Dynadot Grace Deletion Policy Change

[Sleepys]

Dynadot has just announced they are changing their grace deletion policies.

I received the following from them:

"Only generic TLDs are affected by this policy:

- COM, NET, ORG, INFO, and NAME will start enforcing ICANN's AGP Limits Policy on April 1.
- ASIA and MOBI have delayed their adoption of ICANN's AGP Limits Policy until May 1, 2009.
- BIZ will not be changing their current grace deletion policy since they have already implemented ICANN's AGP Limits Policy last year.
- TEL will be enforcing ICANN's AGP Limits Policy on March 24, 2009 (General Availability).

Each TLD affected by this policy will be restricted to the following:

- The deletion rate will be limited to 10% of all new domain registrations for that TLD. (The 10% limit applies to our whole system.) Therefore, we cannot always guarantee a grace deletion.

- The deletion fee will be increased from $0.20 to $1.00.

Please note that we may opt to increase the deletion fee further depending on demand. A list of the current deletion fees will be shown on our Grace Deletions page:

Grace Deletions
http://www.dynadot.com/domain/grace_deletion.html"

 

[ripley]

I just got it too. So basically, they won't guarantee that you can grace delete, and if you can the fee's going up from $.20 to $1.00. Pretty stark change if you ask me.

Wonder how other registrars will handle it. If anybody gets details, post 'em up.

ripley.

 

[Tribulatio]

Good news! This will at last help to reduce tasting drastically. Let's hope Dynadot will still raise the fee for deletion.
Grace period is meant for registrations by mkistake, or other such problems, not for tasting.

 

[buyauthority]

I want to know about their GA prices for tomorrow on .Tel nothing is being said in their forum.

 

[Steven]

I guess that it's not a very good news for tasters.

 

[h2o]

At least enom can kiss tasting goodbye.

 

[bgmv]

Definitley not too thrilled about this, the .20 grace fees lowered my costs considerably and allowed me to prospect end users

 

[ripley]

Definitley not too thrilled about this, the .20 grace fees lowered my costs considerably and allowed me to prospect end users

Same... big time tasters aren't the only ones affected here. Though, I am frankly a bit more concerned about unpredictability created by the fact that at some point, arbitrarily and with no way to know how or when, they might just decide not to refund you at all.

ripley.

 

[Ms Domainer]

*

Everyone will need to think twice about what they reg.

No more drinking and domaining! (Or do so at your peril).


*

 

[HBK216]

I am glad to see this as I am sick of the tasting going on in this industry. This might hurt the smaller tasters but they are just that, small. This is not meant in a disrespectful way as the main problem is with the big companies. They pretty much have a monopoly on names & this has to come to an end.

Definitley not too thrilled about this, the .20 grace fees lowered my costs considerably and allowed me to prospect end users

Shouldn't this be done before hand anyhow? Yes, you can't be sure on what names you will be able to get but at least have a general idea before registration.

 

[JoshuaPz]

*

Everyone will need to think twice about what they reg.

No more drinking and domaining! (Or do so at your peril).


*

I'm right there with you. This virtual ban on tasting just enforces a modus operandi that domainers should have been abiding by in the first place. The law doesn't smile on one who walks into a clothing store, purchases 50 jackets, and hands back all but the 1 or 2 jacks he deems the best bang for his buck within the 30-day return window. Why should one be allowed to do the same with domains? Personally I think the AGP should be eliminated entirely.

 

[wot]

Has my total support. Will help to clean up the industry- one small step. :wave:

 

[HuntingMoon]

i like this since for years we have watched the same name get tasted and dropped over and over again. this polluted the droplists.

 

[bgmv]

I am glad to see this as I am sick of the tasting going on in this industry. This might hurt the smaller tasters but they are just that, small. This is not meant in a disrespectful way as the main problem is with the big companies. They pretty much have a monopoly on names & this has to come to an end.



Shouldn't this be done before hand anyhow? Yes, you can't be sure on what names you will be able to get but at least have a general idea before registration.

My dilligence is done before hand but sometimes you come across a domain that you think is perfect for an enduser and theres only 1 potential user for the domain - what happens when they never reply? You are stuck with a $7.50 sunk cost, its pretty much worthless if theres only one person that would/could use that domain. Dynadot was the only registrar out there that allowed you to start out with $100 and reg 10 names then delete 9 and do it all over again for $1.80. It increases your chances you are recycling your money.

 

[JoshuaPz]

My dilligence is done before hand but sometimes you come across a domain that you think is perfect for an enduser and theres only 1 potential user for the domain - what happens when they never reply? You are stuck with a $7.50 sunk cost, its pretty much worthless if theres only one person that would/could use that domain. Dynadot was the only registrar out there that allowed you to start out with $100 and reg 10 names then delete 9 and do it all over again for $1.80. It increases your chances you are recycling your money.

That's why you shouldn't register (or drop-catch) domains for $7.50 that you wouldn't be able to flip for $7.50 on NamePros based on Google search volume, CPC, brevity, and liquidity. ICANN's restriction forces you to impose these new parameters of selectivity on your domaining patterns, and this coercive innovation might be tough to swallow, but if by this point you haven't fallen in love with the challenge of tweezing out 1-2 worthwhile domains from tens of thousands of possibilities at a time, you should pull yourself onshore today -- away from the domaining rapids -- and go find a "real job".

I can understand that a speculative brandable domain might be worth $7.50 just because many other websites coincidentally brand themselves using the precise keywords contained in that domain, and NOT because the domain corresponds to a popular concept that would lend itself to NP liquidity. Fine. But if you've seasoned in the art of end-user sales, you should be able to predict accurate answers to the following two questions for every possible end-user that domain might interest:

1. What is the probability that pitching this domain to that end-user (based on relevance of name to end-user, strength of end-user's Internet presence, etc.) would result in an end-user sale? Let's call this figure B(i).
2. If this end-user were to purchase this domain, how much would they buy it for? Let's call this figure M(i).

Then, if your total number of end-user prospects equals N, you should perform the following mathematical calculation to determine how much money you could get away with spending on a given name yet be slated to break even on it (we'll call this amount T):

T = sigma[i = 1 .. N](B(i) * M(i))

Let's illustrate this calculation with an example. Say you're eyeing a domain, KoolDude.com, for which you've found the following end-user prospects:

1. KoolDude.net: Professionally developed Internet marketing site, strong Internet presence, been around since '96, would likely appreciate the value of the Internet real estate you're offering. You approximate they would fork out $500 with 35% probability of you pitched KoolDude.com correctly.

2. Kool-Dude.com: It's a parked page. Probably either belongs to a domainer or is being held by KoolDude.net to secure their brand. The probability these this candidate would want to purchase your domain virtually nil, say 3%, and would not likely pay more than $100 even if they did take interest.

3. KoolDudeInc.org: It's a tiny art school named "Kool Dude" based in rural Pennsylvania. Your domain is incredibly relevant to this school as they brand themselves "Kool Dude", but their site looks as if it's designed by a 3-year-old. You estimate they'd dish out $150 with 25% probability.

4. Kool.com: A massive gaming site which showcases a weekly comic called the "Kool Dude" strip. If they did agree to purchase your domain they could clearly afford to pay four-figures for it, but the chances your pitch would arrive in the hands of the right decision maker are slim, and to as a further discouraging factor, your domain is of ancillary importance to the site as a whole. You fix your M(i) at $1800 and B(i) at 5% for this candidate.

So, the amount you should spend attempting to attain KoolDude.com to break even on your investment is:

T = 0.35 * $500 + 0.03 * $100 + 0.25 * $150 + 0.05 * $1800
= $175 + $3 + $37.50 + $90
= $305.50

So, if you bid up to $305.50 on NameJet, you are slated to break even on your investment.

But of course, you don't want to break even -- you want to make money! How much can you make? Well, that depends on how much time you've got to dedicate to scouring domains for high ROI candidates. For the sake of simplicity, let's say you set a goal to twice as money money as you spend. In such a case, you would perform the EXACT same calculation as above, except you'd divide T by 2 to get $152.75, and THAT becomes your NameJet bidding cap on KoolDude.com.

With tireless trial and error you'll eventually be predicting your B(i)'s and M(i)'s very accurately (over large samples, at least), and in spite of the tasting restriction you won't lose money on domains.

The model I have illustrated is a form of smart domaining. You're welcome to choose a different model, but my above depiction is the high-level technique I swear by. The AGP allowed you to get away with clawing in the dark, grabbing every little marble that "might" sell. If your method of domaining resembles this image even but slighty, then the AGP served a band-aid covering up deep flaws embedded within your domaining patterns. With the AGP peeled off your wall of options, domainers who have traditionally failed to make their picks selectively and thoughtfully will either fail or be forced to rethink their methods. All I can say is, it's about time.

 

[bgmv]

That formula is similar as one used to calculate stock/investment portfolios risk but using beta in place of sigma (same thing). my old strategy was working absolutely fine, never spent more than $7.50 on ANY domain I flipped and I cleared over $6k in profits in a little over two months. This is my part time job, I am currently going to school getting my MBA and this is helping me pay for it.

Josh, you can go ahead and label me as a lazy domainer but I really dont have the time to calclualte formulas and percentages before I make a decision, all domains I reg have a 50% chance of a sale at $125+ and $117.50 in profit. I generally reg 30 prospective domains a week and sell 3-4, that $5 loss in grace deletions is a lot less harsh as a $25 loss. i may be taking the "easy" route but its working for me and thats all that matters.

 

[JoshuaPz]

I'm not calling you or anyone else lazy. My point is that now, the risk domaining entails better reflects risks inherent to other commodities like stocks, brick & mortar real estate, etc. As a natural consequence of the economic reality that resources are limited, it's inevitable that all activities with low risk combined wth high returns will be eliminated, either by the risks increasing or the returns falling. With the squashing of the AGP the former has occurred, and the fact ICANN instituted this policy change should surprise no one. So, who benefits and who loses?

* End-users BENEFIT. They will now be able to register many domains for $10 you would have otherwise demanded they dish out $150 for.
* Domainers BENEFIT + LOSE. The former because eNom won't steal away your tasting opportunities on mass, the latter because of the low-risk tasting + flip sequence you can no longer attempt.
* Big tasters (eNom) LOSE. They can't taste nearly as many domains for traffic as they used to.

Personally, I like this new picture more than the old because the new paradigm coincides more intimately with Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Internet as a vehicle for free flow of information.

 

[ripley]

Personally, I like this new picture more than the old because the new paradigm coincides more intimately with Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Internet as a vehicle for free flow of information.

Theories are great for classrooms, but I'm interested in paying off my debt. Anything that hurts my progress in that arena is bad to me.

ripley.

 

[JoshuaPz]

I understand what you're saying, but as a personal choice (which I won't impose on anybody else) I try to take a utilitarian stance on life. I feel the world as a whole benefits more from an ICANN without an AGP than ICANN with an AGP, and I therefore oppose the AGP (that summarizes my 2nd post). The dearth of AGP also forces domainers to sharpen their hatches and innovate, in turn fueling the domaining industry with intellectual capital (that summarizes my 1st post). As a tangible analogue, the fact Israel lacks natural resources has been shown to bear a strong causal relation to the fact Israel hosts the highest concentration of scientists & engineers per capita in the world. If the domaining industry is ever to gain popular respect, I feel domaining needs to become a challenging endeavor that has weeded out all but the most sharp and inclined participants. Computer science and law are both lucrative fields, but these fields have received popular respect because participants therein generally create as much value in the world as they receive in cash. Such has rarely been true in domaining or finance (though in the latter case, nobody's realized that until the present recession).

While I'm not accusing any individual of selfishness or greed, it's important to realize that forces such as these gave birth to our present economic recession. As Barack Obama himself stated, engineering and creativity are the most effective antidotes for greed. Now there's my bridge between classroom theory and your personal finances

 

[bgmv]

* End-users BENEFIT. They will now be able to register many domains for $10 you would have otherwise demanded they dish out $150 for.
* Domainers BENEFIT + LOSE. The former because eNom won't steal away your tasting opportunities on mass, the latter because of the low-risk tasting + flip sequence you can no longer attempt.
* Big tasters (eNom) LOSE. They can't taste nearly as many domains for traffic as they used to.

So the only ones that arent at a loss are Endusers? how does that help you, me or any domainer for that matter? there was a vision for the internet but unfortunately the internet took on a life of its own and it is what it is, theres no going back now and i really dont think that upping grace deletion prices is going to help anything - we may even start to see higher prices on the forums, more risk + cost involved.