Many years before I started working with Mike on TheDomains.com, we had a back and forth about the ICA.
My position was that you want more members that an organization with 80 members doesn’t hold any juice when they want to say to a politician, “Hey we are your constituents, and we demand justice.” Having 5,000 – 10,000 members holds a lot more weight.
Of course many in the domain industry don’t have thousands to donate. Over the years after some more discussions the ICA did come up with a lower price for individual membership $600.
Membership
Platinum Membership $25,000 USD and above
Gold Membership $10,000 – $24,999 USD
Silver Membership $5,000 – $9,999 USD
Bronze Membership $1,000 – $4,999 USD
Individual Membership $600 USD
I commend Nat Cohen and others who lowered the price after some of the conversations had. $600 is still too high, domain investor ranks are growing in many parts of the world and they don’t have $600 to donate to the ICA.
Coming up with a $99 option to grow the ranks makes sense in my opinion.
The other thing I always thought was that there should be benefits like how AARP does it.
Rick Schwartz in a comment on DomainInvesting.com articulated that same sentiment.
I want the ICA to succeed and be flushed with $$$.
Here is the issue and it has always been the issue. But there is a chance to change that.
Today I sent in my $145 for my NPPA membership. That’s the National Press Photographer’s Association that I’ve been a member of for nearly 40 years.
They give me press credentials and negotiate all types of deals and discounts and perks and all types of stuff that makes $145 not a payment but a down payment on benefits that pays dividends.
I’ve had my AAA card for 45 years. That cost me about $150 a year. But I get 10 times that back in benefits.
The ICA needs to have benefits. Lots of benefits and lots of members.
They need to learn how to market and make profit.
It has to be run like a business not like a charity.
You make profit by negotiating deals with suppliers that can only be found through the ICA. That gives people a reason to join. Without that you have no spark plug and that’s what the ICA and the industry needs to be effective and have a strong and wide voice.
I think that’s spot on and when you look at AARP you get a ton of benefits for a membership fee that is affordable to most.
Along with free movies here are some other benefits to membership:
Dining, Shopping and Entertainment Discounts
There are over 30 different restaurant, entertainment and shopping discounts available to members. For dining out, members get discounts such as 10 percent off at Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill and Carrabba’s Italian Grill and 15 percent off at Denny’s. There’s an AARP member discount offered on select event tickets from Ticketmaster, coupons for Tanger Outlets, and many more.
Now of course domaining does not have the potential membership pool that an AARP does, there are not millions of domain investors around the world. But I think the framework can be put in place that registrars, aftermarkets, tools like DomainIQ, DomainTools, Efty, DNAcademy and hell even domain blogs (10% off standard advertising rate) can provide discounts to make membership more beneficial to all members.
You would have to be the dumbest guy on the block to pay $600 or more to this organization.
Rick Schwartz is not a true leader in the domaining community, despite his successes from decades ago. He hides behind the “block” button of Twitter and walls himself off from anyone with a slightly different opinion.
When charging a domain inquiry fee, what’s a fair price & what’s a good system to figure these prices? “Curious ,focused , and hungry for valuable information. Yes I have a lot to learn , 30 year old online eutrapanuer ,business owner, options trader, future marketing genius enjoying the knowledge I’m absorbing each and everyday. Any new ideas, help and guidance is always greatly appreciated. Thanks Diggity D. Pinyon @diggitydsoutdoorjungle.com
Great ideas for discounts. Love to see who steps up.
Rick Scwartz is not a member of ICA currently. But he has done more than almost anybody to make domain investors aware of the various threats facing their assets, so he deserves credit in that respect.
If you make your living in the domain industry in any general or investing function, why is $600 too much to contribute to ensuring it is a fair and balanced industry with good governance? If anything it is way too low for a number of industry participants who have ample resources at their command yet contribute the bare minimum or nothing at all.
$600 is a lot for people living in India, Nigeria a couple places that namepros says is adding a ton of domain investors. So those investors should not have to pay $600 and put their finances at risk.
Also there is no proof the ICA has ever accomplished anything on their own let alone ensuring a fair and balanced business.
My alternative is for ICANN to fund a “Commissar of internet” office that will represent all registrants with a funding of 0.01$ ( 1 cent/domain/year ). this is about a $3.5M yearly budget. Registrants will all have representation. It’s like having a syndicate of registrants. The 1cent could be added to the ICANN’s fee each time a registrant buy or renew a domain. Then, ICANN could make the payment once a year on a certain date.
The ICA is a joke! Most of registrants don’t even spend $600/year on buying domains.. so, why would they spend more on fees for an association who is in contradiction. They can’t represent two entities with different goal at the same time. ICA represent “accredited registrars”… They don’t have the same goal as registrant. Both should be appart by having their owns organisation. And, the best way is registrant to give 1cent/domain/year to an office that will represent them and their issues to ICANN.
Would be great to see ICA offer something like a $99 deal to make it more affordable for part time domainers to afford to be a part of it- the goal should be to increase the numbers of ICA members worldwide. Totally agree that having thousands of members would provide a more unified voice on issues.
I love the idea of offering benefits a la AAA or AARP- I can see Godaddy offering something like a discount off of the Domain Discount Club to ICA members or perhaps a reduction in auction fees perhaps, Namescon can offer a discount to attend events, Efty could offer a discount on annual fee (maybe even give the ability to display the ICA membership logo on Efty sites), BrandBucket can offer a discount on credits, Escrow can offer a discount, etc. Seems like there could be a real opportunity to grow the ICA membership while offering rewards for being a part of it and have it be a win win all around.
Cheers,
Mike
What do you guys think about use a third party service to manage benefits and discounts? Just like Affiliates, you can work with each individually, or you can use an affiliate management company.
$600 is a lot especially if most people are only doing domaining part time. Besides memberships and contributions, maybe consider paid sponsorships? logo merchandising? conduct surveys and provide infographics and results?
I would like to see the ICA produce clear pursuading standalone websites for the most important isuues at hand. For example PIR.
Once the content is available ICA then asks domain investors to diect their traffic to that site on specific dates that they will be speaking to politicians.
I think our traffic might be of more value than $99 membership. If all domain investors sent their traffic to one such site, the impact across the world would be significant.
So lets start with PIR ……
Some good insights here such as industry discounts and a lower entry level membership price, and ICA will likely take them to heart, but mostly poor amateur ideas circulating on the old blogs and Namepros. It’s very easy to criticize the efforts of other people. The ICA will continue to do whatever it takes to protect domain registrants rights, YOUR rights, even if those domain registrants don’t want to support it. They could lower the price and maybe they will, but most people would still find reasons to complain. They could offer benefits and then it would be oh they didn’t offer the right ones. The ICA posts all the time about what they are doing for the community and it’s still “oh, I don’t know what the ICA is doing. What do they do anyway?” Maybe the problem is not the ICA at all. All the people offering brilliant suggestions for rock bottom membership rates and lots of movie perks and maybe a t-shirt, a pin and a few pens are way off the mark. It’s a trade association, not Etsy or even a general organization like AAA or AARP. You think there are enough people willing to pay $49 for a membership to support ICA? Wrong. They say they will but if they lowered the price to $49 the crowd would complain that it’s not $19, or say I will wait until it’s $9 until I join. Then gee I really would join, honest I would. Or maybe if they gave a first year free membership rate and then $5 in the second year and maybe combined it with $500 of discounted gas coupons. Or better yet maybe you should pay me to be in your organization so you can say you have lots of members. And please give me discounts to Denny’s too. Please. Get real. Meanwhile, the registries and ICANN drink your milkshake and you wonder why.
You get real!!! Nobody is drinking anyone’s milkshake. The ICA writes letters they don’t do much, they have accomplished what?
You sound like you work for them, there are only 84 of you and half wouldn’t be on a domain blog. But good luck with your 84 members because y’all ain’t getting many more.
And my milkshake is delicious.
I laugh at Nat Cohen’s ramblings on Elliots blog, thank and ICA member at Namescon? For what Nat, a bit pretentious. These people are doing nothing, and the ICA is too expensive, so good luck Nat, but when, Rick,Frank, Berkens,Mann,Linton,Strong,HugeDomains,Epik,NameSilo, Castello Brothers don’t belong that speaks louder than a million voices.
Seems some of those people are actually members. Some have retired and just moved on. Others have itheir own in-house legal teams working for them.
As for the remaining individuals who are not members of ICA, to you that is a sign of their wisdom. Others might think it is folly.
Some of those people may also have agendas, grudges, prohibitive legal agreements that they don’t disclose publicly that prevent them from speaking out.
You just never know.
But it is probably not wise to let wise men lead one astray.
No one cares about the ICA, 84 members in 13 years??? WTF. Lower the price or move on no one cares about what Nat Cohen thinks, and no one is thanking them at namescon, get a clue.
Looks like those 84 current members include: Godaddy, Sedo, Dynadot, Shane Cultra, Andrew Allemann, Michael Cyger, Andrew Rosener, Kate Buckley, Endurance/BuyDomains, Elliot Silver, Jothan Frakes, Ron Jackson and a bunch more of the industry’s most influential and successful participants.