Domain leasing at scale and building on new TLDs.
Rob Monster is CEO of domain name registrar Epik and Digital Town. Rob explains how his company is carving a niche for itself in the domain business and handles a high volume of domain name lease transactions. He also explains why Digital Town registered 11,000 .city domain names.
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mike says
sold…again
John says
Very disappointed you’d feature Rob Monster after you already made a mistake of featuring Rick Latona.
Sorry man, I think you are losing a lot of credibility you worked really hard for over the years. A few bad posts like this and you are no better than them, IMHO. Why perpetuate agendas of guys like this?
Andrew Allemann says
I brought up the mini sites and what happened on the podcast.
John says
Disagree with you 100%.
Mike Tenderweed says
Not trying to kiss Andrew’s arse here but there’s a reason why his blog has lasted so long (and it’s the most professional domaining blog around imho).
People see through blogs with an agenda very quickly and generally leave them in the dust at the same speed. Having said that, hammering on law firms and complainants filing crappy UDRPs is an agenda, but it’s always well deserved 😉
As long as he doesn’t fawn and just asks questions and chats, his reputation shouldn’t be linked to who he interviews. Don’t reputable mainstream journalists interview unsavory folks all the time (Assad, Putin, etc.)?
John says
That other “John” with his bashing seems like the only one with a bad agenda doing people a big disservice to me.
Robert Monster says
Some comments here:
– Andrew approached me about doing this interview. I acknowledge Andrew as a professional and was happy to contribute to his editorial efforts in and industry that benefits from an open discussion about topics like how to use new TLDs. As for the interview format, let’s be clear, Andrew did not do a puff piece. He did his due diligence and left no stone unturned. I expect nothing less from Andrew.
– I think anyone who has actually worked with me will confirm that I am a worthy business partner. Even in the case of the minisites, which was caught up in Google Panda in 2010, we did the right thing by refunding folks. This is a topic I have addressed at length elsewhere. While I am not sure when the statute of limitations runs out, there were certainly no character issues there. Rather there was a dramatic change of circumstance. Epik chose to move away from mass development and become a full-service registrar. No regrets.
– As for “agenda”, I am not sure that I have one in specific. I don’t dislike .COM. Epik owns about 15,000. I do think the new TLDs deserve a look, particularly if they can built with scale so that the TLD becomes a cohesive brand. The .CITY, .MENU, etc. developments are a possible step in that direction. I realize that my efforts may annoy some of the dot-com-forever types, particularly anyone with a large geo domain portfolio. Oh well.
At the end of the day, Epik has an excellent product supported by an excellent team. It was this that afforded me the luxury of tackling another adjacent project, namely DigitalTown. It is an interesting project, and one that I think is worth watching. It is frankly the biggest idea that I have ever worked on, and it happens to be at at time when “Smart City” concepts are just taking root.
John says
Thanks for doing this podcast. I really enjoyed and appreciated it.
John says
So check this out, folks:
I sat through this whole podcast earlier in the evening, shortly after having sent an email to Andrew himself, ironically.
This is a really excellent podcast which I’m very glad Andrew produced and very glad I found.
I had been doing some research about domain leasing, and this caught my eye with considerable interest because I had already discovered Epik not long before.
Funny, get this – I’m not sure what happened, but my understanding was that this was an old post, at least a year or so. I only just discovered a few moments ago how recently this was posted, hours after listening to it now. Too funny from my perspective. I had simply been doing some late night perusing to see what the most current posts on DNW are and was surprised to find what I thought was an old post here is only from this past Monday.
• My 2¢ about the Epik phenomenon:
Do you ever have to deal with domain buyers who contact you out of the blue for your domain they want so much, only to hit you with big time tired worn out old (really old) bashing of EMD domains as part of their negotiating tactic? Me too. Lol. Gets pretty asinine, yes? And yet, they still do it…
It turns into something I’ve remarked about elsewhere recently: “groupthink” and “ideological momentum,” as if it’s taken on a life of its own.
Well that’s what I see with this ridiculous bashing of Robert Monster and Epik: asinine nonsense. “Bull spit.” Sorry to be so blunt (not really sorry though).
I’ve looked at all this very carefully and very critically too. I used to even be paid to be suspicious (a story for another time perhaps).
We should be applauding people like Robert Monster and organizations like Epik for the kinds of innovative “win-win” things they have done and tried, not harping on one little wrinkle resulting from the actions of a search engine with far more power than I believe they should have, which was also MET WITH AN ENTIRELY PRINCIPLED AND CUSTOMER-FOCUSED RESPONSE BY EPIK NO LESS.
Honestly, get a clue. They innovated and tried to bring useful and valuable things to the marketplace that you could not get elsewhere, or not get in nearly as good a form – exactly what you want from a company, the “minisite” option was a big hit and smashing success for a while, but then a big powerful third party dropped a bomb that affected us all more or less. And what did Epik do? They honored guarantees, issued refunds, and ate a nice loss to be as principled customer-centric about it as they could.
Meanwhile, what are they still doing?
They are still maintaining a modus operandi of innovating in the marketplace for a win-win benefit for all, with innovative and extremely cost-effective options and opportunities you can’t find elsewhere now, at least not like that as far as I’ve seen.
Look at what Robert Monster just said here “[w]hile I am not sure when the statute of limitations runs out, there were certainly no character issues there.” Indeed, when does it run out? What part of honoring guarantees, issuing refunds and eating a financial loss is too unacceptable in the wake of a good experiment that simply fizzled out due to actions done by a disproportionately powerful third party and beyond the first organization’s control? And what part of bringing to market such highly desirable, potentially spectacular, and extremely affordable options and opportunities is not acceptable to people?
As someone who has been involved in “the business” since 2001, I wish I had learned about Epik long before. They appear to be meeting a need and filling a desire that other companies frankly even refuse to meet – and doing it in a desirable way. In my view they appear to be a nugget of gold and diamond in the industry I missed until now. But what’s going on is the exact opposite of what should be happening with posts like the above. This is exactly the kind of company you want in the industry, and their particular way of establishing a leasing platform alone is one of the best innovations and positive developments I’ve seen in a long time.
Potential Domain Sales says
Great comment, John (the real one).
Not sure what the other commenter’s issue really was. It appears he must have some sort of personal issues with Rob; can’t tell!
That said, this was a great podcast! Even better that it was informative and not lengthy or boring.
So far so good, everything discussed on the podcast has been knowledgeable; since not much is known or has been blogged about Epik’s history. From how Epik has evolved over the years to their domain leasing program, to their unique marketplace and DigitalTown’s smart city initiative, IoT, etc.
Not a customer of Epik yet, but here at PDS, we like companies that try to change perspectives, in an industry where major service providers (registrars, marketplaces) do very little to nothing in adding value to their customer’s assets, but rather all about fees, up-sells and selling upgrades.
Not really a fan of many new TLDs released thus far, but .CITY is one of the few top-level domains we are highly optimistic about over at Potential Domain Sales.
If DigitalTown’s smart city initiative becomes successful (and maybe, mainstream), this could bring great exposure to many new TLDs, which is good for domain investors alike who have diversified stake in the second level new gTLD market.
Kudos to Andrew and Rob for the informative interview/podcast!
Ben,
Potential Domain Sales
http://www.potentialdomainsales.com/