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Opinions on domain selling rules
AnthonySmith
Member, Patron Provider
in General
This discussion was created from comments split from: Rules for selling on LowEndTalk [UPDATED 08th May 2018].
Comments
But the opportunistic no effort vultures part is wrong though.
You have to pay $50-$100 to backorder good domain names and then you re-sell it immediately at $200-$20k (depends on the domain). So there is some effort and small risky investment there.
Thanks to everyone who participated in the discussion.
This seems like an odd premise. Why would we want to maximize our 'membership'? This isn't a startup that needs to grow at all costs. The purpose of LET is presumably to provide a place for likeminded people, not to arbitrarily inflate numbers (eg. member count) that are totally meaningless for that purpose.
If there's a tradeoff between member count and appropriateness for the purpose, then I really couldn't give a shit about the member count.
The "no effort" part may be wrong, but the "opportunistic vultures" part certainly isn't, and the amount of profit you're skimming off the top is absolutely out of proportion with the tiny amount of effort that you do invest.
It's a scummy business that nobody benefits from except those running the scummy business, simple as that. I'm quite happy that this kind of parasitic behaviour is discouraged here.
That's an absurd perception you have regarding "efforts".
Each business has a different amount of "efforts" required. Some require special skillset, some require special strengths, knowledge, consistency, network (contacts), etc.
If you open a business, not for profit, then sir you are doing charity. Which is good in a way though (shout - "Giving back to the society")
But at the end of the day, you gotta earn your bread and butter.
The parasitic behaviour and the opportunistic vultures part will ensure that you live in an expensive condo, have costly food like caviar or have golden opulence sundae in dessert on your table, drive a Ferrari F60, etc.
It should be perfectly normal to skim off the profit as its an opportunity! and as long as you are not exploiting/threatening someone to pay you a hefty price for something which is available in abundance.
You cannot register sex.com
You cannot register xxx.com
You cannot register phone.com
You cannot register host.com
You cannot register servers.com
You cannot register hosting.com
You cannot register vps.com
The ones who registered it have the upper hand and they can sell it at whatever price they want to and they have sold it at absurd prices.
Think of it as antiques, because there can be no other "sex.com" so its super rare.
And, those people are definitely "opportunistic vultures" as they grabbed the opportunity of registering the specific domains first (which you and I didn't) but living a life which every average person dreams of.
The matter I brought up here was, suppose a domain ABCD.com is registered by me 2 days earlier. Should I be able to sell it here on LET as an auction starting at $1 or any single digit value less than $7.
This won't happen too often or say the member to have such auction should be a member of LET from years (2, 3, 4, 5, etc.)
That way, the sane members won't start an auction thread every other day.
OR
Can have like a limit, say such kind of domain auction/sales be limited to one per month or two per month.
If a proper discussion is done weighing the community views then the outcome can be different. Some might feel this is right, some might feel this is wrong.
EDIT:
Investing.com for sold for $2,450,000 in 2012 and see what a wonderful informative site is up there. So hasn't this benefitted the masses? The scummy seller did profit much but the buyer came up with something which is benefiting many.
So its a matter of perception is all what I would say.
EDIT 1:
But, sure, lets keep the 6 month rule here. Lets continue the same stuff and not embrace the change. Ultimately it would put a burden on the staff to moderate the threads. (This sounds like sarcasm, but its not!)
If I could, I'd delete the posts (or a moderator can) where in I brought up this rule amendment in the first place.
Which does not in any way justify doing so unethically. "Man gotta eat" isn't a wildcard excuse for doing whatever the hell you want.
No. Just don't register the domain if you don't intend to use it, and leave it for somebody else to use. That is how this shit is meant to work.
And the seller contributed exactly zero value to that, compared to the buyer registering it directly with the registrar. Again: this is parasitic behaviour, it isn't adding value for anybody, it's just skimming off the top. This is not an ethical way of doing business.
The purpose of a business is to contribute to society in an organized manner by adding value to the thing they are selling, producing, or otherwise providing. If you're not adding value - which you're not, as a domain scalper - then you're just being a vulture, not running a legitimate business.
(And this isn't even going into whether I think the concept of 'a business' is a good thing in the first place.)
Yes, that's one way to put it. I prefer phrasing it as "you're trying to justify your unethical behaviour".
It isn't unethical. It's just making the use of opporunity because YOU THOUGHT OF IT FIRST & that made you register.
Rather lets put it this way, not all can be Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mark Cuban, Jack Ma, Mukesh Ambani, etc.
The ones who make use of the opportunity are on the top and the ones who don't are not.
Should read the famous Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Oh btw, I registered few domains a week ago related to NAT & IPv6 hoping to partner up with someone to launch a service similar to Anthony's LES. But I immediately dropped the idea due to some personal unexplainable circumstances (Yes, I sometimes do impulse purchases). Day after I decided to sell/auction the domains here on LET. Going through the rules I saw the 6 month limitation and this made me question the rule.
Though @teamacc did mention that exceptions are possible if the discussion is done via helpdesk and the staff mutually resolves to a affirmative conclusion (I hope I understood this right). I did not want to trouble the staff over this hence I did not proceed.
Hence I ought to end the discussion here and auction the domains elsewhere.
Hope your perception is altered a little bit here after.
Feel free to have your own thread about this
@BlaZe you seem to have a very materialistic worldview. There is quite a difference between having to eat and living some kind of luxury lifestyle which believe me or not isn't something every average person dreams of.
Sure i wouldn't say having a bit of spare money is inconvenient in any way but what exactly is the point of driving a Ferrari? It's a status symbol i get that but otherwise it seems to have zero practical use. It's actually quite bad in a lot of scenarios. OK, if your a car nut and that's your guilty pleasure i won't spoil it but i guess that isn't the point here.
TL;DR: Money is nice and so is a good standard of living but luxury just seems pointless and wasteful to me.
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Why would you need more than your initial investment back for this?
IMO if the domains are properly related to hosting (it is LET after all) then selling them at "no reserve" should be allowed. However, if you do that repeatedly, it will start to look like scalping, which should be prevented at all costs in my opinion. Hence the "let staff decide on a case-by-case basis"
@mksh,
Yep, the standard of living. Those were just examples I gave when taking into view the domain investors like Mike Mann and others.
@teamacc,
As joepie91 mentioned, "opportunistic vulture" needs to skim some profit off the initial investment
Jokes apart, I never had the intention to sell the domains for like $xxxxx here on LET. I would run it as a normal auction, normal bidding, normal auction period.
One more fact was that because of the 6 month waiting period, 180 days out of 365 would get already over, so even if you win an auction at say $15, you're getting a domain having less than 180 days to renew (usually $7-$12 for renewal).
EDIT:
@teamacc, I had registered the domain name because:
EDIT 1:
To @joepie91 and others, I hope ya'll did not get offended by any of my replies. Incase ya'll did, then my sincere apologies.
And that is unethical.
The domain namespace isn't about being clever enough to claim first rights to a name; it's about making things addressable. Snatching names you don't need from people who do need them, just to sell them on and skim off profit without adding any value, is decidedly unethical.
Again: you are not adding any value, you are not benefiting anybody else, you are just using a system in a way it wasn't intended to be used for your own personal profit and at somebody elses expense.
If you don't understand how that is unethical, then you have a very strange and worrying idea of ethics.
That certainly sounds a lot like "I don't care about ethics if it makes me rich". Which has been the recurring theme in your remarks. And as long as you keep following that theme, I am going to keep calling it what it is - grossly unethical.
I don't care if Bill Gates has done the same; that is no excuse for you doing what you're doing, whatsoever. I criticize unethical behaviour when I see it. Right now, that is yours.
In particular, there should be no reason for LET to accommodate unethical behaviour like that.
I'm totally fine with selling on a domain that you didn't need after all, right after you got it. But then you can sell it for the initial registration fee. That way nobody loses.
Be sure to jump with equal fervor on all those horrible, reprehensible "scalpers" sitting on zillions of IPv4 addresses, not making use of them today... many of them our fellow LET members here
Yeah, tell that to all trademark holders, too
Is this an excerpt from a course in "Political Economics of Socialism" you'd attended?
Well, here's a take from a more contemporary school of thought:
The purpose of a business is to generate maximum profit for its shareholders / owners. Granted this should be carried out in a socially responsible manner, that is to say not causing undue hardship to people involved and damage to the environment.
Well, making outrageous profits flipping domains hardly qualifies as socially damaging by any stretch of imagination.
Where the heck do you get these ideas from, friend? Or are you really hardcore, old guard, brainwashed political commissar from long lost Soviet Union or present day North Korea perhaps?
When I was a priviledged teen in long gone socialist Poland, we had a law on the books, one I'm pretty sure would warm your heart today: buying anything for less and selling at a profit was defined as speculation and punishable by years in jail.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm sorry communism has had it's all too brief fling with history, too... althought I'm fairly certain my sentiments stem from entirely different reasons
Is it really that big of an issue? I thought the threads were pretty uncommon, definitely not an every-day sort of thing.@joepie91 I appreciate what you said, but I think people only expected the domain name system to work like that maybe before the dot-com bubble... it's idealistic but outdated... nobody acts as if that's how the domain name system operates today.Are we going to prevent people from reselling their old SP-64-D's at anything except, free? @joepie91, go tell everyone in here that you've identified their behavior as unethical and criticize them.Actually the rules are fine.
I have regularly publicly complained about precisely that.
No, it's not. That's just the narrative that's been built around them in the past quite-a-few decades, and is completely ignorant of the history why incorporation is a thing in the first place.
It doesn't make any logical sense, either; why would you have an ultimate goal of maximizing profits? What's the point? To what end?
I'm going to pretend that you didn't make those.
I don't know why you're bringing communism into this. I'm really not interested in ideological tribe wars.
It's not an issue because it is not currently allowed. What I'm arguing against is changing the rules to start allowing it, and the general rationale behind that attempt.
Allow me to rephrase that as "people are abusing the system en masse". That doesn't change that this is not how the domain name system was designed or intended to work; regardless of the amount of abuse.
That doesn't change its purpose; it just means that misuse was not appropriately acted against. It also doesn't mean that we should therefore open the floodgates for even more abuse.
Are you expecting me to go police the entirety of all threads in the entire history of LowEndTalk and post my moral judgment? This kind of whataboutism reflects poorly on you. What I'm criticizing here is domain scalping; whether there are other things that are also bad is completely irrelevant.
What does everyone think the chances are of everyone reaching common ground? lol
As small as me not saying "The end is nigh".
101% obviously. Having said that i think the 6 month rule is fine as is. This is mainly a VPS/Server forum after all and not a domain flipping forum.
Huh? I've always seen domain sales on LET, unless the rules changed in the past two weeks or so... if you've been around longer than then I am seriously confused why you'd try to act like there was a serious problem in the past.Allowing domain sales on LET is hardly opening a floodgate.The system may have been intended to work the way you describe, I'm not good at channeling persons motivations besides my own, but regardless that's not how it's intended to work any longer. Did you notice how the ngTLDs had long periods where registration was only open to trademark holders, and then open at premium price points X days before availability to the general public?Err, no I'm asking a serious question, and it's extremely relevant. Surely we wouldn't allow people to transfer servers at OVH and charge people for it, if we're not going to allow people to sell domains? I don't understand what the issue is so long as two people are consenting to enter into the business relationship no matter how short-lived.Ah, so I got around to actually reading the rules just now, and I think they're fine. I thought we were disallowing all domain sales. Nah.
Okay, at least you're consistent, I can respect that
Ohhh, boy!
My sincere apologies. Nothing personal, I assure you. You must have missed all my smileys:
Well, I had had to take the course "Political Economics of Socialism", even if you hadn't. In fact I passed with honors. A lot of the stuff you've been spouting here reads word for word like that commie spiel I had had to memorize and play back to the examination board way back when (critical thought, questions and discussion hadn't been encouraged). Sorry, friend, I haven't brought in communism here, but you have... in all but name.
Not that I'm anti-communist or anything. No sense debating what has been pretty much discredited as an epic failure. A little surprised to find such a hardcore proponent of some of those old, failed ideas here, is all. Not that this is a bad thing, except maybe for you (as in having somewhat naive, unrealistic expectations about the people around you and the real world we live in).
Back on topic: the rare domain sales thread rules are perfectly fine. There are by far better venues to flip domains anyways... as far as us horrible domain scalpers are concerned
Add this :
premium parking page and advertisements not allowed on sale domain
Change name server or add txt field to ns1.lowendtalk.com
@AnthonySmith About as likely as Emma Watson showing up at my house naked and ready to go.
I understand why the rules are there, and support them. This is not NamePros and should not be turned into anything like them. We are not here to sell domains, but to talk and find servers.
Scalping is scalping. Doesn’t matter if it’s Ltd edition Nike, small print-run video games, concert tickets or domains. If you’re buying something you do not want, simply so you can sell it someone who does want it for more money, you’re a cunt. Pure and simple.
Fascinating how so many, if not most, otherwise perfectly reasonable people seem to lose all perspective when it comes to domains. I dare say a good subject for a doctoral thesis in psychology
@Nekki: I wonder, does your list of all those reprehensible cunts* include Amazon, Walmart and millions of other brick and mortar shop owner cunts* and online scalpers* buying all kinds of stuff they do not want, except to sell at a sizeable profit?
*) quoting and using @Nekki's terminology.
Not defending cybersquatting here. There is that. From what I gathered from comments I take issue with here, they were highly biased references to any kind of domain investing.
Domaining is a complex subject, more than most outsiders can appreciate. Comparing it to scalping concert tickets only goes to prove this. It's akin to calling all OpenVZ hosts cunts and scammers for overselling resources. Clueless!
@aglodek,
Well you seem to be one of those people who have ambitions in life and who do not want to lead a normal average life. We are in the same boat.
Many termed domain flipping for profit as unethical or "opportunistic vulture" which is ok in their perspective.
I blame Apple Inc as unethical for pricing the iShit products at a high price for the shitty amount of hardware they use. Thats unethical in my perspective. But others might not agree to it which is perfectly alright.
But hey, Apple Inc is going to be (or is) a trillion $ company and me sitting here in my small office, handling clients, setting up servers & doing the average middle income Indian stuff still complaining how unethical and opportunistic vultures the Apple Inc is, complaining how unethical Apple is.
Their business will still make unholy profits. Business is started for profits. Maximising profits is one of the obvious goals of any business.
Do a course on Business Management and you'll realize. Or read the famous book "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert K. You'll understand clearly what I am trying to say.
Oh and btw, I'm in the process of finalizing the sale of the domain which I was gonna auction here, at $xxxx to a buyer
So, I am too much happy now
Thanks LET.
EDIT:
The rule of 6 months is ok in a way it seems. Afterall this is a community and not a business center.
Requesting the staff to close the thread (if they feel like) as it will only lead to the discussions on ideological differences and perceptions.
From one "opportunistic vulture" to another: congrats on a good sale
This may be the first time someone has alluded to me being a ‘perfectly reasonable person’.
I do think Amazon and Walmart are cunts, yes, but they are also part of the supply chain, and add value in most cases - yes, I probably could by my vegetables from the local farmer, but that’s a longer journey and more aggro, plus the farmer isn’t open at 11pm.
Scalpers add no value - they add an extra link in the chain that’s unnecessary and make it more difficult for folks to buy what they want.
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Well, you know what they say... if you wait long enough, sooner or later, there's a first time for everything
Hmmm... can't speak for all the other vultures and scalpers, but I, for one, sell my domains 24/7... I've worked out a very convenient, seemless transaction process... even offer terms (instalment payment options)... so, does that add enough "value" to let me off the hook, I wonder? Help me out here, please... I'm seriously at a total loss about this "added value" stuff some people here are advocating...
@aglodek: I think that the main point to take home is that LET doesn't wish to attract domain scalpers/resellers, independently of how one views or judges domain scalping/reselling. Domains are simply not the focus of LET. You can think of the 6-month rule for domains as an expression of this.
Convenient, seamless payment is available at most registrars already, and offering payment options is very generous when the only reason someone needs terms in the first place is because you snagged the domain first then hiked up the price to the point that the buyer needed to pay in instalments.
To go back to the supermarket/massive online retailer analogy, they form a critical part of the supply chain. Without them, there are things we cannot purchase because the manufacturers do not have the infrastructure, funds or expertise to sell directly to the public. If they did, you can be certain prices would go up, and probably end up in the ballpark of current prices, especially when you factor in the things they wouldn’t be operating at a big enough scale to do, like free/cheap shipping.
Scalpers are simply not part of the chain. If they didn’t exist, all that would happen would be that people would spend less money. If Amazon or Walmart didn’t exist, people would be spending similar amounts of money, just with far less convenience and speed.
Bring even-handed though, it has to be said a lot of registrars are behaving just like scalpers, making certain unregistered domains as ‘premium’ and charging a fortune for them, so the line is increasingly blurred.