Discuss your Epik Experience!

[dande]

I think Epik is building the best ever Domain Lander in the history of domaining, and it really needs to be talked about extensively. That's why I am creating this discussion thread. A lot of thought process really goes into the project. And I can see (for the first time) a landing page that is built from the stand point of domainers rather than for just the marketplace itself.

Everything you have ever dreamt of getting or seeing in a professional landing page can be found in the new Epik marketplace landing page design.

Some of my Favorites Features:

1. The ability to optimize your "domain for sale" landing page to actually rank on Google, displaying your sales pitch/domain description. I just did that with few of my generic domain names such as ASAP.TV, targeting certain keywords, and they are showing pretty well on Google. That's a huge plus in my marketing effort.

2. Being able to change background image is another huge one for me. If you are good with pictures and images, you will surely find this very useful. I did that with Nagasaki.org and the result was truly amazing, showing the city of Nagasaki right at the background.

There are too many positive features and I don't want to mention all of them, all alone

So I am leaving you guys to share and discuss what you loves most or dislike about the new Epik marketplace and the landing pages.

The only negative for me is the checkout process. There are too many terms and conditions buttons to tick before checking out. It will be nice if they can streamline those into one beautiful big button

They also need to place the checkout button directly under the payment options. Right now it is awkwardly place somewhere below at the sidebar, which I don't find cool at all.

Sales experience is also welcomed in this discussion. I haven't had any sells so far at Epik because I started using the marketplace just recently, but the future is looking so bright.

 

[Silentptnr]

PayPal is no longer working at Epik. Has been down for at least 12 hours and is no longer listed as an option in the payments area. Hopefully this isnt permanent.

Any news available when service will be restored?

Thanks for the update Omnia!

We have been working over the past 48 hours assembling materials for the antitrust divisions of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission.

I don't understand. This comment would indicate that you were aware of this for some time prior to customers noticing. Valuable time lost imo.

 

[MapleDots]

I'm tied into the paypal ecosystem as well but Epik would be further ahead to check out alternatives.

https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/paypal-alternatives

There are a number on that list that I would consider so I don't think this will harm Epik forever. The payment industry is the one most rapidly affected by technology and the days of paypal dominance are over anyways.

The time spent a Epik blogging about this could have been better used to find a solution.

Maybe a post asking domainers what secondary payment system they would be willing to use.
That would have made for a better topic, he could still have said it was paypals idea to cut ties but we need to move forward.

 

[Silentptnr]

I find it ironic how the very people who preach love and understanding to rationalize acceptance of hatred, anti-semitism, and racism, turn into aggressive, stop at nothing, scorched earth victims when they feel they have been treated unfairly.

Just saying.

The statements publicly posted do not reflect what Rob has said. Quite the contrary.

I guess it's different when others ignore THEIR perspective. Where's the love and understanding now?

And I mean this with love.

 

[jberryhill]

https://mashable.com/article/epik-domain-names-paypal-proud-boys/

A source close to the situation put the issue more bluntly: money laundering.

The source said that the problem lies with Epik’s digital currency. The domain registrar runs its own “alternative currency” called Masterbucks, which can be used to purchase products sold by Epik or converted into U.S. dollars.

According to the source, Epik has not gone through the appropriate legal steps to run Masterbucks, and was encouraging tax evasion. An archived version of the Masterbucks page promotes its "tax advantages."

Tax advantages? Lol. That’s as good as when Rob was claiming to provide 1031 exchanges (a type of transaction which can only be done with real estate) for domain names.

So, what were these “tax advantages” in Masterbucks?

 

[Rob Monster]

OK, guys, let's talk about truth. Take a look at the article that just came out featured on the home page of Mashable:

https://mashable.com/article/epik-domain-names-paypal-proud-boys/

The salacious headline refers to a "Proud Boys" domain that arrived at Epik without our knowledge on October 21, 2020 and was used in an Iranian spoofing operation without using any Epik hosting. The registrant was completely blindsided by all of these developments.

So why did this registrant move the domain to Epik? Because his former registrar required him to leave effective immediately. So, the registrant dutifully complied thinking that Epik would provide safe harbor for his non-active domain.

The "Iranian Op" is described here.

See how this works?

 

[Rob Monster]

According to the source, Epik has not gone through the appropriate legal steps to run Masterbucks, and was encouraging tax evasion. An archived version of the Masterbucks page promotes its "tax advantages."

This is nonsense. We completely re-did the site in early 2020. There is zero discussion about tax.

These folks have go into the wayback machine to construct their false narrative.

What nonsense.

 

[JB Lions]

This is nonsense. We completely re-did the site in early 2020. There is zero discussion about tax.

Show attachment 171231
These folks have go into the wayback machine to construct their false narrative.

What nonsense.

That screenshot in the Mashable article is from the Epik site (epik.com/services/masterbucks), not Masterbucks site (masterbucks.com) that you just posted.

The Tax Advantages text is right under the Why use Masterbucks, then a short paragraph - "Masterbucks also offer certain tax advantages................."

https://web.archive.org/web/20180822155804/https://www.epik.com/services/masterbucks/

Current version, that has been removed.

--------------

Hunter Biden catching a stray. Not sure why all that stuff is in that blog.

 

[karmaco]

So Masterbucks is the issue or part of the issue. I never understood the need for an internal currency anyways. All other registrars use regular money and no internal “currency”.

Anyone saying PayPal is no loss is misguided. I would bet large majority of domainers use PP and the ones not using it have suspended accounts so not by choice. With the introduction of crypto into PP them being an option is even more popular.

 

[TCK]

I don't doubt Rob is a nice guy, and has good intentions, but for his company to flourish he must separate his (and staffs) emotional self with the company.

Unfortunately, Epik (tightly aligned with Rob's worldview) has become known for spreading conspiracy theories. That doesn't help.

It is hard to imagine PP suspending the account of a client that has over 100,000 customers without a good reason. Feeling like we're not getting the full story.

However, it should be noted that this is part of a much bigger picture.

OK, guys, let's talk about truth. Take a look at the article that just came out featured on the home page of Mashable:

https://mashable.com/article/epik-domain-names-paypal-proud-boys/

According to that article, sounds like PP tried to work with Epik to resolve the issue.

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

Great read. My apology tom for coming down on you before and standing up for rob like i did dicker. Two wrongs dont make a right. I know that.
This is heavy shit Rob, no paypal no business from me. Thanks for the heat too. Irs and all feds worldwide gonna come down on this biz hard.
The truth will come out, to many brains with noses sniffing around. Hope you dont end up in crowbar hotel bud. I better stop wouldnt want to ruin my reputation here haha

 

[Silentptnr]

So Masterbucks is the issue or part of the issue. I never understood the need for an internal currency anyways. All other registrars use regular money and no internal “currency”.

Anyone saying PayPal is no loss is misguided. I would bet large majority of domainers use PP and the ones not using it have suspended accounts so not by choice. With the introduction of crypto into PP them being an option is even more popular.

If a business is canned by PayPal or a major bank, it can definitely affect other relationships.

 

[jberryhill]

I asked what were the tax advantages? How about you answer instead of pointing to some distraction?

We completely re-did the site in early 2020. There is zero discussion about tax.

So what, Rob. You “re-did the site”. What was the tax thing doing on the site in the first place?

Just because you got caught and changed the site doesn’t explain why it was there in the first place.

Does this kind of thing happen a lot at Epik? Stuff gets posted on publicly-accessible web pages, and nobody knows what it meant or how it got there?

And, the problem with PayPal isn’t about your propensity for bogus statements about tax evasion schemes. The problem seems to be related to the overall Masterbucks scheme in the first place.

Stop pretending this is about your Nazi pals. You are engaged in eyebrow-raising financial services (and let’s not even get started about your DNProtect unlicensed insurance/warranty scheme), and going on unhinged rants about vandalism at police stations, freedom of speech, and how everyone is out to get you, does not address a relevant substantive question such as “Why were you advertising ‘tax advantages’ in the first place?”

Don’t tell us about how quickly you can pull your hand out of the cookie jar, tell us what it was doing in there to begin with.

 

[cyc]

Hello,

Just wanted to start with my experience before;

I was a once-time customer within Epik.com before few months ago, i purchased a bargain LLLL.com type of domain from Nameliquidate.com and then relisted at Epik Marketplace.

Name was sold within a sale thread at here, i was waiting to get the fund within Masterbucks.com via Bitcoin.

After two days, i contacted with them because of no reply and they tried to force me to an identity verification.

It was around $100 sale and i have never faced within this problem in any registrar, got around $4k transaction from a competitor registrar, they have never required it however, my account was verified within credit card.

Then, i sent some advanced comments within the email, and @Rob Monster quit within the verification then passed the fund to me.

I'm ok to some regulations in Bitcoin withdrawal, as recently i'm a verified Dan.com seller, but those transactions were above $1000 as totally.

Now, there's the personal opinion about what i watched from related threads as, Voxility (one of the largest DDOS protection company in the world), then PayPal (one of the largest payment gateway company in the world) terminated their relationship with Epik, and maybe will come something from other big service providers, but Epik is an innocent guy here as always, funny.

The other story is, when they're being against by another company, they're trying to create it's alternative, huge ego.

I won't be surprised if i ICANN terminates their accreditation in next 3 years.

Once time, i sent a private message to @Rob Monster that you're failing, but he didn't care about it much, and now, Rob Monster and somebody called himself "Lifting people up is what we do..." is lifting the Epik business down day by day..

Best Regards.

 

[Silentptnr]

Wow, a month?

Imo, totally mishandled.

 

[jberryhill]

And while Rob comes up with his next evasion of the question of why the site touted “tax advantages” in the first place - and apparently for years - I don’t want this gem to pass by unnoticed.

Davies said the blog screed wasn’t intended for publication. But did you notice what else he said:

You and Andrew Allemann from DNW were literally the first to publish it online and make it public, post a GoDaddy executive sharing it with you. You can deny this all you like, but in total truth – we counted on it.

“we counted on it” - You counted on what, genius? You counted on the page you “didn’t intend” for publication to be published?

Make up your mind.

 

[Silentptnr]

I must say....the communications from Epik are not professional. Off subject, but even some domain email notifications are poorly composed. Not polished.

I'm not sure what's going on. I use Epik and have maybe 100 names there despite my personal feelings about the company's trajectory based on its business decisions.

Chasing so many concepts before perfecting the core, aligning and publicly defending bad actors, and slowly losing important mainstream relationships. Its a disaster. In most organizations heads would roll internally over this level of inefficiency.

This is completely unacceptable from a business perspective.

 

[Intelliname]

You guys are deceiving yourselves, with no intention of objectivity or truth here. They are literally staging ops in front of your eyes, conflating "Iranian spoofing campaigns", and branding us in major headlines as the home of the officialproudboys.com website that was linked to doing it. But you are domainers, which means you of anyone in the world, have the experience to actually look and see that the domain was not moved to Epik until literally this week. 48 hours ago, and upon discovery that they had ordered a hosting solution, Rob himself terminated it in a matter of minutes.

Wake up please. This isn't about your negative judgement or externally influenced views of Epik and the information you have been fed. PayPal is cancelling accounts of companies based on their political affiliations. They are not having discussions, or asking for corrective fixes, or looking for solutions. This has nothing to do with finances, accounting or Epik wrongdoing. These are PayPal's own customers! If they thought they were doing something wrong, they would shut their accounts off - NOT EPIKS! Any money sent to PayPal is controlled by PayPal, not Epik.

We have had two key correspondences back to back from PayPal. The first said they were terminating our account, and there would be no appeal, discussion, review or opportunity for correction. The second said they were shutting us down, and taking all money in the account for six months. Tell me on what planet that makes sense.

No one is here "creating drama". You can hate on Epik all you like, and some of you have clear conflicts of interests in your attempts to reduce this with character attacks and condescension.

But if they can attempt to do this to us, they can do it to you. The individuals attacking us relentlessly are not doing so in good faith, nor are they reflecting truth. But if it isn't professional to let our industry know that merchant services are blacklisting Republicans, that they are coordinating mass DDOS attacks against critical infrastructure providers, that Discover card just blacklisted a ton of people they felt were right leaning, and that PayPal cancelled services on the SPLC's guidance.. then you let me know what abuses of power are enough to where you will actually feel a need to be alerted and woken up.

There are so many clear discrepancies and outright falsehoods in the featured Mashable piece alone, that I find it unfathomable that several of you could still be pointing fingers claiming fraud and illegal money games as a counter strategy. This isn't just an attack on Epik, you are literally helping traitorous elements by burying the real story through the most transparent of character attacks directly upon us.

That makes you far worse than just professional trolls.

 

[JB Lions]

merchant services are blacklisting Republicans, that they are coordinating mass DDOS attacks against critical infrastructure providers, that Discover card just blacklisted a ton of people they felt were right leaning

So Epik is Republican? It seems you can't get your marketing on the same page. We're for everybody, we're neutral, we're Republican..........

So it's an attack on Republicans? Why? Republicans spend money just like everybody else. I'm sure there are all kinds of Republicans, right leaning sites using PayPal just fine. So because you're Republican, makes no sense for somebody to drop you. Then DDOS attacks on top of that? Who specifically is carrying out these attacks?

 

[Silentptnr]

You guys are deceiving yourselves, with no intention of objectivity or truth here. They are literally staging ops in front of your eyes, conflating "Iranian spoofing campaigns", and branding us in major headlines as the home of the officialproudboys.com website that was linked to doing it. But you are domainers, which means you of anyone in the world, have the experience to actually look and see that the domain was not moved to Epik until literally this week. 48 hours ago, and upon discovery that they had ordered a hosting solution, Rob himself terminated it in a matter of minutes.

Wake up please. This isn't about your negative judgement or externally influenced views of Epik and the information you have been fed. PayPal is cancelling accounts of companies based on their political affiliations. They are not having discussions, or asking for corrective fixes, or looking for solutions. This has nothing to do with finances, accounting or Epik wrongdoing. These are PayPal's own customers! If they thought they were doing something wrong, they would shut their accounts off - NOT EPIKS! Any money sent to PayPal is controlled by PayPal, not Epik.

We have had two key correspondences back to back from PayPal. The first said they were terminating our account, and there would be no appeal, discussion, review or opportunity for correction. The second said they were shutting us down, and taking all money in the account for six months. Tell me on what planet that makes sense.

Show attachment 171260
No one is here "creating drama". You can hate on Epik all you like, and some of you have clear conflicts of interests in your attempts to reduce this with character attacks and condescension.

But if they can attempt to do this to us, they can do it to you. The individuals attacking us relentlessly are not doing so in good faith, nor are they reflecting truth. But if it isn't professional to let our industry know that merchant services are blacklisting Republicans, that they are coordinating mass DDOS attacks against critical infrastructure providers, that Discover card just blacklisted a ton of people they felt were right leaning, and that PayPal cancelled services on the SPLC's guidance.. then you let me know what abuses of power are enough to where you will actually feel a need to be alerted and woken up.

There are so many clear discrepancies and outright falsehoods in the featured Mashable piece alone, that I find it unfathomable that several of you could still be pointing fingers claiming fraud and illegal money games as a counter strategy. This isn't just an attack on Epik, you are literally helping traitorous elements by burying the real story through the most transparent of character attacks directly upon us.

That makes you far worse than just professional trolls.

I don't think your approach is considering the wealth of business experience and knowledge being shared here.

Noone but Epik is putting Epik alone on an island.

 

[Samer]

“a source close to the situation.”

Is it you @jberryhill

 

[Silentptnr]

“a source close to the situation.”

Is it you @jberryhill

That is a ridiculous insinuation. @cyc is right. @Intelliname seems very defensive. This forum supported Rob generally.

For years, everything I have ever read about @jberryhill has been in support of domain registrants. He also gives "real life" time and money to "real" good causes. Actually made me feel a bit guilty at times for not doing more.

 

[Samer]

That is a ridiculous insinuation. @cyc is right. @Intelliname seems very defensive. This forum supported Rob generally.

For years, everything I have ever read about @jberryhill has been in support of domain registrants. He also gives "real life" time and money to "real" good causes. Actually made me feel a bit guilty at times for not doing more.

Sorry it was satirical, i respect @jberryhill as one of the best in the business;

i just hate "anon sources"

They're dirty.

 

[Samer]

I don't understand. This comment would indicate that you were aware of this for some time prior to customers noticing. Valuable time lost imo.

Working with the Department of Justice is as hard as you can try to even put a dent

At least they're trying.

I believe the truth will come in time. We're all so quick to judge;
.... not a fan of the mischaracterization in the Mashable article.

WTF is with this "alt right" nonsense?

 

[Silentptnr]

Sorry it was satirical, i respect @jberryhill as one of the best in the business;

i just hate "anon sources"

They're dirty.

The PP correspondence was clear. They determined there was an unacceptable level of risk.

The mashable author talked to someone "close". Someone who works or worked there probably. Not so much a mystery.

 

[Samer]

The PP correspondence was clear. They determined there was an unacceptable level of risk.

The mashable author talked to someone "close". Someone who works or worked there probably. Not so much a mystery.

Yes that someone "close" will be the cause of the demise and fall.

Give me a break.

Hopefully it will hold in court; but these outside forces dont seem amicable