Using Free Domain Services to Build Business
Richard: And at the same time, I was looking at Mydomain.com, which was owned by another Vancouverite, and it was more of a white elephant for him. It was just not on his radar screen, he had other projects going on, so we bought that and rewrote it from the ground up, and we took that up to hosting 500,000 domains.
Monte: Wow, that was big, and you attracted a suitor because of that, I guess?
Richard: Yeah, so we had, you know, Namesdirect had about 100,000 names under management, as a registrar, we had Mydomain, we bought 500,000 domains that--it was a free dns--or is a free dns domain name management service. And that’s still around, it’s still going strong. So after that, I mean, I merged with Namezero. They owned at the time around 1.4 million domain names that there were providing to individuals to use at no charge and they were generating revenue off advertising.
Monte: Right.
Richard: That was in 2001, and then in 2002, coming--getting closer here, we--Mydomain and Namesdirect was sold by Namezero to Dobster [ph], and, you know, I think that was a great move for the clients of Mydomain and Namesdirect. Dobster’s [ph] a very solid company and some great people there.
Monte: Yeah, yeah, there’s some great people. They just faced a major security issue here, but they are some great people running that company.
Richard: And then so I left, at the time it was sold to Dobster [ph], and in 2003, I took a bit of time off and then I wrote and set up Domainmanager.com, which is a small, free dns domain management service, with a domainer in mind. So it’s got features in there that I wanted for myself and I figured well if I’m going to write it or get it written, I may as well have it set up so that I can offer it to other domainers that I know, and I didn’t really feel like setting up with Visa or Mastercard, so it’s free.
Monte: That’s great. That’s great. Well, I mean, the free model seems to be something that you’ve actually been successful with and have made money on--
Richard: Yeah.
Monte: --over the years.
Richard: I really like the free, it brings in a community feel, and it’s a very soft sell, it’s--when I was at Mydomain, we would very often get e-mails saying, you know, how do you make money? I don’t have any of my domain names with Namesdirect, I’ve got them all at Godaddy or at Moniker or at Networksolutions, and I use your Mydomain services for free. I’m like well, you know, if you just consider us in the future, that’s all we ask, it’s a soft sell.
Monte: Right, right.
Richard: And--
Monte: And as people build more and more confidence in that model, they start building confidence to have their names all in one place and all that stuff, so I guess the model does work.
Richard: Exactly. So along that line, I’ve started something that it not with Domainnames, but it’s another free model that freephotos.com, and that’s a free stock photo sharing site, so people can upload photos and download photos for free to use for web design or brochures or commercial use with no credit back, no fees, and--
Monte: Oh, that’s cool, so it’s kind of a virile network, and the more photos that are shared, the more you can use and so it’s everybody helping everybody with the photos--
Richard: Exactly.
Monte: --type network. That’s very cool.
Richard: So that pretty much brings us up to today, I do a lot of consulting in domain recovery for hijacked domains, help registrars with monetization [ph] of their domains, and do a lot of brokering, both of high value domain names, and also for people that own high value domains to get them the most amount of money from advertisers directly or from PPC.
Monte: Right, right. Well, it sounds like--and I guess I knew this already, but we have a lot of things in common, you know, with our domain sales and history and it started that we got started around the same time, and have a lot of the similarities and we’ve crossed each other’s path so many times and met, got to meet each other for the first time at Traffic, back in October.
Richard: Yeah, that was great.
Monte: And you won quite a great honor from that show, which was basically the Domainer of the Year, voted on by your peers.
Richard: Yeah, it was--you know, I was surprised, but, you know, very flattered. The group of people that gathered at Traffic was just--I mean, it’s just so fantastic to have everyone in the same room. It was just an amazing honor.
Monte: Yeah, definitely. And this coming meeting’s gonna be really awesome in October. I know that Howard Neu, who’s on next, is gonna talk a little bit about that, ‘cause it’s just a--was such a success last year, and we’ve talked about it a couple of times during the shows and it’s gonna be a real success this year, as well.
Richard: Yeah, I--
Monte: I’m excited about it.
Richard: I recommend it to everyone.
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