A Long Overdue Thank You to Francois Carrillo

Many of us take Domaining.com for granted every day.  We come here every day to see the latest post about the industry we love. “It’s a simple aggregator” I and many others would say.   Yet there are tons of aggregators now and in the past yet none of them have drawn the crowd that Domaining.com does. Nobody put in the work that Francois Carrillo has put into Domaining.com

When I first got in to this industry I was like many people.  I didn’t like the fact that one person controlled so much of my traffic.  As a businessperson you don’t like having one entity control your destiny.  What I soon realized is Domaining.com was a gift.  A gift from Francois that if I accepted would send me endless amount of traffic and eyeballs that would allow me to have a voice.  All I had to do was deliver content that kept people coming back.   So I wrote, and they came.  Francois and I had many “discussions” over the years.  A relationship that over the years, turned into mutual respect and allowed each other to speak freely with our concerns and questions.  A mutual understanding of what we each were trying to accomplish.

Some accuse Francois of strong-arming the community to make them exclusive to Domaining.com.  They weren’t wrong but it was a necessary evil to keep all things leading to Domaining.com.  Without it there wouldn’t be a central hub.  And whether you like it or not, it works better for the industry to have at least one place that represent all that is domain investing news and entertainment.  That place became and still is Domaining.com

I want to thank Francois Carrillo for helping me get where I wanted to go faster.  For giving me the voice.  A voice that led to meeting my partners here at DSAD.com  To meeting Michael Cyger and becoming part of the Domain Sherpa team.  All of which has led to a profitable domain career that has made my personal life more enjoyable.   I have no problem admitting a big part of our traffic is Domaining.com.  It’s the exact audience that we are trying to attract.  I don’t write for Google.  If Google finds something of interest for someone, fantastic.  We’re here to help people make money in domain investing.  And to have a fun journey while they do it.   Focusing on auctions was the best way for us to have content and financially pay for our time.  Francois allowed me to do that with one requirement.  That I do it in a way that is either entertaining or informative.   And to not steal from his sources of revenue.  And so I did. And its worked.

I am writing all this for no other reason than I was thinking of Francois.  His terrible English and his emails that come across as course but really its just a bad translator. I smile when I think of him and that doesn’t happen with everyone I think of.  I believe I met Francois at my first domain conference but I honestly can’t remember. I felt like I met a big French guy.  I was so nervous about meeting everyone its kind of a blur at times. But I know I haven’t met him since.  Yet I feel like he is a friend.  A partner in my journey.  And if I never get to thank him in person.  I am thanking him now.   I am also sponsoring this post myself not Francois.  Because I am going to give him his pat on the back from the top of his own site.