I did not intend my comment on prices as a dig. I don't know what you offer
or what you charge, I was only making a general statement. But as you say,
an RSP cannot compete on price with OpenSRS. So the RSP must EITHER provide
more than what OpenSRS offers, OR cater to clients who only register a small
number of domains.
As I understand it, you feel OpenSRS should not offer additional features,
so you can add them yourself, thereby "adding value".
The problem with this reasoning is exactly what you yourself point out -
there are already lower-priced registrars WITH the value added services. If
OpenSRS does not offer these services, then they will lose business to the
other registrars that do. These are not unique services, they are
"commodities".
If OpenSRS adds URL forwarding, DNS services, or under-construction pages (a
la register.com and others) in a way that allows all their RSP's to offer
them (not just the "go-getters" that are currently providing them), it will
bring them (and the RSP's) more business, which is obviously good for
OpenSRS.
My point is that if OpenSRS does NOT implement these features, to the
detriment of their own business and that of MANY of their RSP's, someone
else will (or rather, "already does"), and so the "protectionist" measures
fail.
Any decision to impose additional qualifications for RSP's, or to not offer
desirable additional services, will have a negative impact on the bottom
line, and will not accomplish the intended effect.
----- Original Message -----
From: "ecs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Chuck Hatcher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: New services: forwarding/DNS?
No, they should have had stiffer standards from the start. Their standards
have always been to low, if they were a true wholesaler, as they like to
claim. The program was designed to work as it has, to utilize RSPs to
attract clients and then sign up the RSP client's as RSPs for OpenSRS.
But from the start they have stated that their business was domain name
registration and the RSPs should add the value added services. Now they are
moving into those value added services, which will result in taking even
more of the RSP's clients.
The point that William made, and the point that I am making is that they
should stay out of the value added area and allow their RSPs to provide
these value added services.
As for your dig about our prices, obviously they can offer lower prices to
our clients for the added services than we can, given the volumes they
handle on a daily basis. This is true for any of their RSPs. An RSP can
not compete with the price that OpenSRS can offer, as OpenSRS has the volume
of all the RSPs clients at their control.
It is impossible for any retailer to offer lower prices than the wholesale
supplier. That is why reputable wholesale suppliers do not sell direct to
the public, bypassing their retailers.
Below anybody jumps in saying that they register domain names for less than
they pay OpenSRS for the service, the answer is yes, you can, as long as you
can provide value added services to make up the difference. However, when
your supplier starts to offer these value added services, you can not
continue the practice of selling at a loss and stay in business for very
long.
As for keeping your wholesale prices low, this has been discussed many times
on this list. I had no intention of making this thread another pricing
discussion, but if you wish to raise the issue, let's look at all aspects of
the issue.
OpenSRS is not the low price leader for wholesale domain name registration,
but one of the higher priced ones. Many Registrars offer lower priced
volume discounts for domain name registrations.
Register.com, through an affiliate, offers lower prices to end users than
OpenSRS does to most of it's RSPs.
Enom.com already offers most of these features as part of their registration
price and they are much lower than OpenSRS if the reseller has any volume.
This has already been discussed many times on this list.
What I am asking, and what I think William was asking, is that OpenSRS stick
to providing domain name registration services and leave the value added
services to it's RSPs to provide. Not that they lower their price, but that
they only offer the domain name registration and stay out of the value added
area.
Which is not unreasonable to ask, given all the times RSPs have been told on
this list not to rely upon domain name registration, but to concentrate on
providing value added services to the domain name registration services.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Hatcher" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "ecs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 1:22 PM
Subject: Re: Re[2]: New services: forwarding/DNS?
> In other words, now that I'm an RSP, make it more difficult so nobody else
> can become one!
>
> You seem to be asking OpenSRS to make their service less accessible, and
> with as few features as possible. Come on, you are talking about an
> Internet-based market in which information flows freely to everyone. You
> can't expect to keep your customers in the dark. Even if OpenSRS made it
a
> point to hide from your clients, another registrar would step in to fill
the
> demand for low-cost services.
>
> If your customers are going around you, it only means they didn't think
the
> value you were adding to what OpenSRS offers was worth what they were
paying
> you.
>
> Another view point is that the more RSP's OpenSRS recruits, and the more
> features they add, the bigger their volume and the lower their costs per
> domain. That's the only way they will survive in the long run, and the
only
> way they can continue to keep our wholesale prices low.
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "ecs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Ross Wm. Rader" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "William X. Walsh"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: "Marc Schneiders" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Thursday, October 12, 2000 11:23 AM
> Subject: Re: Re[2]: New services: forwarding/DNS?
>
>
> This is not quite true. You already compete for our clients by making it
so
> easy to become an RSP and allow non-RSPs input to these discussion lists.
> When one of our clients visit your site they are immediately told how easy
> it is to become an RSP themselves. We have lost several large clients to
> you this way.
>
> Many that remain do so because of the services that we offer that they can
> not get from you as an RSP. Once you start offering these same type of
> services to RSPs that I currently offer to my clients, we expect to lose
> many more to you. This is why we say no in every survey.
>
> We also expect to more to you once you may it easy for RSP to RSP
transfers.
> Many have register domains with us and are now RSPs themselves. We expect
> that they will transfer those domains to their own account once you make
> such transfers easy to do.
>
> So you are directly competing with your RSPs who make the public aware of
> OpenSRS now and will compete even more directly as you make these
additional
> services available to RSPs.
>
> So for once William is correct. Does not happen very often, but in this
> case he is correct and you are expanding the ways that you will directly
> compete with your RSPs once you make these additional services available.
>
> You may knock these other Registrars, but you are doing the same thing in
a
> more subtle way. How do you think you expanded the number of RSPs so
> rapidly, had it not been for the clients of your RSPs discovering OpenSRS
> through your RSPs' selling actions and then discovering from your site and
> these discussion lists how easy it was to become an RSP themselves and
> bypass the RSP that introduce them to your service?
>
> So you have always competed with your RSPs for the clients that the RSPs
> introduced to your company. And not just with Domain Direct, but directly
> through your advertising, your site design and your mailing lists. You
just
> have not been upfront about your competition with your RSPs.
>
>
>
>
