Afternic

The domain industry is relatively small with considerable overlap between companies and individuals. Many people have worked for different companies in the domain space, and there are strong relationships that have been forged over the years. I want to share a story about one relationship that I think you’ll enjoy reading about.

If you’ve ever been to a domain conference before, you’ll notice the team from NameMedia is very close. One reason for that is because Christina Forker, Customer Service Manager/Business Services Manager at Afternic, and Danielle Romeo, Business Development Associate at NameMedia, are former high school classmates that stayed in touch with each other.

After graduating from college, Christina worked for a payroll company for several months and wasn’t interested in pursuing a career in that field. Danielle told her about an opening for a Customer Service Representative position at NameMedia, and Christina was intrigued by the idea of an online domain marketplace to buy and sell online real estate. Christina applied for the position and was hired by the company.

At DomainFest last year, I was introduced to Christina, and she and I spent some time discussing how I could work with her to have some of my domain names listed for sale at Afternic. We also had a friendly conversation about the town of Newburyport, since she lives there and I owned Newburyport.com. It was a fruitful discussion, and I continue to work with Christina when it comes to Afternic sales listings.

A couple of months after DomainFest, my wife and I flew out to Denver on our way to a ski trip in Breckendridge (awesome skiing there fyi). We made a quick stop at the Name.com offices, where I met Marketing Coordinator, Ashley Forker. After speaking for a little while, Ashley mentioned something about her sister working for NameMedia, and I connected the dots.

I asked about how Ashley found her job in the domain industry since NameMedia and Name.com don’t have a formal relationship (aside from being partners on Afternic’s DLS). According to Ashley, “I had recently graduated college and was again trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life when my sister offered me a gig working for her doing compliance (eye opening experience, there really are some foul domain names out there!!!).”

After working there for a couple of months, Ashley emailed Andrew Hyde of Boulder.ME to ask about job opportunities in the Internet/tech space, and he passed her resume on to Paul Carter, VP of Operations at Name.com. They called Ashley in for an interview, and after “15 minutes in a room with Bill Mushkin, I was sold on Name.com being the right place for me and the rest is history 🙂”

As you can imagine, the Forker sisters are able to use each other as resources since they operate in different areas of the domain industry. According to Christina, since the industry is so small, “it is so awesome to have my sister as a part of it, to bounce ideas off of, to talk in what everyone thinks is code at dinner parties mentioning SLD’s TLD’s ccTLD’s, gTLD’s, DNS, ETC. It is also great that we both work on seemingly opposite sides of the industry, her working for a registrar and myself in the aftermarket but are still involved in each other’s worlds. She is an immediate resource for all of my registrar-esque questions and the Name.com team is so helpful as well.”

It’s been great to get to know Ashley and Christina over the last year, and when you do get to know them, you’ll know why Ashley and Christina are valued by their companies and clients.