discuss Domain Microfinance Program

[Rob Monster]

As some folks here know, I am a big fan of Digital Empowerment projects that scale.

Over the last year, I have seen lives transformed by people becoming successful domain investors on a bootstrap.

I have been discussing with a few folks about introducing a Domain Microfinance program for emerging economies and for young entrepreneurs.

This could be a Digital Empowerment strategy for helping people to bootstrap domain portfolios. The idea was inspired by a discussion with a young Angolan.

The idea is this:

- People apply to get a microfinance grant. To get the grant, they have to verify their identity. This is done in order to prevent repeat applicants.

- Domains registered are limited to .com. With a budget of as little as $30, right now that is about 5 .com domains at a promo rate of just $5.49.

- The domains are powered by an SSL powered landing pages which domain owners can optimize and then use to sell or lease.

- Once the grant participants generate a certain level of sales or leases, e.g. $100, they can request an interest-free domain loan based on their portfolio.

 

[Tia Wood]

I voted “you are going to lose your butt on this one”

It takes a certain personality to deal with sales and do the required marketing.

I would say up the amount to maybe $1k or even $500, limit the applicants and make people prove they have the knowledge, business plan and skill required to execute.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

I am pleased to announce that we added @Abdullah Abdullah to the team today, based in Yemen and native of Somalia. He will be full-time at Epik from Monday and I believe will play a role here.

More details for anyone who missed it:

@Abdullah Abdullah volunteered as a moderator at NamePros for a number of years. He was very generous with his time to help the community without compensation. Recently, he accepted a paid position at Epik. Abdullah is understandably focusing his attention on Epik now and is no longer a moderator at NamePros as of last week.

We greatly appreciate everything he did for NamePros, and we wish him the best at Epik.

 

[Dan Nayo]

Still don't understand a lot of this. What is the 1000/703 domains stuff?

If they have time and hustle, they don't need paid courses. They can simply put the time into reading forums like this one and blogs. It's free.

You said domain quality relatively good. Good domains sell. So they should be making profit, take that and buy more good domains.

Then, this isn't something I would get into in their situation, if they lack money, knowledge etc. It's investing. I wouldn't advise broke people to get into this, stocks, crypto etc. It should be something you start on the side (hopefully they have a job) and if you're good at it, you'll make money and grow from there. From what I've read, cost of living is much less than say in America, so they wouldn't need to make as much as some others. Get your hustle on like everybody else in the world.

It's hard comparing folks in places like Nigeria to the US. We've got college graduate looking for means to start cab driving, bar tending, hair grooming, just any job ete.
You wouldn't understanding in a Million years how hard people struggle just to earn a Dollar, only to live by it, and the cycle continues till age sets in. That 5 names as little as it seems, it's an opportunity to change destiny. It may not work for everyone, but chances are someone can make it from there.
Thanks @Rob Monster. Great initiative. And God Bless.

 

[Kassey Lee]

We are dropcatching decently at Epik . Every day about 100,000 .com drop -- not all of them are trash. Many very decent names easily worth $100 to $1000 to an end-user are dropping to General Availability.

Well, then let them acquire domains from your drops, and do the hard work of researching and contacting end users. Set up a dedicated page to provide education sources such as Domain Sherpa shows, DNW podcasts, Namepros links, Domaining.com, etc. Learning must come first.

 

[Rob Monster]

Domaining already has one of the lowest, if not lowest barrier to entry out there. Like you said, $5.49.

I don't think getting people caught up in loans, especially people without much money is a good idea.

If you want to help people from certain areas, have a special section for them, tell them if you reg thru Epik, hook them up with courses, like DNAcademy or something.

I don't even follow the email above. He has a 1000 names to register, what does that mean? He already posted 703, what does that mean? Then he said he only has 1 registered name.

Yes, already reached out to Cyger. Funny enough a guy from Nigeria said same earlier today in response:

However, indeed there is no debt to start, and any debt would be non-recourse, secured only by the domains.

The point is that folks can't even get started when they have no money, or no access to an electronic payment method. They have time and hustle, and some of them are highly entrepreneurial. Their domain quality is remarkably good, e.g. Nigerians.

 

[Rob Monster]

I am pleased to announce that Epik has acquired all rights to Troy Rushton's very excellent online training product:

https://learn.domainflippa.com/

Along with the deal, was included:

https://nameinvestors.com/ - investor shops/network etc

https://namebrokers.com/ - broker CRM - (investor names can feed into broker network)

https://learn.domainflippa.com/ - training courses

https://affiliates.namebrokers.com/ - affiliate system

https://facebook.com/nameinvestors/ - 60k likes

https://facebook.com/namebrokers/ - 20k likes

The deal was signed this weekend and we are in the process of the handover.

We are very happy to integrate this excellent curriculum into our Microfinance and Digital Empowerment onboarding platform. All participants will have free access to all courses.

Congrats to @Troy Rushton and team. They did something cool, and we hope to share it with a lot more folks, extending the legacy of his excellent work.

 

[Rob Monster]

Okay, this is a very good starting point.

This post begins the conversation towards what might become a solution.

Next step is likely for those who like the idea, to gather all the pros and cons and filter through everything to see what comes of this idea.

If there is a fairly good chance that it could help than it will be up to an organization with enough resources to do a trial-run and see if it would work.

Also, how about doing some sort of community co-op where a group is funded and makes a purchase of a good quality name, a name that has been appraised high enough to make a good return.

This can and will start the wheels turning...

@BradWilson - you made a good point there about community coop. Epik owns the domain name called DomainEquity.com. It was originally intended for a domain lending platform but I am staring to see another purpose -- a registrar-agnostic domain bank.

I think so many of us have domains with auth codes that we routinely dump. Rather than dump them on the last day of expiry, after they go through Snapnames, for example, they could certainly be made available for reg fee.

At Epik, we have Daily Diamonds. It bottoms out at $9 + reg fee. And then we drop the domain. However, we actually have one more day that we could use from Verisign where people in a special program could pick up these domains for just reg-fee or even subsidized/discounted reg-fee.

I think so many of us have domains we don't need and won't sell but are not junk. If these domains could be listed with an auth code, folks in a special program could sell them or buy them and sell them later.

Also, if that part were structured as a non-profit, folks could get a tax benefit, similar to how it works with Goodwill. You donate a domain, get a tax benefit, and then Goodwill sells the item to some retail customer.

Anyway, it needs more thought, but I think the coop idea is relevant. Governance and ownership will be important. If someone knows a good non-profit lawyer, I could use an introduction. I hear Swiss Foundations are a good structure for concepts like this one.

 

[wwwweb]

Seems like the poll is very polarized atm ... half of the people think it is good idea, half of the people think the very opposite.

I am trying but honestly still do not understand how can $30 (or $300) in domaining change someone's life ...if that would be other field of human activity (let's say someone needs to plant their fields and just need those initial $30 to buy first seeds, from which they will have crop and thus new seeds to repeat the process, etc, I would understand that.

But domaining does NOT require initial capital, it requires time, effort, drive and energy to study.

If someone is without funds, they can BROKER already existing portfolia ... and they can get commision if they make a sale.

So why do you guys want someone to take your $30, and to register some names, for which (because they will be handregs) they will in average get let's say $400 IF they ever resell them? In the same time, with same effort and same energy someone can (with $0 capital required) broker some of my names (for example) .. and if sold succesfully, they can get MUCH MORE then anything they could ever get from those $30.

But that would require lot of study, lot of energy, and focus on non .com names imo (why non .com ? Because for premium .com names we already have enough brokers, competition is huge there, while even my grandmother can broker name like hotel / com and achieve 7 figures for it, it is not a miracle). But to actively sell new gTLDs let's say via Linkedin is much much harder (it requires knowledge, end users will be asking many things), and this is where I see potential for future, because competition is still very low there, so even new people can enter there quickly and have success ..

So I would forget the $30 idea, and I would better focus to train people to be domain brokers, that will have much more value longterm, both for you and them ... just my 2 cents

You have to learn to walk before you can run.

Who in their right mind is going to let some newbie run loose, and broker valuable domains who doesn’t have much experience. Especially someone from a third world country known for scams, and where English is not their native language.

This is graduated learning, it takes years to figure out what sells, how to make money on the buy. Many good names teeter on TM’s, and you have to be very careful how you engage.

I get calls everyday from people trying to sell website services etc, as do others, and they are screened to the point of no return.

I really think this program has merits, as there are a lot of inquiries coming out of Nigeria, and Indonesia, but they need guidance on how to sell, and stay away from marks like “realtor” etc... it’s nice to see regional ambassadors who understand such regions, and nationalities.

Domaining has a huge learning curve, with a high failure rate, I think teaching most how to create affiliate, and commission revenue sites is probably a better way to go, flipping subpar inventory via email marketing is very difficult.

 

[Kassey Lee]

It's a long shot. Limited budget can be compensated by hard work and good research. Fresh registration is tough for a beginner. Instead, $100 will enable one to buy about 3 domains from Godaddy Closeout. It may work if one is willing to go through the thousands of Closeout domains everyday, look for the few with end user potential, then contact them directly to sell the better domains to them.

 

[Rob Monster]

At these odds (having only 5 new domains to work with) it's even hard for experienced domainers to make something happen as far as making a sale goes nevermind a new domainer who is just beginning to learn the ropes. And to put them in debt without a realistic chance to come ahead might actually hurt them more than it's going to help them since $30 might be a lot of money for them to have to pay back if they don't make a sale.

Although I like your idea of trying to empower those who are disadvantaged (like me ). Now instead of giving them money how about giving them some free domains to get them started. Something like 25 domains per person (not pigeon dropping domains, but domains that have a reasonable chance of getting sold for $50 to $75 each. The kind that some of the more experienced domainers here might have who don't mind donating to this cause.(just an idea, hope it helps)

To be clear, the initial amount is non-recourse debt. It is really a restricted grant.

At the end of 1 year, if they did not generate sufficient sales and don't want to pay the renewal, the registered domains simply are lost and go to the expiry stream. As such, the participants have no continuing burden at all.

In developed economies, people don't have time to buy for $5 and sell for $50. Well, in places like Indonesia and Angola, or even Gran Canaria and Serbia with 40-60% youth unemployment, they very likely do have time for this.

 

[Ategy]

NOTE: I accidentally posted a post that I later added to in another tab .. the blue italics is what was added/modified.


Despite the good intentions, you're really inviting a disaster.

At the end of the day the vast majority of people do not succeed at domaining.

Add to that the unfortunate fact that people living in less well-off countries generally do not have the language and/or branding/marketing knowledge to select domains that would even have the 1-2% average chance of selling.

With 5 domains even at an extremely generous 2%, we're talking 1 sale every 10 years. Effectively more than 90% will fail to make a sale with 5 domains in their first year *IF* they pick good domains.

Admittedly that number could go up with aggressive outbound, but the likelyhood is that the quality of domains will not be conducive to significantly more success.

Like @JB Lions .. I'm highly sceptical of the quality of those 700-1000 domains (feel free to email a small sampling to me if you'd like .. I have more than enough domains to choose from my private lists to ever bother stealing anyone else's .. lol)

Enrolling people in @Michael Cyger's Domain Sherpa involves both time and money. I've privately helped a good deal of newcomers to the industry via PM/email, and I can say that presuming anything above a small fraction of people will really grasp everything that is needed to build a solid foundation in the industry is a big mistake. Domaining is not easy .. and teaching domaining can be a monumental challenge (there is NOBODY better than @Michael Cyger for that, but even he can't work miracles, particularly in the short term .. DNAcademy is long because there is a lot to learn before someone can even begin to be good at domaining .. there are no real shortcuts if you really want to be a successful domainer). So as bad as it is already, that rate of non-successful domainers gets amplified significantly the moment language and cultural barriers are added into the mix.

I most certainly am not saying that a super minority of very dedicated and very smart individuals could overcome that obstacle, but even then with $30 most will fail to get lucky even with good domains.

You also need to ask how much time and energy it's going to take to support and maintain this effort?


With zero actual equity in the domains you're also looking at the extreme likelihood of outbound spam, which effective hurts the entire industry as it lowers what people think of domains as a whole when too much non-targeting and non-personalised emails are sent.


All that said, one idea that could be a little less overwhelming is to have a similar program available strictly on a referral basis. Meaning that if someone in your group of successful domainer contacts sees someone who shows a lot of potential (via consistent quality forum postings), they could point them out to you for an invitation to participate ... then maybe you might have a higher average quality of domainer to give a tiny bit of hope.


All that said .. the way you're talking sometimes, it seems like there's an excess of domain buyers at Epik (I need to switch from parking to landers ASAP it seems .. lol) .. if that's the case, then the probabilities obviously get skewed upwards.


So good on you for trying to think of a way to help others .. unfortunately I just don't see this working unless it encompasses a significant domain education and significant oversight as to the quality of domains .. which kinda defies the point anyways.


I'm curious to know what sort of volume you had in mind and how liberal you were going to be in terms of accepting people? More importantly how you were planning to ad a layer of quality control for the domain acquisitions?

 

[Rob Monster]

Rob, as far as teaching and training goes, you yourself can write a crash course on domaining (with some help and input from the more experienced members here) to get the participants started on the right track, remember that they don't all have to become experts on day one just teach them the basics and give them a little time to learn the rest, as we all know somethings they can only learn once they start to interact with other domainers here and only after they have done a few sales on their own. Perhaps NamePros can make a special section for this project so that participants can ask questions and interact with some volunteer experienced domainers. As some of the more talented participants become more experienced you can use them to supervise and guide the rest. As I have mentioned before it's very important to make the program as self sustainable as possible both as far as education, finances, and supervision so that way the program can continue indefinitely as new participants join in in the future.

As far as vetting the applicants goes, as already mentioned you want to give first priority to honest, smart, motivated, and productive people who have a better chance of succeeding so that way they can help lift others out of poverty in their community, but as a devout Christian as you are lets not forget to also give a second chance to those who might have been caught in a bad situation due to the circumstances and the environment that they had to grow up in, so also give a chance to those who are willing to repent and help them make a fresh start in their life.

IMO

We have leads on training materials. We are good there. I bet we have that part of the supply chain solved within a week from now. @Braden Pollock is helping there. No need to invent. Easier to assemble.

I do believe NamePros will play a huge role in terms of creating a support community for new domain investors and sharing knowledge as well as enforcing standards of professionalism.

On that note, I am pleased to announce that we added @Abdullah Abdullah to the team today, based in Yemen and native of Somalia. He will be full-time at Epik from Monday and I believe will play a role here.

 

[Rob Monster]

Is he resigning as mod?

Is that your first reaction? Pity. Maybe congratulate the man first. He just got married too and now he got a pay raise for a job he can do from his home with his new wife.

 

[JB Lions]

Domaining already has one of the lowest, if not lowest barrier to entry out there. Like you said, $5.49.

I don't think getting people caught up in loans, especially people without much money is a good idea.

If you want to help people from certain areas, have a special section for them, tell them if you reg thru Epik, hook them up with courses, like DNAcademy or something.

I don't even follow the email above. He has a 1000 names to register, what does that mean? He already posted 703, what does that mean? Then he said he only has 1 registered name.

 

[BradWilson]

Okay, this is a very good starting point.

This post begins the conversation towards what might become a solution.

Next step is likely for those who like the idea, to gather all the pros and cons and filter through everything to see what comes of this idea.

If there is a fairly good chance that it could help than it will be up to an organization with enough resources to do a trial-run and see if it would work.

Also, how about doing some sort of community co-op where a group is funded and makes a purchase of a good quality name, a name that has been appraised high enough to make a good return.

This can and will start the wheels turning...

 

[Bob Hawkes]

While acknowledging the concerns and caveats expressed,I like the idea a lot @Rob Monster and voted brilliant. Micro loans have been empowering. I like the idea of a very restricted start like $30. I genuinely feel that with sufficient time, and as you say the economics of time cost is very different in different regions, money can be made turning $10 into $100 and then build on that success. Epik's aggressive pricing, now extended to drop catches, makes the most of that $30 start.

I would strongly agree with the importance of an educational component, but would add the caveat that the training should focus on learning appropriate to this domain experience. I am not saying that the idea of buying $$$ names to sell for 5 to 6 figures should not be part of it, but the main focus should be on names for $ that would sell for $$$. Ideally in time the mentors would be successful prior participants who had transformed a $30 start into a successful part-time business.

Best wishes for this innovative and empowering idea.

Bob

 

[bmugford]

I think having a poll to see how many members here are willing to donate at least one good domain will settle all arguments and points us to the right direction, the right answers will come after the poll is running for a week. Until then going back and forth is useless.

I would rather donate something more useful personally.

The truth is the average person has absolutely no idea how to extract value from a domain no matter what country they are from, developed or developing.

I think it makes limited sense to "donate" a valuable domain to a party who likely has limited idea what to do with it.

Brad

 

[Ategy]

As mentioned, we are going to put a big emphasis on education and structural best practices to make sure folks don't blow their nest-egg on crap. That helps nobody. We agree there.

I think my struggle in thinking this could be an effective idea is the epic (with a C) and monumental a task in how getting new domainers sufficiently educated actually is. We're talking multiple dozens of hours to even get to a point where 10% of people already very knowledgeable in the other necessary requirements (like language and marketing skills) will even have a small chance of succeeding if they also have significant luck!

What I don't get is how everyone is assuming all of a sudden there is some magical new way to drastically increase the rate of successful domainers .. when actually drawing from a pool of people who unfortunately never had access to all the other sets of knowledge and information required to have even a small chance of succeeding in domaining at what's already a bad rate of successful domainers who have been lucky enough to have been exposed to many of the required advantages?

There are two simple astronomical obstacles that I haven't seen seriously addressed here.

The first being how there's any way of actually and realistically keeping out fraudulent applications.

The second being as mentioned above, and the need of creating a significantly better and more effective way of teaching domaining than even DNAcademy. I hate being the pessimist here, but @Michael Cyger has put together and continuously improves upon an excellent program. He's an extremely intelligent and wise instructor who has put in hundreds upon hundreds of hours into perfecting the course (combine his intelligence and time, and it's just silly to assume something better could just be willed into existence in a matter of weeks or even months) .. I have a huge amount of respect for the man ... his course is just about as good as one could possibly put together a course on domaining. Repeating what he has done is not just something that can be assumed to be a part of this program.

If you go back and read some of my earlier post you'll see I had a few ideas to increase the odds ... but I really recommend you take pause and seriously address those two very significant obstacles before moving forward with the rest.


I again commend all who are actually doing something tangible to make this work .. but really take a step back and figure out how you're going to get the fundamental road blocks addressed and take a serious and honest look at the math and numbers ... because anybody who thinks this will actually work in it's current form (unless I've missed some crucial and key details) is living in a fantasy world .. and it really bothers me how nobody seems to be concerned about the potential harm false hope can bring, as well as wasted time that the candidates could have put towards other sources of more effective work/learning/self-improvement .. and so I am extremely concerned for the few genuine people who will be introduced to this program for fear of giving them false hope .. which is a VERY SIGNIFICANT probability for MOST applicants .. particularly the genuine ones. (Ironically the scammers will likely have a far better chance of succeeding given their obvious lack of concern for TM issues and more importantly their proficiency in spamming and in creating exaggerated sales proposals full of false-promises of what buying their domain(s) would deliver to potential buyers).

 

[Mister Funsky]

Wow...it is a full time job keeping up with Rob!

Okay...lots of good points on both sides but having had some interaction in 3rd world issues I see (or think I do) some of what Rob is wanting to do.

Regardless of the continent, there are locals that see things happening in their area...a new business to make water filters, to sell basic/essential items, a business to work on local roads/infrastructure and yes, even hotel/motels in some areas.

There is always a new, top level businessperson in that area that has just come into 'wealth' or a little expendable income because of the money their government or outside investors have put into the area. The scenario I see is a person, having the ownership/control of a relevant name for that geographic area and/or purpose being able to approach the new found money person and offer them a domain name that fits there needs for reasonable $50/75/100 or maybe more if it matches one of the bigger projects.

For Examples: CityxMarket.com, CityxGrocer.com, CityxTailor.com, cityxSolar.com (of course local language would be used where English does not make sense).

At first I had trouble getting my head around some of this but now I can see, if handled properly, how this small investment could be uplifting to some young man or woman that has nothing to look forward to and can I see where an intelligent and driven individual could make a sale by walking or pedaling up a business with an assisted/planned presentation.

I understand that this is separate from 'goodwill domain donation' project, but let me know if you (Rob) would like me to reg a couple names that I think would work in some areas and I will be glad to sign them over as my contribution. But, I know lots of groundwork for the project must be laid first.

 

[Rob Monster]

Where? URL?

The dedicated webpage is still coming. ICYMI, we are still working on selecting the right domain for it. The domain search is covered here.

My general approach to develop is to Crawl, Walk, Run -- get out there with something functional and start learning and gathering feedback while architecting for scale, usability and reliability. As the application scales, build in process automation, internal controls, and virality. As the application achieves critical mass, start optimizing monetization, aggressively re-investing in product superiority and service excellence.

In the meantime, a few progress points:

We hired @franka46 in Australia to help with candidate screening. He is off to a fast start.

We hired @Abdullah Abdullah in Yemen to lead the rollout in Middle East and North Africa.

We hired @domainexpert77 in Nigeria to lead the rollout in Central Africa, starting with Nigeria where we have about 1000 clients now.

We have 2 strong leads for a domainer education curriculum. I expect a deal to be finalized shortly.

We have started issuing Digital Empowerment grants. We won't name names just yet but we are getting requests and processing them promptly.

We hope to finalize an intake questionnaire as early as this week. The actual site has a vision for it that is taking shape. I don't have an ETA for it yet.

As for hiring pace, I expect we'll add 1-2 persons per week, notably in emerging markets, for the foreseeable future.

 

[Internet.Domains]

My initial thoughts are similar to what's been shared. Five hand regs or $30 dollars may only show who is lucky, instead of who is skillful. I believe by having a larger starting budget there would be a more clear understanding on who is skillful.

Great idea though! Good luck.

 

[bmugford]

I think several of the commenters here have already highlighted many reasons why this is not going to work.

If someone is serious about the field they need to read and learn first. You can get a basic education for free with the resources out there.

As others have mentioned, most people in this field fail.
Buying (5) domains is not going to do much to change that.

There needs to be serious vetting, with larger budgets to have any chance.

Brad

 

[JB Lions]

Thanks @JB Lions, the devil is in the details, and I appreciate that you are playing devil's advocate.

What kind of intake/screening questions would you use to root out the bottom-feeding parasites? The screening questionnaire could automate the process of separating the high potentials from the leeches.

To be clear, I am actually fine with the idea of giving a "Hand up" but not trying to just give a "Hand out"

So, the idea has to be to teach a man/woman to fish, not just to give them a fish, or worse, to give them money to buy spoiled fish.

Have no idea how you would do that. I would just link them to the Beginner's Forum - https://www.namepros.com/forums/domain-beginners.25/

And tell them to get their read on. After reading, ask questions of the members here for things they don't understand. There are also some free ebooks on domaining floating around. Link to those.

I would be curious for the people you're talking about or people on this forum that have asked for a mentor, if you asked them this. How many hours have you spent reading that Beginners Forum/Namepros. If they said half hour, haven't read it yet, something along those lines, you can tell they don't have it.

You have to put in the work, you should be a self starter. When I first started getting into this, I read night after night. I had so many text documents where I took notes, I had spreadsheets where I listed every domain sale over $100,000 and then found corresponding sales of the same keyword in other extensions. After awhile I got a feel for what they should be selling for. I bought names, sold names, lost money etc. Study, ask questions, jump in.

 

[Rob Monster]

Congrats @Abdullah Abdullah ,

Maybe NamePros mods aren't such bad guys after all.

Rob, how many people have you hired due to your recent projects, and how many more are you planning to hire in the near future, It looks like you are already empowering several people even before the project has started.

There are no particular hiring slots. We just look for amazing people that feel called or inspired to come work with us and where there is some compelling basis for sustainable win-win. @franka46 is actively scouting but mostly it will be driven by whether talent shows up for which we can derive some projectable ROI beyond what it costs to sustain their cost. We'll be largely promoting from within but we'll be on the lookout for middle management candidates that we know well enough to have confidence that they would be a good fit. We are about 30 people now, and I would not be surprised if we are 300 in 2 years. However, that is just a guess, and it will be driven "talent meets opportunity" rather than a set hiring plan.