First, let me start by acknowledging that the communication around this initiative has been poor, and on behalf of Tucows I apologize. Also, this announcement came via LRU last week, Monday October 17, with implementation planned for Wednesday October 19. We acknowledge that there was limited information in the announcement, and the window of advance notice was only 2 days, both of which are not acceptable. I commit to each of you that we will improve both the content and timing of future announcements.
Second, the announced and planned change to the nameservers for expiring domains in fact did not occur this past Wednesday. It is currently scheduled for next Monday and will include some modifications to the functionality originally announced. Before I go into detail on these changes, let me take a step back and start this whole process over so that everyone feels they have an understanding of what we are trying to do and the strategy behind it. I will try to balance the length of this response with including as much detail as possible so as to make this helpful. We have observed that the market for domains - specifically expiring domains, auction services and parked pages, has changed dramatically over the past few years. It is a very dynamic market that changes almost on a monthly basis. This dynamic state is likely to continue for the next few years, and all of us will be learning as it evolves. Our intention is to take what we are learning from the market, and to develop services for the benefit of our resellers and their registrants. We do not know how to refer to this market yet - it has been called the secondary market, dropped domains, expiring domains, unused or parked domains, even enhanced services. We do know is that it has become a big business. Many of the registrars are taking advantage of parts of the market. These registrars are also hosting providers and your competitors, and they are leveraging the market changes to your disadvantage. For those of you that have not followed the activities of the Registrar community, many are engaged in some kind of activity that leverages their accreditation and portfolio of domains to generate additional revenue. Some auction their expiring domains. Some generate revenue from paid search advertising. Some have partnerships with specific buyers of domains. Some have programs linked to their batch pool connections. Some do not drop names at all. This is to their benefit, with little to no consideration for the original registrant or their channel of resellers. Our strategy is that we want to identify and develop relevant tools and services that 1) assist our resellers in maximizing their revenue potential for their domains registered with Tucows, and 2) provide our resellers with good data about each domain's activity which resellers can use to provide service to their customers. . The solution we are working on will have 4 key elements. I will go into some detail on each and the inter-relationship between these elements. 1) Parked Pages We are developing a Parked Page service that will take a reseller's parked or unused domains and generate revenue through a "Paid Search" or "Pay-per-Click" ad based revenue model. For the domains in this program, the domain would display a customized screen with two elements - a reseller portion at the top that could include a company logo, links to a website, promotional material or specific messages (whatever our resellers deem appropriate), and a contextual search based list of pay-per-click links. Tucows would negotiate a supplier relationship with one of the major paid-search players. All revenue generated through this program would be split 50/50 with the reseller. Our ability to aggregate advertising volumes across our reseller channel will provide the basis for negotiating good financial terms with the paid search partner we select. Tucows would take responsibility for the development and ongoing maintenance of the systems to support this initiative, provide summary reports, and deposit funds directly into the reseller's OpenSRS account on a monthly basis. There are two phases for an unused domain - pre-expiration and post-expiration. The current thinking is that a reseller would elect to include in the parked pages program some, all or none of their parked domains during the pre-expiration period. Our data to this point tells us that a reseller's share of the revenue would be in the range of $50 per thousand parked domains per month. In this case I am referring to the average name, not something unique and of high value because of the domain's profile. It is up to the reseller's discretion on how these funds are used - in some cases I can see that resellers might choose to share the proceeds with the registrant. Post-expiration, we would include in the parked pages program all domains starting at 15 days after the expiration date. We are proposing 15 days post expiry because almost all renewals post-expiration happen within 5 to 10 days (we see this pattern from the data in our systems). Domains not renewed within 15 days post-expiration typically do not renew. All domains not renewed by this point would be included in this program. Resellers would have the ability to opt-out of this phase of the program. In terms of revenue generating potential, we believe that the post-expiration phase is much greater because there will be a mix of previously used and parked domains. This is something we will come to understand better over time. Please note that the registrant will still be able to renew their domain through the entire 75-day redemption and grace period. Overall, we believe that for minimal effort on our reseller's part, we can implement a program that will be effective in generating revenue for our resellers by leveraging their unused domains, just like the retail registrars do. Timing for this service is not finalized, but we are working to launch in the late December to early January timeframe. 2) Domain Auction We see two types of customers for an auctioned domain - strategic or business customers (someone that wants a domain because of the association of that specific name to their business or venture), and the pro-players (individuals or businesses that purchase domains through auction because of the underlying value through the paid-search revenue model). These two types of customers place different valuations on the names they are purchasing. The pro-players are already involved in the paid search opportunity I referenced above. We are effectively bringing this business model to our resellers with the parked pages program. While the pro-player buys a name based on the future revenue stream, the strategic buyer purchases a specific name because it matches their brand or has another semantic value. However, in both cases, understanding the traffic associated with the domain would be of real value in determining a bid price for auctioning these domains. Traffic information would be valuable to both resellers and their registrant customers who might choose to auction a domain rather than let it expire. The Tucows auction service is currently under development. We have been working away on this although we have neglected to continue talking about it. We intend to bring to market a service that facilitates the auctioning of unwanted domains. Again, there are going to be pre-expiration and post-expiration phases to this program. The intention would be that at any time during the pre-expiration period for a domain, a registrant could choose to put their name up for auction. We have not sorted out how the initial bid price will be established, but believe that Tucows and the reseller could be of value in helping a registrant to understand the inherit value of their domain by providing them information on the traffic associated with that domain. Revenue generated from the sale of the domain auction would be split (current thinking) with the original registrant getting the majority of the proceeds, and the selling reseller and Tucows splitting the remainder 50/50. Resellers can choose to offer the "for auction" domains to their customers, and Tucows will provide the tools to integrate this option within the reseller's website as well as provide all of the financial processing related to the transaction. Post-expiration, all domains that are not generating any significant revenue for our resellers through the Parked Pages initiative listed above could also be included in the auction. This process needs to be balanced with the registrants right to that domain for the full 75-day redemption and grace period following the expiration date. Work is still to be done in this area. Timing for the launch of this program will be late Q1 2006, and this is affected primarily by the allocation of resources to work on parked pages project in parallel. 3) NameSpinner We have heard from a number of our resellers that we should be providing a name suggestion or name generation tool. It is clear to us that we need to do this. However, we believe our resellers need a tool that does more than suggest similar options from a pool of unregistered names. We would like the suggestions to include names that are available through an auction service (Tucows and others) as well as names that are currently in the parked pages program. This would put our resellers in the middle of the transaction of these domains. It also means that more of our reseller's customers get their first choice in a domain name, or potentially purchase more than one domain name. All this would be positive for our resellers. We are working on the technology to incorporate the name suggestion options from all of these services, and as a result, the timing of the name spinner tool will be sometime in Q2 2006, after the auction service. 4) Domain Traffic Tools Finally, we have an initiative under way to develop a set of tools that can monitor the traffic associated with a domain. We believe this to be of value both to our resellers and their registrants. The availability of relevant tools should assist resellers in helping their customers to make better decisions around the usefulness of their domains, and help with customer loyalty and renewal rates. These tools also link in to the auction and parked pages initiatives. Better data on a domain's traffic assists a registrant in assessing the value of their domain and a decision to put it up for auction. Traffic information can also assist potential buyers of a domain, or Tucows and its resellers in selecting domains for the parked pages program. The order of the introduction of these four elements is driven by the importance of traffic information. The nameserver change for expired domains is a first step in gathering information. It is now scheduled for October 31. We are adjusting the implementation of this change to begin 15 days post expiry. This will better coincide with the proposed timing of the parked pages program for expired domains. Under the current process, a domain that has not been renewed is locked and does not resolve. In the future, 15 days post-expiration, we will change the nameservers for any domains that have still not been renewed. The DNS settings will be replaced with the Tucows hostname ns1.renewyourname.net and ns2.renewyourname.net. The original DNS settings for the expired domains will be stored, and it will be restored if the registrant renews their domain anytime through to the end of the 75-day redemption and grace period. Resellers have complete flexibility to opt-out of these nameserver changes In summary, we still have a lot to learn, and this will continue as the market evolves. Obviously, there will be many questions from our resellers beyond what I have been able to cover in this brief. We will have more detail in the days, weeks and months to follow, and we look forward to your suggestions on how to turn these into highly valuable programs in support of your businesses. Dave -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doctor PC - Brian O'Donnell Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 2:54 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [domains-gen] renewyourdomain.net? (was Re: OpenSRSLiveReseller Update[Domains]-17/10/2005) > Hypothetical New Situation: > Customer goes to the web site and sees a page explaining that the > domain registration has expired. Customer renews the domain. And what can this website tell them that we have not already told them? It will (probably) not give them any specific way to renew, other than to "contact your reseller". > > The new situation seems better to me. Faster, easier, and I'm > less likely to get yelled at. However, if it's just a generic > 404 page, it's no better and possibly worse than the old > situation. You would assume that it's not going to be a generic 404 page? That assumption might be correct. It could be advertising for Tucows' services. However, it would not be faster; it would not be easier; and you would not be less likely to be yelled at. And how could it possibly be better than allowing US to take care of OUR customers? If the customers, many of whom do not really know what Tucows/OpenSRS is, believe that they registered their domains through US, they will be even more angry at US for allowing this new entity to put up content on THEIR websites. They usually would not realize that their website has not been modified. They would still come yelling and screaming to us. After all, when they have not paid their bills previously, we have not broadcast that to the world. > > I agree that it would have been nice to have had more notice and > a better explanation than we received. I'll withold further > judgment until we do receive a detailed explanation. We still have not received any detailed explanation. Elliot? Anybody? Thanks Brian O'Donnell Doctor PC www.doctorpc.ca _______________________________________________ domains-gen mailing list [email protected] http://discuss.tucows.com/mailman/listinfo/domains-gen _______________________________________________ domains-gen mailing list [email protected] http://discuss.tucows.com/mailman/listinfo/domains-gen
