I have been a huge fan of Domaining.com and think it’s a GREAT site for not only people who are domainers and bloggers but helps get the word out to "outsiders".
Today in the Domaining.com newsletter Francois has made it clear things are about to change and it’s going to cost YOU and our Domaining industry as a whole.
Francois said:
"Time is come to generate recurent revenue to can at least help maintain this service.
It’s now clear the sale of advertising spaces is not a financing solution.
This is why Domaining.com should switch to a subcription based service within the next weeks.
Don’t panic, the cost should be something between $10 and $30 monthly (still to define).
As a postive note this will lead to major improvements:
- You could select the blogs you want to read.
- You could add your own feeds. "
I personally do not see anything "Positive" about this move besides killing a great service to the domaining community with Money getting in the middle. I really do not think the "money" part of this story is all that true as there just is not that much money involved with the site from what I can tell. The content is provided FREE, the design and software I’m sure is and was very low costs.
Francois has built a large base of "emails" adding in the login feature to read posts awhile back, so that list of emails alone imo is priceless. ExpiringDomains.com was brought to what it is Because of Domaining.com and the domaining industry itself has Grown because of Domaining.com which in return helps the value of Domaining.com itself.
Sometimes Money comes in other forms then the paper stuff all of us love in our wallet!
Charging the people who READ Domaining.com is not the right thing to do, no matter if it’s $1 a month or $30. I hope you reconsider this Francois as this will hurt our whole Industry.
ADDED: I think if any fees are charged, it should be to the "bloggers" or incoming feeds that Domaining.com shows it’s readers. (I thought I added this, but noticed I didn’t)
Steve Luvender
Francois is a smart guy and I know he can come up with a better model than charging subscriptions to provide other people’s content. I really appreciate the Domaining.com service, and even as an active domainer I would not pay to subscribe to Domaining.com. I have my favorite blogs that I read, and I can manage my own feeds. Francois has earned a ton of respect by keeping Domaining.com free and providing a great resource, but I definitely agree that paying for a subscription won’t do the industry much service — it likely won’t thicken Francois’ wallet any, either.
Damir
Perfect post Jamie – 5 Stars
Tim Davids
someone can easily step in and set up a free site to fill the void.
**Jamie Says**
Yes and No Tim. Francois has a lot into Domaining.com and the domain is also a perfect Fit. The reason behind my post is to hopefully provide Francois to hear from Domaining.com readers on what they would do if they had to pay to read Domaining.com. I think better options are available and Francois might also be forgetting the things that Domaining.com has brought him already. My blog is fed in Domaining.com but I think if anybody should be charged is the Bloggers, but then on the other side, why should I pay for content I am creating to be read on a different site…. Traffic I guess, but I do not make any money on DotWeekly.com either and that includes traffic from Domaining.com .
troy
I hit up domaining.com on a daily basis but I am certain that if it was a paid subscription I would not even consider paying it. There is way to much free stuff for me to pay to read a persons blog.
Good luck with the change I say, but it wont work.
Troy
Stan
I think Francois is “thinking” of charging the bloggers not the readers? This would make total business sense imho. Consider all of the FREE traffic his site has been sending you for the past year? Besides the free traffic, your name and brand had been in front of the entire domaining community. I support a fee to all bloggers who use the service. I would not support a fee to the readers, as this would kill the service.
Rob
Francois, I hope you are reading all these comments. I think the feedback of your user community is good for you in your business planning and decision making.
From my perspective, charging for the service is a mistake. Yes, you could possibly charge a nominal fee of $15/year and probably not lose many of your current loyal users. The real problem will be in acquiring new users. New users who have not used domaining.com before will have not yet experienced the value of your service and therefore will likely not pay to join. Furthermore, someone else will inevitably create a competitive site, offer it to the public for free, and start luring your users away. New users will go with the free service of your competitor before paying for your service.
So, in a nutshell, by charging, you will:
1. encourage a competitor to offer a free service
2. retain some of your loyal users (for now)
3. lose some of your users (who won’t pay) to the free service
3. lose most potential new users to the free service
4. eventually lose more of your paying users to the free service (when they don’t want to renew)
In one year from now, what will you have? A lot less traffic than you do now.
Is it worth charging a subscription fee now, only to have lost the majority of your traffic (and potential future traffic) a year from now?
N/A
Domaining.com is owned and operated by a private company, and they have every right to charge people for a service – especially since it’s so valuable to people in the industry. Whether you choose to subscribe or not will ultimately be your decision, and the traffic implications may cause Domaining.com to reconsider – much like many newspapers tried making visitors sign up to read content, and that model didn’t work either.
If you decide to charge readers to read your blog, that’s your prerogative. Nobody should criticize you for your business decision. Perhaps you are being a bit selfish since the loss of Domaining.com could lead to the loss of many casual readers of your blog?
**Jamie Says**
I am looking out for the domaining community, not myself. I will and have already thought about PULLING my feed from Domaining.com but I write my blog to help people. Plus, how am I being “selfish” by offering to Pay Francois if I want my writings on Domaining.com other then charging the Readers?
Francois
Thanks Jamie to let me an opportunity to express me.
Many things come to mind reading this post and the comments, so maybe I will post many times.
Please excuse my poor english.
What will exactly happen:
In fact visitors will have again access to the linked posts without having to register or login, like when we began.
But only for a limited time. This will allows one time visitors, or curious to discover our site, our industry, …
If they continue to return then we will suggest them a free membership by blocking their access, it’s the current service.
After registering they will have access to our newsletter, to submit/buy at ExpiringDomains.com, and participate to new services to come.
At this point we will inform about the interest to become a Premium Member (improvements I presented and more to come).
It’s possible further this paying membership become an obligation but first I want to test if we have to propose worth this little monthly fee.
Don’t panic:
When domaining.com switched to a (free) membership service there was a similar wave of protestation and doubts from our community.
Guess what? The switch has been a true succes. Better, most of the domainers who pested finished registering few weeks or months after.
Cost:
Wake up! We are talking about something like $10 to $30 per month.
Copycat:
It’s Sahar Sarid who said that content can be copied, services can be copied, … but the names cannot be copied!
This is why our industry is making so much money, we have something unique to sell.
Domaining.com will be always what people type-in for domaining.
And this is probably why I turned down a “crazy” offer last month for this site.
Bloggers should pay?
Some feed owners emailed me saying bloggers should paid, finally they are getting traffic from domaining.com
Yes and No.
My main feeling is bloggers are getting traffic but without their content our service cannot exist so its’ a win/win situation.
Desesperated bloggers:
I will comment more later on this.
It’s a real problem.
Does it make sense to try to make some money:
- I spend hundred thousands dollars to buy/develop/market this site.
- Maintaining and improving the site is costing me a LOT of time, money, hassles.
- Like you I also have a family to feed.
So the free model has limits I am reaching…
RegFeeNames.com
I think if we together paid something like $40-$60 per year for access to the site would be worth while and could help with the costs of running the site.
Regards,
Robbie
Alan
Francois,
I said to you many months ago charge – go for it and as for Jamie’s comment “Traffic I guess, but I do not make any money on DotWeekly.com either and that includes traffic from Domaining.com”
No Jamie – you may not make direct money but you do get readers to help build your brand and any reputation you have so although the money may not be directly tangible you are dead wrong in stating that no money is made from the presence you have on domaining.com
Compare domaining.com to a billboard – someone throws your name up for free then a few months later you complain about paying for it since it does not bring you business … but wait, more people know your name – there is still a tangible benefit.
Francois is providing FREE traffic to many bloggers at this point – something he does not have to do. How many domainers would have built this domain out the same way???? Very few as Francois is one of the handful of domainers that has any idea about true development – In fact, he was developing before most even entered this business.
It was nice to Francois state he believes the site wouldn’t be as successfull without the content so there is a hesitation to charge bloggers but I would be the first in line to pay “as a blogger” – traffic is much cheaper than adwords, more direct than almost any other venue.
It seems like some have a sense of entitlement to domaining.com – no one except Francois has any right to be on this domain so go for it, charge away.
Think of the other side – if you started domaining.com I will assume you would be first in line to say how much work you have done and continue to do and then charge for premium services. Its a two way street.
Francois – you have my vote
**Jamie Says**
I agree with 99.5% of what you said Alan but also consider it from the other side of the street. Francois stated he was thinking of charging the READERS. That was my point, charging the bloggers makes more sense then the readers!
Steve Morales
Jamie,
Completely understand your concern. However, Francois has done a remarkable job launching Domaining.com. I can tell you that it is nowhere as easy as it looks and how it is delivered by Cybertonic.
We are going through some hassles launching GeoDomaining.com in the same caliber. Francois has set the standard and anything less will not be near as successful. Tough job for us.
I applaud his efforts, hard work and financial promoting of Domaining.com. He is one of the few people who has promoted this industry in mainstream without demanding to be paid upfront. This is very commendable in my book, as most leaders in this industry want to get paid for everything in advance if they are going to do anything positive for the industry to grow.
Francois is a domainer, but a businessman first and foremost. I for one would be willing to pay for this service because I know it will continue to grow into a valuable asset that no one has ever created in the last 10 years for the domain industry. You have your forums, which now are mostly full of crap. However, Domaining.com continues to deliver great content(Because of great bloggers), and valuable resources and tools to newcomers and old timers in the domain industry.
A persons time is worth money, regardless of the software only costed a dime. Francois consistent creative effort and drive to bring new innovations to the domain industry and community should be financially rewarded, and he should not be criticized IMO for planning to charge for this great service.
Bloggers are the true heroes to Domaining.com being a success. I hope all of them continue to do what they do. As I a blogger, I can tell you that I agree with Francois 100% when he says it is a win/win situation for bloggers. Bloggers have become successful and well known in this industry because of being located on Domaining.com.
More money to Cybertonic company leads to more promotion which in fact leads to more name recoginition and more business for bloggers. Additionally and more importantly, it leads to providing more education on the domain industry for all involved.
His selfless service all these months should be rewarded now. Though I do not think $30 a month is a smart move. =) I think $10 a month would be a great start and increase as more valuable tools, customizaion, etc are added. Perhaps different levels of paid membership.
In the end, Domaining.com is going to continue to grow because bloggers know how valuable it is to their sites, and those seeking knowledge are going to be willing to pay for the education that bloggers provide, etc.
I imagine that Cybertonic will eventually pay bloggers who perform well with great content, but that is for another post.
N/A
Domaining.com Benefits:
Users = Easy to find blogs they wouldn’t know about if it wasn’t for domaining (how I found your blog).
DotWeekly.com = An audience, which can be converted to sales or used to sell advertising.
Everyone wins except Francois. He should be entitled to make a business decision.
What % of your total traffic comes from Domaining.com?
**Jamie Says**
I must say, I was kind of suprised at these numbers…
DotWeekly.com’s traffic
82.2% Direct Navigation or Bookmark
13.3% from Search Engines
4.2% from Links (42% of my links are from Domaining.com)
0.1% Unknown
So about 2% of my traffic appears to come from Domaining.com “by the numbers”
Now a question that would be hard to answer is how much of my Direct Navigation/Bookmarks are from readers from Domaining.com earlier? That I am not sure I could find out or would ever know.
Steve Morales
P.S. I feel domaining.com should be free to readers for 60 days to allow them to learn how to use the site effectively. Additionally giving them a reason to see how valuable it is to those serious about the industry and to add it to their tool box.
Readers and those seeking knowledge will pay for great content. This has been proven over and over on the internet. Domaining.com is not a newspaper, but a targeted service that can not be found anywhere on the internet for the domain industry in this quality.
However, this is not my business model, and I will support it regardless of the outcome.
Alan
Jamie,
He should charge the readers – its capitalism pure and simple. Francois has a service – why not try to make a buck. I would pay and most others will only end up paying. In fact, charge on both fronts. Its a good service for everyone and as Francois said – its only a few bucks – maybe lunch at best.
troy
I guess I am in the minority (from what seems to be the consensus) in that I am sure that I would not pay for it.
If it becomes a per month charge someone else will start another site that simply grabs all the feeds from all the same blogs and I will switch to their service.
It seems like he does not have any scarcity power, anyone can do what has been done. The domain name will likely not be as good but just a simple site that pools content will not be to tough to do (I am simply assuming this… perhaps it is very difficult and I am completely wrong).
I guess the only way to find out if it will work is to actually try it.
Erhan Yilmaz
You already made very good points Jamie. I don’t think charging readers is a good idea for domaining.com. Most blogs are wordpress, RSS feeds are readily available.
Realtor
2 cents from a faithful domaining.com reader:
1. I love Domaining.com, and I visit at least twice per day
2. I wouldn’t pay even $1 per month for access. Why? There are a handful of blogs that I believe provide me value, I was aware of these before I found domaining.com, and I’ll continue to visit those blogs directly if domaining.com charges a fee. Much of the content on the other blogs is pure crap, although I sometimes read those blogs purely for entertainment value.
3. Although I wouldn’t pay anything for Domaining.com, you better believe that I’d try to figure out a way to further monetize the website, if I were in Francois’ shoes. He doesn’t owe me as a reader anything for free.
Jamie Parks
My question is this, although I am a content provider, I am also an avid reader of domaining.com. So…Would I pay twice? Anyway, money always complicates matters, but as long as we continue to talk about things and Francois keeps reading and responding to both readers/and publishers concerns, I am confident GROWTH will come for all. Domaining.com is a vital resource for our community and deserves a sustainable revenue model. I look forward to helping Francois feed his family =)
domain king
Domaining is nothing more then an RSS feed. Anyone can build one using iGoogle customized to what they read or even get headlines in their e mail box. Domaining only exists because domainers are igbnrant to RSS and SEO.
In fact alltop.com is already doing it. Francois is NOTHING without the content he carries and HE owes it to the blogging domainers who have for years invested so much in helping the industry and creating content and never asking for a dime in return.
I believe the traffic homepage should be the new domaining feed. Domainers are cheap fucks. They won’t pay and with what’s coming down the pike for domaining from Google and certain death of parking, few domainers will be left standing soon any way.
Any smart blogger has built equity in their own blog without needing domaining to deliver traffic. I know one of the top domain blogs has over 25,000 RSS feed subscribers and daily email newsletters that are passed around the web by thousands every day.
Stan
Jamie
2% from domaining.com, I think you are overlooking that the 82.2% of the direct navigators most likely found you as a result of domaining.com
Kevin Jackson
From a business perspective, Francois does indeed need to recover costs and also to get some form of compensation for his time, effort and skills.
As much as the domain industry may fun and be a mere hobby for many, it does take time and money to produce a service of any reasonable quality.
Now, I believe that charging readers may hinder further success. Imagine what would happen if DN Forum charged you before you could read any forum post? My suggestion is to let readership stay free, and entice readers to a premium subscription that offers an added and prized bonus.
With regards to bloggers, yes, we do provide the content. Without us, the domaining.com site would be rendered useless. We get traffic, and domaining.com gets content. However, what bloggers must bear in mind is that advertising costs are huge, and there is hardly another resource that offers such highly targeted traffic for FREE.
How do you strike a balance? Again, offer a premium service for a paid subscription. This could include listing the feeds of paid bloggers on the homepage, while non-paying bloggers’ feeds are accessed via a link to “Other Feeds”.
However, bloggers should not hesitate to pay a fee, as the traffic from domaining.com, when compared to even PPC traffic, is almost priceless. Domaining.com in my opinion delivers highly targeted traffic, which is not exposed to the risks of click fraud.
It would then be the bloggers responsibility to figure out how they can monetize the traffic that they get from domaining.com. Quite frankly, any one blog could make ten times more than what they pay to Domaining.com.
Francois
Regarding traffic delivered:
Each headline in domaining.com get within the next 24 hours between 40 to 800 unique clicks (not viewers).
It’s sure that the headlines that make the newsletter (received by +95% of our members) benefit of a terrific exposure and traffic.
What happen is that clicks from mail browsers rarely have a referer, so when you look at your stats this traffic appears as bookmarked/type-in.
I guess it’s what happen with Jamie stats.
Now it’s sure that a lot of poeple should have added Jamie’s feed in their RSS reader as his posts use to be of great interest for domainers.
I will never pay:
They are people that wash their car themselves and others that allways go the washing machine.
I estimate my time worth more than the few bucks I will save doing it myself, this is why I am a washing machine fan.
People allways exist that will find all is due and/or that it pays to spend a lot of their time to save few bucks.
This is why I cannot blame Troy, as I know many Troys exist, and whatever I will charge they will allways find it as an abuse.
I am simply fortunate they use to be a minority.
Thanks for the kind words and support!
Ritz
That’s a tough Cookie!
Making Readers Pay will not work. Why?
because the initial “free access period” that is being proposed to them is enough time for them to decide which blog they’d like to follow and bookmark them or subscribe to their RSS feed.
That option is (a la fin du jour) paying simply to receive a group of RSS Feeds.
Making the Bloggers pay ? will that bring in enough money? out of the 83 sources of information, quite a few I’ve noticed are inactive.
And Also how much to charge? Charging the Bloggers would make them expect a service and that’s good TRAFFIC! Great!
But if they pay for that I can see a few of them simply making the most of their money and Flooding Domaining.com with posts advertising their own domains.
(Not as if it’s not Already happening!)
Quality articles would get rare (IMO) and if quality goes down, audience will go down too.
If bloggers are made to pay, a limit on number of posts allowed per month should be enforced. I would certainly not want to see the first page of domaining.com flooded with just one person’s blog post.
(OR maybe charge a small fee PER post? – Now That would improve quality of the posts!)
Tu es le capitaine a bords Francois. Peu importe la decision que tu prends, je te donnerai mon support.
Thanks for this post Jamie
Adam
Charge the bloggers ? There’d be no domaining.com without the content from the blogs. This is a give and take relationship. Blogs give the content and take traffic from Domaining.com Domaining.com takes the content and gives traffic.
John Motson
I thought I’d put in my two cents here too.
I have known Francois for a while now over correspondence and he has always come across as a top guy. Being a top guy does not also mean that he is stupid – on the contrary, he is a very smart businessman too – so, I am sure he will come up with a solution that will:
1. satisfy visitors who just want to read
2. keep them at the site and keep them coming back
3. finally get a revenue model that is deserving of the effort and money he has put into Domaining.com
Looking at my blog’s stats I can say that I get a daily boost from my posts that appear on Domaining.com – at least 50 visitors a day – max days have been even above 100 visitors a day ( these are stats that I could track via referrals, I am sure the figure is larger as Francois mentions). Considering my blog gets 500 to 1000 visitors a day, that is quite a percentage.
Not to mention, Domaining.com gets natural traffic so the visitors that come across from Domaining.com are usually a mixed bag of new and returning visitors which means my feed count has slowly grown since my posts started appearing on Domaining.com. As someone mentioned, some readers have come to my blog for the first time thanks to Domaining.com and the pulling power it has.
In any case, I am sure that Francois will come up with a solution that will keep his readers happy while improving the returns of Domaining.com.
All I can say is good luck Francois and keep up the great work.
John Motson
BullS
Heck I am not going to pay..somehow I will get the domain news somewhere for free like dnjournal.com
If it is charged, it is like a BS site…and it will go down
Patrick McDermott
Francois,
Until you figure things out why don’t you put up a Donation button and see what happens?
James
Thanks for the post Jamie and to all views on what Francois is trying to achieve here which is a fine line from my understanding. I would think that a decent model to work off of would be to allow a grandfather clause if you will. If you are a subscriber to Domaining.com before February 14, 2009, then you are a free member for life. If you are a new person that is discovering what domaining is by visiting Domaining.com, when why not charge a small subscription fee of $9.90USD a month or cut the retail by 20% if paid for annually.
I would personally be happy to pay a ‘per blog feed fee’ as long as it was reasonable or even go on an unlimited post package for $29 or $39 a month.
And John M- I’ll talk to you in January when our new model is up and running to advertise with you again.
And Francois could always go to the CEOs, CFOs and COOs of GM, Ford and Chrysler to ask them what he should do
LOL
Great thread Jamie- and nice to meet you.
James Wester
Ritz
You’ve beaten me to it Patrick.
I was just about to suggest that.
Chad
I wont be paying if it goes to a subscription service.
Alan
domain king
“I believe the traffic homepage should be the new domaining feed”
That is funny. Domaining.com is clear, unbaised and does not have tacky music. I respect Rick for what he has done to promote the industry but he (or you if its your post) is not a developer. Not to say Rick can’t be but there has not been one single example of any decent development projects coming from Rick and Howard – prove me if I’m wrong. Sure, great sales but anything more than awful looking adsense sites is all I have ever seen.
Francois knows what he is doing and everyone can bitch and complain all day long but domaining.com is the best resource we have for news and traffic – getting 30% of people to pay is better than 100% of non payers.
We all talk about how domains are worth 1,000′s, some of you will even say that you spend 10′s of thoushands of dollars in pre-development of a name to justify an asking price. Now you’re complaining about paying a small amount to one of your fellow domainers that has proven his commitment to the industry by continually developing new projects and promoting the industry many of us make a good living from.
Some of the post provide great suggestions and I’m sure Francois will find a balance between whats good for him and whats good the industry.
As for the haters … have a beer and chill
littledevil
No one paid for advertising, so why on earth would anyone pay for access?? I’ve already got my favorite blogs added to my reader. Silly business decision…hundreds of thousands to market and develop…..p-lease.
**Jamie Says**
Advertising rates and subscriber rates are way different, but I agree on the hundreds of thousands. Francois I’m sure paid a pretty penny for the domain name alone and he does advertise a great deal on domain forums which is not cheap in anyway. Now if Francois used those Advertising Dollars OUTSIDE of the domain industry, then we might all be in a different boat here. This could very well be the case of a bad business decision and the amount of money spent to advertise Domaining.com .
~
If Domaining.com was advertised in “Business” magazines, business type blogs etc… I would see domaining type bloggers tripping over each other to pay to be a feed provider on Domaining.com. The posts would still need some policing, but could you imagine being able to “present” yourself/brand to Afternic/Buydomains.com buyers?
~
I hope you read this idea Francois because if I had the money, that’s what I would be doing
rpanella
Am I missing something here?
Other than having an excellent domain, what does Domaining.com provide? As far as I can tell they have no unique content and nothing that couldn’t be easily duplicated.
As someone who uses a feed reader (Google Reader) and has subscribed to all the domain blogs I am interested in, I see no reason to have to visit Domaining.com on a regular basis.
A competitor is trivial to set up, and many feed aggregation scripts already exist.
I don’t see anyone paying for a “service” like this other than suckers who are unaware how simple it is to subscribe to any blog in their preferred reader.
I agree that Domaining.com is great for the industry and an excellent place to point people new to it, but I don’t think it provides any unique value that could be charged for.
RSS is not magic!
As a user of Domaining, I would “never” pay for someone to parse RSS feeds.
Now I might pay for Domaining to remove “Frager Factor” from spamming the site with useless posts.
Anyone in for that?
**Jamie Says**
The last part is funny
namer.ca
asking bloggers to pay would be like, a company asking their employees to pay because they provide shelter and safe working environment, it’s quite absurd, but maybe they can be fooled. What value does domaining.com provide beside feeds? One Word, Shortcut!
Does the world need more reliable shortcuts? or more, search engines, and directories like yellow pages, the users will decide.
Stephen Douglas
Wow! Just the 36 responses alone should alert Francois to what he’s trying to do is NOT IN HIS BEST INTERESTS.
Francois, take it from a marketing executive (me). Charge the bloggers you feature a yearly fee, within the $30 – $50 range. Then start getting some domain industry ad banners on your site, a la Andrew Alleman’s Domainnamewire.com and Ron Jackson’s historical DnJournal.com.
BUT NEVER, EVER EVER CHARGE YOUR READERS A FEE!!!
This reader revenue “path” has been abandoned online by most of the largest newspapers and magazines in the world. Why? Nobody pays for content to read that they can easily find with a “google alert” on their gmail account or homepage settings. I can read ALL YOUR BLOG ARTICLES from an email that google sends me from simply setting up an “alert” from google on the term “Domains”. This is free, and is a standard process used by most professional domainers I know (if you aren’t using this service, you’re waaay behind).
Granted, Domaining.com sums it up neatly, gathers the best of the best blogs (ahem, not speaking for my own blog, I’m full of hot air).
All your readers that you hope will pay you can find the same info by using Google’s free services. At most, I’d be willing to pay you $50 a year to keep my blog featured on your site. I suspect most of us domain bloggers and newsites will pay this price. Maybe Adam Strong will complain because he has a huge Burger King budget he has to adhere to, but the rest of us will probably concede and pay you.
Heck, there are about 150 domain bloggers out there, so that’s $7500 a year, more than enough to pay for your labor and server costs to run the site. What you want is READERSHIP, so you can sell those uniques to CPMs or directly to the domain community to boost your revenue. Banner ads, adlinks, even promotional “topline” story lead-ins bought by domain conferences, domain auctions, and other newsworthy commercial domainer events.
You haven’t yet implemented banner ads on your site, nor any other CPA type ads, or even links to sell domainer ebooks. There are many ways to monetize your site that you haven’t explored yet, so don’t be misled by the false “easy money” ways of obtaining financial support for your great website. Start placing and selling advertising banners, promote the amount of hits you get monthly (I’ll bet it’s over 10,000 targeted visitors), and sell to the TOP of the domain heap, and leave the readers alone.
Keep your readership free, my friend, because if you don’t, you will lose the advertising value you already have achieved with your great site because everyone reads it, and include in that group are NEW READERS and POTENTIAL DOMAIN BUYERS.
If you even provide a 60 day “free readership” program, you’re going to LOSE the majority of your readers because they will identify the top blogs you feature, and just subscribe to them for free.
You can always add a news story on a “one time” basis from a source that hasn’t joined your website, but you can followup with them and let them know that if they want to have regular information targeted to domainers worldwide, they should pay the $50 a year to be included. I have about 25 new companies that would LOVE to reach the domainer crowd and pay you $50 a year quickly to have their news posts appearing on Domaining.com.
Hope this helps you, I’d hate to see you self-destruct because of confusion regarding how to make revenue off your popular site.
NOTE: If you follow my advice, a free blog listing membership should be in order for me, don’t you think? ‘-) just kidding bro!
Dan
Hi,
Bad idea.
Peace!
dan
Ken Gettys
Free is what we want to pay for all the things we want. Lots of money is what we want to earn for our labor so we can pay for the things we need and want.
If I build Stuffed Widgets, it costs me time and money to do so. If no one will pay for these nicely built Stuffed Widgets because they only want Stuffed Widgets that are free, then they won’t get any Stuffed Widgets because I won’t build Stuffed Widgets for free. So go stuff yourself turkey and enjoy!
Charlie
Francois is complaining about not earning enough via advertising space – its no wonder, have you seen what he charges. A friend of mine enquired and nearly fainted, and apparantly Francois didn’t even try to justify his astronomical prices with even a mention of his sites traffic.
Ok so domaining sends traffic to featured blogs, but the bottom line is Francois is getting FREE content from the very same featured blogs. He first went wrong when he required people to log in. He gets his content for free and is now wishing to charge the folks he gets the free content from. I personally think domaining is totally mismanaged and does anyone actually sell that many domains as a result of having a featured domaining listing?
Develop Domains
Although I read Domaining’s daily email, there is nothing stopping me from simply adding the RSSs from the different blogs. I believe there is a slight misunderstanding because no sensible business man would be charging (or attempt to) their loyal readers.
If the case is they believe their revenue is low considering the amount of traffic the receive, then charging people to “read” is absurd. Maybe if the site offered more value they could get away with it, but not from what they have now.
IMO, the site is not monetized to it’s possibility.
littledevil
Stephen douglas is right on, hopefully francois reads these comments, because he’s gonna lose on this deal. Dnheadlines is free, and I’m sure after reading about this other wbemasters are gonna launch their own free service. Having a good domain is one thing, but a bad business model flushes it all down the toilet.
Greg B
I wouldn’t pay (as a reader) either. However, if francois would advertise the newsletter in places where domain “end users” rather than “domainers” congregate I would pay something to have a blog featured/included.
I have always agreed with francois’ comments about the domain auctioneers failure to advertise where the end users are – I wonder if there is an analogy here.
Scott
I figured I would chime in too. I have a small blog, and Domaining.com certainly helped me get readers. I thank Francois for that.
But the fact is, I don’t get nearly the clicks that other bloggers do on Domaining.com. Is it because my content is inferior? Perhaps. I’d like to think that Francois’ own opinion is accurate when he said (i’m paraphrasing) that no one knows who I am, so no one clicks.
It’s the main reason why I focus on facts and content, rather than posting an opinion no one cares about. (before you slam me, i know that the trends themselves are based on opinions, but i try to support them with facts and proof. When I say ‘opnions’ I mean on the domain industry in general)
Because of my smaller amount of traffic from Domaining.com, I would be unwilling to pay for my blog to be featured there. I’m not saying it’s Francois’ fault, cuz it isnt. It’s just that I can’t justify the fee for the traffic I personally receive. And I think you would find many of the smaller “no-name” bloggers agreeing with me on this.
(In case you were wondering, I average about 20-30 clicks from Domaining.com when I post. Sometimes I get more, but not always)
Other bigger bloggers may get the clicks. But something tells me they would get traffic anyways without Domaining.com
And I am against charging readers.
I’m on the side that feels there are other ways to monetize Domaining.com. This industry is fully capable of working together to find a solution that benefits all three parties: Francois’ business, the bloggers and the readers.
Brokering seems to work well for large email lists, why not go there? I receive Rick Latonas newsletter every day, even though i never bought anything from it. I love it and don’t feel it is spammy in any way. Something tells me Domaining.com has a large amount of email subscribers.
RKB
I think Francois should do these two things to monetize the site:
1. Charge sites a small subscription fee to have their links included in domain.com top tool bars.
2. Sell display ads on the site.
Thanks.
RKB
Correction: I meant domaining.com top tool bars above.
Francois
Charging bloggers:
I already said NO.
At the inverse, find a way to motivate and reward them is on my TODO list, but it’s not the moment to talk about.
What I will do is already explained. Read very carrefully and again don’t panic by the litle change, it’s for better.
Sponsored headlines are expensive:
Some are charging $150 to can only post your domain name in their newsletter. And not a title, a description and a link like we are offering, plus the extra promotion by being sticked at top of our homepage for 24 hours.
I paid a popular forum several thousands just for a very small banner not even visible without having to scroll in their newsletter… Do you know how Google advertising cost for related domain name terms?
Think aout and tell me if we are abusing with the pricing of our sponsored headlines or in fact it’s a terrific opportunity for a very reasonable cost?
Just for info less than 5% of our members declined to receive our daily newsletter.
Charge sites for be listed in our menu:
The aim is list domain related sites we recommend and that have accepted to show our “Domaining Award”. This should NOT change. The last we are proud to recommend is Escrow.com
Shaun
Francois, charging people to view the aggregated content of others is absurd in my opinion. Do it and somebody else will fill the void quickly I would guess. I would suggest working on delivering more value on the site so that advertisers are more compelled to pay to be there.
BobWhite.me
Go Francois!
I love capitalism. The market will decide if the product is worth the price. If you don’t feel its worth it, don’t subscribe. I also think it is generous of him to not charge other bloggers for promotion of their blogs. Best of luck!
Ms Domainer
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Francois is free to do as he wishes, but as a consumer, I have the right to not subscribe; as a reader, I can add whatever feeds I wish.
While domaining.com has been a nice feature, it isn’t a must-have site for me, and I would not be subscribing.
But I still wish Francois the best.
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