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.

 

[Rob Monster]

@Ategy.com

The core story is Digital Empowerment grants from Epik. We are internally funding what is essentially a marketing expense, choosing to invest in the masses, rather than celebrity endorsement, for example. The emphasis is on (1) bootstrap funding, (2) guidelines on acceptable use, and (3) training on best practices.

The secondary story is in a separate thread where I described a domain name search for use with the Goodwill of Domains. This parallel initiative could be a secondary source of funds with which a lot more Digital Empowerment grants could be funded.

Domains could be from many sources:

- Direct dropcach activity
- Donations from domain investors
- Registrar expiry streams

That is a brief summary.

 

[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).

 

[franka46]

Great, except yet again, doesn't touch any of this:

$30 to people who are broke, in poverty, where English isn't their native language, in a business where:

$30 isn't enough money usually

high failure rate

hand regs or other domainer's leftovers, names they want to drop, will be even harder to sell, than let's say an aftermarket pickup

most names will probably never get an offer, or could take years

It seems people just want to jump all around that with a lot of rah rah stuff but not taking an honest look at those issues. I don't think anybody has taken apart each point. How do you get past the high failure rate? How are they supposed to sell domains, other domainers can't? You guys very well know some domains will never get offers, some it might take years. Hand regs, other people's leftovers, the odds even worse.

-----------------
Give them a job. They can take money earned and try their hand at domaining. I wouldn't suggest these people try their hand at buying stocks, crypto etc. either.

JB ..I have domains with Afternic ,although they are .CO but also have good brandnames @199 BIN and nobody is interested .
I came from a non english speaking country but now i speak english .german french dutch and bahasa indonesia .
Subject closed ,
Peace
https://www.afternic.com/franka46

"I have over 1000 now and I know what you going to tell me "" if you had invested that money in a proper domain [$10k +] you would have made more money ."

I've never spent that much myself on a domain, it's rare I even go over $1,000. You find what works for you. I would have suggested instead of 99.9% hand regs, jumping in the Aftermarket and getting names a few hundred and under and selling them for 4 figures and up. That's very doable.

 

[JB Lions]

JB ..I have domains with Afternic ,although they are .CO but also have good brandnames @199 BIN and nobody is interested .
I came from a non english speaking country but now i speak english .german french dutch and bahasa indonesia .
Subject closed ,
Peace
https://www.afternic.com/franka46

I have no idea what point you're trying to make with that post, except you do realize you're actually backing my posts up? You've been doing this for awhile now and just posted "nobody is interested". After taking a look at them, nobody is interested because they're just not good domains. So if you're struggling, what do you expect new people to do? I also see the domains you have up for auction at Namejet. Besides the 4 letter domains, nobody is interested in all the other ones you have up for auction. You have 5 4 letter domains with bids, then you have 70 something with 0 bids. You're making my point for me.

 

[Furquan]

The idea is good but I don't think it's gonna work.

$30 is way too small money in domaining specialy if it's going to be given a newbie. It's should be more then $500 or equal.

Last year I hand reg hundreds of domain names with Netsol $1 offers (I still miss that promo). Yet I am sitting on most of domain names. They all are ready to be dropped some of them already dropped and some got caught by others.

I invested around $350 and got 350 .com names.

I sold only two names to enduser one was sold for $1500 and other was for $588

35 to 40 names I sold here to other domainer. $15 to $55 each.

Am I successful! I don't think so, it's took lots of time and energy. I wish I would have just invested that $350 to buy a single domain.

I got my invested amount back but look how much money I needed for it. Your $30 ain't be a lot it's just Rs 2135 here. It could buy me some foods for a month but not good sellable domain names.

 

[Lox]

Inspirational words of wisdom - domaining and taking chances (Hope) at something you didn’t understand how it works.

 

[TCK]

@JB Lions - Here is what you either don't get, or are deliberately overlooking for reasons I don't know.

Two points:

Many of these folks live in countries where there is not just poverty. There is also extreme wealth. There are successful business owners. They need .COM domains too. Who will bring them to them? Well, why not locals. If a new 5-star luxury resort hotel is being permitted in Bali, would you know that? I wouldn't. A local might. Well, that local can secure the perfect domain and bring it to the resort operator's attention. Win-win.

The rate limiting time for finding domain buyers is often time -- time to pore over drop lists, and time to see who is the logical buyer for these domains. With 100,000 .COM dropping every day, there are plenty of domains that are being dropped and not picked up. There are also plenty being dropped by the big dropcatchers because they got no traction for $3000 or whatever. Buy for $5, sell for $100 or whatever.

This is a story of crawl, walk, run. If that bores you, so be it.

So the premise is to have local poor/middle-class third world country folk sell domains to millionaires who have businesses in those countries for $100 or whatever. Hmm.

Sounds like you are pretty convinced this will work and have thought it out, Rob. So less talk and more action.

Get this project off the ground and let us know how it goes. Otherwise this is turning into an endless debate again with no foreseeable outcome.

 

[Rob Monster]

So the premise is to have local poor/middle-class third world country folk sell domains to millionaires who have businesses in those countries for $100 or whatever. Hmm.

Sounds like you are pretty convinced this will work and have thought it out, Rob. So less talk and more action.

Get this project off the ground and let us know how it goes. Otherwise this is turning into an endless debate again with no foreseeable outcome.

It is already in operation.

The first phase was offering $5.49 .COM to everyone. There is a hard loss there, by the way.

The second step is to offer grants and interest-free loans.

These are both operational.

The missing elements that are now coming are:

- Scalable intake of grant applicants through a "Start me up" workflow.

- Educational material to help new domainers succeed, even if they have no money to buy a course.

- Donation framework for folks who wants to contribute domains or funds for Digital Empowerment grants.

Safe to say though, at Epik, we are pretty action-oriented. However, we are also co-creators, which is why these threads have a function, i.e. to tap the collective wisdom of all -- including fans and critics.

 

[TCK]

It is already in operation.

Where? URL?

 

[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.

 

[oldtimer]

I understand that this is separate from 'goodwill domain donation' project,

I believe that it's best to combine these two programs together so that the goodwill domains project will complement and energizes the micro finance project. One program that encompasses everything such as grants, interest free loans, domain donations, money, time, and effort donations, expired domain streams, educational materials and courses, and application wetting procedures. This way there will be less confusion for everyone including the participants. IMO

 

[Rob Monster]

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.

Thanks @Mister Funsky. Anyone can register domains at Epik.com and push their donation names to [email protected]. Worst case they don't get renewed, but we'll put SSL landers on them and try to liquidate them. [email protected] has its own accounts ledger so we can begin to make that account self-funding in terms of inflows --right now it depends on Epik as corporate sponsor which is fine.

 

[oldtimer]

Added:

Also because charity and donations are involved there has to be a special board to oversee this program to make sure that there is no bias or discrimination towards the participants and in handling the donations and funds. IMO

 

[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.

 

[Lox]

.

 

[Ategy]

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

The problem with emerging market city-level geos, is exactly the fact they are emerging market .. and because of that there are very few domains taken and relatively little online saturation. Because of that there is little speculation .. add all that together and the problem you're facing is simply too many potential alternatives at handreg. So while selling a domain for $75 might not seem like a lot .. in fact it is a lot to many businessmen .. and more importantly it becomes an unjustified expense when there are plenty of handreg alternative.

Also .. the moment you get away from English domains the market saturation drops significantly less to the point where mark-up is really almost impossible.

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

Now I'm really confused .. all these people are being hired specifically to proactively go out to effectively "recruit" people into this micro-finance program?
I really don't want to knock this .. but wouldn't it be wiser to wait until your "education/training" program is developed and ready? Seems like you've got the cart way ahead of the horse here.


I really still am very concerned about the success rate of this program the way it is described.

Rob .. have you maybe thought of a vastly simpler and more realistic and proven option with vastly higher potential success ratios?

Why not just HIRE locals in some of these places you'd like to target. Give people basic training to go out and find CLIENTS for Epik. Basically have them sell packages that include a domain (with branding advice), hosting, email, web design, app development, etc. Obviously sales is not always an easy thing and not for everyone .. but compared to trying to get not-yet-domainers to become successful domainers with absolutely absurd math stacked against them, succeeding at selling Epik "packages" would be a piece of cake.

At some point down the road then it would make a lot more sense to offer "domainer" loans to those sales people who want to try the next step .. but in the meantime at least they have a significantly more attainable and tangible option available to them to help them reach a better standard of living.

Added bonus in that actually having local salepeople will in fact directly grow those digital markets .. where the end users targeted in a micro-finance program would almost need to be first world markets if the math were to have any hope of working.

Not only that, but the markup on hosting/email is pretty significant if you already have the infrastructure as Epik does already. You could effectively offer a 100% commission on a client's first year of revenue knowing that the businesses that do stay beyond a year will more than make up for first year expenses of all new clients. Or better yet .. offer a lower up front commission to your sales force, but have a lifetime (trailing) commission. I won't get too finicky with the numbers as those are details you could better figure out looking at your actual profit margins. (plus I see a few people here getting all exited with minute details, when it's really at the macro level where unfortunately I see a very little potential rate of success the way this all appears to me now).

Beyond that .. I think if it were to help ACTUAL REAL-PERSON and PHYSICALLY VERIFIED locals in developing nations, then I'm pretty sure many of us here would gladly help out every now and then if one of the salespeople needed advice or suggestions on what domain would be good for a local business in a developing nation.

Because at this point while I'm sure the first few cherry-picked obvious candidates already on NamePros would be legit candidates .. there's just too much opportunity for fraud unless there is some physical verification (and even then there's no guarantee).

It's a completely different set of math when you have a client who wants digital services, to find them a domain .. as opposed to having (a likely crappy) domain and then trying to find a business to pay for it at a huge enough premium to pay the expenses of all the domains you didn't sell.

 

[Mister Funsky]

The problem with emerging market city-level geos, is exactly the fact they are emerging market .. and because of that there are very few domains taken and relatively little online saturation. Because of that there is little speculation .. add all that together and the problem you're facing is simply too many potential alternatives at handreg. So while selling a domain for $75 might not seem like a lot .. in fact it is a lot to many businessmen .. and more importantly it becomes an unjustified expense when there are plenty of handreg alternative.

Okay, so lets scratch the geo...how about 'DlaminiUsedTires.com'? I'll save you some time, that is a popular name in South Africa. I've dealt with the 'nouveau riche' on many occasions and part of the marketing to a local money man or woman would consist greatly of the ego aspect (don't think about this like a western domain broker). There is a great divide between those trying to make $5 a day and those that make much more in those markets and a sharp individual can take advantage of the many situations that would present themselves.

I don't think this project is going to be easy by any means and I think there a lot of nuances here that people aren't grasping...there could be local/regional/national assistance to piggy back on this initiative as well as other types of 'help'. Rob alluded to the other 'facets' and it is not my place to speculate or say what I think they are but I do see several that aren't and wouldn't be apparent for a while if/when things get rolling.

My marketing skill set is significant. In two hours time I have convinced business to give me tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in FREE merchandise or services to use in marketing their business (including some of the largest automotive and restaurant entities). At one time I was one of a few dozen people in the US that knew how to successfully do this and it gave me a phenomenal life. I'll stop here before referring to myself as a 'marketing genius' out of modesty, but I assure you that if I can see potential in this project (keep in mind there may be more than one way to define 'potential' and/or success), there is.

Whether or not the logistics can be worked out to sustain a long running project/operation remains to be seen...but I think it is likely since it seems Rob has sunk his teeth into this one.

 

[wwwweb]

Okay, so lets scratch the geo...how about 'DlaminiUsedTires.com'? I'll save you some time, that is a popular name in South Africa. I've dealt with the 'nouveau riche' on many occasions and part of the marketing to a local money man or woman would consist greatly of the ego aspect (don't think about this like a western domain broker). There is a great divide between those trying to make $5 a day and those that make much more in those markets and a sharp individual can take advantage of the many situations that would present themselves.

I don't think this project is going to be easy by any means and I think there a lot of nuances here that people aren't grasping...there could be local/regional/national assistance to piggy back on this initiative as well as other types of 'help'. Rob alluded to the other 'facets' and it is not my place to speculate or say what I think they are but I do see several that aren't and wouldn't be apparent for a while if/when things get rolling.

My marketing skill set is significant. In two hours time I have convinced business to give me tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in FREE merchandise or services to use in marketing their business (including some of the largest automotive and restaurant entities). At one time I was one of a few dozen people in the US that knew how to successfully do this and it gave me a phenomenal life. I'll stop here before referring to myself as a 'marketing genius' out of modesty, but I assure you that if I can see potential in this project (keep in mind there may be more than one way to define 'potential' and/or success), there is.

Whether or not the logistics can be worked out to sustain a long running project/operation remains to be seen...but I think it is likely since it seems Rob has sunk his teeth into this one.

I think this project has multi faceted goals in mind, trying to kill 3 birds with 1 stone so to speak, one interesting point Rob made was a deductible for donated domains based on some kind of automated appraisal method. This is an interesting concept that goodwill.org does with their goods etc...

Nothing about this industry is easy, and I know many people on the outside spin it other ways, or sometimes you can think it especially these days seeing some of the offkey top sales, but people from emerging countries are usually ready to work 10 times as hard for a 1/10th of the pay. So most will fail, but there will be some who grasp it, and grow it. They may start in domaining, but they will probably end up somewhere else in the ecommerce cycle.

The thing is Rob has a good portion of tools in house at Epik to give his project a fighting chance, and the connections on the outside to put the missing pieces in place. It is no small feat for sure, but he is not really harming anyone except his own resources, so let's see what he can do.

I wake up everyday to an inbox of inquiries from Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia, India, Colombia, Mexico... right after seeing the IP locations to be honest I already know it is a dead sale, but I can see their comments, $10,$20 budgets.... I need this domain, you are not using it can you give it to me etc...these are non English first language countries, but these people are filling out the forms and making the submissions. Of course it has become an impossible task to respond, so inquiries just get junked because I don’t have the time to deal with what I perceive as a dead sale, but hopefully ICANN will use some of those millions to help grow the internet into these emerging economies and as the internet grows, so will the value of everyone’s domain portfolio.

 

[satsdifference.com]

IMO this is a brilliant vision for the world masses and the corporate side. Nothing better than a domain name to empower countless hopes worldwide expansion. In 1998 I studied grad school #NGO like Muhammad Yunus Grameen bank. Highly successful with women in particular for these small loans. It was known as "microenterprise" (microcredit).

This is inspiring thought for me as I have been collecting domain names since January 1999. Domaining aside, if even a name like GodAddy can make it, just having one can make all the difference mainstreaming. This shines as Epik is stand-out approach!


- have a special day

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 at Epik 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 Epik's rate of just $5.49.

- The domains are powered by Epik's 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.

 

[Ategy]

Okay, so lets scratch the geo...how about 'DlaminiUsedTires.com'? ...

That's effectively cybersquatting and trademark infringement when you target someone's business and then outbound to them (even without outbounding and holding something so specific is really past the line).

There isn't a single UDRP panellist that wouldn't find someone guilty for holding such a specific and targeted domain .. and they would be 100% correct in their finding.

Obviously nobody is going to bother paying the $2000 for a UDRP when they can buy it for $75 ... but that doesn't mean that it's not wrong (and has potential to significantly tarnish the industry as a whole if this is done at scale) .. or even illegal ... but even more importantly .. even with such targetted names many people will simply not buy the domains at a markup when they could buy several similar alternatives for handreg.

I think this project has multi faceted goals in mind, trying to kill 3 birds with 1 stone so to speak, one interesting point Rob made was a deductible for donated domains based on some kind of automated appraisal method. This is an interesting concept that goodwill.org does with their goods etc...

Unfortunately I wouldn't really count on this idea ...

First problem is getting all the possible countries covered. I'm in Canada .. it would involve a completely different set of paperwork than someone in England or the USA.

The second problem is value. No government tax agency is going to give you more than what you paid on an asset with such an intangible value as most domains. Plus given the lifetime of a renewal cycle, the more logical amount you'll likely be allowed to claim is $8.49 MINUS the prorated amount of time since the domain was last renewed. So if you donate the domain with 36 days before expiration (1/10th of a year), the tax credit will likely be $0.85 .. which in turn would net you about $0.25 depending on your tax rate. Certainly not worth the paperwork even if you were to donate 10-20 domains! (In Canada I'm pretty sure charities don't give receipts until $20 .. which would mean donating about 23 domains for an approx $20 tax receipt if you donated them with a little over a month to go before expiration)

That being said .. if Rob were to miraculously somehow find a way to give tax deductions based on "appraised" retail values of the domains .. then basically no domainer would ever pay any taxes! So I most certainly hope he finds a way ... but I'm just not very optimistic at the chances of that!

but he is not really harming anyone except his own resources

Unfortunately this is where I disagree .. and why I'm posting a bit more often in this post.

If this grows in scale, it has potential to hurt the industry as a whole if there is a lot of spam or TM issues. Even if unintentional as you see with most newcomers.

I also feel that giving people false hope can also hurt them .. particularly if they invest time that could have been put towards more effective means of self-improvement. Domaining is very difficult .. the VAST majority of people who try it fail ... and unfortunately there is absolutely nothing about this program that mitigates the significant failure rate in any way ... in fact .. the people who this program is actually intended for unfortunately in general have fewer of the complimentary knowledge based resources and skills beyond the basic technical side of domaining. Basically it's already very bad .. and I feel it's not appropriate to tout this to potential applicants as a credible path to prosperity unless they are also told that even after many hours of work they have a sub 10% chance of making it (and I'm being EXTREMELY generous with 10%).

but hopefully ICANN will use some of those millions to help grow the internet into these emerging economies and as the internet grows,

That's one thing I definitely 100% agree with! Icann should really be ashamed of themselves .. it's a total scam how they are completely ignoring their potential mandate to help make the world a better place via digital empowerment! Some of their decisions, actions and non-actions have to make you wonder how it's possible they aren't being paid off to make the absolutely worst decisions for the Internet and humanity!