Verisign says its biggest customers are engaged in a questionable practice of reselling domain names.
Fresh off a win with the U.S. government that will let it increase prices on .com domain names, Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has dissed its biggest customers: domain investors.
In a blog post today, Verisign calls people who buy domains to sell for higher prices “domain scalpers” and says they are the ones to blame, not Verisign.
Among the companies it calls out are Turn Commerce and GoDaddy, who are supporters of Internet Commerce Association. Verisign writes:
Flipping domain names or warehousing them to create scarcity adds nothing to the industry and merely allows those engaged in this questionable practice to enrich themselves at the expense of consumers and businesses.
Yet it’s these very companies–especially Turn Commerce–that Verisign can give credit to for keeping its domain registrations growing. It’s domain investors in China that gave the company a big boost. It’s companies like Turn Commerce that have bought millions of domains that have padded Verisign’s bottom line.
Verisign has been catering to this market for years. Sponsoring its conferences, promoting domain investing, creating the very tools designed to let domain investors know which domains to register…and now it wants to pretend it has nothing to do with this “questionable practice”. C’mon.
I’m flummoxed by Verisign’s decision to post this. I mean, it just won. I can understand the company publishing this if Verisign was trying to move the discussion, but not that it got want it wants, why would it bash its biggest customers?
I’m dumbfounded.
Slow down. Let’s talk about adding value again, ok Verisign ?
FuckYouVerisign.com
Unbelievable. We know what side Verisign is on at least. Bet they support even more corporate bias in the UDRP policy. Study up on TM law.
The pending recession and more aggressive anti-Domainer policies are going to change the domain game moving forward…
Please take note of more absurdity of the person writing the article and how she calls herself a “domain collector” on her own linked in page : https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanniemcpherson/
Finer hypocrisy
I’m sure she collects them just for the fun of it
well she reads your blog :
Now she is a Domain Name Collector (Not Reseller) . . .
My favorite quote from Yun Ye was “Nobody ever talks about Pokemon squatters.”
Lol
What we may see, and I pray we don’t, is Verisign increasing the prices Significantly to try and put off the “Scalpers” . Most large companies have resellers ,some who add value some who don’t ,but that is the way the World works. Why Verisign said that may be to pre empt complaints about their next action.
Big companies, with no bid contracts, big lobbying budgets and back door dealing is our government system is our country. Talk about centralized control of our infrastructure, time to join and promote Handshake.org and these others trying to at least put some defense for the little guy into the mix.. Verisign has the political system under its wing, along with ICANN. Now they can earn a billion dollars, 80-90% margins on a no bid contract and ICANN can pay its way to many employees $150k average salary with trips around the world to do what, policy protection.. Its called getting run over and not being able to do anything about it.. Welcome to America.
Their new positioning moving forward communicates this message:
“Price increase is justified, here’s why”.
No surprise.
So is Jeannie McPherson to stupid to know what’s going with Verisign always sponsor the “scalper’s” conferences . Or is Jeannie McPherson aware of it and just a hypocrite.
My experience with verisign is that everything is reviewed multiple times. I would be shocked if this blog post wasn’t approved high up within the company, especially since it calls out customers that send tens of millions to verisign every year.
There was a time when Verisign, and other registries, needed domainers. That time has long past.
>calls out customers that
>send tens of millions
They don’t need us to do that.
Get rid of “us” and someone else will reg those domains and continue the revenue.
We/Domainers may still add value as unpaid sales force for nTLDs, getting them out in front of others, but not with .COM. The industry is mature enough to go without us at this point.
“too” not “to.” Get it right if you’re going to call someone else stupid, stupid.
I do make grammar mistakes , many grammar mistakes . I do it in 3 different languages. When a person writes in a language that it not their first language it’s bound to happen. How many languages can you write in stupid little troll?
They don’t own the .COM registry and are basically just given a no-bid handout that any number of entities would be willing and able to do for much cheaper.
Now they are biting the hand that feeds them. Verisign can fuck off.
Also, as a member of the ICA I am not real happy with Phil Corwin and his sellout move of joining Verisign. From an outspoken critic to working for them. It is amazing what a little money can do. Pathetic.
Brad
Rational people do rational things. Perhaps if the industry had more methodically secured funding for the ICA, there would have been sufficient budget to support a living for Phil. Now the ICA has our good friend, Jothan Frakes, who is spread thin like peanut better across multiple projects and no match for battle-tested lobbyists.
As for the price increase of .COM, I am glad it was not larger. A truly Draconian policy could have gotten inspiration from Uniregistry’s 3000% gTLD price hike. This price increase looks more like a boiling frog program. Sure, it is not great for domain investors but it could have been far worse if there was truly malicious intent to smoke domain speculators.
I do believe this new price trajectory for .COM will create greater urgency for domain investors to monetize through selling or leasing simply as the net carrying costs are about to go up materially.
I further believe it will also create new opportunities for ccTLDs as the majority of gTLDs are, for the most port, being rapidly consolidated into the hands of profit-maximizing monoliths.
And lastly, I see untapped potential for gTLD to embrace Forever / Freehold registrations so that registrants can be implicitly shielded from future price hikes and/or other extractive maneuvers from established registries.
For years, Phil busted his ass for table scraps and now, you want to publicly impune his integrity as a “sellout?”
Cheap shot.
Chill out Brad…you’re just as much a part of the problem as Verisign. Do you tell everyone you don’t agree with to F*ck Off?
Inquiring minds would like to know.
Now is that nCredible or nCredulous™, a name I just hand registred just for you.
Hey Richard,
You have been banned from NamePros at least 3 times, so you have resorted to spamming me and others (via CC) about your new registrations.
I could care less about your domain registrations.
You can go ahead and remove me from your spam list.
I have received (11) unsolicited emails from you. In one of them you called a fellow NamePros member a “bitch” and another an “asshole”.
I have requested to be removed twice now and still am getting spam from you. I have no interest in receiving further emails. Remove me.
Have a great day.
Brad
Thanks Brad for confirming that you read all my emails…it’s sort of like you reading and responding to all the threads I started on NamePros. I’m not sure why you do it, but I know I hand reg’d nCredulous™.com early this morning with you in mind. Oh, and you’re wrong too about me referring to some of your “ilk” at NamePros as a “bitch”, and the other as an “asshole” If you had been paying closer attention you would have noticed that I had actually registered domains earlier for an nCredibleBitch™ and for the other as an nCredibleAsshole™. Please Brad, if you’re going to credit me with registering intellectual property that I created try to get it right.
On another note…you don’t have a spam filter on your email account/server? Do you need for me to show you how to use it?
Finally, I attracted a whole lot of attention on NamePros, and as it turned out, you were one of my biggest followers, and it appears you still are☺
Face it Brad…it turns out your industry is seriously f*cked Up….you know, the same thing you told Verisign, but without the asterisk.
Again, I appreciate the attention you’re paying me. It actually has the potential to open some doors to Verisign and Jeanne McPherson, both located right here in Virginia, but only a three hour ride away.
That’s all I have for you now Brad, but my domains like nCredibleBreasts™ and nCredibleVegas™ are already getting some attention. And another NamePros member who you know even offered to pay me $250 for my domain market place name, DomainGourmet™
I’m sure you saw his post offering to buy it from me, but I’m way too smart for that Brad. Somehow I think he got the impression I might need the money? I wonder who gave him that impression?
Thanks again for following me Brad☺
It’s a non logical statement by Verisign. On one hand they are bashing domain investors for trying to make a little money, while they themselves are a for profit company trying to broaden their bottom line. Not only that, they act as if buying something at a lesser price and trying to sell it for more is some kind of a questionable act. Have they ever heard of investment real estate?
Same idea. Some person with good speculative insight buys a piece of property or run down home in an area they know is going to flourish and then sells it for a profit when their prediction comes true or the market adjusts correctly. People buy, sell and trade stocks in the same manner. Should the stock market call stock holders “stock squatters”? No, Verisign just seems to be out of touch with the market and reality. Domain investors didn’t invent the buying low and selling high mentality.
I guess it’s only Verisign and companies like them that are allowed to enrich themselves through their protected monopoly and we should just shut up about that. Any mention of companies like Google or Amazon that own thousands of domains they don’t use, I suppose that’s ok though for them and not the little guy. God forbid the small business person or sole proprietor tries to get ahead by risking their own money in domain investing.
There is a lot of backend things Verisign and other registries do regarding this very issue and drop catching.
Back when I was the top .INFO and .ORG drop catcher, there were many that claimed I somehow had inside information.
No I did not.
I spent massive hours being the one to carefully watch the realtime transactions and how Afilias did all they could to break my code. I was just the one committed enough to fight that war and update almost as fast as they tried to get rid of me. No registry likes drop catchers or domainers, even if it just comes down to lost revenue for them having access to the arbitrage opportunity.
In turn given the domainer comments about Verisign, and ignoring that other registries enjoy the ability to increase prices without a peep, Versign’s response seems very appropriate.
The real issue here is the impossibility of Verisign’s argument, but again, domainers don’t help themselves with the double standard of ignoring other registries and only attacking Versign.
There is some value in having domains in a given TLD having different value based on issues like quality and traffic. The question is who gets the windfall of that unique pricing.
If all domains are $10, the all quality domains WILL be registered to someone. Domainers do push up the quaility on the domain usage by forcing the next user’s commitment to development via a price far higher than $10. That is the value we are adding. And we adjust our prices as needed, so its more market based than at the registry.
In my view the thing to watch out for here is that variable pricing, via domainers, DOES add value to domain usage and Verisign is in NO WAY ignorant of that fact. What they want is the arbitrage opportunity themself, they want to build they case that THEY are better at setting that price than we are. So everything should consider that as we move forward.
The seeds of this go all the wait back to Verisign’s wait list service. To me there could be no clearer sign that Versign is going after variable pricing next …. That is cut out the middle man and keep the rev themselves.
And that can be done in other ways to, such as creating a DNS resolution tax as I have pointed out for many years.
You are very insightful. Do you write anywhere else? Would enjoy following your view on things.
No, recently got kicked out of CircleID for my “insights” regarding GAB.COM (so it would appear).
So looking for a new place to share what I know and think I see.
Now my big mouth is here and other domain blogs until I wear out my welcome again. 😀
Almost nobody is allowing comments about Gab.com anywhere that I have seen.
Freedom of Speech is being systematically silenced.
>Almost nobody is allowing
> comments about Gab.com
> anywhere that I have seen.
Good!
That gives me a GREAT opportunity to reevaluate my associations. Maybe others will to.
🙂
One problem with this blog post – among many – is the constant reference to “speculation”.
However, it’s not really what’s happening. What’s really going on is “commoditisation”.
You can see this right across the board from HugeDomains to BrandBucket to our own NameDream. On all sites domains are priced as commodities.
It’s a New Economy – the fundamentals of that Economy are dot-com and other domain extensions.
The question is, who should benefit from this new commodity.
We have a beautiful eco system and HugeDomains do a great job.
Surely the people who do the mining – the hard graft – should get the benefit, particularly as their customers in turn get an undervalued asset.
Over the years I have witnessed individuals from developing parts of the world take part in the domain game.
If they sell a domain for $250 to $500, that is a tremendous amount of money for them. It’s also possibly a tremendous bargain for the buyer! I see it every day of the week on NamePros.
Verisign are taking a massive risk here as who knows how Godaddy will react?
The fact that Verisign are listening to emotion fuelled narratives about speculation rather than the logic of commoditisation will be clear to them soon.
Jeannie should be fired. She just shit where she eats.
Deep comments, everyone… Good insights, and a lot to think about. *slow clap*
Any thoughts about the fact that Verisign actually has to operate the infrastructure that enables and protects these domains? Considering the cybersecurity climate in the Internet, how does their track record compare to the critical infrastructure that all of you hardcore operators manage? Let’s be straight here, domainers and registrars don’t do anything on the operational side. It’s not like any of them are operating infrastructure at the scale of hundreds of billions of transactions per day, globally, right? Maybe it would be worth getting your facts straight before chewing up your keyboards…
a) there are lots of companies that can provide similar infrastructure
b) verisign certainly does a good job, but their margins are sky high
c) verisign doesn’t do much on the marketing side. they leave that to the registrars
d) the registrars have to do a lot of tech stuff to, including making secure systems, hosting Whois, handling domain transfers etc.
I have a nice .com steel water bottle. I got it at a domain scalper conference from their big massive booth at said conference. That’s their marketing dollars at work. I’m sure they’ll say that Namescon isn’t filled with domainers (aka scalpers) but it’s an industry conference dedicated to making the world a better place. . . . .or they’re all just “collectors”
> Let’s be straight here, domainers and registrars
> don’t do anything on the operational side.
Yes they do:
ADD COSTS.
No matter which registry we speak of.
The fewer registrars the better, again, no matter the registry.
Verisign has gone totally nuts !
VERISIGN NEEDS TO BE KICKED OUT OF THE .COM REGISTRY.
The sooner, the better..
Lots of companies (Afilias, Neustar) will do the same job (or better) for much less – $4 per domain would still be highly profitable with the volume.
As I understand it, THEY are operating under contracts that ALLOW them to increase prices.
Why would they want to take a step backwards?
Allowing prices increases, especially variable pricing, would be the carrot they would bite on. But at that point just stay with Verisign.
One possible rationale behind Verisign’s post today is that they are upset that they didn’t get the ability to raise prices more.
There is no doubt they pushed for removal of price caps and possibly for variable pricing on domains. If .info and .org can raise 10% why not us. It is not our fault we are more popular than them,
Remember the officers and directors of Verisign have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value , not to be “fair”
>have a fiduciary duty to
>maximize shareholder value
+1
The ICA right to petition, and that ‘right’ allows Verisign the right to fireback.
without domains being purchased as investments I’d say .com’s would be about half the number they are now. You’ve got to wonder who exactly wrote that and did they run it by anyone else first?
31% is one third the way to 100%, at which 1/2 domains being gone has no financial effect.
All the better if you can then use that reduced reg count as justification for “needed more money to survive” thus justifying variable fees.
This company keeps digging a bigger hole, but doesn’t matter, we will have shareholders defending it soon, no surprise. This company earned 7 figures from me alone, keep calling names.
This comes across extremely whiny. “we did not get everything we wanted (which only boosted our valuation by 20% today by the way), we therefore are going to point fingers elsewhere to try and hope the ridiculousness of what we just pulled on you all is ignored.” Extremely disrespectful to those in the domain community. As others have pointed out – verisign actively markets to domainers, they help domainers invest in domains at domainer-friendly conferences such as NamesCon. It will be interesting to see their demeanor, and fake-friendliness come this January and how much verisign either a.) helps domainers succeed or b.) shoots them in the face with piss-filled water guns.
inflation rates are only 2.0% a year. what warrents/grants verisig 3.5 times this amount? is this a bailout by the US goverment?
So let me see if I’ve got this right.
If Google, FB, Apple etc. hoard tens-of-thousands (literally) of prime domain names, they’re being savvy business people but if the little guy/gal does it, they’re domain scalpers… go it.
If someone buys a block of land for an investment and sits on it for 20 yrs they’re a smart business person BUT if we buy-and-hold domain names (ie. intellectual property) we’re cyber-squatters…got it.
Verisign, we will NOT forget your comments…
Andrew…while I can sympathize with the way you and others feel, I knew from almost the first day I arrived on the scene about a year ago this was one seriously screwed up industry. It never made any sense to me, and it still doesn’t. Everyone here told me I was to buy a few domains, park them somewhere, and hope and pray someone might find them….to which I thought, that’s total BS. I don’t need to go into detail, but I’ve been stalked and harassed 24/7 because I wanted to do domaining my way. Just to make a point I created and hand registered DomainsMyWay™ a few weeks ago. Most everyone here said to me, you’re a fool if you hand register domains, and you need to buy your domains here at a NamePros auctions or from us? NamePros member Kate did her very best along with attorneyJohn Berryhill to have me excommunicated from this industry before I even got started.
Other NamePros members targeted me for the way I was doing business, ridiculed me for hand registering hundreds of what they referred to as “crappy” domains, and another member known as Recons from Texas posted this about me: “I draw conclusion (I can be wrong) that he is very determined to the level of being stubborn and arrogant and a bit naive believing that he can redefine single-handedly an industry. Those qualities have probably helped him to succeed in real life within the field he worked before, but in domain industry that is bound to fail. So, yes, I judged all these based on the portfolios, sale reports (or lack of those), as supplemented by some forum posts )”
Unfortunately my response to Recons post got me booted from Namepros for the fourth time just for speaking my peace. I made one response, and NamePros considered it thread crashing. No doubt I stirred things up in less than a year I was involved, but when I’m on a mission to succeed at something I set out to do and I normally succeed.
I’ll leave you and your readers with this Andrew…I’ve built what I believe is a pretty damn good portfolio of names. I own domain names for industries I’ve worked in and around all my life. In addition I’ve carved out a couple of niche portfolios like the portfolio for two word domains that start with the keyword “incredible”. I own names like IncredibleFlorida™, IncredibleVegas™, IncredibleMilk™ and even IncredibleBreasts™, and just today I created/discovered another way to display the word “incredible”…..”nCredible”, thus today I’ve gone back and registered 40 new domains that are the equivalent of premium domains like, nCredibleHomes™, nCredibleRealty and nCredibleAutos™ etc.. Bottom line, much to the chagrin of my critics, the keyword nCredible is more aesthetically pleasing than simply Incredible and it’s even more brandable. I met with a realtor friend of mine and a mortgage broker friend this afternoon, and they both agreed about the new look. btw, no one in the domain world has picked up on this yet, and I’ve already pretty much cornered the market on Premium nCredible domains. I’m sure my critics will say my new idea is “crappy”, but I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.
Finally, if anyone thinks all I’ll do is just list my domains on sites like Sedo (no one knows how to pronounce it, and I use to own a Sea-doo jet ski, lol) and afternic, and hope and pray someone finds them and buys them they’re sadly mistaken. It’s taken me a while to get my engines started, but they’re revving as we speak and come the first of the year I’ll be off the blocks.
I doubt you or anyone else will respond to this except some fool known as anonymous who follows me everywhere I go. Now there’s a spammer for you.
Good luck Andrew, and maybe someday we’ll have an opportunity to meet.
I’m a domain “collector” now, not a domain “investor”. Lol
Who can check and post which domains she currently owns/”collects”?
Also, would be interesting to know …
1. How did she Acquire her “Collection” (i.e., Hand Reg’s, Aftermarkets, Drop Servicec, Verisign …)?
2. Has she Sold any of her “Collection” in the past?
3. And, are they Parked, Coming Soon Page, or Not Resolving?
DailyDoucheDigest.com is owned by Jeannie McPherson. A GoDaddy customer.
so is wannabedomesticgoddess.com
Whois history shows that she dropped ProfessionallyBitchy.com last year.
OMG! When Jamie posted above that Jeannie McPherson owned the domain name, DailyDoucheDigest.Com, I thought surely he was kidding. How ironically funny, thought I! But then I did a public lookup and see that it is true, she really does own that domain name!
Additionally, she currently owns…
artbyericpolak.com
jullianbunn.com
theannapolak.com
theadampolak.com
atomixknight.com
freekidactivities.com
walkamileinmomshoes.com
adamjpolak.com
dailydouchedigest.com
jeanmcpherson.com
jeanniemcp.com
kidpartyactivities.com
slime220.com
thejuliemcpherson.com
lynnoxbunn.com
annapolak.com
forgewordsmiths.com
artistericpolak.com
ericpolak.com
thematthewrussell.com
thejeanniemcpherson.com
Do you know what scares me most about this blog post? It’s the fact that there are follow ups planned on the same theme:
“How can we ensure that the intended benefits of the .com price caps actually accrue to consumers? Stay tuned – that question will be tackled in my next blog post, where I’ll explore this question with industry experts. You’ll be surprised at how simple and effective some of the answers will be.”
Hmm how simple could it be Jeannie?
1. Exterminate anyone having sold a dot-com address for profit over the last ten years, excluding of course dot-tv.
2. Chop off the hands of anyone selling a dot-com for profit over the last ten years.
I think she’ll go for Option One. Far less messy.
Versign did not get rich the major shareholders did. Biggest holder is no other than w.buffet. What an great call.
Domainers are not customers, they are secondary registries. The value of a namespace derives from actual usage, so while this is still remarkably good with .com, it’s not due to domains under management that are registered by domainers.
From the .com registry perspective, having domainers pay for renewals on millions of domain could pay off or not, depending on whether this crosses the threshold of making the namespace value smaller.
It could be that VRSN is just paving the way for massive domainer drops when it increases wholesale prices, so they started telling a story of how it’s not a problem since now.
That said, with wholesale price increases or not, I do have a feeling that domainers current inventory levels are higher than what would make economic sense. So taking the price increases as opportunities to streamline inventories might be a good thing.
That’s a brilliant statement Gabriel…in response I’ll tell you about a domain I just hand registered 10 minutes ago;
nDescribable™.com
I just registered this “crappy” domain for $8.50 when I learned this; https://www.godaddy.com/domain-value-appraisal/appraisal/?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.godaddy.com%2Fdomain-value-appraisal%2Fappraisal%2F%3Fisc=cjc1off30&checkAvail=1&tmskey=&domainToCheck=indescribable
Now you tell me, or anyone for that matter, how fu*ked up is this? It makes absolutely NO SENSE. However, i do Domains My Way despite the rhetoric.
Well … said by Verisign, which is a de facto monopoly that “enriches itself at the expense of consumers” … it’s like the pot calling the kettle black … lol 😀
Very disappointed in Verisign’s forgetful approach. It has been domainers that put them where they now find themselves.
Note to Andrew: I see people are not using the new “like” feature and think this is because it requires a seperate registration and login. I am sure many love the idea, but domainers like their anonymity even more. Might there be another plugin available that doesn’t require login?
http://chng.it/TWQP2JB5
We need to put restrictions on people who do this, make them register as a dropcatch or reseller make it so they can’t just snatch up domains (people wait years to get some of those domains and then get screwed over by turn commerce and their dropcatch website. Let’s get icann to put restrictions on them and at least slightly even things out.
If you can sign the petition it’s time people tell icann and verisign they can’t do this anymore.
The “restriction” you ask for is already coming.
It will manifest as removal of .COM price caps, and then Verisign will take the arbitrage, not third party drop catchers.