Re:Offer HN: Free Domains
by mattwdelong on Friday February 01, 2013 @12:24PM
(#5152042)
How could someone monetize this?
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Re:Offer HN: Free Domains
by mladenkovacevic on Friday February 01, 2013 @01:23PM
(#5152383)
Haven't given it much thought but here are a couple of ideas:
1) Users pay to list their domains.
Pro: Guaranteed revenue from every user
Con: Low motivation for user to pay up as there's no guarantee for reward
2) List up to 20 domains for free anything over that falls into a tiered annual payment plan Pro: same as 1 but better because of larger free user base who might be more likely to convert to a paying user
Con: Could a user just keep rotating hundreds of domains through their free account? (imposing a limit on how many times a user can list and de-list domains would prevent this)
3) Users pay a flat fee only when a successful trade is made Pro: more motivation for users to pay up as the reward is imminent. Also both users can split the fee making it more affordable for each of them
Con: Revenue is conditional on successful trades. Could the users use the service to simply list their domains then use outside channels to complete the actual trade/transaction?
4) User pays a fee when they want to take a domain they received through trading off of the trading block. This would require the site to actually assume ownership of all domains being traded then hold them hostage for a small fee when a trader wants to take possession of them (or else they are still up for trade/in limbo)5) Maybe the site handles trades as well as cash purchases. Trades are free.. purchases incur a 2% fee.
6) Ads for other internet services. Perhaps the domains could be contextually paired with the ads so that if a user is searching for mma-website.com he/she sees ads for mma training equipment and facilities.
7) Make the users redirect the domain to you and put a nice notice on it stating that the name is available for trade / swap / a worthy purpose and place some AdWords on it.
You can actually sell it as a value-add and, from what I understand from professional domain squatters / traders, there's a surprisingly decent amount of money in it. The amount of link juice you could give the main domain probably also isn't insignificant...
Re:Offer HN: Free Domains
by abstractbill on Friday February 01, 2013 @12:52PM
(#5152211)
There are plenty of other services you can easily sell/advertise to an audience of people who are swapping domain names.