Hey Witt

[lotsofissues]

Please don't take this as an insult but why do you advertise your service here, where many cheaper options are clearly listed?

[thewitt]

Why not?

By advertising here, I help out Peo and support the forum by paying him an advertising fee.

Believe it or not, not everyone is looking for a $6.25 domain registration in a foreign country :cool:, a free domain name in a TLD that no one has ever heard of, or even a sub-$10 domain registration. In addition, many of the people who start with these other services will eventually transfer their domain to someone with a different business and support model.

We don't do a significant amount of business off any of the forums that are haunted by domain speculators and people looking for stuff "on the cheap," but I can identify a number of our regular customers as visitors and posters here, so I don't mind paying for ad space here.

-t

[Todd]

Well said thewitt and I'm sure Peo appreciates your support. Now if only you came in to existence a couple of years ago. :)

I know I would have happily sent business your way for one main reason. You are one of the few domain registrars, which clearly don't offer web hosting. All of the others seem to be affiliated with it in some way, and I'm sure most web hosting companies will agree they don't want to refer customers to a company that will in turn promote a competitor. Dotster is a good example of that, as they had no prior affiliation with any companies and then bam, the next day they are pushing web hosting on their main page.

A couple of years ago I opened an OpenSRS account as well to avoid this but had another reputable domain registration company been around to take the business I would have happily referred business elsewhere.

That might be an idea for some of you domain registrars, if you can agree not to advertise other hosting companies on your site you may capture a larger market base from web hosting customers that don't want to enter the domain registration business.

[sense]

forgive me but you should change your site design first. it seems ugly

allthough I prefer the cheaper registrars I would not go with you even just for this reason :rolleyes:

[Chicken]

... because of the logo??? Sense isn't making himself. :confused:

[thewitt]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Break my heart, baby.

-t

[lotsofissues]

Well it ain't as horrible as sense describes it but I understand his position. I am a cautious person with credit cards. If a site's design is too crapohorrific I won't buy.

[Super8]

Originally posted by thewitt
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Break my heart, baby.

-t
Cheapest price isn't everything. Service is key & I've seen many complaints on this board about cheap registrars. If MyOstrich has good & fast service & good problem resolution he will do well despite not having the cheapest price. MyOstrich DOES have the cheapest price for .CA domains and does accept money orders. I wish him well and may even entrust him with my next domain. :)

[sense]

Originally posted by thewitt
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

Break my heart, baby.

-t

you me too

first US is not the only country on the world ! you american guys should understand this. US is a foreign country for me and I still prefer namecheap instead of a registrar at my country.

also about .tk (I guess you mean .tk), they just started and will be one of the most known tld after .com .net .org in my opinion as it's free :classic2:

[lotsofissues]

.cx gave free domains and DNS, but who knows about it?

[Super8]

Originally posted by sense

also about .tk (I guess you mean .tk), they just started and will be one of the most known tld after .com .net .org in my opinion as it's free :classic2:

Don't count on it. .TK will pull a Namezero a or a .kg once they have enough suckers and will start charging you to keep your domain.

[thewitt]

Originally posted by Super8
Don't count on it. .TK will pull a Namezero a or a .kg once they have enough suckers and will start charging you to keep your domain.
Ahh, but the same people who were screwed over by Namezero are flocking to .tk ---- fool me once...

I can't count the number of people who have tried to transfer Namezero domains to us - that they don't actually own. It's sad, but they get mad at us for not being able to make the transfer happen. Then they can't reach anyone at Namezero to straighten out the registration, renew, actually buy the domain, etc. It's really sad.

-t

[Super8]

Witt.. do people tell you that it is a NameZero domain that they are trying to transfer? Or do you find out after initiating the transfer?
I think that ALL registars should have a NameZero section in their FAQ explaining how to transfer a NZ domain. (you have to have NZ "PLUS" service and have access to the Admin contact email address).

[thewitt]

Since most transfers are totally automatic, we don't know until the transfer is rejected. Actually, they time out more than they are actively rejected.

We then try to educate the customer, but they think they bought the domain in the first place.

It can be very frustrating.

We have a 100% refund policy for failed domain transfers, but they somehow feel cheated anyway...

-t

[Super8]

Originally posted by thewitt
We have a 100% refund policy for failed domain transfers, but they somehow feel cheated anyway...
-t
That's generous. Not everyone does that.

[sense]

Originally posted by Super8


Don't count on it. .TK will pull a Namezero a or a .kg once they have enough suckers and will start charging you to keep your domain.

I'm allready a paid customer of dot.tk :rolleyes:

[thewitt]

Originally posted by thewitt
We don't do a significant amount of business off any of the forums that are haunted by domain speculators and people looking for stuff "on the cheap," but I can identify a number of our regular customers as visitors and posters here, so I don't mind paying for ad space here.

I said this last week, and I have to appologise. Our ad here has been very successful, and I thank all of you who have come to our site and registered or transferred domains.

Thank you for your support!

-t

[lotsofissues]

Exactly how successful? If I may intrude.

[thewitt]

Originally posted by lotsofissues
Exactly how successful? If I may intrude.
Though I won't quote sales figures (my partner would skewer me), I was just running user tracking reports and we have exceeded expected referrals for the month by 200% already.

When we enter into an ad campaign, there are a couple of goals. One is simple branding, and for that the number of impressions are what's interesting. We don't have a way to track impressions with the ad service that Peo has set up, so we can only track click-throughs. We have a fairly accurate reverse equation for tracking impressions from click-throughs though, as we have both pieces of data for most of our ads and they track fairly well.

The second measurement of course is sales. We did not expect to pay for the ad space here based on what we figured the demographic was after - as you know there are many threads here on cheapest, free, "live with poor support if you have to and save a dollar" domain registrations. We will not only pay the ad costs, but by all appearances we'll do very well with the ad here on a return on investment perspective.

That should be vague enough to keep me out of the fire with my partner. Sorry I can't be more specific, but I can say that the results here are already much better than the results were at WHT...

-t

[lotsofissues]

Its really a misnomer to say $8 domains come with poor service. I've used to $8 registrars before.

[thewitt]

Originally posted by lotsofissues
Its really a misnomer to say $8 domains come with poor service. I've used to $8 registrars before.
Did I say that all $8 domains come with poor service? I never said anything like that at all.

There are poor service models at every price range. I just find it wild when people put up with poor service, add-on costs, no control panel for things like DNS changes, etc - all so they can save a couple of dollars on a domain name.

I've seen the same people who slam a particular registrar for poor support, or difficulty in changing their information go right ahead and recommend that same registrar wholeheartedly to the next newbie who comes along. It's just wild. It's like people are not ready to admit they might have made a mistake when choosing their registrar, so you should "pick me," "pick me!"

If you knowingly register your domain with someone who never answers support email, or charges you for support phone calls, or adds costs for ownership changes, DNS changes, transfers, etc., than you deserve what you get.

These problems are not relegated solely to the sub $10 registrar, but you have to wonder how they can afford to pay support staff when they don't make any money on domain registration. My prediction is that most, if not all of these registrars will be taking the Stargate route. They sell like mad for no profit to build a client base, then raise their prices a couple of times - losing only a few of the die hard cheapskate customers in the process. It's a great business plan. It's not the one we have decided to persue, but it's been very effective to date for some.

The people who are jumping on $6-and-change registrations are also just waiting for the other shoe to drop. If they don't value the name enough to worry about losing the ability to manage it when their registrar disappears, or maybe even lose it when they can't transfer out or renew, then that's fine. If they are putting serious effort and money into the development of a website, and they are paying less than they would pay the babysitter for the domain name, then they deserve what they get when they lose control of it, or lose it completely.

I know I've said before that people continue to try to transfer domains to use from Namezero - names that they don't actually own. Hello? Wake up and smell the marketing scam...

-t

[Coight]

Originally posted by lotsofissues
Please don't take this as an insult but why do you advertise your service here, where many cheaper options are clearly listed?

The thing you need to realise is thewitt most probably have better support. Although Im happy with godaddy myself, it takes 3-5 days for a response.

[thewitt]

Although we don't state it in our TOS, we strive to answer every support desk question within an hour. We do take support very seriously.

-t

[Super8]

I always get a reply from 000domains within a couple of hours.

[ducktape]

On the subject of .TK names if you don't recieve 30 visitors in 90 days it goes back into the pool again.

I am looking to become a registrar myself. Can anybody help?

http://www.triadwebhost.com

[wm2k1]

http://www.icann.org/registrars/accreditation-process.htm

[ducktape]

yeah we know that we meant a reseller. anyone know of cheap and good i mean just cheap with a good control panel thats all were asking for.

[Todd]

:topic:

This thread has gone off topic so I'm closing it. If you have questions which aren't relevant to this thread please feel free to start new threads.