Arif Mirza

@MichaelCyger .. @ntropiq explained it today on their show. Turns out it was a bunch of domains acquired via abuse of their deep discounts. They offered the abuser(s) to pay the difference, but they declined, as such @unstoppableweb is auctioning the domains in question to make up the difference. While I don't know the details, if true, it makes sense .. @unstoppableweb were already extremely generous with their deep discounts (I saved $10,000 myself) .. kinda sucks people tried to break terms to get even more than that.

@MichaelCyger @ntropiq @unstoppableweb In the end, as much as we'll miss discounts, their wanting to be profitable is actually a good thing. Real question is if their product is good enough for people to stay under new prices. They've accomplished a lot .. but also have a good way to go. I'm rooting for them. :)

2 big @unstoppableweb auctions announcements: Starting today and thru the next few weeks, we're auctioning off 17,000 domains from our own inventory. These domains have strong SEO value and aren't expired domains so you won't be able to find inventory like this anywhere else. You can bid on them in our auctions tab by filtering with type=user - unstoppabledomains.com/marketplace/au… You can also now search through auctions inventory with our AI search, and even schedule AI searches to give you an email digest of auctions inventory relevant to you. Happy hunting!

@PaulENicks @darpanmunjal @Berryhillj Lmao .. @Berryhillj is the best at being the worst and the worst at being the best! :) .. if you want the ultimate in "educational entertainment" go check out his posts/roasts on NamePros .. be sure to get Costco portions of popcorn ahead of time! lol

@darpanmunjal When I was in the industry, @Berryhillj drove me crazy, now I can't wait for his take on stuff like this.

For decades, domains have been sold like assets. You either buy them outright or lease-to-own them. Different payment structures, same end result: ownership. Meanwhile, the software world shifted to SaaS. Businesses became comfortable paying for access instead of owning everything outright. Next week we're launching Domain Rentals on Atom. Instead of committing to purchase a domain, businesses can simply pay for the right to use it. Keep it for as long as it creates value. Buy it later if they choose. I don't expect rentals to replace domain sales. But if lowering the commitment expands the pool of businesses willing to use premium domains, it could create an entirely new layer of liquidity for domain investors.

@godaddyauctions @GoDaddy @GoDaddyHelp @DNAcademy @jamesiles Hmmmn .. actually noticing some @godaddyauctions between $100 to $500 at $5 increments and others at $10 increments. What's the story @GoDaddy @GoDaddyHelp? Simple A/B testing? @jamesiles @jjstyler @AlanShiflett

@godaddyauctions .. I've been away a bit, when did you change your minimum increments, and what are the new ones? (I noticed $10 increments starting at $100 now) @GoDaddy @GoDaddyHelp @DNAcademy @jamesiles

@MichaelCyger @NotifyDomains Listened to that one about a week ago as I'm finally catching up on a 6 month backlog of podcasts ... awesome to listen to as you and @DomainNameWire are my favorite voices in the industry. Literally thousands of hours in my ears over the past decade! :) Good luck with Notify!

“Don't call it a comeback / I've been here for years.” 🤣 Always a pleasure talking with Andrew about domain names. @NotifyDomains is my latest launch, and one I plan to operate forever. It’s been a ton of fun building. Please check it out. 🙏

Well .. at least he's pretty cute. I've participated in rooms with them and they seems like smart guys. Ultimately their platform is simultaneously overly complicated, while also missing crucial information. The domain community simply isn't large enough to maintain something like this in the long term. But if they figure out how to get the NFT and Blockchain Name FOMO "investors" to jump into this, then there will be some short term gains to be made by people with domains who position themselves well. But whole thing will likely crumble after a year when people realise most of the domains put into these things are most likely the stuff regular investors overpriced into the hype, or domains they wanted to drop because of low likely Sell-through-rate x sales-multiples. Look at NamePros for the decades old continuous stream of people dreaming up schemes like this. People have wanted this for many years before blockchain had gotten more popular. The success or failure of this will have extremely little to do with the actual technology itself .. but rather the long term demand based on actual END-USER SALES performance. No point buying things even at wholesale if they never sell at prices that make for an overall full portfolio profit.

@TheDomainSocial But they have an animated rat and lots of folks thrilled by it...

Is this still a thing, or is it over already?

As far as I know Registrars don't get anything from ICANN. It's Verisign who from time to time offer some promotional volume discounts to registrars. In the past I think those discounts were focused mostly on (1) net change of domains under management, and sometimes (2) new hand registrations ... so even those weren't automatic unless the registrar was growing. IF you got free transfer ins, then the $11 unlock makes sense (vs my $5 unlock because I already paid $5.49 or $5.99 for most of my transfers). That said, after you pay $11 you should be able to transfer out. Maybe their renewal isn't set up properly, but the effect should be the same as an unlock fee since in theory they are getting a full year payment for the first year (your expiration date wouldn't move back a year though in theory as you'd be paying for the current year).

We aren't locked in to their yearly renewal. It doesn't make a difference if we renewed the domain with them. Can't transfer out within a year without paying the $11.40 unlock fee. I think that's unfair to us especially those who promoted them and got many other domainers to transfer to unstoppable. Also a new registrar gets lots of freebies from @ICANN so they can attract new customers - pretty sure they didn't have losses like you imagine. With us renewing at their full price we are already covered their expenses per domain as far as I know. 🦋

🔘 What do you think of the UnstoppableWeb charge of $11.40 for unlocking our domains (transferred during their free transfer promo) to transfer out?? A year is not added for this price. Found out today charge stays the same even if we have already renewed. I'm Disappointed 🙁

Sometimes the domain industry totally sucks. Back-to-back days with issues .. Yesterday at @Spaceship leading to double renewal of 100 domains (extra $1000 that "can't be cancelled" even if reported minutes later), and now @GoDaddy back to same old Access Denied. :(

@happreneur But I don't think it is varied. Did you just "renew" (assuming it would also unlock), or specifically do all the steps I mentioned to "pay the unlock fee" .. those are two different things.

@TheDomainSocial Lol I like how you put it down step by step Arif 😂🥰 Yes it was for an LTO sale I can't reveal yet. Either way I hope the unlock fee is fixed by them soon and not varied. 🦋

@cultra @unstoppableweb All the fancy theoretical spreadsheets in the world can't make up for the warm fuzzy feeling you get paying off your costs and still have money left over for whatever it is that brings you to your happy place! :) That said .. here's a typical portfolio spreadsheet anyways.. lol

@unstoppableweb @TheDomainSocial Profit pays the bills, margins and sell through is for the analyst

Sell-through rate is meaningless without considering average multiples. In domain investing, profit is the metric that matters most. Valuations shift based on a buyer's business plan and available capital. Featuring: @TheDomainSocial

Hey .. where have I heard that voice before? lol x.com/unstoppableweb…

lol .. that's overload. In the end I was sharing about 500 to 800 new auction domains per day and the trailing 5 days of closeouts on NameCult.com. But all my work was on Excel and the site was a free Wordpress Multi-site installation I did myself for TheDomainSocial.com and a couple other test sites on a shared linux hosting that I think was under $20/month. Super cheap on my end (like my domaining .. lol). That said .. your site is a ton prettier .. lol .. with lots of cool bells and whistles (and filters). Ultimately I never cared how NameCult looked (even the name was silly, but it was a bit on purpose as I didn't really want end users learning about closeouts) .. people who used it only cared about the domains in the lists. I don't do lists at this point, but the site is still there if you're brave enough to handle the fact I only spent about 5 to 10 minutes on the actual "design" (not even sure I'm allowed to use that word .. lol. Josh (@domainpro) was a regular user and made a few $$ from some of the names! :) In the end the sad reality is our industry / community of domain investors is pretty small. Multiple people are trying to do the same thing .. leaving a very small pool of potential users to get affiliate revenue from if the links even work 100% of the time (which they don't).

I have lots of data (nearly 1TB), backups, off site backup, worker server, proxies, Claude 5x, Resend, Claude api, OpenAi api, zone file processing. Yeah, affiliate stuff is hard in the domain space for sure. I will get it figured out, it can just get frustrating during the process.

Unfortunately DotWeekly will be going through some drastic changes. Earning $65.73 a month, you just can't keep the lights on. I really don't want to manage a SAAS, so that will likely lead me to shutting it down.

Their site is not instant to show the fee information. (From memory this is the process) 1- Click on the domain to go to it's management page Unlock the domain. 2- Click transfer. 3- Click the Blue "Unlock Domain" button. 4- IMPORTANT >>> WAIT A BIT (1-2 MINUTES). 5- Refresh the page. 6- You will then see: "Domain was transferred in under our transfer discount promo, which requires managing it with us for 1 year. To unlock early, you must repay that discount. After unlocking you can transfer out." 6b- Click the "Pay Early Unlock Fee" button 7- It will then take you to a checkout to pay $5.09 (+$0.30 processing fee) 8- Maybe wait some more (I forget how long here) 9- Go back to "Transfer" on management page to get the transfer code. 10- Purchase your transfer at new registrar. 11- No indication of a transfer request will ever show up directly on Unstoppable itself (ever as far as I know). Instead ... 11b- WAIT AT LEAST 20 MINUTES (that's what it took me today, but can be longer) 12- Check your email for title: "[Urgent] Domain transfer for ______.___ 12b- Click the "Cancel or Confirm" link in the email. 13- Follow the instructions on the page from the link. BE VERY CAREFUL, what looks like the more notable default button to continue is actually the button to cancel the transfer, so be sure to press the correct link. (Same thing to be aware of after entering 2FA) 14- Go back to your email for the 2FA code. 15- Go back to the last page and enter the 2FA. 16- Not long after that the domain should be at the new registrar. :) 17- (Hopefully you have to transfer because of a domain sale at which point .. do the happy dance) The information and instructions are pretty much a 0/10 the first time you fumble through it .. particularly since things aren't instant and there's absolutely no reason to think anything will be different after the first time you refresh the page and see nothing pertinent for next step .. and indeed as you mentioned .. quick support is pretty much non-existent (thank goodness we have @ntropiq and @mattgould to pester if things go wrong (it's funny .. but also VERY true). :) So the situation is not quite what you're saying .. but it's 0% your fault and 100% on them for not making the process clear from the start. Took me a frustrating while to figure it out the first time .. and eventually I just got lucky after refreshing the page a few more times before giving up as there was no indication anything would be different after the first refresh. NOTE TO @unstoppableweb: - For domains that are under lock, all the information I just put should be on the transfer page from the start. As well as the date the lock ends. Also, as mentioned elsewhere .. now that you have lowered the number of days we can renew/transfer our domains from about 40-42 days, down to 29 days, you definitely need to lower the lock length by at least as much. Some people mentioned 11 months which I think is a fair compromise, but at the very least it must be lowered to 350 days.

Just $5? Very interesting 🤔 Thanks Arif, hope you are doing well. Let's talk soon 🤗💕 I did pay $11.40 twice - first time I was in a hurry and didn't realise it didn't add a year. Got a shock only yesterday coz it was already renewed for $10.50 and still locked. To their credit I like their services a lot so it felt painful to even speak about this online. Their support is too slow and I had to let others know it's happening. Glad I did, i wouldn't have known unlock fee was just $5 (as i thought it should be) for some already. Let's see how they continue, for now looks like as a one off the refunded the unlock fee I paid yesterday 🙏🏽💕🦋

Bit of an inside joke. On the DNX show Josh (@domainpro) mentioned needing to pay the $5 early unlock fee at @unstoppableweb because he sold a domain and needed to transfer it out. I had one such sale last week (and another today) so we laughed that "we needed to pay the $5" (so we could transfer out to Afternic). Basically the deal at Unstoppable was we needed to keep the domains there for the full year in order to take advantage of the super cheap $5 transfers (and registrations I think), so I'm fine with paying the $5 .. in fact it's a good problem to have when the domains you're selling are at $3000-5000! :) Given a 1% sell-through, you're still saving $495 on the 99 other domains still there. I hope I need to have to pay even more $5 fees all year! :) lol

@TheDomainSocial @domainpro Who is charging to unlock?

Just had to pay another $5 unlock fee! @domainpro .. what are we going to do? lol

I remember the frustration doing NameCult.com back in the days. I hear you .. affiliate business within the small number of active domainers is a tough grind. Not only that, but in the end I saw I wasn't even getting all my commissions. Only way it's worth while is if you're already doing everything for yourself (going through lists), then you can write off most of the time involved. Also need to keep it simple. How are you spending $500 a month? I just put it on a multipress WP install with a few other sites like TheDomainSocial.com to keep costs to bare minimum. When I went on a little buying spree over last couple of years I brought NC back for a bit, but probably will never be worth doing unless I'm back in active daily buying mode. Anyhow .. good luck and best wishes however you decide to go forward.

As I mentioned, I do not want to manage a SAAS. If I could get the site to earn at least $500 a month from affiliates or something similar and keep it free for everyone, I would leave it up but right now I'm spending $500+ out of my pocket each month and I can't afford to continue doing that.