Domaining.com no longer free

[internext]

Got my usual daily email, clicked a link and got the domaining sign-in page rather than the story I expected. No problem, I logged in only to find the following:

IMPORTANT NOTICE:

Unfortunately the Domaining.com membership is no longer free. We started to charge a low annual fee to help us pay our bills: hosting, data transfer, ... For this reason free accounts have been closed. If you are serious about domaining then we invite you to SIGN UP AGAIN HERE.

 

[Jackie]

Whether the owner of Domaining decides to charge or not charge any fee for access to the site, this going back and forth is silly.

This is the process...
Francois sends an email out saying the site won't be free anymore > someone posts it on NP > others chime into how ridiculous it is & threaten to leave the site > Francois comes on here and posts to defend his decision > others keep threatening to leave and say how Domaining.com is going to have no visitors > Francois comes back and says the site is going to stay free.

It's happened twice now, come on.

:imho:

Anyhow, I too feel that a fee isn't needed to be charged to the readers to provide an RSS aggregator. I respect Francois' decision to make Domaining.com a paid site, as it is his business as others have said, but there will be alternatives.

I've taken the time to build my own Domaining news site http://DN.vc/ and take my word for it, it will stay FREE for readers to read and FREE for the bloggers to have their site syndicated there. I encourage you to give it a try (you can sign up for a daily email newsletter, as well).

 

[VisionEdger]

I found domaining.com to be one of the top 5 sites for the industry and the fact that they are charging to access it now is a drag. They say its to pay for costs to run the site which is warranted however doenst that site owner make enough from their domains to at least take the hit and offer a free site to the industry??

Man another domianer trying to make even more $ from who else?? OTHER DOMAINERS!! This industry is one loaded with opportunists BIGTIME and whereever a buck can be made EVERYONE is fair game.

 

[yilduz]

Well, before this thread, I didn't fully understand that what the site was. I always thought it was a pay site, so never looked. Now that it's free again (for now), I figure I'll join.

As stated a few posts back, even bad publicity is good publicity.

 

[corgi]

The subscription model can be a tough sell - I mean everything is basically readily available already for free.

For that model to work, it really has to be exclusive, professional content...that's worth paying for, that will return greater than the fee.

Just sell ads, or have value-added services...but don't charge a fee for the basic stuff.

 

[Chef Patrick]

I am personally tired of everything with Domaining.com going back and forth. Do I think Francois should lose money, definitely not, he is a great guy. BUT he needs to pick one method and stick with it.

The one major problem I have with this is he has EVERYONE'S EMAIL ADDRESS!!! Really, he has built probably the largest if not second to largest email list along with Rick Latona. Those email addresses are GOLD. Having to charge a membership fee should be the last resort.

There are alternatives...
domain-name.alltop.com
dnheadlines.com (which has twitter feeds)
socialdn.com (np member)
popupnews.com/about/domains (np member)

 

[Keral_Patel]

I am personally tired of everything with Domaining.com going back and forth. Do I think Francois should lose money, definitely not, he is a great guy. BUT he needs to pick one method and stick with it.

The one major problem I have with this is he has EVERYONE'S EMAIL ADDRESS!!! Really, he has built probably the largest if not second to largest email list along with Rick Latona. Those email addresses are GOLD. Having to charge a membership fee should be the last resort.

They should they just get a good coder and put some fancy stuff in their newsletters.

Newletter advertisements is another way to get some dollars in.

 

[liquidcherry]

There are alternatives...[/B]
domain-name.alltop.com
dnheadlines.com (which has twitter feeds)
socialdn.com (tivo our very own member)

You forgot one link in your list, www.domainnews4free.com (coming very very soon)

Cheers

Frank

 

[-REECE-]

That's a great point Patrick. If instead of Francois charging a fee to list domains, suppose he charged a flat fee on domains brokered -- with all the domainer email addresses he has, I'm sure he would do very well for himself.

Get rid of the listing fee, keep the commission at 10%, and only list the domains on the site + by email which you think have the best chance of selling. Each $2000 sale would make Francois $200 this way -- I think Domaining.com would be more than capable of producing several of these per month. Add in the occasional larger sale together with more competitive advertising rates and Domaining.com will be making a very healthy amount, certainly more than enough to cover costs + put some money in the pockets of Francois for all his hard work.

I am personally tired of everything with Domaining.com going back and forth. Do I think Francois should lose money, definitely not, he is a great guy. BUT he needs to pick one method and stick with it.

The one major problem I have with this is he has EVERYONE'S EMAIL ADDRESS!!! Really, he has built probably the largest if not second to largest email list along with Rick Latona. Those email addresses are GOLD. Having to charge a membership fee should be the last resort.

There are alternatives...
domain-name.alltop.com
dnheadlines.com (which has twitter feeds)
socialdn.com (tivo our very own member)
popupnews.com/about/domains

 

[npcomplete]

...snip...
Anyhow, I too feel that a fee isn't needed to be charged to the readers to provide an RSS aggregator. I respect Francois' decision to make Domaining.com a paid site, as it is his business as others have said, but there will be alternatives.

I've taken the time to build my own Domaining news site http://DN.vc/ and take my word for it, it will stay FREE for readers to read and FREE for the bloggers to have their site syndicated there. I encourage you to give it a try (you can sign up for a daily email newsletter, as well).

There are alternatives...[/B]
domain-name.alltop.com
dnheadlines.com (which has twitter feeds)
socialdn.com (tivo our very own member)

You forgot one link in your list, www.domainnews4free.com (coming very very soon)

Cheers

Frank

I just love the free marketplace! As soon as one failed business model surfaces, gasping for air, several new business models pop up.

If only the US Government understood the free marketplace, and gave it a chance to work. sigh.

 

[strong]

I am personally tired of everything with Domaining.com going back and forth. Do I think Francois should lose money, definitely not, he is a great guy. BUT he needs to pick one method and stick with it.

The one major problem I have with this is he has EVERYONE'S EMAIL ADDRESS!!! Really, he has built probably the largest if not second to largest email list along with Rick Latona. Those email addresses are GOLD. Having to charge a membership fee should be the last resort.

There are alternatives...
domain-name.alltop.com
dnheadlines.com (which has twitter feeds)
socialdn.com (np member)
popupnews.com/about/domains (np member)

or just use google reader or any other RSS reader and build your own more customized version where you can throw in techcrunch and all the other good tech blogs. . .. aggregating blogs isn't difficult. .

 

[liquidcherry]

I just love the free marketplace! As soon as one failed business model surfaces, gasping for air, several new business models pop up.

If only the US Government understood the free marketplace, and gave it a chance to work. sigh.

Well, i agree with you, it is just wonderful(i man the free market place)...but i have to conquer a bit of your statement, domaining.com is not grasping for air...it is suffocating!! ....the owner made just a very wrong decision, even there where complaints from many here upfront, before today he didn't care....just plain bad business decisions, listen to your customers should be always goal number one(sorry Francois, just my 2 cents)

I could go on but i rather wish everybody a happy new year

Cheers

Frank

 

[Premiere]

I have taken this opportunity to remove my subscription since I was unable to do so prior to the site going live again.

Nice to have news but life goes on without it. I feel for the owner, but he is suffering from the same malady as the NY Times or any other online news media. PPC is null and monetization is brutal.

 

[Keral_Patel]

I just received newsletter from them today.

 

[Seabass]

My guess is that traffic to Domaining.com came to a grinding halt the second half of the day and he totally swallowed his adams apple. He quickly then made this "two week" quick fix to give himself time to think about what to do next. :yell:

.

 

[krx]

Bad Move no. 2

I said yesteday I had been planning to list some of my names on Domaining.com - right up until the decision was made to charge a subscription fee and flush the thing down the toilet. When Francois came back here and said he had opened it back up again I assumed he had corrected course and to show my support I immediately listed the first of what was to be a series of names on Domaining.com's sales venue.

I wake up today to find a full refund of my paypal payment and this message:

Message from merchant: We no longer list names from members having the membership due.

It's really too bad. In a week's time he would have made my subscription fee in listing fees - with the added commission from any sales. Now he makes nothing.

That sound you hear would be the toilet flushing ... again.

 

[Charley]

I just received newsletter from them today.

I did too.

Now I have to search for each of the blogs on Google to read them individually

 

[Domainate.com]

I'm going to have to side with the people that don't think a site with only posts from other blogs (unless something changed since I looked at it months ago) is worth paying to access. Chances are there's only a few of the blogs aggregated that are worth going to on a frequent basis, so hey, why not go to them directly and get RSS? How hard is that for free vs. paying for a site to take the few mins to do it for you?

Anyways, I will say to leave Francois alone about it...it IS his site and he certainly IS free to do whatever the heck he wants with it - no reason to be hostile and whatnot. I'm sure he realizes without people here telling him that charging for subscription will lose him a lot of subscribers.

 

[Charley]

How hard is that for free vs. paying for a site to take the few mins to do it for you?

I did that just now.

 

[gazzip]

I did too.

Now I have to search for each of the blogs on Google to read them individually

....or you can use this site I just saw in a post on Yofies blog

http://domain-name.alltop.com/

Looks pretty good to me


.

 

[Brujah]

You can build your own (aggregator site) if you want using this free script.
http://www.expire.biz/news/

 

[dotnom]

....or you can use this site I just saw in a post on Yofies blog

http://domain-name.alltop.com/

Looks pretty good to me
.

Looks good for me too

 

[bustermattie]

Here you go: http://doteconomist.com/

 

[DotWeekly]

You can build your own (aggregator site) if you want using this free script.
http://www.expire.biz/news/

Keep in mind that it is Always Best to ASK the people you will be using their content if you build an aggregator site. I personally have only given 2 people permission to use my content (Domaining.com & DN.vc), but it's amazing how many people are using it....

 

[bustermattie]

Please explain why permission needs to be asked to pull headlines from an rss feed that the domain owner puts out there for the purpose of getting people to read their site?

If you're only displaying headlines that click to the actual site, what's the problem?

 

[DotWeekly]

Please explain why permission needs to be asked to pull headlines from an rss feed that the domain owner puts out there for the purpose of getting people to read their site?

If you're only displaying headlines that click to the actual site, what's the problem?

That's the problem. Some people just grab all the content and do not link back to the original source.

If your linking back, all is good.