Saturday, September 13, 2014; 4:23:45 PM Eastern
A store I'd like someone to operate
- Suppose I have a great domain name. I'm only using two or three sub-domains myself. I'd be happy to sell sub-domains to other people, for a price, of course.
- I don't have the interest or ability to operate the store. However, if someone else is willing to operate it, I'll provide a domain name, and I'll market the domain as something other people can buy sub-domains on.
- You can have 30% of the revenue I generate in exchange for operating my store.
- #### How it's implemented
- I buy the domain on a service like Hover or GoDaddy or Google's new domain service. Amazon just opened one up too.
- I create an account on your service. You operate the DNS for the domain. I set it up so the names point to your DNS server.
- There's now a "store" on your site for this domain. I can edit the text of of the home page, kind of like a Kickstarter page. I tell the story of the domain. Point to some of the other sites that use it. Say what I think it means, and the role I plan to play in it.
- Anyone else can buy a sub-domain. They pay $1 a year for it (or whatever price I set, which could fluctuate). My customers can edit a landing page, or point the sub-domain to another server. Give me the same kinds of prefs that I have for a mail list on Google Groups. It can be public or require my permission to buy a sub, or whatever people can think of. Maybe it's only open to people whose last name is Smith.
- #### Caveat
- The important thing is that I can move the whole domain to another service at any time, automatically. The list of names that are registered under my domain must be available in a text-based format. Transferring should be almost as easy as entering new values for name servers in a web form.
- Each purchaser of a sub-domain is free to re-locate any time they want. Zero lock-in anywhere. As is the tradition in DNS.
- But if you operate a good service, this is the kind of thing people are likely to want to set and forget. It's an annuity. But not without risk (as it should be).
- This is going to be a big business. You can be the founder of it. I want to be a customer.