Rob Monster of Epik has become the most prolific poster on Namepros over the last couple months.
Rob is embarking on a lot of different projects and is putting them all out there on Namepros to get feedback.
Domain Microfinance Program
As some folks here know, I am a big fan of Digital Empowerment projects that scale.
Over the last year, I have seen lives transformed by people becoming successful domain investors on a bootstrap.
I have been discussing with a few folks about introducing a Domain Microfinance program for emerging economies and for young entrepreneurs.
This could be a Digital Empowerment strategy for helping people to bootstrap domain portfolios. The idea was inspired by a discussion with a young Angolan.
The idea is this:
– People apply to get a microfinance grant. To get the grant, they have to verify their identity. This is done in order to prevent repeat applicants.
– Domains registered are limited to .com. With a budget of as little as $30, right now that is about 5 .com domains at a promo rate of just $5.49.
– The domains are powered by an SSL powered landing pages which domain owners can optimize and then use to sell or lease.
– Once the grant participants generate a certain level of sales or leases, e.g. $100, they can request an interest-free domain loan based on their portfolio.
This thread is currently the most popular thread on Namepros for the week.
The second most popular? Another Rob thread, his discussion on hyphenated domain names and mention that Epik is actively buying hypenated domain names, this post mentions some of the recent buys.
Rob is buying up assets from Troy Rushton and posted on this on Namepros:
Has anyone used this:
https://www.namebrokers.com/
We just acquired it from Troy Rushton. Wondering what people think of it. It has quite a large social following, and we think maybe it is an platform to build on.
Also, what about a migration script that goes into your DNS / Uni account and mines it? I am thinking about people who have a lot of legacy data in their DNS accounts.
Rob made a post about an Epik University?
Over the weekend, Epik acquired a very interesting set of courses from Troy Rushton. You can get a sense of the content here:
https://learn.domainflippa.com/
The plan is to open up all the courses — they will be free. In many parts of the world, even a $49 tuition is unaffordable. So, we want to democratize knowledge.
The question on the table is about branding. Providentially, we secured EpikU.com on the drop this week and could forward it to a subdomain like university.epik.com.
However, there is also a case for putting it out there as stand-alone brand.
Rob also started a thread that has gotten heat from both sides on creating a “Deadbeat megathread” Rob went into detail on how scammers have ripped Epik off and what solutions could be provided to bring about some sort of framework to bring a unified solution.
Rob wrote:
The main question is whether NamePros will provide a framework, with the consequence that people who scam can be restricted or banned entirely. There are ToS, but the process for flagging abuse is not clear.
I do believe that the community that solves governance and standards, will be able to scale as it onboards tens of thousands of new participants from places where rule of law might vary very widely..
While I have heard no talk of this or any kind of rumor, it just seems to me that the next logical step might be for Epik to buy Namepros if there is a price the owner would accept. Again just a thought not a rumor.
