which anyone here will recognize for Domain Names.

Really, try it right now. Type in DN.vc into your browser and it's that short! I'll be inviting domaining blog owners to give me permission to syndicate their RSS feed on my site after I launch soon. Stay tuned.

 

[Fka200]

I actually really really like DN.vc.

 

[seven]

If this guy is so smart, there's no way he'll go through with this. This post just laid out all the market research he'll ever need in 7 minutes. The conclusion - it isn't going to happen.

 

[Charley]

Charging the people who READ Domaining.com is not the right thing to do, no matter if it’s $1 a month or $30. I hope you reconsider this Francois as this will hurt our whole Industry.

Paid subscription is really going to hurt the industry.

 

[trsaso]

I definitely vote against a charge.
I Work in new site and plan to add category news will be feeds from others blogs.

 

[HuntingMoon]

watch how fast it flips back to free and becomes ad supported

 

[henniemeijer]

he is smart enough and knew that people would object, so now he has a chance to put down a compromise(which he thought what was acceptable in the first place) by making the charge small and/or show the bloggers/advertisers that they have to pay.

 

[DotWeekly]

What if Domaining.com used it's advertising dollars that it uses Here (Top Banner) and whatever other forms Francois uses and focused that amount of money OUTSIDE the domain world on "Business" sites and business magazines?

Then he would be advertising to Potential Buyers just like Afternic/BuyDomains.com does currently. Our industry would be getting a lot more marketing to the outside world with startup type interested parties.

I would forsure pay to have my blog feed included in Domaining.com if I knew that potential end users were reading my blog daily from the business world. People looking to make new investments, new startups etc.

Domaining would need a bit more policing so people were not constantly publishing "for sale" type posts but I think this would really HELP our industry and the bloggers would have a very positive reason for paying Domaining.com . Consider Domaining.com as Unique Advertising and Francois is the one selling the ad spots. Not to mention that A LOT more people would be developing a blog to get on Domaining.com as it would make it easier promoting to end users....

I think this solution would be a win-win-win (Bloggers, Domaining.com & Domain Industry).

What do you think?

 

[Chef Patrick]

Hmmmm I just thought of something.

I'm sure you guys have heard of the saying, all advertising is good advertising. Well maybe this is his way of creating a buzz about Domaining.com? The issue has been blogged about and talked about in forums...makes you think