I grew up on a cul-de-sac in suburbia. I was an idealistic kid, a dreamer and I didn’t focus well in my early years. This really concerned my parents who were worried what might become of their eldest. Who would hire me? I’m fond of telling friends that “I could never get jobs – so I had to make my own.”
Eventually I did find a regular job, but because I was so expedient and found focusing difficult, I didn’t have a strong education. The jobs I got never paid particularly well either. I had a natural affinity for biz-dev and sales opportunities but never seemed to find my groove. Things turned around when I discovered the Internet. I was in my early 30’s already, had started fooling around with domain names and bought a thousand or so. That was a lot of names in the era before PPC with no clear way to make money with them. I started putting up affiliate program banners and text links on blank white websites and pointed all my names to the same page, essentially funneling raindrops of din-level visits from all the names into one garden hose flow of traffic directed at the billboard. “Get your visitors to join this online casino and get paid $250 per join”, put up that search box and “get 4 cents a search”, “sell 12 roses and get $20 for the sale”. I started making money. Enough to cover my hosting and a car payment, but I could see the traffic my names were getting and I knew there was potential for more.
My first big leg-up came the week before going to my last job interview, a gig selling industrial chain. A domain registrar of that era had launched an affiliate program. Names back then were $35 per year and you had to take two-year minimums. Half of the $70 sale got paid to the affiliate. Stats updated weekly and I had put up their links and banners, not knowing how they would convert. I was driving to the interview when my partner called on my Motorola flip-phone to tell me our stats had updated and we went from making $50 dollars the previous week (selling flowers and chocolates and casino memberships) to making $380 dollars selling domain names. I still remember the spot at United Blvd where I made a fateful illegal U turn, abandoning my job-interview, in order to follow the destiny that would allow me to retell this story to you now.
In hindsight I shouldn’t have been surprised. .COM names were just becoming main-stream and everybody wanted one. Also, it was clear that some people who type in our domain names want to buy – well – domain names. Even today a well run pay-per-click program with targeted text links can only generate 10-12% click-through on ads. What do you think the other 88-90% of people who navigate onward are looking for? Lots of things. But some of them are looking to buy the name or website they just visited at registration price. We get tens-of-thousands of banner clicks each day from hopeful dreamers like me, looking to buy the names of our customers. The trouble is, most of those clicking want to buy the domain name they typed for $8. As astonishing as it sounds (and in spite of the best efforts of our industry to educate people about the scarcity of high quality domain names), your average man on the street is still under the delusional impression that he can get a great search-term like cookieshop.com or ceilingfans.com for $10. If our sellers and I could only sell our great generic names for $10 a name, we’d have one hell of a business – for about a month. Then we’d sell them all and be out of inventory! That’s where new GTLDs fit in.
What if we could take a buyer looking for greatname.com and after exhausting attempts to sell them the name, offer them greatname.link or .club or .global? Sure, these are not the same as the .com but if you’re a buyer who can’t afford $20,000 for the com and you have no easy alternatives, do you really care? And what if we could pay the owner of the name that brought them for placing the sale? That would be a nice way to augment parking revenue during these dark ages of PPC. Names are the natural killer-product to sell people who are interested in other names.
Similarly, many affiliate marketers are capable of generating leads for domain name sales. But they (like you) have been loath to play the affiliate game where domain-name opportunities are concerned because the onus of conversion is on them. And then for all your trouble shaping pages to convert visitors into sales, you get paid once and you’re out! Well, what if there was an affiliate program that paid the affiliate for the sale and then treated them more like a registrar-reseller in the future; compensating them again when the name is renewed? Now you’ve got a model that can get website owners to invest, to put their shoulder to the wheel and sell some names in volume – creating a business inside our business. What if that affiliate program could payout across legacy extensions like com, net, org, biz, info too! That would “really” be great!!
Well I couldn’t find a generous affiliate program like that folks – so I had to make my own.
Now when you sell domain registrations at Uniregistry, we’ll pay you for the sale of the name, and for the renewal when the registrant re-ups. We intend to offer all viable extensions, at viable retail prices with viable payouts to the affiliate – all on the most advanced registrar in the domain name business.
While there are no guarantees the conversions will ignite the way they did for me in the early days of .com, this is a valuable tool that is worth experimenting on. When viable low price extensions like .link .photo and .pics come out this April (and as more follow) you’ll have a great way to get a discount on your own purchases of the names you’re buying anyway!
Something old is re-imagined, a well curated affiliate program to lift revenues for domainers. Who would have thought that an idealistic dreamer like me could come up this stuff? Somebody tell my parents, who will be so relieved!
Start building your business today at uniregistry.com/affiliates We look forward to serving you.
