
Non-profit CEO takes home a 700k+USD annual paycheck - pramttl
http://domainnamewire.com/2016/05/16/icann-salaries/
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pramttl
I always wondered why do we have to pay for domain names annually. Now I
understand where that money actually goes. There are 340+ million registered
domain names. [1] Annual ICANN subscription price of a domain name is about
10$. That is a guaranteed annual revenue of 3.4bn USD and consistently growing
and no one can give ICANN a competition because effectively it's a monopoly.
That is a lot of money for a "non-profit". We have reached a serverless
computing era where paying for compute/storage for a small service is becoming
cheaper than owning a domain name and the price for "buying" domains hasn't
changed in years. People are so used to the standard domain pricing that they
are willing to pay that subscription amount. All of this while executives of a
non-profit get filthy rich. Me feeling unfair about it is not enough to change
the market, but I sure do derive some business learning from this.

[1]
[https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=98...](https://investor.verisign.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=980215)

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MrQuincle
It's a ridiculous salary.

However, I don't think your figure of 3.4bn USD is correct.

[http://domainincite.com/20121-icann-ups-new-gtld-revenue-
for...](http://domainincite.com/20121-icann-ups-new-gtld-revenue-forecast)

[https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/adopted-
opplan-b...](https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/adopted-opplan-
budget-fy16-25jun15-en.pdf)

So, I think it's the registrars (GoDaddy, etc.) that get this money, not
ICANN. Blake Irvin (CEO, GoDaddy) made 1.9 million in 2015 (with a turnover
beyond 1 billion).

