Comments on: Domaining.com goes to $35 annual Membership

By: Francois

Francois — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 09:53:49 +0000

Well I think this time I definitively got the point as now domaining.com is FREE:
No need to register to can read headlines!
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The membership for existing members will continue FREE like in the past. Free members could receive our daily newsletter but will only see featured domains 24 hours after paid members. So if you are not receiving our newsletter your account has been deleted as there is no interest to maintain it.
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Now membership for new members will no longer be free, we will charge $25/year or $10 per quarter.
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This fee as you understand is no longer a fee to can read news or receive our newsletter, it’s simply a fee to can do business:
- Receive new featured names before everyone.
- Can list featured domains.
- Can use profesionnals services to come lile auctions.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:47:45 +0000

Francois,

I think you are missing the point. It is not the amount of money, it is any money that is bothering people. I don’t think you will see an increase in subscriptions at $25 – if someone doesn’t want to pay for something an extra $1 per month won’t change their minds.

By: Francois

Francois — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:24:12 +0000

Thanks Sri for your kind proposal.
But many dedicated servers are involved in the service, not only one: Firewall server, SQL server, web servers. They are servers running under Microsoft software with expensive licences. Prices are almost the same from the main hosting companies offering similar service, we use PEER1 for years. We will not go to big pain of a change to save few hundreds dollars.
…
For the main reasons exposed we can no longer go free for the membership.
Now I hear your comments, as a result the annual membership has been reduced to $25 and an option at $10 for 3 months will be soon available.
The decision is retro active, so all that paid $35 have now a $10 credit + $5 bonus into their domaining.com account.

By: Mick

Mick — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:57:29 +0000

Just realised my error in registration of afterdomainer.com so now I am happy to say that I have just registered afterdomaining.com as well. Happy Days.
Mick from Downunder

By: Mick

Mick — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:33:14 +0000

Man oh man. You are indeed a silly man Francois. To have a potentially successful site with growing popularity and through simple greed you have pressed the self distruct button. Ethically, I cant see how you can use someone elses freely available content to line your own pockets. How much of the reg. fee goes back to the blogger? Actually dont answer that Im sure we know the answer. Any way it may not be too late to reverse your mistake but I do believe that the damage has been done and you have lost faith of many loyal visitors and indeed shown your true colours. Just to think that you think that we are so gullible to think that you pay up to $6000 a month (or year for that matter) for hosting this site. I suggest also a change of name for obvious reasons, what do you think ‘Frank’. Maybe we should use the great afterdomainer.com (now for sale hehe). Thanks Frank for another registered domain for my stable just in case you proceed with your rego fee. Thanks for the post Jamie, love your work as always,
Mick from downunder.

By: Sri

Sri — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:43:44 +0000

Francois,

I am ready to offer you free hosting – yes FREE. No ads, no riders, no reciprocals, no scratch my back required.

If you really do want to get paid service, for $6000 a year (not month), I could set you up a dedicated server with around the clock human attended customer support thrown in.

Frankly Francois, if you ARE paying that obscene amount for hosting and bandwidth (data transfer as you say), you should kick them (your hosting provider) you know where and seriously reconsider someone else (like me for instance).

Best wishes.

By: Garry

Garry — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:42:13 +0000

I submitted a domain for sale on domaining.com a couple of weeks ago and from the emails I got from Francois, I think he’s a first class turd. He didn’t even list my domain for what I wanted him to. Who cares if my domain is overpriced. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it. But from his name and his apparent language barrier, I guess he’s French and we should just expect this kind of behavior from him. Bye Francois. I not think I join you domain site.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 02:21:06 +0000

Morning Coffee Firefox extension
The idea is simple. You know how you have that list of websites that you visit every day, morning coffee Firefox extension puts them all in one place and opens them up with one click replaces domaining.com
http://www.shaneliesegang.com/projects/coffee.php

By: Rodney

Rodney — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 22:09:11 +0000

I don’t understand the $3k-$4k for hosting. My site is only fractional of it and the website traffic, I guess, should not be that huge due to redirect. Francois does have an advertisemnt section http://www.domaining.com/advertising/ on the site. I took a close look at it and I am just wondering why the advertisers not coming? Too expensive for the charge? I would say, free access, with paid premium features, should be the future direct for many sites. Domaining should consider that

By: Randall Brown

Randall Brown — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:58:09 +0000

Like I Wrote on my blog, I see this “fee” hurting the site more then us. If you dont like paying the large hosting fee a month then sell your site. But, mot everyone in domaining has the money to pay.

I don’t use domainging.com ever since I sent an email and the reply i got back was not bad but not nice. It seems edgy, also more sites are coming around with the RSS feeds like SocialDN.com for FREE. I think Ross might have more sites linked. He doesn’t mind that your site may not have PR and does not charge. But he does care about the content.

Good Luck Domaining.com, Why not set up a Donations Post and who ever donates 35 can be listed on a page and Recognized for the donation and link to there site, You will get allot of Donations that way.

By: Kevin Davis

Kevin Davis — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:11:19 +0000

I just submitted a name and paid for it and Francois refunded my money and I have paid for 7 domain features in the last 2 weeks alone.So in the last 2 weeks I have spent more than 50 dollars advertising domains and now you will not get any of it.Re think it Francois.Kevin Davis

By: Mat

Mat — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:13:20 +0000

Hi All Domainers,
Charge for an information website, never ever gonna happen! The web is all about free information and connecting people to a wealth of free knowledge!I undertsand you want to make a profit however this is not the way to go about it. Why dont you try concentrating on selling more domains and the only way to do this is through increasing traffic to your website, and lets face it a website traficed at 61,635 (which is yours) is not really that successfull, what do you think? So why not continue to increase traffic to your website through information and build on driving reveune in other functionalities!
Umm maybe think more about crowdsoucing!
Food for Thought
Cheers Mat

By: Sri

Sri — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:35:28 +0000

I haven’t yet read all the comments, but it does seem very outrageous, paying for aggregated content. Did Francois hand-reg domaining.com or buy it from the secondary market for a hefty price? Probably he want’s to realize a.s.a.p., the price he might have paid for the domain name.

On a hunch, I just looked up “Readers Digest” on the web and landed on their site. And, holy cows! They are giving away gift subscriptions for $5. Yes, 12 issues of RD delivered to your door for $5. Can’t believe it! Go check rd.com. For $35 you can gift 7 RD subscriptions!

But on second thoughts, is Francois playing a game of HPM triggers to get noticed and talked about? Domaining.com’s Alexa rank has been decreasing for some time now.

By: Rafiq

Rafiq — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:33:20 +0000

I’m dissapointed from them going from free to paid. i’m even planning to launch a similar one under http://www.domainjokers.com soon which will be always free.

By: Johnny

Johnny — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:59:26 +0000

My subscription got cancelled?

I actually READ these newsletters and didn’t notice.

Guess it’s not as useful as I thought.

Everybody everywhere all the time wants $35 for something or nothing.

F, it’s NOT penny pinching… there’s so much “gimme-gimme” that ANY amount should be scrutinized. I feel like I am choking to death on gimme-gimme.

To simply render unto Caeser as one poster insinuates just makes for another fool and his money.

Everyone now must THINK and CHOOSE who to give $1 to, much less $35.

I can get this info elsewhere, so the value added is just not there for the saavy domaineer.

Francois, love ya (mean it) but you have a good thing that is yours to ruin or rule. So… so long and thanks for all the fish!