Re: Comments of Chuck Hatcher
Our success rate. Chuck Hatcher estimates that our success rate is "near
0%" for the most actively pursued names, to "near 100% for names that only
one person in the world wants." Both the premises and conclusions here are
incorrect, but, because our revenue per click-through speaks for itself,
they are also not relevant to whether SnapNames is good business. Here's
why.
Our overall success rate prior to the moratorium on drops was running at 76%
(a number that will only improve as more registrars add their power to our
consortium). Regardless of how much demand there is for any particular
name, you can only charge for the name once (as Mr. Hatcher noted) and we do
get most of those we charge for. If we weren't successful in answering the
demand (the premise of Mr. Hatcher's first conclusion), then our customers
wouldn't keep coming back and spending money on our services. But they do.
And our highly responsive legally-trained customer service personnel are
uniformly praised, both directly to us and in chat rooms. Meanwhile, our
partners profit enormously.
As Mr. Hatcher also noted, the SnapBack(tm) slots do fill up and we only
take one order for each name. Just so. As in initial registrations,
back-orders are first-come, first-served, and we are extremely confident
that this will be the form of the solution chosen by the Registry and ICANN
as the only fair and workable solution. Based on our substantial
conversations with opinion leaders in the industry, NameWinner-type auctions
for a few will not be in the running. We discuss reasons for this in our
most recent "State of the Domain" (subscribe for free:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]).
Mr. Hatcher continues with the insightful observation that: "Any time a
product is priced at substantially less than its true (or perceived) market
value, someone will step up and remedy the situation." We agree. Who will
step up? NameWinner? No. They don't track total demand for all names;
instead, they gather a few pros to bid on an accordingly small number of
names. They also have the very short notice of a few days to do so. It's
not scaleable to more than these few people in the know, nor scaleable by
more than a few registrars -- how many sophisticated speculators are there
in the world? On the other hand, if it's long-term auction capability
you're looking for, only SnapNames and its partners are tracking *all*
customer demand for all names in order to capitalize on their market value.
We collect buyer demand data through our SnapShot(tm) service on partners
sites all over the world, and only we can have true auctions, with all
relevant bidders present, rather than the few professionals brought together
by NameWinner at the last minute.
(I note also that the NameWinners, acting alone, will become increasingly
less successful over time even if, as they allegedly informed their
customers in advance of this drop, they bend Registry rules to participate.
Moreover, most if not all NameWinner customers are ours as well; speculators
hedge their bets. We're the way to diversify your risks.)
Will customers be misled into thinking they have a better chance than they
do? Not if you manage their expectations. We don't promise to get names.
We promise the best chance in the industry, and on that we deliver. Will
they be frustrated because they can't get a back-order because it's taken?
No more frustrated than they already are on your sites, when they want a
name but it's already registered. There's no inherent distinction between
the two, and yet you've lived with the latter for some time now, at modest
margins.
Cameron Powell
VP of Business Development and General Counsel
SnapNames
115 NW First Avenue
Suite 300
Portland, OR 97209
(503) 219-9990 x229
(503) 274-9749 fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Connecting Registrars and their Customers to the Secondary Market in Domain
Names
-----Original Message-----
From: John Payne [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2001 5:42 PM
To: Mason Cole
Cc: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
Subject: Re: ATTN: Resellers -- input requested on domain name
back-ordering
On Tue, Aug 28, 2001 at 09:52:32AM -0700, Mason Cole wrote:
> Dear TUCOWS Reseller:
>
> Several substantive conversations with TUCOWS' Elliot Noss and Tim Denton,
> specifically about the changing nature of registration services demand,
have
> developed into working ideas about what SnapNames can bring to registrars
> and their resellers to increase conversion rates. TUCOWS has asked us to
> forward our thinking and seek your input.
Not the kind of discussion you're after, but I would like to know
a) Why this is not on biz-ops rather than discuss-list
b) How snapback avoids abusing the registry, but can still scale to
the volume you need to remain a viable company.
(and simply spreading the load across various registrars does not
count as avoiding abuse, as it won't scale)
--
John Payne http://sackheads.org/jpayne/ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sackheads.org/uce/ Fax: +44 870 0547954
To send me mail, use the address in the From: header
