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My thoughts on employee turnover at Uniregistry

by — Domain Registrars 15 Comments

Here are some probable reasons you’re seeing visible turnover at Uniregistry.

On Friday, Konstantinos Zournas at OnlineDomain wrote about something people have been mumbling about on message boards for a couple months now: turnover at Frank Schilling’s company Uniregistry.

Konstantinos is correct. There has been quite a bit of visible turnover at the company. A lot happened over the summer, but there has certainly been turnover for a while. I have explained DNW to a couple marketing people at Uniregistry, only to have them leave a week or two later. (I hope that’s not correlated!)

I think there are many reasons for this.

First, I should state that I know for a fact that not everyone leaving Uniregistry has been let go. Some have left on their own volition. Others have been fired.

I also know that headcount at the company is at or near its peak. So the company isn’t laying off people as a cut-your-way-to-profitability plan.

That said, here are some reasons I think Uniregistry has had visible turnover lately: Click here to continue reading…

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Frank Schilling talks domains – DNW Podcast #149

by — Podcasts 18 Comments

Frank Schilling talks about the state of the domain name industry.

dnw-podcastDomain investor and Uniregistry founder Frank Schilling comes back on the program to talk about what’s going on in the domain world: new top level domains, Donuts taking over Rightside, and your .com domain investments. How is one of the world’s most successful domain name investors looking at domains? Also: GDPR, DailyStormer.com backlash and Broadcast.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:38 — 28.6MB) | Embed

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Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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You’re not Rick Schwartz. So don’t try to emulate him.

by — Domain Sales 21 Comments

Your own circumstances probably don’t align with the most successful domain name investors.

This isn’t an article picking on domain name investor Rick Schwartz. I’m just going to use him as an example.

Rick has made a lot of money investing in domain names. He got in early, kept the faith, and has a negotiating style that leads to chart-topping sales.

Assuming you did not get in early and don’t have millions in the bank, you shouldn’t try to emulate everything he does.

I bring this up because I sometimes hear people say “Play hard to get” with domain buyers. String them along. If they really want the domain they will find a way to reach out to you and make it known.

This strategy makes a lot of sense for Rick. He’s not going to have to skip dinner if he doesn’t make that $250,000 domain sale.

When you have money you can pass on deals that other people would accept. It puts you in a great negotiating position. Your BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement) is to just skip the deal and move on. Click here to continue reading…

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Top 5 Domain Name Stories from March

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

New TLD price changes dominated the discussion.

The first quarter of 2017 is now in the books, and the initial tax deadline in the U.S. is quickly approaching (yikes!). But before we think about taxes, here’s a look back at what happened in the domain name business in March.

1. Uniregistry price change – The top story last month was Uniregistry’s decision to drastically increase the wholesale prices of many of its new top level domain names. One will go up over 30x. GoDaddy subsequently stopped offering Uniregistry domains. Uniregistry is now backtracking a bit when it comes to already-registered domain names. I think New TLDs aren’t dead, but some business models won’t work.  In case you’re wondering, this is how much it costs to run a registry. You can listen to Frank Schilling discuss the price hike and his take on the state of new TLDs on this podcast.

The top five stories on DNW last month were all wrapped up in #1, but that would be boring. So here are numbers 6-9, but marked starting at #2.

2. Tesla registers domain names for UAW Union fight – This story caught steam (volts?) after a couple union folks tweeted about it.

3. A TLD registry just slashed its wholesale prices up to 97% – While Uniregistry increased prices, one TLD is taking the opposite approach.

4. 35,000 domains at MarkMonitor need to be updated soon – Matt Serlin is leaving MarkMonitor, which means a bunch of domains registered with his name as the Admin contact need to be changed.

5. Cool story about how a company bought matching .com for $40,000 – Inspired by Sumo.com’s founder, this company stuck with it and paid top dollar for a .com to match its existing .io domain.

Last month’s podcasts:

#129: The Internet of Things
#128: What you need to know from ICA
#127: Frank Schilling explains price hike
#126: In the .Clouds w/ Francesco Cetraro

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Frank Schilling explains price hike – DNW Podcast #127

by — Podcasts 60 Comments

Schilling explains why he decided to increase prices on some of Uniregistry’s TLDs.

dnw-podcastFrank Schilling’s Uniregistry created an uproar last week when news leaked that the company was preparing to drastically increase the cost of some of its domains as much as 30x. What does this mean about the health of new TLDs? What does it mean for domainers, registrars, and other registries? Frank Schilling sits in the hot seat this week to discuss.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:36 — 22.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Android | Email | RSS

Subscribe via iTunes to listen to the Domain Name Wire podcast on your iPhone or iPad, view on Google Play Music, or click play below or download to begin listening. (Listen to previous podcasts here.)

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