What the f*ck is wrong with this industry?

[hookbox]

Honestly I'm getting sick of being associated with Domaining. One black cloud after another. Every time I turn around another scandal is occurring in this industry.

If the Snapnames Halvarez scandal isn't enough
http://www.thedomains.com/2009/11/0...hings-that-came-out-of-the-snapnames-scandal/

then we can talk about Bob Parsons shooting elephants
http://mashable.com/2011/03/31/bob-parsons-elephant-story/#mipS02pncSqf

How about the Network Solutions story?
http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/10/ne...uestionable-tactic-to-sell-more-domain-names/

How about the story of Toby Clements.
http://domainshane.com/time-domains-selling-left-right-toby-clements-vanishes/

How about the Flippa story?
https://www.namepros.com/threads/so-you-thought-flippa-was-shady.879930/

Low and behold we have another with Adam Dicker.
https://www.namepros.com/threads/is-adam-dicker-a-criminal-you-decide.883579/

What the fuck is wrong with this industry?

 

[hookbox]

You must have had to really dig to come up with so much negative crap. And then come here and share it with us, in an attempt to make us as generally bitter about life as you are.

It didn't work. If you think you have it bad always remember you could be an algae eater in a fish tank, sentenced to press your lips up against the side of the glass and peer out at the world around while ingesting algae. I'll bet any algae eater would trade you. You could go and suck algae for a while, and they could be a domainer, and sit and eat bagels while regging domain names that will never sell.

Or, if you think you have it bad you could be toilet paper. I don't believe that one needs any explaining

Cheer up! And quit dwelling on all that negative crap.

You obviously don't know much about this industry because these are things that most domainers already know about. I added the links so those that don't know could read about it.

I guess it's easy to call me bitter because you didn't like what I had to say about your Brandigger project. Hookbox "laughs at you". Wait a second, that was your slogan.

 

[Jeff Markus]

I think our industry is not very bad. Just has a few very bad people running a shit ton of scams each.

For example Adam Dicker. He just got slammed for scamming people with Nichewebsites.com and hes already off on his new SEO SCAM

http://seobrokers.ca/

So you cut one head off the hydra and another grows back. Same thing as Rick Latona, he got busted in the domain business and went off to the watch business but the same pattern of ripping people off.

We have a problem and its get rich quick, easy development, shortcuts shortcut shortcuts... If you read essays from Paul Graham you'll ready about hard work, struggles and overcoming challenges.

You listen to guys like Adam Dicker or view his sites and its ... fast results, no hassle, low-low price....

"SEO can be a slow tedious part of your online business. Let us make it easy. With our technology we can show you real results in as little as 1 week!"

Just ONE WEEK!!!!

Until everyone STOPS guys like Adam Dicker from making false claims this industry will also suffer from one conman to the next

His 4 week old site SEOBrokers.ca claims to be over 10 years old with 43000 people using their API. It makes unreal claims throughout and provides no live examples of any of their work. It's a fraud. He's a fraud and he needs to be called out. People with bold claims need to back them up, if we can do just this we will be in much better shape.

 

[Winfluence]

I don't understand why folks don't use Escrow. It doesn't matter if it's an old friend or someone with reputation in the biz. If they aren't trying to scam you then they'd agree to use an escrow with out a fuss...especially if you're offering to pay the Escrow fee...then there's absolutely no excuses for not wanting to use Escrow. If they say "no thanks" you're dealing with a scammer. Even if it's your best friend...guess what...he's a scammer!

 

[1NiteStand]

Welcome to the Internet.

 

[frank-germany]

I don't understand why folks don't use Escrow. It doesn't matter if it's an old friend or someone with reputation in the biz. If they aren't trying to scam you then they'd agree to use an escrow with out a fuss...especially if you're offering to pay the Escrow fee...then there's absolutely no excuses for not wanting to use Escrow. If they say "no thanks" you're dealing with a scammer. Even if it's your best friend...guess what...he's a scammer!

wise words..

 

[Winfluence]

Link: Crime levels soar as millions of cyber crimes included for first time (Note: This might just account for the UK alone. Imagine world wide!)

 

[S-B]

You must have had to really dig to come up with so much negative crap. And then come here and share it with us, in an attempt to make us as generally bitter about life as you are.

It didn't work. If you think you have it bad always remember you could be an algae eater in a fish tank, sentenced to press your lips up against the side of the glass and peer out at the world around while ingesting algae. I'll bet any algae eater would trade you. You could go and suck algae for a while, and they could be a domainer, and sit and eat bagels while regging domain names that will never sell.

Or, if you think you have it bad you could be toilet paper. I don't believe that one needs any explaining

Cheer up! And quit dwelling on all that negative crap.

I think you and Iowadog need to make love.

The offspring of such a horrifying relationship would literally be the worst forum member in history.

 

[carob]

What the f*ck is wrong with this industry?

It's an interesting question and I thought, let's take a step back and see what features of this industry make it so open to scamming? The equities industry also has scams, and so do physical auction houses and the gaming industry.

Auctioning
All auctions run the risk of shills - even in fine art and antiques.

Easy transfer of property
Takes just minutes to transfer ownership - not like cars or land.

Virtual Product
Supply of domains is infinite

Low barriers to entry
Anyone can join. No clear set of knowledge you need - and some exploit that to "train" others.

Get Rich Quick Stories
We're always reading about high price sales so people dream of a lottery ticket

Lack of trusted advisors
Estibot anyone? Or someone operating on commission? No real way to set values

Trademark Issues

I'm sure there's more...personally I think domaining should be seen as gambling rather than investing.

 

[carob]

By the way, we are talking about the aftermarket - domainers are used car dealers, whereas registrars are dealerships selling new product, mostly.

 

[yogiDomain]

I think you and Iowadog need to make love.

The offspring of such a horrifying relationship would literally be the worst forum member in history.

This is the most hilarious comment.
I agree about offspring being the worst nightmare to everybody..

 

[Templr]

Get Rich Quick Stories
We're always reading about high price sales so people dream of a lottery ticket

Bingo! Many of the blogs are full of the 'unrealistic truth' in domain sales. This emphasis the sleaze bag 'Make Money Quick Online In Your Squat' schemes that has been around since the Internet's beginning.

I'd rather hear a story about a domainer making a good $350 - 1500 ROI from a creative name that will inspire the regular folks. IMO.

 

[frank-germany]

glad to see you all are so positive ..

 

[ksusha64]

By the way, we are talking about the aftermarket - domainers are used car dealers, whereas registrars are dealerships selling new product, mostly.

Absolutely wrong analogy. Used cars worth much less than new cars for most part. Domains domainers have on average worth 10-100 times more than new registered domains. You got it WRONG buddy. Registars are selling AIR and domainers are selling businesses.

 

[jberryhill]

I should have stuck with engineering, so I could design software for Volkswagen emission systems.

 

[carob]

I'd say another prob is the whole industry is so insecure - you can lose domains easily and they have no clearly established value. Look how often domainers get into slanging matches with one another about who has the best names or who is the better domainer.

The wider world is confused about domaining, if not downright suspicious or hostile. So it is easy for even those who are clean to not welcome publcity for problems in the industry. But more darkly, the industry needs an ongoing inflow of speculative domain registrations, so it benefits from publicity from high-profile scammers, until they get caught, and then it hopes they just get buried.

 

[Argie]

As domain industry gets bigger and bigger, more of this type of things will happen,scandals are in every industry, and ours is not the exception. More and more newbies are getting in and most of them are pursuing the "get rich quick" dream because they read about some domain that the owner got for $100 bucks when nobody knew what a domain name was and then he/she sold it for millions, so they think is that easy, buy cheap, wait and sell for millions.

Scammers make their bread and butter from this people, and it will get worse, believe me, I've been in this industry for a long time, and is getting worse every day.

 

[HeyNow]

What the f*ck is wrong with this industry?

No law enforcement. No industry ethics enforcement. No one's done the perp-walk for breaking the law. No one has been shunned in a major fashion for cheating at auctions. In fact, the industry seems to treat typosquatters, auction cheats, cybersquatters, and others of that ilk as though they are examples of what we should all aspire to. That's what's wrong with this industry.

 

[cocaseco]

Omg handregged domains and people wondering why no money is coming in.

I do quite well with handreg'd domains in my parking portfolio....it might be difficult, but it is possible.

 

[ezcoms]

What I'm referring to is someone buying greycatsweaterweather.com and wondering why there is no traffic coming to it. Or, buying zippidydoodah.info and trying to sell it for $100.00 starting bid. And making up traffic stats.