Domaining.com no longer free

Chef Patrick said:

where did you get this info? I don't see anything on the site.

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For me, the site says $35, but the PayPal link has $25 filled in.

Steve said:

For me, the site says $35, but the PayPal link has $25 filled in.

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I just found it. I guess because I provide material I'm not charged. I signed on using a different browser and it does show a $25 membership fee per year.

Chef Patrick said:

I just found it. I guess because I provide material I'm not charged. I signed on using a different browser and it does show a $25 membership fee per year.

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That is correct. Domaining.com is paying you $25 a year for all your content. so you can use the site for "free".

Yofie said:

That is correct. Domaining.com is paying you $25 a year for all your content. so you can use the site for "free".

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I think it would be safe to assume yours is free as well. I get your point about "free".

Steve said:

For me, the site says $35, but the PayPal link has $25 filled in.

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I don't think the amount matters so much. This is just the wrong way to monetize the site. Maybe if it were a nominal charge of $10 or something people wouldn't find it so offensive. But it's still ill-conceived as a business model. Compiling the blogs/news simplifies things for domainers looking for all their feeds in one place. But this convenience is just the hook that brings people in and builds traffic ... traffic that could and should be monetized in other ways - like the sales venue that seemed to me to be off to such a great start.

And then not accepting submitted domains for the sales venue from non-paying members just blows my mind: Drive everybody away with a high subscription fee to read blogs that are freely available elsewhere. Then kill off the only other viable piece - the sales venue - by requiring the membership fee from people wanting to list their names there. WOW.

I think he should drop this whole idea but if he has his heels dug in on this and simply MUST charge a mem. fee, it should be $10/year and you should get one or 2 free sales listings for that. That will still cost him a number of domainers who simply won't pay for free content, but the damage will be much less ... and possibly survivable.

I've expressed my point of view earlier in this thread on how noone should have to pay for the service, however, if anyone should pay, surely it should be the blog writers themselves as effectively it is advertising. Obviously you aren't writing for the money (and, once again, this is why noone should pay), however, writers must receive significant traffic from Domaining.com.

I am sure there has been an increase in readers to all the blogs that contribute to Domaining.com, thus giving even more reason for high-quality posts. I genuinely am very disappointed by the effects we'll see from Domaining.com's demise; just as a site brings the community together, in one fell swoop it can, once again, be dismantled.

An update:

First I remember again it's totally FREE to see headlines at domaining.com, there is NO need to be a member to can consult new and past headlines. And that the site is compatible with mobile devices.

An annual fee is asked only when you are an existing member or sign up as a new member. The value is of $25 year. And probably we will offer soon an option at $10 for 3 months for those that are not domainers and that only want buy/sell domains punctually.

With these fees I can tell you that members should not even finance 25% of daily cost. So it's NOT an option to finance domaining.com and less to make benefices as some people think.
Read my previous posts to understand the 2 main reasons of this annual fee.

Once the membership paid you could:
- Join/participate in our affiliate program that will offer from next week a $5 CPA deal.
- List featured domains for sale.
- Buy sponsored headlines.
- Receive one day before anyone the new featured names for sale.

Yofie said:

Here is a classic example. http://www.accuratename.com/blog/

The owner does link back BUT provides the Full Story on Their Site, so why would a reader need to go to MY blog? I wrote it, but the text is fully displayed on Their site and no reason for the reader to visit my blog.

If it's a Headline and excerpt and the headline goes to the writers site, that's fine but clearly these things are hard to track and not everybody just displays "the Headline".

Displaying the Whole Story on a site does no good for the person who wrote it.

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I have only just stumbled across this thread. I understand your point here Yofie and have removed the rss feed to your site and all content which came from it.

I was under the misconception that provision of an rss feed inferred the author was happy to have the content reproduced, so long as all links remained intact.

Chef Patrick said:

I agree 100%, I didn't even know this site existed. Honestly I find my feed all over the place. Like you said, as long as it's a headline and it links to my site I'm happy. Taking the entire article is not cool.

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This is a strange copmment seeing as I have full permission from you via pm to use the feed on my site, around a month ago:

gingeman said:

Hi Patrick,



would you be interested in letting me syndicate your feed amongst other top blogs on http://accuratename.com/blog ?



Do you have an rss 2.0 feed?



Kind Regards



Chris

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your response:

Chef Patrick said:

Sure that would be great Chris, appreciate it. The articles will link back to DNKitchen right?



http://www.dnkitchen.com/feed/rss



Chef Patrick

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Anyhow, after speaking with Patrick I assumed (wrongly) that it was fine to use people's rss feeds so long as you linked back and proceeded to add other sites, including yofie's, to my feed.

I have now removed yofie's site altogether and patrick I now only have a rss 0.92 from yours so it is only an excerpt. If you wish for me to remove it altogether then please let me know.

It saddens me that this discussion had to publically defame my site when I had the best intentions.

Yofie, you clearly read and knew about the site as can now be seen in this thread:
http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/535193-domaining-com-soon-charge-you-read.html

so if you had a problem you could have pm'ed me. I now see you even commented in that thread also.

I never made a consicious decision to publish whole articles of everyone's posts, I am pretty new to wordpress and thought I was doing a good thing providing a free aggregator site as an alternative to domaining.com

I apologise unreservedly for using any posts which the author did not want me to, I have begun to remove feeds and/or contact any owners I did not contact before. I will be more careful about which feeds to include on my sites in future and certainly won't publish whole articles again (as soon as I figure out how...)

Chris, I would never authorize someone to use a full article feed. If you are using headlines or the first few sentences then that is ok. In the pm approval it asked if you were linking it back to my site. Sorry for not clarifying, to me the majority of feeds are like Domaining.com, DNHeadlines.com, SocialDN.com and so forth.

And do not bring my name up as far as pointing out your site, I did not bring it up.

Chef Patrick said:

Chris, I would never authorize someone to use a full article feed. If you are using headlines or the first few sentences then that is ok. In the pm approval it asked if you were linking it back to my site. Sorry for not clarifying, to me the majority of feeds are like Domaining.com, DNHeadlines.com, SocialDN.com and so forth.

And do not bring my name up as far as pointing out your site, I did not bring it up.

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Thanks for clarification Patrick, although I'm not sure what you mean by bringing your name up- I am only defending comments made in this thread, with evidence that it was a misunderstanding. I would definitely have preferred not to have to. I don't know what more I could have done to point out my usage other than letting you know the exact site for approval :]
Thanks for your time and understanding the misunderstanding, as well as granting permission to use the headlines from your excellent site. Best wishes for 2009

cybertonic said:

An update:

First I remember again it's totally FREE to see headlines at domaining.com, there is NO need to be a member to can consult new and past headlines. And that the site is compatible with mobile devices.

An annual fee is asked only when you are an existing member or sign up as a new member. The value is of $25 year. And probably we will offer soon an option at $10 for 3 months for those that are not domainers and that only want buy/sell domains punctually.

With these fees I can tell you that members should not even finance 25% of daily cost. So it's NOT an option to finance domaining.com and less to make benefices as some people think.
Read my previous posts to understand the 2 main reasons of this annual fee.

Once the membership paid you could:
- Join/participate in our affiliate program that will offer from next week a $5 CPA deal.
- List featured domains for sale.
- Buy sponsored headlines.
- Receive one day before anyone the new featured names for sale.

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May I ask why its important for you to have my addess, age, and paypal email id? I have no plans of using your domain service, or whatever it is. Please cancel my account. I'm not giving away my personal info just to use an RSS reader. What a rip.

seanboy said:

May I ask why its important for you to have my addess, age, and paypal email id? I have no plans of using your domain service, or whatever it is. Please cancel my account. I'm not giving away my personal info just to use an RSS reader. What a rip.

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Age - Be sure you're over 18 years old

PayPal email - To can pay your affiliate commission as each member can show affiliate ads.

Contact info - Needded to create an escrow.com transaction in the fly if you purchase a domain.

An annual fee is asked only when you are an existing member or sign up as a new member. The value is of $25 year


So basically its not free? Right, you put a trap door in there too Cyber for existing members to "update their account" then we we click on the "free" version it leads directly to a paypal page to pay a $25 yearly membership.

I've paid up. The daily emails alone are worth the $25 a year to me.

Broker said:

An annual fee is asked only when you are an existing member or sign up as a new member. The value is of $25 year


So basically its not free? Right, you put a trap door in there too Cyber for existing members to "update their account" then we we click on the "free" version it leads directly to a paypal page to pay a $25 yearly membership.

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Again:
No need to be a member to see news. It's FREE.
You need to be a member to receive the newsletter and can buy/sell names. it's FREE for old members.
If you are a member and want receive new domain for sale 24 hours before the others pay the $25 fee or if you want to sell names.

cybertonic said:

Again:
No need to be a member to see news. It's FREE. EDIT << understood

You need to be a member to receive the newsletter and can buy/sell names. it's FREE for old members. EDIT << don't understand ?

If you are a member and want receive new domain for sale 24 hours before the others pay the $25 fee or if you want to sell names.<< understood

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I'm really confused now , I was an "old member" but now I can't log in ??

Just get > IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Domaining.com membership is no longer free.
Free unactive accounts or with a fake identity were closed.
If you are serious about domaining then we invite you to SIGN UP AGAIN HERE. <<< so is this still free for "old members" ?

phew please clarify



.

My account is still working just fine. No issues, and I have a free account. I wouldn't think that Domaining.com would do that, but who knows, my account is still up and running smoothly, I hope nothing will happen Sorry to those who this happened to.

gazzip said:

I'm really confused now , I was an "old member" but now I can't log in ??

Just get > IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Domaining.com membership is no longer free.
Free unactive accounts or with a fake identity were closed.
If you are serious about domaining then we invite you to SIGN UP AGAIN HERE. <<< so is this still free for "old members" ?

phew please clarify.

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You no longer need to be a member to view the news. You can jump on the site and browse around and click on articles without having to sign on.

cybertonic said:

An update:


Once the membership paid you could:
- Join/participate in our affiliate program that will offer from next week a $5 CPA deal.
- List featured domains for sale.
- Buy sponsored headlines.
- Receive one day before anyone the new featured names for sale.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but you are missing the whole point IMO, you are charging for the privilege of:

Join/participate in our affiliate program that will offer from next week a $5 CPA deal.

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Since when did people charge for a affiliate to be able to sign up and promote your service and earn you more money?

- List featured domains for sale.

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you charge for domains to be listed! why would anyone pay a membership for the right to be able to PAY for a domain to be listed for sale?

- Buy sponsored headlines.

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again, you want people to pay a membership for the right to then be able to pay for sponsored headlines???

- Receive one day before anyone the new featured names for sale.

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This IMO is one of your biggest mistakes, when your newsletter was free paying to advertise a domain for sale was well worth the money, but now you have destroyed the service, i have no idea the size of your "paid list" but if this thread is anything to go off its a lot smaller than the full list, I would now not consider advertising in your newsletter as it as lost its effectiveness, the domain would now only be advertised to a smaller list, as I'm sure most other subscribers will agree, for those that get the list of domains a day later they wont even bother to look in most cases.
When i used to get your list i would make sure i checked it early to see if there was a bargain or two to be had, now i don't even look, knowing its already been out to some the day before.

As I'm sure most will agree, you had one of (if not the) best domainers lists on the internet, but you have systematically destroyed it.

IMHO you really need to take professional advice, your business/site/newsletter have great potential to make you a lot of money, but you are going about it completely wrong, you are biting the hand that feeds you.

Your newsletter contains nothing (from you) it contains the blog feeds that are free anyway and whilst this is handy for domainers, its not something they will pay for, and your domain sales, the revenue you receive for advertisements is your payback for supplying a useful service of with the blog feeds.

Pound said:

I've expressed my point of view earlier in this thread on how noone should have to pay for the service, however, if anyone should pay, surely it should be the blog writers themselves as effectively it is advertising. Obviously you aren't writing for the money (and, once again, this is why noone should pay), however, writers must receive significant traffic from Domaining.com.

I am sure there has been an increase in readers to all the blogs that contribute to Domaining.com, thus giving even more reason for high-quality posts. I genuinely am very disappointed by the effects we'll see from Domaining.com's demise; just as a site brings the community together, in one fell swoop it can, once again, be dismantled.

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I agree 100% it is sad to see.

when the notice of charging for the newsletter first reared its head i immediately felt although it was handy for the blog feeds all in one email, its not something worth paying for.
I was going to un-subscribe, then came the email saying i wouldn't be receiving it anymore and to subscribe.
Then it came back, now its changed to the point where its useless, clicking a blog link just takes you to a subscribe page, so I'm sad to say i will be un-subscribing as i feel many other will too.

the list that was once one of your greatest assets is being destroyed by the day and you wont need to take my word for it, you know the original size of your list, you know the size of your subscribed list, and as the newsletter is now useless you will see the lists diminish to nothing over the next few days/weeks.

although i don't expect you will publish the figures, It would be interesting to see:
the size of your list before announcing the requirement to pay?
the size of your paid list?
the size of your original list in one weeks time?

On a final note i would just like to say, its not about the $25, its the principle of paying for what is free.
I truly wish you every success in your business, but strongly urge you to take professional advice on how best to monetize your site before its too late.

The rss feeds are free everywhere... why bother.

I hope Francois will reconsider.

Good luck,
EM @ KING.NET

I been poping inn and out of this thread.

Surly sounds tense and all of this backfiring on the owner imo. Feeds are free. He isn't cutting the domain bloggers a cut. He is wrecking a loyal fan base and people were behind them 100 percent when it was free. Its all about eye balls and his advertising revenue alone should have covered his expenses and draw an income. Maybe charge a small amount for other areas like commissions on domain sales and join the vip chat room with a paid membership

Hope all of this is figured out. I only read couple blogs daily so this dosent impact me.

If dnjournal ever charges a fee imagine the trickle down impact that could have but in that case he writes his own stuff, does content. Domaining is just using peoples brains, set up an rss feed and sits back and collects cash.

Rep added Jack for by far the best post in the thread.

Honestly I wish the owner would stop abusing the fact that everyone sees it as the only source for domain-related blogs. Although harsh, of all the people I know on the internet, he has the worst idea of business I have ever seen/heard of.

We keep getting different stories as to what will happen. Basically, he doesn't even know himself and so changes it, waits for a response, adjusts it accordingly, and so on.

We were told you could access the headlines without an account but then you would not be able to do anything else which seemed like a fair compromise. It seems now that, once again, you require an account.

-RJ- says the newsletter is "worth the $25 a year". Honestly, the domain are overpriced and the headlines can all be found elsewhere anyway.

All I know is that there is no way I am ever using the Domaining.com service again. Even though it worked well before, other services offer exactly the same experience and it is too much to expect people to be continually toyed with and bear with it. A service that relies entirely on its users should look at the customers first and foremost, then, and only then, look at ways to generate revenue.

cybertonic said:

Again:
No need to be a member to see news. It's FREE.

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I noticed today you have to be logged in to read again?

Chef Patrick said:

You no longer need to be a member to view the news. You can jump on the site and browse around and click on articles without having to sign on.

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I could yesterday but NOT today I can only see the news headlines but if I click a link to a blog...say, www.dnkitchen.com :tu: it goes to the login page which apparently you need to sign in to view your blog article.

My user email + password no longer works so I guess I must fit into the "unactive accounts" group (even though for months I have visited at least 3 times a day)......or the "fake identity" group, hmmm

I honestly wish him the best with it but all this nonsense is wearing a little thin now

cybertonic said:

Again:
No need to be a member to see news. It's FREE.
.

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So basically what you mean is its FREE to see the headlines but if you want to click to read the News you must PAY ?



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