Industry-wide Need For Domainer Portfolio Management Service

[CDM]

As I laid out in a recent tweet:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1551931742713438213

I believe there is a need in the domain industry for a domainer focused portfolio management service. It's a service I'd definitely be willing to pay for, so I suspect others would as well.

I'm not talking about corporate domain portfolio management, like a Mark Monitor, I mean something targeted to domainers, that would help ease routine, day-to-day administrative burdens such as:

- transfer newly acquired names to consolidated registrar after 60-day lock is up
- list new names at marketplaces, including verification (changing name servers back and forth, etc)
- making updates and adjustments as needed (changing prices, switching from bin to make offer, etc)

I'm sure there are plenty of other tasks, it seems like from my own experience various tasks and demands come up on an ad-hoc basis, which is one of the reasons I don't personally want to hire/train someone as I believe it would take me longer to explain and oversee someone doing these ad-hoc, one-off tasks than if I just do them myself. But if a company started such a service and has a trained stable of account managers, maybe each one is working with 5 - 10 domainers, and they are trained up on the ins-and-outs and quirks of the various registrars and marketplaces, without the threat of constant turnover (i.e. I hire someone, train them on all the complexities of these systems then they don't even last 6 months and have to do it all over again).

I covered some additional thoughts in my tweet, including risks such as insuring against domain theft.

I'm curious to hear others thoughts, do you think there is a need. Is it the type of service you would use? I created a poll where you can answer if you wish.

For me, I feel blessed to be a domainer. It's a job I can wake up each morning and be excited for the day. On the other hand, dealing with the administrative aspects, particularly with what I consider to be many buggy and let's say "challenged" software platforms that can easily suck the joy out of my day, (won't name names, though I did name one in my tweet, but you know there are some really great platforms and some really sucky ones). So as much as it is freeing up more time to work on acquisitions and sales, it's moreover alleviating a constant pain point, things that can very easily turn into 'headaches' and killjoys that bleed into the rest of my day/work/life.

 

[twiki]

Or at least the above is my view... I'm pretty sure not everyone shares the same.

 

[Lox]

domainmod

 

[alcy]

yea hard to take seriously man who buys curving,eth and then somehow thinks its good or special enuf to showcase it around like this. next.

 

[biggie]

Let's face it, most domainers won't pay $500+/month on portfolio management.

Hi

maybe somebody with 10K > 100K domains could use something like that, but majority of domainers don't make $500 a month, and their portfolios aren't large enough where it's needed.


imo...

 

[CDM]

yea hard to take seriously man who buys curving,eth and then somehow thinks its good or special enuf to showcase it around like this. next.

LOL. It's my last name. Thanks for your comment though.

 

[CDM]

yea hard to take seriously man who buys curving,eth and then somehow thinks its good or special enuf to showcase it around like this. next.

Hard to take seriously man who criticizes others out of ignorance

 

[alcy]

Hard to take seriously man who criticizes others out of ignorance

guess we all got an opinion huh

 

[alcy]

LOL. It's my last name. Thanks for your comment though.

honestly it doesnt matter what u put in front all .eth it's all useless garbage extension. nothn but money grab.

 

[bmugford]

Hi

maybe somebody with 10K > 100K domains could use something like that, but majority of domainers don't make $500 a month, and their portfolios aren't large enough where it's needed.


imo...

That is the biggest issue, the addressable market size is tiny.

How many people own large portfolios? Not that many.
How many people need a service like this? Even less.
Of those, how many people are willing to pay for it? Way way less.

Brad

 

[dirk]

Hi

maybe somebody with 10K > 100K domains could use something like that, but majority of domainers don't make $500 a month, and their portfolios aren't large enough where it's needed.


imo...

That is the biggest issue, the addressable market size is tiny.

How many people own large portfolios? Not that many.
How many people need a service like this? Even less.
Of those, how many people are willing to pay for it? Way way less.

Brad

Agreed. I have a 'small' platform running which kinda does a lot of what's being suggested in this thread. About 8 domainers (friends) with a portfolio of 7-20K each.

It doesn't scale well with limited demand. The technical side of it does but from a practical pov... At some point you gonna need 24/7 support with enough knowledge to tackle issues that arise. That doesn't come cheap. You don't want to put out services like this without superb in-house support... 24/7.

Down the line it makes me exactly zero $ in profits. Only thing I get from it, it brings enough revenue to cover operating costs and time. In return I'm getting the exact solution and resources I want, for 'free'.

 

[dirk]

server resources run out faster than you think. Especially if you also do https (there's a reason many big players out there don't do https).

I agreed with your post. As for this, yes. But not offering Https by some of the major players is just being lazy. There's really no good reason for not offering it.

If they really wanted to, they could implement it today at minimal additional cost.

 

[CDM]

Honestly, half or more of the headache and time suck could probably be eliminated if GoDaddy would just clean up the hot mess of a platform they created. This is really my attempt to find a viable workaround to the fact they will simply not do that, as has been proven over the past decade, in my humble but honest opinion. Maybe other's experience are different.

 

[okaydomains]

Efty is a good example. They have been at it for what, like a decade? Yet here is where they are. I'm not saying they did a rubbish job. They did alright within their scope and resources etc etc. And they are still the best private solution of this kind, although as per my taste I find it unbearable. You can't even add a dang link to point at your Afternic sales page.

That's exactly the reason I quit trying with Efty within a few days. Not being able to place a link to the Afternic sales page (much less any URL you want) made Efty a non-starter for me. If Dan + Escrow.com is enough for you, Efty is great. Otherwise not so much.

Bodis has ugly landing pages but at least they can forward to an Afternic lander and they provide HTTPS and stats.

I've also tried doing it (for my own needs first of all) and I found it requires expensive hardware. For reasons that don't become obvious until you try.

This is why I'm willing to pay. I have far better things to do than run a nameserver, and I don't know a lot but I know its more complicated that it would seem and would be one more thing to maintain.

However, most companies that offer private nameservers as a service charge per domain and the costs get outrageous (e.g, DNSMadeEasy).

I'd be very interested in a private-nameservers-as-a-service product that simply provides HTTPS and forwarding in bulk, even if it included nothing else on my list. Seems like someone smarter than me could wire that up with LetsEncrypt for the HTTPS piece pretty easily and have a nice little SaaS.

Marketplaces are might be the solution, I think. Because they get a % of the revenue, that's a different sum. Who would build this and NOT be a marketplace is taking the bone and leaving the meat behind.

I think you're right, and that's basically where we have ended up except the options are all terrible.

Honestly, half or more of the headache and time suck could probably be eliminated if GoDaddy would just clean up the hot mess of a platform they created.

This is so true its painful.

Its crazy too because Uniregistry's platform is so much better and GoDaddy owns it (Uniregistry still has flaws to be sure, but oh man would I like to use it instead of Afternic's interface).


I think you're all right about the market being too small. I would gladly pay $299/month for the right solution, but I'm not going to pay that much for half a solution and there's probably not that many like me anyway. So we'll all end up reinventing the wheel privately.

 

[dirk]

I'd be very interested in a private-nameservers-as-a-service product that simply provides HTTPS and forwarding in bulk, even if it included nothing else on my list. Seems like someone smarter than me could wire that up with LetsEncrypt for the HTTPS piece pretty easily and have a nice little SaaS.

Out of interest, what's a price point for exactly this that you'd be willing to pay?

Do you think there's more demand, besides you?

Do you think people on this forum would be interested in a tutorial to be able to accomplish this themselves? For free obviously, beside the fact they'd need to put some money towards servers.

There's a learning curve if you have little knowledge about services like this but I reckon it would be great fun to do a walkthrough...

Anyone else interested?

 

[okaydomains]

Out of interest, what's a price point for exactly this that you'd be willing to pay?

Do you think there's more demand, besides you?

Do you think people on this forum would be interested in a tutorial to be able to accomplish this themselves? For free obviously, beside the fact they'd need to put some money towards servers.

There's a learning curve if you have little knowledge about services like this but I reckon it would be great fun to do a walkthrough...

Anyone else interested?

I'd pay $99/month, assuming it had a decent interface. I'd want to set rules or do some kind of easy bulk editing, for things like:

- forward all my .xyz domains to ns3.afternic.com / ns4.afternic.com
- forward Starred domains to ns3.afternic.com / ns4.afternic.com
- forward [Category 1] domains to ns1.uniregistrymarket.link / ns2.uniregistrymarket.link
- forward all other domains to ns5.afternic.com / ns6.afternic.com

Meanwhile you give me some kind of traffic stats and automatically provision HTTPS certs when I add a domain.

For adding domains, I would require kind of simple API + CSV bulk import. Doesn't have to be fancy - just need to be able to add new domains programmatically.

 

[twiki]

Out of interest, what's a price point for exactly this that you'd be willing to pay?

Do you think there's more demand, besides you?

Do you think people on this forum would be interested in a tutorial to be able to accomplish this themselves? For free obviously, beside the fact they'd need to put some money towards servers.

There's a learning curve if you have little knowledge about services like this but I reckon it would be great fun to do a walkthrough...

Anyone else interested?

You're wasting your time, my friend. Keep this in mind - you've been warned. Reason: I went on this path but I recognize something when things just don't add up. This is NOT something you can build and/or maintain as a lean thing.

The math doesn't add up. There are probably at least 10 folks starting on it each year and then dying. Year after year, I've seen countless so far, the latest opened like a month ago (think I saw on Reddit).

Anyway as I said. You'll encounter serious technical difficulties And not enough market size to make it worthwhile. This idea is doomed from the start. Not to mention the efforts to reach critical user mass. Which costs time, money or both.

Build something simpler instead, more straightforward, that caters either to proper businesses with enough money and a particular pain, or to individuals - a larger segment. Good luck regardless.

 

[dirk]

I'd pay $99/month, assuming it had a decent interface. I'd want to set rules or do some kind of easy bulk editing, for things like:

- forward all my .xyz domains to ns3.afternic.com / ns4.afternic.com
- forward Starred domains to ns3.afternic.com / ns4.afternic.com
- forward [Category 1] domains to ns1.uniregistrymarket.link / ns2.uniregistrymarket.link
- forward all other domains to ns5.afternic.com / ns6.afternic.com

Meanwhile you give me some kind of traffic stats and automatically provision HTTPS certs when I add a domain.

For adding domains, I would require kind of simple API + CSV bulk import. Doesn't have to be fancy - just need to be able to add new domains programmatically.

Great. You seem to have a reasonable understanding of the costs that comes with it.

I'm just brainpicking here, hope you don't mind

 

[redemo]

Spreadsheet. Job done.

 

[satsdifference.com]

Spreadsheet. Job done.

buy a printer

 

[satsdifference.com]

there is no price