原文：http://www.domainsherpa.com/mike-carson-parkio-interview/
标题：Mike Carson Park.io Interview
在今天的访谈中，我将与一个域名抢注服务商 Park.io 的创始人进行洽谈。Park.io 专注于 .IO 、 .LY 和 .ME 等国别后缀域名的抢注服务。为什么我认为这个访谈值得您试以投资人的身份投入时间来观看呢？因为我为支付 $1655 购买了域名 php.io ，在30天后，我以 $6000 转手卖出，获得200%的利润。
Mike: 我有建站的需求，常常想获得一些.IO域名。于是我写了程序监控它们，然鹅常常被人捷足先登。
domains and I was really vigilant around it. And I was watching it and watching it, and I even had a script checking it, but still somebody else beat me and they got the domain that I wanted. And it is really frustrating, and so what I did is I just learned more about it. I wanted to figure it out, and then I figured out more about it, when they drop, what time they drop, which ones are dropping, and then I got into the whole thing.
I started writing scripts around it and it got more competitive. I figured out there was a couple other people out there who were also doing it, and so we were competing with each other and my scripts improved and improved, and they got to a point where they were beating everyone. And so, at that point, I thought I might as well open this up because there were no other .IO backorder services out there, so I decided to open it.
Michael: Right. And so, why .IO? First of all, what is .IO, for anybody that does not know what it is?
Mike: .IO stands I guess for Indian Ocean, but for hackers it is input-output. I mean basically that is what it is about. It is .IO. We, hackers, see it as input-output, and a lot of tech companies, like I read Hacker News all the time and a lot of the sites that are going up there, a lot of the other computer programmers who are launching sites are doing .IOs. So, yeah, it stands for Indian Ocean and I think it is run by the British Government, but yeah, it is input-output.
Michael: Okay, so it is a country code top-level domain for the Indian Ocean and underlying whatever.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: And hackers like it, and you mentioned Hacker News, and I used to read Hacker News pretty regularly at News.Ycombinator.com. When you say hackers, how do you describe hackers in a sentence?
Mike: In a sentence. Well, hacker is just somebody who loves to figure things out and build things. That is how I see it.
Michael: Programming things, right, like services or offerings through a website.
Mike: Usually, it does not have to be. I mean electronics. There could be electronics hackers or other types.
Michael: Okay, great. And a lot of the hackers see the .IO and they have just, over the years, sort of affinitized towards that. They see a lot of their hacker friends using .IO, so then they want to pick up a .IO as well.
Mike: Yeah, and now there is a meaning behind it. Now .IO has a culture behind it. And when you see a .IO domain name, at least when I do and other people, it is like we know a little bit more about what it is about before we even go to it, and that is where I think a lot of the value is coming from it too, this whole momentum behind it and the culture behind it.
Michael: Well, that is a great point, and this momentum behind it was not created by a new top-level domain that has just been launched, like the hundreds of new top-level domains. This is one that has been out for a while. A quick side note, what do you think about all these new top-level domains, like .APP, which is going to be launched in 2015, .STORE, .WEB – you name it?
Mike: Yeah, I do not really know. Personally, what I think is they need to have success. If there is a successful company built on these domains and people have role model or it starts to develop a culture around the TLD, then I think people will gravitate towards that for that reason. That is why I think .IO domains. There is a whole culture behind it, and so there is value from that. And I think if they can do that, which I think needs to be led by people building products on those TLDs, then they will have value that way. That is my opinion, but I do not know that much. I mean I have only been in domains for like one year.
Michael: For just one year?
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: That is when you first started writing this script, before you commercialized it and offered it to others. You have only been doing this for about one year.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: When did you launch the Park.io service?
Mike: It was just last June, the end of June of last year.
Michael: June 2014. Wow, okay. And what top-level domains will you try and drop-catch for people.
Mike: Right now, on Park.io, we do .IO, .LY, and .ME.
Michael: Okay, and .LY is the country code top-level domain for Lichtenstein, I think, or Libya.
Mike: Libya.
Michael: Libya. And .ME is the country code top-level domain for another country.
Mike: Montenegro, yeah.
Michael: Right. So, why country code top-level domains? What drove you to these three to first launch the service?
Mike: I mean they are all around basically the culture. So, .IO is kind of a domain. It is input-output. We have kind of changed the TLD to mean input-out, and .LY is used for domain hacks. For example, Bold.ly or Local.ly sold for like one hundred thousand dollars. So, you can create these cool hacks and it does not really mean. Libya is kind of not as important as the hacks that you can make around it, and the same with .ME too. I guess it is just the things that I am interested in because you can create the hacks with the names around it.
And also, there were not any backorder services for .LY or .IO, so I created it to provide a service for that.
Michael: Cool. So, if I go to Park.io today and I want to create a backorder for one of the .IOs, and we will see exactly how it works, how much does your service cost?
Mike: Well, it does not cost anything to place an order and you are only charged if you get the domain. So, if you place a backorder for a domain and we get the domain for you, and you are the only person that placed the backorder, it is a 99-dollar fee. If another person places a backorder also, then it goes into a ten-day public auction.
Michael: Ten-day public auction and anybody who is signed up for Park.io can participate in that auction.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: Okay. All right. And I have see 99 dollars if I am the only one that sees the domain name going to auction and places a bid. That is not too much of a profit for you because if I go to Nic.io and I see .IO, the registry for .IO, it is going to cost me 60 pounds, based in the United States, to register a .IO domain name, which is about 90 dollars.
Mike: Yeah, there is a small fee if it is only one, but a lot of the profit comes from the auctions.
Michael: Right, and so basically you are going to go out and grab the domain name if there is one or more bidders, and then you grab it for regular registration fee and then you are opening up to whoever wants to bid on it. The market value will be determined at that point.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: Got it. All right. What is the most expensive domain that you have sold in auction through your service, that your service was able to catch quickly and then sell?
Mike: It was SMTP.io. There were a few people. I guess people were watching. So, what we do is – well, when I say we, I just mean me. I do that all the time. I do not know. Once you become a website, you start referring to yourself as we, but anyway. When Park.io gets a domain, we change the DNS to redirect to Park.io. So, for example, SMTP.io. When we got that, we redirected to the auction page, and so that is how a lot of people find Park.io. They are looking at SMTP.io because they wanted to register it when it was dropping, and when we got it, they saw, and so they go to the auction and start bidding on it.
There was quite a few companies that wanted SMTP.io and it ended up SendGrid had got it for 6,385 dollars or something like that.
Michael: And SMTP is a technical acronym. What does it stand for?
Mike: Good question.
Michael: Come on, Mike. You can do it.
Mike: Something mail protocol.
Michael: Mail transfer protocol. I do not know what the S is either, but yeah, if you ever setup your iPhone and you want to connect it to your mail server, you need to enter in either pop servers or SMTP servers, something technical.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: So, some companies really wanted it and SendGrid, a large software as a service provider, actually picked up.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: Nice. And so, you actually wrote the script yourself. You are not just the guy that had this idea. Hey, there are no drop-catching services. I am going to start on and go hire a programmer to build it. You are the business owner and you are the programmer.
Mike: Yeah.
Michael: Wow.
Mike: Yeah, the whole reason I got into it was because I was interested in how it all worked and figuring out the most efficient way to get a domain the instant that it drops. And I think the only way you can really do something is that way. I mean this is just my opinion, but I feel like if I just hired a programmer, they would not have the enthusiasm behind it to make it as good as it is. I am proud of this script because it works so well. So, for the first six months, I launched in June and through December, we had got one hundred percent. One hundred percent of it is perfect. Every single .IO domain that was ordered on Park.io, and this was hundreds of orders, we got. Nobody could beat us.
Michael: Wow.
Mike: And the reason it got so good is because I was just really interested and also it is competitive. Before, months before, there was somebody who every once in a while would beat me.
Michael: Yeah, I can attest to that. I think I have purchased four or five domain names through your service and every single one has been caught. In most cases, I was the only bidder, which probably does not say much about my investing skills, but then some of them that you did catch go to auction and I won them for more. So, yeah, I will attest to that. Do you find that most of your customers, most of the registered users of Park.io are investors, or do you find a lot of end users who have discovered .IO, a lot of hackers who have discovered .IO and figured out that Park.io is the best catcher of those expiring names?
Mike: I think it is mostly domain investors. Those are the regular users because honestly it is a way to get discount domains and sell them for more. And I know a lot of users even get them for 99 dollars and then sell them for thousands, but every once in a while, like I said, I redirect the domain to Park.io, so some end users who are looking for that specific domain find Park.io through th