bb99

As some of you may know, I used to sell email addresses off the back off certain domain names. This was a branded/customised service running out of www.girth.co.uk.

When we moved servers, the signup code that I had written myself stopped working because we changed various elements of the back end system. I never got round to rewriting it. Still, the customers signed up back then continue to use the service.

The point is that, if you have a reasonable generic nice domain name (or maybe a surname or first name), some people will pay to have an email address there.

I'm going to be relaunching my Girth service and am paying a developer to write a nice clean front end interface and sign up script that will interface with a payment gateway and then setup an email address at the required domain name.

After discussing it with the developer we thought there may be an opportunity to provide this service to domain owners.

As a domain owner, you would provide:

- the domain names
- a price per year per email address
- a logo
- a domain name to run the service from, a brandname
- a PayPal account

We would be invisible behind the scenes and would provide a templateable skinnable system for the users. They would be able to:

- browse the domain names available
- search for their name@ the domains available
- buy an address
- perform admin like changing password, forgotten password, etc
- find out about the service, its limits, etc

As a reseller, you would be able to:

- list your domain names
- set your selling price
- view signups/traffic/etc

The email service itself would be run by a reliable established 3rd party email provider and would be (almost) invisible to the end user.

We would charge you a small setup fee and then a fee per email account per year.


Nothing is cast in stone but I'm curious as to whether any domain owners would be interested in this sort of thing? I know it's been mentioned on here before a few times.

The other added bonus is that this may be seen in a DRS as making fair use of a domain name - offering a bone fide service. But I wouldn't know anything about that

Thoughts / comments / criticisms please

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mally

This sounds interesting and is something that I would consider looking at once your established.

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bb99

Just to clarify a couple of points having discussed this with A Domainer:

- You could still park the domains or do what you want with them, it's just the MX in the DNS records that would point over to us.

- One sticky point would be what happens if you sell the domain name but you've got 10 email addresses running off it? I guess the T&Cs will need to clarify this and will allow the domain owner to give say a month's notice to the email users and maybe refund them their fee.

- The email service will not be run out of a crappy reseller account, it would be a proper gucci service with imap, pop3, webmail, anti spam, anti virus, desktop notification widget, uptime guarantee, etc.


Not sure on costings yet, will post them here once I've done some more work.

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philiporchard

Interesting...

Not sure of how viable charging for email is?

I know as I am trialing it at the moment. Take a look here:

http://www.chislehurst.co.uk

Chislehurst is a very expensive and exclusive place to live, and therefore thought it might take off!

Even printed 15k leaflets to deliver. Had a friend hand deliver 2,000. Not a single response.... hmmm. Don;t think I will continue down that route!

Maybe there are some glaring issues with the site, as I am suprised there was such a lack of interest. Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained!

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bb99

That's interesting... I'm very surprised that you didn't get a single sign up! Did you get traffic but no sign ups, or just no traffic?

When I did it before it seemed to do OK based on several domains, there were about 20 domains and you could pick which one to check availability against. I advertised it through Adwords and that's where I picked up customers from.

Times have changed though - with free Gmail (although with ads) it's much less of a valued commodty. Gmail was around back then, although with smaller inbox and by invite only (but everyone knew where to get invites).

But if you were offering @smith.co.uk and your name was Bob Smith, surely you'd be happy to pay over for bob@smith.co.uk ?

Dunno - I suppose it's a case of suck 'em and see. The plan would be to keep the setup cost very low anyway. It's not as if the script is that complex anyway so it's not going to be a lot.

Thanks for the info anyway.

Having looked at your site I'd suggest the following to perhaps help get some signups. Not sure if it'll make any difference but here's my thoughts. Not criticisms, just thoughts and suggestions

- Advertise on Google Adwords based on Chislehurst as a keyword

- Show some screenshots of the email interface and emphasise benefits

- Maybe explain things a bit more, not everyone knows what POP3/IMAP is, the key point being that you can have webmail OR you can access your email through Outlook etc. You could even charge a tenner to nip round to the person's house and set it up in Outlook for them (5 mins work).

- Have a customer testimonial or two

- Tell people who you are and where you're based, there's no name/address on the site, this would put me off

- If I click on the T&Cs it takes me to the apply page, that's odd. I love small print

- Give an instant sign up, it's a bit odd that I have to wait up to 24 hours to get up and running.

- Maybe add a forum to the site to get people in the community talking, although you may have missed the traffic boat if you've already done the leaflet drop. A nice Sky affiliate advert may be a good earner on the forum.

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keys

I like this idea, and it is one that we could make substantial use of. I would expect most interest in domains that are short, fun or popular surnames. Place names are another option but they seem rather too functional and impersonal.

I would also be inclined to aim for quality hosting and extras, thus adding value to the service.

bb99

We hope to have a basic system up within the next few days or so, depending on our workload on other stuff.

Because the email system is already there we just need to code up the search/signup stuff, payment stuff and a bit of management code.

How exciting

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philiporchard

Thanks for the comments.

I'm sure it can be done well, it's just getting the site to be 'just so' so that it engages the audience.

I designed the site chislehurst.co.uk to look smart (i.e. no funky colours etc) and to be quite understated. Not sure if this works or not - I guess not at the moment!

I use the free email that comes with the hosting to run this service.

I have 170GB of email storage available for users to access.

I can have unlimited users, and my hosting company is responsible for running the email system. I just put the site up, and pulled the email login box onto the index page. Total cost per month is £5 which is not bad considering they are running Smartermail which is quite a robust email system.

So at least I'm not out of pocket (apart from the £200 I paid to print 15k postcards to promote the service!)

Will watch this space with interest to see what your system looks like when it's up and running.

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Multiowner

Interested in your plans but I have tried something similar without much success. I registered personal names to be used as email addresses e.g. danas.co.uk, danasplace.co.uk and tried to lease them- no success. I have sold a number of the names (£300.00- £400.00) but no takers for the email addresses. I also tried the same with business addresses e.g. Westminsterbusiness.co.uk - but nothing apart from a few sales.
I have a reasonable number of visitors to what is an "old" site -scotours.co.uk but nobody seems to be interested in email addresses - web diversions are more popular.
If you can get something running that works for email, I'ld be happy to sign over a few hundred names.

ratboy

Another.com is a big provider of paid for email addresses, think they have over 10,000 generics they offer email on (!). Looks closed for businesses at the moment, but thats probably a good model to follow if you want to go down this route.

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