Sold Out!
June 29, 2007 on 8:24 am | In Business, Funnyish, New Features, Promotions by Josh Jones |
No, not the iPhone.
DreamHost!
That’s right, we’ve sold out!
Let me ’splain:
There are only two ways to grow a company’s revenue:
1. Get more customers.
2. Get more money from each customer.
(or 3… both 1. and 2.)
It’s been our feeling at DreamHost that we’d rather go with the former than the latter (or even both).
But why?
Mainly because you don’t have to be so sleazy when dealing with your customers, always trying to upsell them and nickle and dime them to death for extra features. People appreciate no hidden fees and no bait and switch, and by not going for #2 at all, you help #1.
And, you can always save #2 for later, if you ever reach a point where you can’t grow your existing customer base as fast as you’d like (we ain’t there yet!).. which is basically the old “get big fast and worry about monetizing later” philosophy you hear about so much in Internet start-ups.
We’re getting kinda old for a start-up (Almost a decade!), but I guess we’re still happily in that “get big slow” phase!
Let’s check out the sign up process at godaddy:
On the first page you see this at the top (among the dozens of ads for other services):
On the next step you see:
(heh, I just discovered godaddy doesn’t allow you to register domains with the string “godaddy” in them!)
Ignore everything (even MeUnemployment.com, if you can), click continue… and…
Compare that to our signup process. One page for your hosting info, and one page for your payment info.
It’s a little amazing what people will go through to save a couple of bucks a year!
You know what else is amazing? One of our support guys used to work at godaddy and guess how they measure the effectiveness of their phone support team?
I’ll give you a hint.. it’s not based on number of calls. It’s not based on customer feedback. It’s not based on random monitoring of quality. Nope, none of these things.
It’s based on sales! That’s right.. they actually treat their customer service line as a SALES team. Your job as phone support is not to help a caller with their question or issue.. it’s to upsell them on other services!
I can just imagine a typical godaddy support exchange:
godaddy: Welcome to godaddy, can I interest you in an adjustable rate home equity line of credit?
UGC: Um.. hi. Er, no? I just need some help transferring my domain registration away.
godaddy: No problem! However, it’s important when transferring your domain away that you turn on domain privacy. Would you like me to add that to your account now?
UGC: Uh.. really? I need that? I guess so if it’s required. Wait, how much is it?
godaddy: It’s really cheap, less than the cost of a latte a day! And, if you also get it with the new American Airlines Citibank Mastercard we’re offering, you can get it for even less!
UGC: Well, wait. I’m trying to transfer my domain away from you.. it doesn’t seem like I should be adding new servi..
godaddy: Don’t worry, I’ve already added the privacy for you! But with the credit card and heloc I signed you up for, you’ll actually be saving money, long term! If you can’t afford it right now, don’t worry, I ALSO just signed you up for a payday loan, and you should see your shipment of Viagra in 2-3 business days. Thanks for calling godaddy, goodbye!
UGC: Blam! (Shoots self.)
But they’re not the only one! I registered a domain with Aplus.net once just to check em out.. and look at this screen shot I took of their admin panel:
It’s crazy.. more then half their navigation is dedicated to selling you more services!
But, I can’t really blame these guys. People really do fall for these stunts, and you really do earn more money. It doesn’t hurt that when you start to get big enough, you’re approached almost daily with some amazing new opportunity that needs access to your loyal customer base.
After a while it starts to wear on you and you decide to try just one.
And you find out it really does bring in some extra cash. Not much, but hey, every little bit counts, right? And it’s at no expense to you, so it’s all profit! So you try another, and another, and another, and before you know it your business is starting to remind you of a default Dell desktop!
Long term, all this selling out can be damaging to your brand. Godaddy is huge, but (as far as I’m concerned), pretty much universally reviled. When customers start to lose their naivete, they start to realize they’ve been shelling out for a lot of junk they really didn’t need.. or at least didn’t need to pay extra for. They start to realize they’ve been taken advantage of. And that realization hurts!
Alright already… what’s this about DreamHost selling out?
Okay, enough meandering. What I’m trying to say is, we’ve been approached so many times for things we finally decided to go ahead and let some of them get through. However, we’re approaching it in the most straight-forward, un-annoying, not-invading-your-privacy, open, and passive way we could…
There’s now just one place on our panel where all of these offers will be collected. It’s the new Home > Partner Offers area (thanks for the inspiration, aplus!), and if you never visit that tab, we won’t blame you.
Besides keeping it so confined, we’re also only adding “partners” who:
- We deem as useful to DreamHost customers specifically.
- Offer our customers something they couldn’t just get by signing up on their own.
- Seem at least somewhat non-skeezy to us.
We’re also doing something I bet you’ve never seen anywhere else; we’re fully disclosing whatever kickback we’re getting for each of these offers. I’m not sure how that will affect people’s decisions, if at all, but hey, anything to be different, right?
Finally, we’re launching this new area with a “partner” (imagine the double curly air fingers thing) we’re actually somewhat stoked about teaming up with… Bandwagon! It’s Mac software that costs $24 a year (they have to host your meta data or something?) that allows you to back up and sync your iTunes library with an FTP server.. a la your DreamHost account.
So, the deal is, any DreamHost customer can get a free year of Bandwagon and any Bandwagon customer can get a free year of DreamHost! Seems fair (except wait, isn’t a year of DreamHost worth five times a year of Bandwagon? WE’VE BEEN HAD!) If you want to try Bandwagon out for free for a year.. just go to that new Home > Partner Offers area, and click away!
Just what we need, everybody actually using their storage.
53 Responses to “Sold Out!”
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June 29th, 2007 at 8:32 am
ummm… I don’t see no offers….
So. How does this work. Does it all get sent to the dreamhost hosting account, or do bandwagon supply the hosting?
June 29th, 2007 at 8:59 am
[...] Read more: martii [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 8:59 am
I have to hand it to you guys. Like you or not (and I’m with the former category), you guys run your business different from other businesses. /And that’s good./
Although, the title of this post scared me a bit. I thought you had sold out /entirely/ to another company (i.e. gotten bought out). See, getting bought out would be acting just like all the other guys, so continue doing things different and don’t get bought out. :)
June 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am
ha ha ha nice. I
June 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Phew, I thought you were announcing price increases. :-)
June 29th, 2007 at 9:03 am
Wow, the partner offers are so unintrusive I can’t even access them! When I go to that URL I just get the panel overview page.
June 29th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Ha!
Whoops, I forgot to copy it live! NOW it’s a little less unintrusive.
June 29th, 2007 at 9:29 am
See, by not actually wanting to be in the domain registration business, we save our customers a lot of time and hassle!
June 29th, 2007 at 9:31 am
This is why I’ve been a customer since 2002 and haven’t thought of leaving. It’s the down to earth straight up approach on topics like this, and even over to downtime issues (which every hosting company has, but most do not come clean).
My heart stopped beating for a second when I read the title. For a moment I thought “Dreamhost sold out to some sick f**ks”
As always, ya make me proud dh!
June 29th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Dreamhost is the best registrar I’ve used since they aren’t primarily in the registration business. I started out with Netsol UGH, moved to Registerfly SUPER UGH! and am happy reg’ing at Dreamhost. I looked at Godaddy but their interface sucks and if you get whois privacy protection they cost the same as Dreamhost (Dreamhost protects your privacy for free).
June 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Thanks! That is a great deal as I have been reading the Bandwagon blog and can not give it a try..i just hope all the music I have already uploaded won’t go waste as I was using backup programs……
June 29th, 2007 at 11:11 am
Hahaha! That last line was great.
Kudos on yet another great entry, Josh!
June 29th, 2007 at 11:16 am
Is DH a GoDaddy’s product ?
June 29th, 2007 at 11:22 am
As much as you may get slated for your downtime (which i haven’t been affected by at all since I’ve been a customer) no one can fault your business model.
You run this company how others should be run. respect your customers and in turn they will reward you with loyalty and financial benefit.
Other hosting companies should take a leaf out of your book and read your blogs.
June 29th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Is the coupon for bandwagon setup available to dreamhost’s oldtimer also ?
June 29th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Well said. I love the comparison to GoDaddy. Lots of people seem to love them, but the up-sell at every turn is suffocating. Your no-BS approach is one of the top 3 reasons I love DreamHost.
June 29th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
Bandwagon is only for Mac? Lame.
June 29th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
[...] Seems fair (except wait, isnta year of DreamHost worth five times a year of Bandwagon? WEVE BEEN HAD!) If you want to try Bandwagon out for free for a year.. just go to that new Home > Partner Offers area, and click away! …Sold Out! [...]
June 29th, 2007 at 8:00 pm
I like your new “sold out” blog entry. About three years ago, before I switched to you, I was a victim of GoDaddy for one year. I grew to despise them for exactly the reasons you mentioned, plus things kept breaking on their part, and at the time there was some kind of silly block on RSS, but I forget exactly what.
Anyway, I appreciate your “sold out” disclaimers in your new partner section. It is understandable that you would enter into agreements with other companies. No foul play!
However, please don’t ever become lame. That will make me very sad. Very sad.
Keep up the honest-to-goodness work.
June 30th, 2007 at 12:30 pm
I like the way you are embracing the blog for explaining why you made a decision; however, I find it pretty low that you attack your competitors in such great detail.
Instead of focusing on the fact that you aren’t bombarding customers with ads, this entry is more focused on GoDaddy’s business model (whether you agree or not is neither here nor there).
Thanks for being proactive and staying true to all your customers.
~ Joe
Customer for many years. :)
July 1st, 2007 at 6:36 am
*laughs* Wow. I’m so tickled you picked GoDaddy. A few years ago I wrote up this which I think proves the point admirably. I’m a DH customer nowadays and I’ve no plans on leaving.
-Kalle.
July 1st, 2007 at 6:37 am
Whoops. My bracketing the URL caused it to vanish. Magic, mesays! Here it is without brackets: http://enrogue.com/godaddy/
July 1st, 2007 at 1:36 pm
Bandwagon needs to be ported to Windows! Go to PetitionOnline.com and sign my petition so Xackup ports it to Windows! :-)
July 1st, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Perhaps I can link directly to it: http://www.petitiononline.com/bndwgnwc/petition.html
July 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 am
Dang, with all that horrible service, Go Daddy must be doing pretty poorly compared to Dreamhost. Oh. Never mind.
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
I tried out Bandwagon a short while back. It’s a good idea, but the software has a lot of bugs and using FTP to “backup” your music is just too darn slow. It would have taken weeks to backup my collection if the software worked.
I started FTP’ing to a local computer and that was moving a little faster, but Bandwagon would lockup about 600 tracks into the backup. So I gave up on the idea.
Maybe I’ll check them out again in a few months, however, when Leopard comes out, Bandwagon will be redundant. Leopard’s Time Machine will take care of all your iTunes backup needs.
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:33 pm
Buying expensive backup software (on a subscription basis? what?) doesn’t seem to be all that useful, when you can just use rsync under pretty much any OS (including OSX and Windows) and it supports synchronization over ssh.
Right now I have an automated script to back up all my systems at home to second hard drives in case of primary drive failure. I hadn’t considered using my DreamHost space for offsite but I actually have been wanting an offsite backup of some sort for a while in case of fire or earthquake or rabid beavers or whatever, and my Dreamhost account has like 200GB of unused space which isn’t going to get filled up any time soon…. hmmm. >:)
(Incidentally, rsync was also a great way to actually move my sites over to Dreamhost when I switched a week ago. In the morning I was annoyed at my crappy home-DSL-based hosting, and by the afternoon I was completely switched over to DH, modulo DNS propagation issues - which didn’t take long to resolve. Easiest setup EVER. Now I’m considering transferring all my domains from Dotster too.)
July 3rd, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Actually, to Nony Mouse: Go Daddy’s the #1 company because of solid advertising, not so much their service. I have one friend who’s happy with Go Daddy, but at least 10 that have run screaming. Their service is poor, but they sell their product with tits and TV ads, while Dreamhost doesn’t.
Personally? I’m happy with Dreamhost, and never want to leave them.
Now, if only we can get Bandwagon to work on Linux…
July 4th, 2007 at 12:36 am
DreamHost Newsletter - July 2007…
Time for another newsletter in condensed form:
Winners of the iPhone Contest
nyquil.org won the iPhone contest. The 2nd and 3rd prizes can be found on the official blog.
iTunes Backup for Mac
DreamHost customers can now get a free year of Bandwagon …
July 4th, 2007 at 5:47 am
Ok, how do I switch my domain name registrations over to you guys? Let’s face it, I’d rather pay you guys a $1 more a year for each domain than give it to the dad.
July 4th, 2007 at 5:51 am
Or I could just go in the registration transfer panel! (Damn, knew I should have looked before clicking submit) Oh well, at least you guys know I’m happy with my service here. (4 years and counting)
July 4th, 2007 at 6:03 am
/me snorts … geez … i read it totally wrong … i thought you weren’t gonna add any more bandwidth and server space and were therefore sold out of services and not accepting new customers. i was rather confused.
gimme a break … i just woke up. lol
July 4th, 2007 at 6:59 am
[...] partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership [...]
July 4th, 2007 at 8:28 am
Bandwagon is nice, BUT it only uses standard FTP not SFTP. DreamHost shouldn’t even be running standard FTP after last month’s security incident.
July 4th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Just a bit of a follow-up … on Stumbleupon, I came across this site accounting for the manipulative GoDaddy sales process and the poor customer service in handling his inquiry.
http://enrogue.com/godaddy/
~ J
July 5th, 2007 at 1:24 am
[...] DreamHost iTunes backup dreamhost has a new deal that gives a year of free service to back up your iTunes (Mac only) (tags: dreamhost itunes backup) [...]
July 5th, 2007 at 5:52 am
[...] está ofreciendo a todos sus clientes la posibilidad de contratar de forma completamente y durante un año el [...]
July 5th, 2007 at 8:54 am
So … How are you going to deal with Bandwagon users ? Obviously, they are copying their audio data to you, and quite obviously they will usually not be holding the copyright to said data (bought tracks from iTunes, ripped MP3s and Lossless tracks from CDs, and … god forbid … P2P tracks).
Are these accounts just “Disabled for Copyright Infringement”-mails waiting to happen ? Sure the data is not public, but what if one of your admins gets overzealous ? Or can you actually guarantee that this will not happen ? (in which case I’d love to use the DH account to back up my library :)
July 5th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
I’ve been with you guys for years. My wife has been hosting with you guys for years. I can’t imagine being with anyone else. You are the ****. (I added those asterisks myself! I’m just so proud.)
July 6th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
I recommend googling “dreamhost” and “rsync”. That’s how I sync everything, from system files to mp3s (no iTunes lock-in for me, thanks). FTP is too slooooowwwww.
July 9th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[...] http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/06/29/sold-out/ [...]
July 10th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
i love dreamhost. I LOVE YOU
July 19th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
[...] partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership [...]
July 22nd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
[...] now Bandwagon and DreamHost are co-operating on a promotion: DreamHost members get a year of Bandwagon, and vice [...]
July 26th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
[...] partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:56 am
[...] Exactly what we don’t want to do. [...]
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
[...] DreamHost has a blog post about [...]
August 5th, 2007 at 5:15 am
coupon for dreamhost.com
TRY90 will give 90$ off when signing up for 1 or 2 year hosting plans
September 14th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
bible study lessons for children about respect…
bible study lessons for children about respect…
September 18th, 2007 at 8:32 am
In contrast to what Josh said about “what people will go through to save a couple of bucks a year!”, In the UK I save around $7.50 per domain/ per year by using GoDaddy rather than another registrar. So it’s saved me over $35 so far this year, plus you get used to the constant ads after a while, and their newsletter is always full of yes you’ve guessed it - more ads!
October 11th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
[...] course, Go Daddy has been doing stuff like this for ages.. if you register a domain with them and don’t set anything up on it you’re [...]
October 17th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
[...] or storage of files not meant for distribution on the Web. Just a few months ago, Dreamhost was promoting the use of your Dreamhost space to back up your iTunes music. I’ve never been one to hop on the "bitch and moan about my web host" bandwagon, but [...]
October 21st, 2007 at 3:46 am
[...] less than 4 months since DreamHost announced a partner deal with Bandwagon, a Mac software program that allows you to backup and sync your iTunes library with an FTP server. [...]