afternic.com Banning sex and gambling

[Bill Roy]

My best decision of the last month - not to renew my Afternic membership.

So I am not a 'professional' according to Afternic, may I remind them just what is said to be the oldest profession in the world!!!!!

Afternic says gambling is self-destructive, is this all gambling, including state and national lotteries, church bingo fund raisers. Like the self-rightous throughout history the glasses they view the world through will be tinted to see just what they want to see.

Go on Afternic, grow beyond your wildest dreams, but your membership and deals done will fall and fall and fall.

 

[sasquatch]

Freedom is what freedom is and they have the freedom to not accept those types of names.

What these guys did has nothing to do with freedom. In fact, far from it. You are not seeing things through the proper perspective. Forget about their grandiose, vomit-inducing rhetorical lingo, these guys aren't "leaders" by any stretch of imagination. What they did wasn't their own "decision", but the decison presented to them in an increasingly septical environment driven by the mainstream corporate America ("Either you are with us in our quest for a lame, tame and squeaky-clean mindless consumer market - or against us").

Like the rest of hypocritical America you better believe they would do all sorts of things if it was really up to them, but it wasn't. They are just followers, obedient slaves to business paths that were imposed onto them by others. And they aren't the only one. It's a freaking trend, and it's also a corporate cult.

Even though I could care less about Afternic, decisions like that make me puke because they contribute to the overall Jehovah's-Witness-Disneyfication of this country. And the overall Jehovah's-Witness-Disneyfication of this country impedes on my freedom of choice. See the connection? Pretty soon I'll have to flee to Kazakhstan to be a free man and self-gratify on my PC screen, or play cards with my buddies. Even Borat has more choices these days than the average American. Talking about freedom.

 

[PRED]

Guys,
only losers are Afternic. Forget them. Never liked them to be honest & their never ending auctions! LOL
Like i said, unfortunately only about 1% of my portfolio is Adult, looking to bolster tbh.
I've seen a fantastic new pure adult domain site. Check it out.....
Best thing is i also heard about Monikers Adult auction here!!!................
Stop the preaching & remember one man's loss is another man's gain! LOL
DNA

Predator :greenrazz:

 

[Olney]

This sucks
I finally bought a membership & listed my gambling jps
They are actually getting the most views of my domains I have listed there.

 

[Domagon]

Many adult domains out there get good traffic, but converting that traffic is more difficult than ever; there's a glut of adult names.

Take some time and look through the "sold" list at Afternic and other venues ... one will find relatively few adult domains sold, especially in total dollars, compared to non-adult.

Gambling domains is somewhat a different issue, though ... banning those may cost Afternic far more in the longrun in lost business; most people, in particular in the U.S., consider gambling to be acceptable / tolerated; not construed as obscene.

On a related note, there is likely to be a resurgance in interest in gambling domains in the near future - it's very likely many restrictions will be relaxed, at least for non-sports related gambling, such as poker.

Ron

 

[RatherGood]

Guys,
only losers are Afternic. Forget them. Never liked them to be honest & their never ending auctions! LOL
Like i said, unfortunately only about 1% of my portfolio is Adult, looking to bolster tbh.
I've seen a fantastic new pure adult domain site. Check it out.....
Best thing is i also heard about Monikers Adult auction here!!!................
Stop the preaching & remember one man's loss is another man's gain! LOL

A lot of things went on this year for adult names particularily; ie, the .XXX trial by fire, BD decides to dump all of their "vice names", DCG started that "adult domains soon not parkable" thread, now afternic won't list them etc.

Things like what Afternic is doing introduces doubt into the minds of buyers and that definatey effects what people are willing to spend. So I would disagree that Afternic is the only loser in this action.

 

[Stargazer]

Guys,
only losers are Afternic. Forget them. Never liked them to be honest & their never ending auctions! LOL
Like i said, unfortunately only about 1% of my portfolio is Adult, looking to bolster tbh.
I've seen a fantastic new pure adult domain site. Check it out.....
Best thing is i also heard about Monikers Adult auction here!!!................
Stop the preaching & remember one man's loss is another man's gain! LOL
DNA

Predator :greenrazz:

Moniker Adult Auction! This sounds VERY interesting! When and where will this auction take place? I havent seen anything on Monikers homepage...

Cheers
/Stargazer

 

[domain_investor]

What a nutty tirade. Get off your soapbox.

Do you believe in capitalism? I do. I don't agree with their choice, but it's their choice. Sounds like you don't want business owners to have a choice. if they don't want to be pervs like the rest of us, I say good for them. At least they are doing what they feel is the right thing to do. I guess you'd prefer to every business owner to be forced to think your way.

Here's my take on the new policy on my blog:

http://domainrookie.com/afternic-gets-a-case-of-the-goodie-two-shoes

On Digg:

http://digg.com/tech_news/Afternic_Gets_a_Case_of_the_Goodie_Two_Shoes

What these guys did has nothing to do with freedom. In fact, far from it. You are not seeing things through the proper perspective. Forget about their grandiose, vomit-inducing rhetorical lingo, these guys aren't "leaders" by any stretch of imagination. What they did wasn't their own "decision", but the decison presented to them in an increasingly septical environment driven by the mainstream corporate America ("Either you are with us in our quest for a lame, tame and squeaky-clean mindless consumer market - or against us").

Like the rest of hypocritical America you better believe they would do all sorts of things if it was really up to them, but it wasn't. They are just followers, obedient slaves to business paths that were imposed onto them by others. And they aren't the only one. It's a freaking trend, and it's also a corporate cult.

Even though I could care less about Afternic, decisions like that make me puke because they contribute to the overall Jehovah's-Witness-Disneyfication of this country. And the overall Jehovah's-Witness-Disneyfication of this country impedes on my freedom of choice. See the connection? Pretty soon I'll have to flee to Kazakhstan to be a free man and self-gratify on my PC screen, or play cards with my buddies. Even Borat has more choices these days than the average American. Talking about freedom.

 

[Dave Zan]

Definitely we're all entitled to what we want to believe. But don't forget what
their email said:

sole rationale behind our decision is to make Afternic a more comfortable site for mainstream domain name shoppers, especially small business owners.

Whether you believe it or not is up to you. But that's their official stance.

As always, move your business elsewhere if you don't agree with their policy.
If you're up to it, send them feedback and let them know how you feel about
this.

I won't be surprised either if Sedo takes the same approach sooner or later.

 

[PRED]

Moniker Adult Auction! This sounds VERY interesting! When and where will this auction take place? I havent seen anything on Monikers homepage...

Cheers
/Stargazer

Pm sent,
cheers, Predator :brushteeth:

 

[scizza]

Afternic sux. Their fees are WAY too high to sell a domain and very complicated to add/update names.

Not a fan...I will not be renewing my membership when its time.

 

[izoot]

Speculation says they are "cleaning up" to ready for a buy out. If true won't the new owners when a signifigant chunk of ALL names are removed. Of course its up to afternic to allow what ever they want on THEIR site ... but as said above its not about that ... its about them playing moral police ( or their potential new owners ).

There is no reason that people should hav eto delete Adult and Gambling names. It is easy enough to just create separate areas that need to be "joined" ... so that all these "small business pwners" they are looking out for don't get "tainted" by "god forbid" seeing and adult or gambling name.

Same mentality as all those types banning smoking everywhere and highly taxing cigarettes ... they know better whats good for us than we do. ( not ) Afternic should do alittle study of how much business lost when the smoking ban and overtaxation of cigarettes took place. They might think better of their choice.

 

[hugegrowth]

Personally I don't mind the change, it's their site so they can list what they want, and if people don't like it they can vote with their feet and stick with sedo or another service. Gambling domains aren't useful anymore to market online casinos to americans, so the ppc must be down. Aside from the adult names, I can easily see why they are banning the other categories. I see many others here who don't list with Afternic but I have had nothing but good experiences with them. This is probably the beginning of a trend that will reach other areas of the domain business.

 

[JMJ]

This is probably the beginning of a trend that will reach other areas of the domain business.

And thats the problem when you have self-proclaimed leaders condemning certain areas of the business. I look at it like a nightclub being at the zoning board of a new stripclub voicing their opinion about how they don't to drive by and see a stipclub everyday on their way to work and how they think it will hurt their business. Here in Nashville they opened up one of those Hustler toy stores just a stones throw from the Baptist convention center. The Baptist people have tried to have just about every law they could think of altered to try and get the store shut down but thankfully the lawmakers see the writing on the wall. Even tried to have the banning of sex toys on the ballots about a year ago.

 

[acronym007]

And thats the problem.

What's the problem? I feel sorry for human being that can't leave without porn and gambling. So what if the whole resale industry shut it down, could you still make money on domains? Yup. Diversify your portfolio if that's you all you have. Cheers,

Acro

 

[Theo]

LOL acro excellent :-D

 

[JMJ]

I feel sorry for people who make judgements about other peoples professionalism based on their truely diversified portfolio. If you don't own gambling or adult names then you can't honestly say you're diversified now can you? And if the so called "leaders" lean us towards a ban on one area whats to stop the trend from extending into your diversified area?

 

[RatherGood]

What's the problem? I feel sorry for human being that can't leave without porn and gambling. So what if the whole resale industry shut it down, could you still make money on domains? Yup. Diversify your portfolio if that's you have. Cheers,

You obviously have personal issues with both of these industries as you have previously stated so why not just leave it at that and move on?

Why try to turn your personal feelings about these industries into a business debate when you know nothing about them and can't even acknowledge their right to exist?

 

[eq78]

Excellent post Namejet best of the thread IMO

 

[Sarcle]

This to me is one of the dumbest things a company could do. Why as a business would it make sense to drop something or anything that could and will make you money? If it's not illegal, and last time I checked "sex" was still legal, then why drop it? This has religious moral undertones written all over it.

1. Sex (arguably) is what made the internet popular.

2. There are consumers.

3. Since there are consumers there will always be advertisers.

4. Since there are advertisers there will always be ways to monetize adult traffic.

I've read that google and ypn won't pay for traffic from DGC yet he owns and parks Mistress.com and is still monetizing off of it. There is no move away from adult. It's a multi-billion dollar a year industry. That is mainstream.

If there is a move away it's because Google F-ed up and was directing "other" genre's of business from adult sites. Which they had to pay out the ass for.

BTW, if you're wanting to let go of mistress.com I will gladly take it off your hands.

This is purely a religious moral issue. Not a business one.