They claim to be the number one registrar. If so, they are laughing at us all the way to the bank.
If history plays out with them like it has with vendors from other industries, their business model will gain them dominance in market share but thin margin 'should' kill them later. However unlike other industries where value added services could not carry those now defunct vendors, Go Daddy is pushing hosting, and that monthly recurring revenue may just be all they need. They are not selling domains below cost and being Internet based (web based) they have an automated system for establishing and fulfilling accounts, that includes billing. Taking all this into account they only need to keep churn to an acceptable percentage and they have nothing to worry about. How does this affect Spy? Not much and a lot. Most all our speculator market has gone to Go Daddy. No more major accounts placing bulk orders. However our single users are not being tipped off so fast so we are still ahead of the game in this arena. For those proponents of customer service ...customer service can save you, but only with select customer types. My advice is identify them, and work them for referrals to establish more like accounts. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about Go Daddy other than to keep an eye on them. I for one don't keep my head in the sand. I believe knowing and understanding how your competition operates is key to winning sales. Not a one of us should kid ourselves that Go Daddy is not a factor in our lives. They will continue to grow and perhaps fix their customer service issues as they see market share increase. Slow controlled growth is key for any business, perhaps the only thing wrong with Go Daddy is they are growing too fast to staff up fairly in terms of customer care. I look at their site and it looks ugly and disorganized. However the price is clear and that is where they have won customers from us 100 percent of the time. Go Daddy has been soliciting us, but so has VeriSign etc... Our position is after 2 years of building a customer base and care system around OpenSRS, running numbers through any other registrar is counter-productive. Again customer service makes a difference, but is not a panacea when the price point is so wide between ourselves and GoDaddy. If you are like us, you know that there is no wide margin in domains (little profit). We use domains as a source to draw in value added and other web services. But as I mentioned earlier, Go Daddy may care less about customer care and long on-hold times. The numbers and profit say it all. If the numbers are up, why make adjustments? They are laughing at us all the way to the bank. It's probably some kid genius c++ programmer with a hacked Oracle database working out of his bedroom, automating everything. <laugh> This is just my opinion. Regards, Lars Hindsley SpyProductions Achieve Web Success http://www.spyproductions.com vox: 302.369.3060 fax: 302.369.6040 -----------------------------------
