Even with their extreme coupon usage, from what I can tell they are still not using them as loss leaders (if we ignore all costs besides registry/icann).
You also neglect to see the effect of thousands or tens of thousands of savvy people actively changing their mind about a company and NOT recommending it to people or bad mouthing the company. My suspicion is, the kind of people reading HN/Reddit are also the type of people that get asked 'computery' stuff quite a bit. I know from personal experience I've probably influenced ~30-50 people's registrar choice this year. Even if it were 1-2 as the average number, the knock on effects could potentially put a nice dent in them.
>You also neglect to see the effect of thousands or tens of thousands of savvy people actively changing their mind about a company and NOT recommending it to people or bad mouthing the company
Savvy people have been badmouthing GoDaddy for years. Being recommended by the technorati simply isn't a part of GoDaddy's business model.
Here in Vancouver, there's a plumbing company called Milani. They hire bad plumbers, don't train them, and pay them poorly. They do shoddy work. Every other plumbing firm knows not to hire plumbers who used to work for Milani, and gets a significant amount of business going back to Milani sites to fix their mistakes. But, Milani takes out a full page ad on the front cover of the Yellow Pages. They advertise on bus stops and billboards. Milani spends more on advertising than the next 5 companies combined. When the average, uninformed person needs a plumber, they think of Milani. That's their business model.
GoDaddy is the Milani of registrars. They quite simply don't give a fuck whether they have a service worth recommending; they spend enough on advertising that they'll always have customers regardless.
I think it's silly to say everyone knows who fit a certain category. For example, look at Cheezburger moving away. I would have suspected he is fairly web savvy, you know, owning 1000 domains and running a giant blog network. But this apparently was the thing that called him into action. Plenty of room to spread the message and actually have people act.
Not sure what prices you're paying with godaddy, but the absolute base cost (assuming godaddy don't have deals with verisign) is $7.52. If I go to the godaddy site now I can register a new domain for $5.02 (current converted) and I don't believe I have ever paid over $7.99 for a domain at godaddy, most of the time I get it below $7. They also routinely do ($1 + $0.18 ICANN fee) domains as others have mentioned
Those '120 domains' they're talking about aren't newly registered. Most people have been renewing them with godaddy every year for $12 a pop ($15 for .org).
They do renewal coupons too, they often work out cheaper than initial registration (assuming you register for ~$8). For example, gdz1229c today will take 31% off of renewal, gets my .com renewal down to sub $8. Nobody is paying full renewal price unless they don't care about cost, it takes ~5 seconds to find a 30%+ off coupon, there are always a lot available.
I just tried it and was told that coupon wasn't valid for my order. I also tried googling around for more details without luck. Can you share a link to a coupon that says it's valid for renewals? It doesn't have to be valid anymore. Thanks.
I'll renew all my domains for the maximum time possible if it means godaddy will lose money on each transaction. Then I'll transfer them out.
-> My suspicion is, the kind of people reading HN/Reddit are also the type of people that get asked 'computery' stuff quite a bit.
This happens to be correct for me, I'm a computer technician (to pay the bills) And I supervise several other technicians. I know for certain that no one will be recommended to go to godaddy if they come to us. And thought it's a local thing I can see it being reasonable that many of the same local shops like mine have employees that visit reddit and HN. It's obviously too early to tell but I think it's going to trickle down until they (godaddy) feels it.
How many people actually do that though? GoDaddy's model seems to be like the banks over in UK - offer a great introductory rate (with a 'bonus' that expires after a year) and then allow customer inertia to set in.
The fact that you can switch and that it makes financial sense to do so does not mean that people will.
You also neglect to see the effect of thousands or tens of thousands of savvy people actively changing their mind about a company and NOT recommending it to people or bad mouthing the company. My suspicion is, the kind of people reading HN/Reddit are also the type of people that get asked 'computery' stuff quite a bit. I know from personal experience I've probably influenced ~30-50 people's registrar choice this year. Even if it were 1-2 as the average number, the knock on effects could potentially put a nice dent in them.