news NamePros.com enters top 10,000 Alexa ranking!

[Chris Hydrick]

Current rank: 9,971

Congratulations to all nP staff, ownership, members, and even lurkers!

https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/namepros.com

 

[Rob Monster]

@Rob Monster didnt you call this ; )

I did though it took 2 months longer than expected.

If the moderators would increase their commitment to working with industry vendors, I am sure 5K by January is possible.

Let's face it, COVID is wiping out entire industries. Domains remain extremely strong as an asset class and as a foundation for digital presence.

Related meme on the asset class:

Feel free to use it.

As interest in the domain asset class grows, NamePros should continue to grow in relative proportion as there is no obvious alternative forum.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Just by eye test, the forum is slower in interaction than it used to be a year or two ago.

Out of curiosity, we looked at the numbers reported by our forum software.

From July 2019 to July 2020:

• 10.0% increase in active members, which is limited by market size.
• 13.0% increase in new posts, which include new threads.
• 15.0% increase in new reactions.
• 18.0% increase in new direct messages.
• 26.0% increase in new attachments.
• 36.0% increase in new status updates.

These are increases in producing content; the vast majority of visitors to user-generated websites solely consume content and do not produce it.

As for why it feels the way it does, @Grilled may be right:

But a year or two ago, there wasn't as much content. As year over year, the forum grows in terms of content, and member count; albeit active membership volume may vary.

Generally, we try not to look at the numbers too often because we're focused on improving and providing value; we believe the rest will follow. With that in mind, the tech team is working hard on a lot of new advancements and features that we hope will make NamePros even more useful and rewarding.

We look forward to sharing them with you all soon.

 

[Samer]

@Rob Monster didnt you call this ; )

 

[Bob Hawkes]

Thanks for letting us know, @Grilled, and agree with @varmuk proud to be part of the NamePros community.

So much great information, news, tips, views, and more here, plus a lively and helpful online community.

Congrats NamePros!

Bob

(does anyone know the highest ranking it ever achieved in its history?)

 

[Recons.Com]

Alexa ranking is unreliable in this range.

Meaning, your sites audience might decrease and Alexa might say it is up and vice versa.

Just change in geography your audience might trigger the change, like if you have the same number but ratio of USA and West Europe traffic is up then your ranking will go down. Why? Because people there normally don't install Alexa toolbar.

Just by eye test, the forum is slower in interaction than it used to be a year or two ago.

 

[Recons.Com]

Out of curiosity, we looked at the numbers reported by our forum software.

From July 2019 to July 2020:

• 10.0% increase in active members, which is limited by market size.
• 13.0% increase in new posts, which include new threads.
• 15.0% increase in new reactions.
• 18.0% increase in new direct messages.
• 26.0% increase in new attachments.
• 36.0% increase in new status updates.

These are increases in producing content; the vast majority of visitors to user-generated websites solely consume content and do not produce it.

As for why it feels the way it does, @Grilled may be right:

​

Generally, we try not to look at the numbers too often because we're focused on improving and providing value; we believe the rest will follow. With that in mind, the tech team is working hard on a lot of new advancements and features that we hope will make NamePros even more useful and rewarding.

We look forward to sharing them with you all soon.

Thanks for the data! Can you share your visitor data as well? How many unique visitors per day/week or month you had 1 year or 2 years back compared to today? Is there a considerable shift in the geography of your visitors?

The above increases are fine, but could mean something else too. For example, more reactions -> you introduced "agree" button and now a post can get 2 reactions instead of 1.

More posts might mean more of the marketplace listings and more of the "up" posts there.

By the way, regarding marketplace, I keep forgetting to post in the suggestions, but would be nice that LLLL.coms and other liquid domains in "auction" or "buy it now" sections would also show in "liquid names section". Very often those are in the former sections and since it is time consuming to look through the piles of worthless listings constantly boosted up, I have just quit on that.

 

[Rob Monster]

That is an awesome pic!

Thanks.

It can be quite useful. I just used it here:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1294147160800464896

Driving awareness of the domain name asset class will drive NamePros. The correlation is obvious.

For the last couple of years, the growth has been mainly emerging markets.

In the coming months, I see a flood of alternative investors in developed markets coming in.

Serious capital has yet to participate in this asset class even though the Internet economy is fast becoming the economy.

 

[Chris Hydrick]

@Rob Monster didnt you call this ; )

[04 April 2020] https://www.namepros.com/threads/na...ions-for-year-end.1152491/page-4#post-7707592

namePros.com looks to be on track to break 10,000 by the end of the year.
Show attachment 149924

Actually, I expect it passes 10K by June. We'll see!

 

[varmuk]

proud to be part of this community

 

[Chris Hydrick]

Just by eye test, the forum is slower in interaction than it used to be a year or two ago.

I agree to this point.

But a year or two ago, there wasn't as much content. As year over year, the forum grows in terms of content, and member count; albeit active membership volume may vary.

As search engines continue to crawl the forum, nP content is becoming more reachable than ever. If not by members alone, through lurkers coming and going by way of search engine search results.

Though sometimes trivial, I think each and every members content can be considered useful. I think that is why mods have tried to work with members opposed to drawing quicker hard line bans.

I'd be curious to hear @Paul's take on alexa rankings. I assume he has a much better viewpoint as to what's going on under the hood.

Added: I can't even begin to imagine the amount of URLs folks like @ategy.com has provided. Since 2018 alone, @Ategy's namesult closeout thread has had over 78,000 views, and countless domains for google and other search engines to crawl.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

What about similar numbers without "for sale" threads?

Can you share your visitor data as well?

Currently, our forum software doesn't track these totals, and moderators don't have access to internal tracking tools (e.g., Google Analytics).

It's worth noting that traffic of a large website with several layers of infrastructure like NamePros cannot easily be compared from one time period to another. That's not to say it can't be done, but it's not a priority for us.

For example, the following can prevent traffic from reaching the analytical services that we use:

1. Some browsers (e.g., their privacy features) and browser extensions (e.g., ad blockers) block website tracking, including analytical software such as Google Analytics.
2. Firewalls and our internal tools that block certain traffic (e.g., for security purposes).
3. Caching by Cloudflare, browsers, etc.

If we remember correctly, our tech team reported that over 30% of our traffic does not reach the third-party analytical services that we use, and that is expected to continue to rise as more browsers compete to offer privacy features.

It'd still be straightforward to calculate a relative change in traffic if the effects of these factors were consistent over time, but they're constantly changing.

How many "igonres" do exist in the db - number of members "igonored" by at least one another member, top10 ignored members (by numbers, without usernames), how many members are restricted in one way or another due to spamming etc.?

Excellent questions. We, as moderators, would also be interested to know, but it'd require the tech team (e.g., a database engineer) to determine, and they're quite busy.

how many members voluntary closed their accounts?

This number is very, very small.

There have probably only been 2-3 accounts in the past six months that haven't been discussed by the community, and those are due to things like retiring, cleaning up one's online presence, etc. The rest are almost always discussed, but even those are a very small percentage of the active community.

From our observations, the community is more positive and professional as a result of some of them leaving, and we try to encourage the rest to return by making improvements.

We hope that helps.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

why should I care?

Reach and opportunity.

As NamePros grows, the community can benefit from more:

1. Viewers of your content (e.g., your viewpoints, marketplace activities, contests, and signature)
   
2. Networking opportunities (e.g., shared-interest relationships, partnerships, and career opportunities)
3. Shared knowledge and news (e.g., stay informed on best practices, trends, strategy, sales, analysis, and tools)
4. Advice and support (e.g., fresh ideas, perspectives, and lesson-filled experiences)
   
5. Financial trades (e.g., buying and selling)
6. Confidence in yourself and others
7. Recognition and status

Not all of these will apply to everyone, but the opportunities exist.

The unique benefit of communities is that our success as a platform is dependent on yours and the value that we provide you. It's a mutually-beneficial relationship.

 

[Recons.Com]

I did though it took 2 months longer than expected.

If the moderators would increase their commitment to working with industry vendors, I am sure 5K by January is possible.

Let's face it, COVID is wiping out entire industries. Domains remain extremely strong as an asset class and as a foundation for digital presence.

Related meme on the asset class:

Feel free to use it.

As interest in the domain asset class grows, NamePros should continue to grow in relative proportion as there is no obvious alternative forum.

That is an awesome pic!

 

[Rob Monster]

While I like the poster and domains are great, they are not for a regular investor to hold their money.

For one, differing from bitcoin, where every bitcoin is the same, and from gold, where no ounce is special, each domain is unique and some are worth 7 figures, while others are similar to trash - not only worthless, you have to pay for a dumpster rent.

For two, costs of holding btc or gold are nominal if any, while cost of holding .com is $8.5/year at least which can mean that if you domains are not high quality and you are not listing them for sale, you'll be hemorrhaging money like crazy every year.

True -- people should be trained in how to find domains with good prospects for asymmetric returns.

For example, if you been following patterns on social media, you know that .VC has good prospects for asymmetric return just as .CO did for $0.99 for those with a patient eye for value.

For people who have more money than time, buying waterfront property like Diamond.com could be a viable alternative store of value. It is worth noting that Microstrategy that just announced they are moving their treasury to BTC is also the same group who sold Voice.com for $30 million.

So, yes one needs to apply one's brain to buy domains, just as one needs to apply one's brain to pick a stock. One can buy crypto but better have a strong stomach for when the crypto gets monkeyhammered by one of the crypto whales as always happens to flush out the weak hands.

Personally, I greatly prefer the prospect of an asset that offers intrinsic value with the possibility of asymmetric returns. The key missing ingredient is the prospect of a mark to market that makes the asset bankable and insurable.

Collectively, the industry must continue to work on innovations that elevate domains into a respected asset class. If that happens, then NamePros ranks up there in the Alexa top 1000. An example for a comp is Coinmarketcap.com for cryptos. No reason why domains should not be as popular as cryptos. None.

 

[Rob Monster]

I gotta say, while imperfect, it does appear @Rob Monster is trying to keep things on topic. I hadn't a clue as to how Robs advertising-like post above was on topic, until the end.



Show attachment 163855

I have consistently advocated to the NP community to keep making the pie bigger.

Great post here if you missed it:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1291428825407070208

Long story short:

Lift folks up and you end up lifting yourself.

Co-creating abundance is real.

Blessings to you all, and congratulations to the NP community. Focus on the good.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

No need to overcomplicate it by going into what percentage reach or doesn't. It is certainly more accurate and benchmarkable compared to anything else, especially to Alexa or how many reactions there were.

The activity percentages are more meaningful and accurate than the traffic. Actions on NamePros are essentially all performed by real people (99.99%?) thanks to years of tech development, whereas visits include all sorts of robots (e.g., crawlers). As we mentioned, moderators don't have access to Google Analytics, but the data is not comparable in the way you want, anyway.

Here's a simplified way to think about it: do you want the domain name with 1000 visits and 0 clicks, or the domain with 10 visits and 5 clicks, if you're purely interested in domain monetization? The latter.

Alexa.com is not necessarily less accurate either, for the reasons we mentioned and because Alexa tries to approximate the true value, whereas Google Analytics only reports what it sees and does not try to account for the significant amount of traffic that it doesn't see (e.g., due to being blocked by a browser/extension, which again, is not consistent over time and therefore cannot simply be ignored or factored out of the equation).

We hope that helps.

 

[CraigD]

Congratulations NamePros, and all you long-time members who made this possible

 

[Steven McEvoy]

@Rob Monster didn't you call this ; )

NamePros member want to blame him for things... they can blame him for this! Completely his fault!

 

[tonyk2000]

so namepros has a lot of traffic
congrats
why should I care?

I tend to agree with this. Especially since the industry already has too many "suppliers" (all of us are, lol) and so it is not obvious that an increased number of new participants is beneficial for the industry (as a group) or to any individual participant. Registrars and other service providers are natural exception.... On the other hand, competition is fine. Where would the industry be should there still be just 1 team ( Yun Ye + tons number of employees who handregged netsol drops in 1990something and monetized the result with generic yahoo feed - short but basically correct description of the "roots")? Hope that the content posted may at least prevent some newbies from thinking that they can make a lot of $$$ fast and with little or no effort.

Alexa screenshot suggests that the forum has a lot of visitors from India. A great country, and an origin of a lot of highly gifted persons well known worldwide - no doubts. At the same time, various analysts report that a great %%% of spam and other questionable stuff are from India : - (

A benefit of a large forum (from a practical point of view) is that if one has a problem (bad customer service received from this or that supplier, or more deep problems), should it posted here, this will definitely help to resolve an issue. Posting the same on a personal blog may not be noticed by anybody. So is general fraud detection like known cases of shill bidding - came to light only because of this forum.

 

[TheBuyerz]

Congrats everyone !

 

[Chris Hydrick]

 

[frank-germany]

so namepros has a lot of traffic
congrats

why should I care?

the only one who benefits is the one selling stuff here
like R.M.

was really quite here for a while .. enjoy it

 

[Chris Hydrick]

why should I care?

Because your 8,000+ posts helped achieve that.

So did r.m's. and r.j's, heck, there might even be a rob(a-z) helping to contribute here.

The point being, namePros wouldn't be the same without you @frank-germany ...

Like it or not, you have become a lot of folks go-to german guy around here.

the only one who benefits is the one selling stuff here

I've bought into some of what you've post. Albeit never a .de domain, but I do appreciate your opinions and viewpoints.

Do online friends/acquaintances count as a benefit? or being apart of a niche community?

 

[Recons.Com]

That is really interesting, @Grilled. Not surprised that USA is about 29% but somewhat surprised how high India is (but maybe higher percentage Chrome with Alexa browser extension there?). No doubt India is more and more important in domain business as @Michael noted in a recent interview with @equity78 . So Canada is way less, but does its inclusion mean it is the third highest contributor to the stats, and all other countries are less than 3.7% of total? Would seem surprising if so, perhaps. Like UK, China, Germany etc. less. Go Canada .
Bob

Having high India traffic ratio almost ensures warped Alexa ranking towards greatly overestimating it.

As the ratio of people engaged in web related services are very high there, they also tend to install Alexa way more than people in the West would.

On the other hand, Alexa could be wrong about NP geography completely, as a consequence of the same issue with skewed preference for Alexa geographically, Alexa is completely off about geography of visitors.

According to Alexa, for Rightbrand the main traffic source is India too with 41%.

Reality? India is number 3 at just 5%, with US being #1 with 35% and Canada #2 with 9%.

So it overestimated India traffic by 8 (!) times, again because of overrepresentation of Alexa toolbars in that geography.

Here is the screenshot of my stats for last 3 months by country.