Epik Promotion

[Rob Monster]

The price increases are going to continue -- 7% per year from Verisign. That is actually still pretty good value for non-trash domains. It may also improve the expiry streams as some registrars use this as a pretext for price increases. At this time, Epik has no plan to raise prices for .COM.

Two things as tactical points:

1. Forever domains at Epik are $399 but we can do bulk deals for less.

2. For bulk transfers we can also do deals, e.g. we have done $6.99 promos and happy hours in the past. If folks want that, we'll see what we can do.

The Versign price increase is not good news. Epik will do its part to try to soften the blow!

 

[Asset]

Why do people buy insurance? They transfer risk.

Why do businesses hedge? They transfer risk.

Same story here. What risks are being mitigated:

- The risk of unforeseen neglect to renew.

- The risk unforeseen loss due to future incapacity or inability to pay renewal.

Forever domains are not for everyone.

If Epik is acquired, the acquirer contends with those inherited obligations.

However, for the folks that are concerned about price increases, there is a hedge. And for the folks who value their time, or don't like waking up in a panic, there is convenience and peace of mind.

Let's not over-think this -- for some folks Forever domains are a useful feature with win-win economics.

You can see in the Epik TOS (https://www.epik.com/forever.php), they have given themselves an out clause...

Cancellation

The User acknowledges that Epik may cancel the Forever Registration at any time for any reason, provided that Epik notifies the user via email and provided that the User receives a full refund of the price originally paid for the Forever Registration. Such cancellation shall release Epik from the obligation to renew the Forever Domain in the future and from any responsibility to pay or reimburse the User for future renewals or other costs. But cancellation of a Forever Registration, if said cancellation is not requested by the User or a consequence of alleged abuse or non-compliance by the User, shall leave intact the Forever Domain's expiration date. In other words, such cancellation of the Forever Registration would result in the User receiving a domain renewal for the maximum period allowed by the TLD registry, paid at Epik's expense; and this service would have a net cost of zero for the User.

We provide forever registration service for hundreds of TLDs.

The quoted clause exists for a reason:

(1) Extreme price increases: remember when Uni increases the price of some TLDs by up to 40X?

(2) If an eventual future acquirer decides that they could never support Forever registrations.

The result would be that the registrant gets 100% of their fee refunded AND they got a free ride for 10 or more years of registration along the way as Epik eats the entire expense.

Then I would rather renew the domain myself every 10 years, because if prices increase Epik may cancel the deal anyways, very uncertain.

 

[Rob Monster]

Here is a real scenario from this week. A widow calls about her suddenly deceased husband's domain portfolio. The widow had no foggy idea which domains to keep, had already lost one valuable domain, and had literally no money with which to fund renewals. This scenario has been happening often enough before COVID. My forecast is that it will happen more often post-COVID. Forever domains fix that. For the high value domains, it is an easy choice. For the guy who wants to play Russian roulette every year with domains worth more than $10K, they can do so but just make sure the spouse knows the game plan.

 

[Asset]

Here is a real scenario from this week. A widow calls about her suddenly deceased husband's domain portfolio. The widow had no foggy idea which domains to keep, had already lost one valuable domain, and had literally no money with which to fund renewals. This scenario has been happening often enough before COVID. My forecast is that it will happen more often post-COVID. Forever domains fix that. For the high value domains, it is an easy choice. For the guy who wants to play Russian roulette every year with domains worth more than $10K, they can do so but just make sure the spouse knows the game plan.

The best way to sell a "cure", is to create fear in the minds of potential clients/patients.

 

[Rob Monster]

The best way to sell a "cure", is to create fear in the minds of potential clients/patients.

Registrar industry insider secret: owners of registrars love their expiry streams. Forever domains eliminate the expiry stream. NameLiquidate lets domains owners keep 91% of their expiry stream proceeds. You can call innovations like Forever domains and NameLiquidate as self-serving, but they actually co-create abundance and are win-win. Not sure what life is like looking for boogeymen, but can't be much fun!

 

[Asset]

Registrar industry insider secret: owners of registrars love their expiry streams. Forever domains eliminate the expiry stream. NameLiquidate lets domains owners keep 91% of their expiry stream proceeds. You can call innovations like Forever domains and NameLiquidate as self-serving, but they actually co-create abundance and are win-win. Not sure what life is like looking for boogeymen, but can't be much fun!

@NamePros is it allowed to promote your own services/company and hijack a forum post, even if you are a "CEO"? I know it is not allowed to promote our own domains.

 

[robs01]

This is not perpetual ownership. It is paying $399 for a promise that can easily be canceled.

But if the cancellation means that you get back 100% of what you paid then what's the problem? I imagine (and think I might have read somewhere) that the benefit of holding that money in advance covers the renewal cost every year, so it doesn't appear to be a financial liability for Epik with the current and anticipated price rises. Sure there might be a risk that something will go wrong down the track and maybe for some reason one might not get the refund that was promised, but at this time I'd consider that risk to be small. And if you do get it back then you just got years of renewal for free (well not quite because $400 now is not the same as $400 in x years, but anyhow...).

In the end everyone needs to consider the costs etc for themselves and for each domain. But I think it's little too harsh to outright dismiss forever domains. For some people/domains it seems like a good option.

But most importantly, at the very least it serves to shake up the industry and put pressure on others including the registry to start innovating and perhaps look at implementing forever domains in future.

 

[johnn]

@Alfa Mod Team
@Bravo Mod Team

Where are you guys?
You deleted member's post because of "off topic" in the thread but why do we let this guy turned the topic
.com prices going up at Verisign

into an Epik spam/hijack thread where the CEO promoted and make it an Q/A thread for his company?

Please be fair. If an CEO violated the rules then you need to delete the posts and give him a warning too like you did with any other members.

 

[Asset]

The bottom line is that Lambo was concerned about the price increases.

Rob offered a solution in the form of forever domains and special transfer rates

Brad saw flaws in that solution and warned everyone about them

Rob saw an opportunity to promote his own company/services to "help us" and himself, which we are not even allowed to do indirectly with our own domain names. Later he started to promote his other service "NameLiquidate" which is off topic. He "attacked" GoDaddy and Brad indirectly too. Wake up.

 

[oldtimer]

Rob saw an opportunity to promote his own company/services to "help us" and himself, which we are not even allowed to do indirectly with our own domain names. Later he started to promote his other service "NameLiquidate" which is off topic. He "attacked" GoDaddy and Brad indirectly too. Wake up.

I am not taking anybody's side here and am trying to stay fair and impartial and as such I agree that everyone involved here needs to reevaluate their stance and adjust their efforts so that it will provide some benefits to the community rather than always ending up as a distraction.

IMO

 

[Asset]

I am not taking anybody's side here and am trying to stay fair and impartial and as such I agree that everyone involved here needs to reevaluate their stance and adjust their efforts so that it will provide some benefits to the community rather than always ending up as a distraction.

IMO

It's not about taking sides, it's about the rules, why if we cannot promote our domains even indirectly, why can he promote his company and services "directly"? That is not fair. What if we all had a registrar as our own company, then everybody would promote it too.

 

[oldtimer]

It's not about taking sides, it's about the rules, why if we cannot promote our domains even indirectly, why can he promote his company and services? What if we all had a registrar as our own company, then everybody would promote it too.

The way that I look at this is that this shouldn't be about promoting anyone's services, but rather offering a solution to a problem and trying to help the community in the process.

Perhaps owning a registrar is different than owning a domain, but if you owned a domain name that was useful for a community project here at NamePros then I don't think that anyone would object if you mentioned your domain here.

Nevertheless I am more interested in coming up with solutions than watching people get in a fight.

IMO

 

[Asset]

The way that I look at this is that this shouldn't be about promoting anyone's services, but rather offering a solution to a problem and trying to help the community in the process.

Perhaps owning a registrar is different than owning a domain, but if you owned a domain name that was useful for a community project here at NamePros then I don't think that anyone would object if you mentioned your domain here.

Nevertheless I am more interested in coming up with solutions than watching people get in a fight.

IMO

Hey I have the domain names "help.com" and "lowregfees.com" would anyone be interested in buying them for $3,999,999 to help the community?

 

[oldtimer]

Hey I have the domain names "help .com" and "lowregfees .com" would anyone be interested in buying them for $3,999,999 to help the community?

If the price was reasonable and everyone agreed to use your domain for the community project then it could be said that you have done the community a favor (the fact that you might have benefited financially here then would be considered secondary).

 

[Future Sensors]

1. Forever domains at Epik are $399 but we can do bulk deals for less.

This is not aimed at domainers:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/ho...gistration-work-exactly.1135382/#post-7411840

 

[Asset]

If the price was reasonable and everyone agreed to use your domain for the community project then it could be said that you have done the community a favor (the fact that you might have benefited financially here then would be considered secondary).

Hey I have a deal, you can pay on a monthly basis for 40 years, but please read our TOS very carefully, we can cancel the project at any time.

 

[oldtimer]

Hey I have a deal, you can pay on a monthly basis for 40 years, but please read our TOS very carefully, we can cancel the project at any time.

I didn't say that the forever domains or the TOS was perfect, as the matter of fact I agree with some of the flaws that Brad had already mentioned.

But the question is can the forever domains as a service be introduced by a registrar in a way that can benefit the domaining community or not.

IMO

 

[Asset]

I didn't say that the forever domains or the TOS was perfect, as the matter of fact I agree with some of the flaws that Brad had already mentioned.

But the question is can the forever domains as a service be introduced by a registrar in a way that can benefit the domaining community or not.

IMO

The whole point is I'm promoting domains which is not allowed and is irrelevant to this thread. Exactly what Rob is doing, but with his company and services. And on top of all the "deal" has it's flaws, which is not really beneficial to the community, but very beneficial for myself for profit. This was just an example.

 

[bmugford]

I didn't say that the forever domains or the TOS was perfect, as the matter of fact I agree with some of the flaws that Brad had already mentioned.

But the question is can the forever domains as a service be introduced by a registrar in a way that can benefit the domaining community or not.

IMO

That is really a question for another thread then. It really has nothing to do with this thread.

It only came up because Rob introduced it as if it was some magical solution when it came to .COM prices going up. Epik has no control over .COM pricing and Verisign is not a partner to their agreement.

Then Rob when on to advertise Name Liquidate, which is even more irrelevant to the discussion.

Brad

 

[oldtimer]

That is really a question for another thread then. It really has nothing to do with this thread.

It only came up because Rob introduced it as if it was some magical solution when it came to .COM prices going up. Epik has no control over .COM pricing and Verisign is not a partner to their agreement.

Then Rob when on to advertise Name Liquidate, which is even more irrelevant to the discussion.

Brad

As I already said I like to see discussions that are of benefit to the community here and don't appreciate having to go through all the unnecessary distractions.

But we have to agree that registrars are in a special situation and as such any reference to their services for the purposes of helping the domainers has to be put in a way that isn't going to come across as blatant promotions.

IMO

 

[Future Sensors]

As I already said I like to see discussions that are of benefit to the community here and don't appreciate having to go through all the unnecessary distractions.

But we have to agree that registrars are in a special situation and as such any reference to their services for the purposes of helping the domainers has to be put in a way that isn't going to come across as blatant promotions.

IMO

Rob isn't helping the community with retail pricing for end-users.