Industry Heavyweights Find New Domain Monetization Gold in Old Vein: Email Addresses

[Ron Jackson]

When I got an email from Chicago.com owner Josh Metnick with a subject line that said "Something amazing is happening!" I sat up and took notice as Josh is not a guy who is given to hyperbole. We got on the phone and he did indeed have an amazing story to tell - one that will be music to the ears of owners of top tier .com domains. You can read all about it here: http://dnjournal.com/articles/companies/2012/atidentity.htm

 

[12345]

Very good read... Thank you!

 

[cdboard]

good read.

 

[ljmcwilliam]

This is very interesting, thanks for posting this. I'm in the social enterprise space and this adds weight to an idea i've been thinking about.

 

[jmcc]

It is a very old idea. There was a guy back in the DotCom era who bought up a lot of Irish and UK town and city names in the hope of providing branded e-mail addresses in this way. It was over twelve years ago and the web was comparatively young. However reading between the lines, the monetisation through PPC model seems to be failing and now some of the large players are left with trying to justify the renewal of domains through other methods.

Regards...jmcc

 

[DnEbook]

nice to read about innovation

 

[Kate]

It is a very old idea. There was a guy back in the DotCom era who bought up a lot of Irish and UK town and city names in the hope of providing branded e-mail addresses in this way. It was over twelve years ago and the web was comparatively young. However reading between the lines, the monetisation through PPC model seems to be failing and now some of the large players are left with trying to justify the renewal of domains through other methods.

Regards...jmcc

I completely agree. It's nothing new and the market is very limited (like domain leasing).
In this case it works because Chicago.com is a developed geo website. Vanity addresses are a natural addition.

It's not an approach you can try with every domain name, even if it's premium. Because it may hinder future development efforts and as long as you have a paying base of customers your name is tied up and may remain underutilized.

The truth is that almost everyone is using a free E-mail like Gmail or ISP E-mail.
Even domainers.

 

[katdan]

At a free email address you will see a lot of ads, it will load but not that fast when compared with a paid service. When you will buy something from the Internet, in some cases you may notice that some websites does not accept a free email address or that they require an additional form of verification.

 

[Veronika11]

very interesting thx for sharing

 

[ytodoeso]

as free email services such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo now offer POP and SMTP access, ads are no longer an issue, and considering Hotmail is offering free email services for your own domain, you can have a professional, custom e-mail address for free, so I'm not sure that's a good business

it's nice to have a "local" email address (I have a free @colombia.com address), but I'm not sure if I'd pay for one...

 

[cache]

are there any free scripts for managing email_account/signup/payment/billing?