If you’re like I am and just have way too much to do then its easy to never follow up on good domains which were recently purchased and developed. Of course, a lot of sales are parked, more will never be developed and some will just sit with empty DNS for years to come but there has to be quite a few examples of great sites around that are new buys (not necessarily new reg – just new change of ownership).

Unfortunately, I don’t have time at the moment to do a list of my favs but would love to read about your finds – whether its traffic, creative use of a brandable name or just incredible design.

Post below !

Halverez has finally been outed – Oversee has stepped up to the plate and not only publicly acknowledged the fraud but taken steps to compensate auction participants and implement policies to prevent this in the future.

First, let me say this breach was a breach at the highest level – both personally and professionally for many. However it happens – in domains, real estate auctions, online auctions and more.

Remember, the heated argument about Adam Dicker from GoDaddy bidding on names or the questions behind NameJet’s continual stream on non-paying bidders.

We do not live in a perfect world my friends – Our politicians are corrupt, our Banks are bottom feeders, our President (for the Americans) struggles with big business day after day to get anything done.

We all could have had a paid a little less in auction or 2 (or 2000) but Oversee has committed to making this right. Granted, there are many emotional factors in bidding outside of just bids alone which could be factored in to the actual measure of this financial fraud however they sound like they are doing what they can to correct it.

No doubt, fraud like this is inexcusable however lets be real – in an online world no matter if the Holy Pope is running the site we are always exposed to the potential of fraud one way or another. All we can hope for is enough people behind the scenes to take any signs of fraud very serious and react swiftly and promptly. There remains questions of how swift SnapNames reacted to this and completely understandable but as VP of engineering – someone who was there from the beginning – there could be 100 ways to hide something should you have the technical know how to do it  — In fact, its very possible the powers to be even gave Nelson the responsibility of looking deep into his own fraud – ever consider that?

Fact is Oversee and SnapNames worked with class today exposing this and sure – some things could have been done different but there is (a) never any good way to expose fraud (b) always difficult to provide full transparency publically and (c) no way to make every victim happy.

Look – it happened. Its over. Life will move on.

GoDaddy auctions still survived after the Adam Dicker debacle

NameJet continues to thrive

Key customers of Snap will remain to be key customers.

This is news for sure and congrats to Mike for breaking such a worthy piece but in 30 days from now this will be gossip once again and people buying as usual.

There is more fraud every day on Craigslist or eBay or PayPal than in domain auctions. Most of us bid against people we all know day in and day out and as SnapNames noted in their email to customers:

“most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007″

I’m willing to bet 50% of people who are commenting where not even in the domain world at this point in time.

No doubt today is a sad day for many who know Nelson and those affected by his actions but can somebody please report the results of Moniker’s extended auction now???

First let me say this is not a post about either Rick personally but it’s about the way of thought many domainers exercise in the current industry. The economic variables of today we are forced to work in will certainly bring opportunity to many domainers but this opportunity must be considered more than just buying a worthy asset at cheaper prices than a year ago.

Joel Ohman referenced a quote I made with a great follow article up about his life cycle in the world of business online (note I did not say domain business) and it would be relevant to your future success to read this article to understand exactly how many elements there are to success online.

Real world experience, understanding of the importance of keyword domains, SEO talent, proper development, online marketing skills. For long term success most people need to understand that starting a website should be viewed no less important than as opening a brick and mortar company (albeit with lower costs) and most of us (even I) need to go back to school every now and then to learn about the courses which factor in to the success of a plan.

Although I do say the first is to stop reading domain blogs it is entirely understandable to peak and peruse what fellow domainers are doing but for the most part these blogs are entirely irrelevant to anything affecting your growth as a developer except to understand a little more how much your domain may be possibly worth.

Is that why you read blogs?

to check your domain value every day – note that daytraders have the same addiction refreshing real time quotes.

For some its ok. Buying and selling domains is a business – a semi-respectable business (will delete semi when main street gets it) but its only part of being a domain owner for many.

Taking the next step: Building a Business … is something very few domainers can ever help you with.

Compare it to buying a car.

The car salesman can tell you all day long how great the new BMW 7 Series is compared to a Jag or Mercedes however when you leave the parking lot and come back a week later for advice on how to modify the car for performance, improve handling with come custom work or almost anything related to making the car you just bought better very few – if any – would ever return to the salesman who sold you the car for advice.

Domainers in general continue to return for advice from other domainers about development, planning a business, SEO markerting and more. Granted, the fellowship is nice and there ARE some people who really know a lot but most of these people do not blog in the vicous cycle of blogs on domaining.com or NameBee (take the Castello’s for example – these 2 have done wonderful things but they do not blog and if you 2 are reading – dont do it … way too time consuming).

I remember when I started learning chess many years ago my chessmaster always told me – NEVER play with someone who you can beat.

That is exactly the same concept which should be applied to those seriously interested in development.

Anyone in this space knows one Rick can sell some great names but has admitted time over time he is no developer. Another Rick made the now semi-famous quote “There is no money in web design” telling us simply that his business plan could not work in an industry where 100′s of companies offer similar services at similar prices – who continue to thrive. Truth is “there IS money in web design” however even one of our own couldn’t do it so why take development advice from him.

I’ve always said certain names in this industry have their respective places but the grand illusion of putting these people on pedestals to learn from them for EVERYTHING web/domain/online marketing related is comical at best.

Today’s economy brings a single opportunity to each and every person interested in online marketing to pick up assets at very fair and reasonable price however Success can START with a domain but no way ends there.

You may have noticed (or probably not) that I have removed myself from blogging on any consistent basis purely because of the lack of real knowledge gained every day from domaining blogs and I suggest those domain owners seriously really interested in development do the same. Truth is no one will really miss you but come back with success stories and see how quickly your blog becomes popular again but this time you will have domainers, SEO and end users excited to read about your work.

As your momma probably always said – honey, you have to go to school.

Now would be a good time to start.

After speaking with a few people today it was clear that many people might have no idea Rick Latona has an extended auction going on SEPERATE of Moniker’s extended auction outside of clicking on the banner of domaining.com

I spoke with a half a dozen good buyers today and 3 of them (50%) assumed all the names in the extended auction from the recent TRAFFIC conference were on SnapNames.

For the record there are actually 2 extended auctions going RIGHT NOW.

1.  SnapNames extended auction is happening at
https://www.snapnames.com/store/extended.action?ig=124

2. Rick Latona’s auction is at www.proxibid.com/ricklatona

End dates are really soon but since I’m not getting paid to post this so anyone interested should check both sites out and understand that yes..

There are 2 SEPARATE extended auctions happening at the SAME TIME with DIFFERENT inventory.

Good luck – maybe one day people will promote these a little more after the conference ends (and not just a link on domaining.com).

Good luck to all.

Shoemoney had a good article about a new service which matches advertisers with popular tweeters. For those of you don’t know Ad.Ly – is the new service matching advertisers (including many A+ clients like NBC, Universal and Microsoft with tweeters.

According to Ad.Ly’s website the service works as simple as you can imagine

“Ad.ly automatically sends 1 tweet in your feed every day from advertisers that you approve. With Ad.ly, you approve every tweet/ad that is sent in your feed. You set the price per tweet that advertisers pay (don’t worry, our system will suggest a price for your account)”

For those who say there is no money in development its purely because you’re developing wrong The first step to success is to quit reading  domain blogs – even this one – and focus on SEO, online marketing and viral marketing blogs.

Targeted advertising does not get any easier than Ad.ly and with an A+ LIST of clients good money can be made if you have the right platform.

Note to self … what the hell is a .ly extension …

For newbies and math geeks alike here is an oldie but goodie link to some very interesting stats about the number of domains registered years after year. Quite amazing to see where we are today, what opportunities were missed just a few years ago and more.

Enjoy…

http://zooknic.com/Domains/counts.html

I have little desire to blog these days but every now and then a sale is published and I say to myself – seriously, who  sold that name at such a crazy give-away price or (probably more times) who is the crazy person who just paid XXXXXX for that name. Not a day goes by when one of these 2 questions somehow finds its way in to my thoughts but Jets.com.

Oh my.

Its taken me a few days to even put my thoughts together on this.

The purchase of Jets.com was a steal.

Yes – the buyer basically robbed the bank without any heavy artillery needed.

To quote Andrew’s piece on domainnamewire.com the new owner said ..

“Justifying the $375,000 price tag for the domain wasn’t too difficult. The previous owners were getting 48,000 unique visitors a month, Klinger explained. “If we took 1% of that, that’s 480 people that would possibly fly private,” he said. That may be an unrealistic conversion rate, so he keeps dividing it in half. “If we can get 30 clients a month by having jets.com as a domain name, the ROI would pay us back in a month or two.”

ROI back in a month or two?

15 years since symbolics.com was registered and people can’t see the light.

But wait – I’m not talking about main street.

I’m talking about the domain brokers in this industry.

Before you sold domain names what did you do?  Sell photocopy paper at escalated prices or sell shoes always upgrading customers with that useless shoe polish for $19. If you can do either of these things you surely can sell an asset at a value much more than 2 months ROI ?

You think you know how to sell since you made a sale for $375,000.

Not a chance.

You failed and failed miserably.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how right these guys were but it does take a good salesman to sell this information to clients.

When an end-user can sit down and essentially mock about how cheap the price was by doing simple math and saying hey – we’ll get our money back in 60 days then I’m sorry – but I wouldn’t give you my grandmothers coffee table to sell.

Furthermore I know of 3 serious buyers who submitted offers in the six figure range or inquired directly with SEDO (buyers who could easily be qualified by doing a Google search on the name) and SEDO came back with a minimum offer of over a $1 million.

So what happens next.

Someone – the seller I can only presume decides hey, we have to move this name so let’s drop the reserve.

Reserve is dropped by over 60%

No one I spoke with ever heard from SEDO now that there was a substantial reduction in price.

A 60% drop on one of the key names in our entire industry and not a peep.

No press release – no showcase – no push to auction.

Absolute rubbish.

Reminds me of a used car salesman who wants to meet a quota this month and has no idea how to extract real value – even a fair discounted value for an asset.

What happens next … you know the story … a charter jet company steals the name, laughs how great the purchase was and people have something to blog about.

Wow – a $375,000 sale people say.

Me.  I say it was a terrible job of brokering such a great domain.

End users are not hard to find – obvious by the continued increase in sales.

Whats hard is to find brokers who understand how to deal with more than one.

Finding an end-user creates a sale.

Finding end-users (plural) creates a market.

Think about it.

15 years in to this thing and even our brokers need help.

Granted SEDO does have some good sales but a scorecard of ZERO on this.

Congrats to the buyer – Concord Private Jets -  you just secured a domain which will forever change the course of your business – at nothing less than the price of a gumball.

A .info sells for 1 million dollars.

Amazing story where the buyer wanted the name for 3 years from the seller and only now both finally agreed on a price. With a seller having the cohonas to hold out and the buyer having persistence to get what he wanted.

Is this a true story?

No.  but it’s a lesson in valuation for many of you fools. Every time a name sells for something more than what you think its worth the bandwagon starts where many rant and rave why this name can’t be worth that much.

It is quite comical to be honest.

Sure, I will jump on the bandwagon for those names bought BY domainers for sale TO domainers. This never-ending cycle is like the dog wagging the tail where 95% of investors have no idea what makes a good domain let alone what markup is realistic by selling only to domain investors. If you buy a name for $10,000 in auction (where 100 of the same people you are actually hoping to sell it to are in) how much do you really think your profit is going to be when you try and flip the name to the same people a few months later? Find price points lower its gets better but there is a cap for this kind of liquidity and a lot of risk.

End user sales are different – an “end user” here includes corporate buyers and even domain investors who have a real vision for development down the road (not some dream where he has NO experience in development today nor gains any knowledge as every day passes but those who are developing and simply acquiring to add to the to-do list one day). These people are actually end-users but participate in name trading/ selling – domaining would not be their sole activity.

When a domain is sold to an end-user the value only does one thing for most domainers.

It brings interest to the assets we all hold and love dearly.

More interest = More players = More Money = More buyers = More Value

Sometimes the press is great with 7 figure sales like Candy.com and sometimes its just a heartwarming story about how a guy quit his ugly day job to enter this industry. Stories like this help overcome the bad press about cybersquatters and validate the industry and these assets as a respectable way to make a living.

However the actually dollar value of a sale to an end user can not be correlated in value to similar domains.

We have many clients as end users and we never send out emails highlighting the amount of Google results, what names Frank or Kevin own that are similar (who the hell is Frank and Kevin most would ask), why an asking price of $10,000 is ok since Johnny sold one last week close to this.

All of this shit that many of you recycle to sell to one another doesn’t matter.

An end user will pay only what they think its worth to thier business plan.

Nothing more.  Anything less is a deal.

Your only job as a seller is to find a price which you are happy and start there.

That target price should be based on your cost, your loss of value, your need for cash, your alternative outlets for sale and many other variables which are all outside and have no bearing of what Johnny’s similar name sold for last week.

This industry has grown pretty fast over the last few years but we are in an environment where a calculation for logical liquidity is sought after by most domainers, dynamics of what makes a good name is entirely changing with keyword development names finally getting the respect they deserve and parking multiples fading out.

The entire point behind this article is do not look outward for your price points – look within.

Everybody could have made another dollar if they held out 5 minutes longer or picked a 35 instead of 36 in Saturday’s powerball but real business is not made of what ifs – its made of what you do.

Use the sales reported to maybe find ranges if you have no idea what a name is worth to you but if its an end-user buying throw it out the window since 90% of the people you hope to sell this domain to will be domainers and those valuations are less.

We get in deal mode every time but I can tell you the most irritating thing behind any seller is having them quote the number of searches in Google or who owns similar names.

We know how much the name is worth to us to buy or sell.

If Frank, Kevin, Rick, IREIT or any of the industry names own similar – whopdef*ingdo.

Back to the $1miilion info sale.

If it happens (and it will one day for A DEVELOPED site which all you .info lovers will claim credit for having foresight which is crap since the power was in development not the name) then you need to respect the PR received, congratulate the two parties – since (a) the buyer was happy to pay and (b) the seller was happy to sell.

The name was worth that much since both parties walked away happy.

Any sale is a good sale.

Trying to find logical value in this industry if your only client base is domainers is like a dog chasing its tail.

They are all moody as hell and would rather buy in auction then buy direct.

You know it.

You are one.

At first read you may think this is a joke of a question but its actually quite serious since from what I can see we have such an incredible amount of dumb people in this industry.

With that statement made, its worthy to note there are (without question) some incredibly smart, talented and professional people but when you weed these out I can only assume many people buying domains are quite dumb.  Possibly even rich, dyslexic and easily inspired to order anything seen on a late night infomercial.

How can I say this?

Logical conclusion is the only way.

Have you seen the names that sell daily on drop lists?  How about those domains which have multiple bidders screaming to get in on the double hyphen auction or those “great” domains on NameJet’s most “active” auction list (this single email every day reassures me that even with an IQ of 70 its not hard to make money if you have a brain here)

Who are these people buying these awful names?

How much money do they lose before they realize all their purchases are worth less than the amount of toilet paper they used this morning?

We are talking about somewhere around 80% or more (in my estimate) of all names that get sold everyday while great names sit on buy it now venues such as Snap, Afternic, BuyDomains etc.

So whats the business plan here?

The more shit you buy the greater the odds the poop will turn to Gold. Maybe they are all part of a cult where the leader chants this mantra every morning. I’ve been confused since the late 90’s about this and expect to be so for another decade or more.

How about advice?

Why are people looking towards the names of this industry to see whats hot?

Most of these people who sell names are … oops… domain SELLERS – not your best friend, development partner or financial advisor. Just because a few names with an I or E in front of them sold for a pretty penny doesn’t make the whole freaking sector worth $500 or $1,000 per name or more.  In fact, they are pretty much all worthless yet people still listen or get excited to get a “deal” on a name that comes with a dream.

Stop right there.

“A name that comes with a dream”

Holy mother – listen to this quote and understand this

Every name has a dream. Every name has a story. Every name could be something.

The only thing that matters is what YOU DO WITH IT.

Doesn’t matter if I owned it, some cowboy owned it or Mother Theresa herself.

Once you pay the bill its yours – Mother Theresa is gone to say prayers, the sellers are back to selling names and you are alone.

So How DUMB are you?  Really dumb if you get caught up in the world of buying names from people and think they have a resale value for more than what you paid just because some “domain celebrity” owned the name before you.

You have to do something with the name to maximize its value.  Truth be told not everyone wants to maximize a name but rather just sell for a profit but if you buy a domain that has NO exact search, a stupid extension, a random collection of keywords that really make no sense used together, have i’s and e’s in front or back to sound cool or a number of other stupid valuation factors many domainers use to put their “pitch package” out for other stupid investors to buy then you’re pretty dumb for not learning how to advance faster in this industry

As for Development and SEO – why are you listening to people who blog day after day about domains and only have a few projects that have never transpired into anything more than Adsense sites.

How DUMB are you?

Pretty dumb if you are typing in a domainers blog to understand SEO when there hundreds of SEO blogs, forums and experts online dedicated to providing more knowledge than 99% of domain investors could ever give you.

Look – this industry is great with many great people like the Castellos, Michael Berkens, Chef Patrick and more

but if you are someone who wants to make a living, create something from nothing, supplement income and/or secure a piece of the internet you always wanted then its time to act smart and look for information from the sources who have resumes to back it up, invest in assets that provide value after the sale and in general – stop following the herd.

Just remember – those who are great sellers are many times not great builders.

Something to think about.

For some time now I thought it was just me and since we are not a big fan of GoDaddy with all the ads and upsells everywhere you look I’ve been ok with letting it ride. However yesterday during the course of conversation with a few investors it came to my attention it’s not just our problem.

First – GD in title does not stand for GoDaddy (you do the math) so if anyone decides to actually listen from the Arizona office lets spell it out for you.

I can text message from Florida to someone in Hong Kong – message received in about 5 seconds.

I can email a client in Tokyo and within 30 seconds get a reply.

Someone outbids us on a GoDaddy auction and the text message or email comes 5-10 minutes later – in most cases in time for the auction to be over and closed.

GoDaddy wants to sent a text message detailing an auction ends in an hour … Not sure what clock you are using but my math usually tells me someone here should run to the computer and see if the auction is ended or not since surely there is not an hour left.

We know you are a model of scale and cheap services which many times bring complications to providing any higher level of service to power users but hell, sending a text message on time is not rocket scientist.

Surely, if my 8 year old niece can do it so can you.