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Lucky are the ones who recognized what value domains held 10 years ago. But not so lucky for the ones who are basically just beginning today. What is the best advice you can give domainers who are stepping onto the train today but still early enough to catch the ride?
I think the opportunities today are in the secondary market and development. The name frankschilling.com got no visits 3 days ago now it gets 200 unique a day (that’s development) You can still get great deals on names privately. That is only 200 people out of perhaps 10,000 who globally participate in this industry. Against that backdrop you are still sooo early. So you might not scoop up hundreds of generics a day at registration p[rice. But if you are persistent in this business, you will thrive Tia.
Since this is your personal blog (these are the questions I always wanted to ask you):
1. I’ve heard that you were financially successful before domains. If that’s true in what other industry you made your money before you got into administrating internet names?
2. What made you start in this particular business? When and how did you started in it? Was your original idea to be like most others, acquire to sell for profit, or did you strictly follow what Ult was doing? Do you remember when and how did you get the vision that “law of large numbers” can only work in your favor?
3. When you could have pretty much any name in the world, why “Name Administration” exactly (sounds a bit bureaucratically plain and boring)? And how come you don’t change NA homesite web design? It looks outdated and very early 90ish, which is fine, but I think you are deserving of much better front presence. I think your audience, your business partners and your fans sort of expect that of you.
Thank you.
1. I made a little money in real estate.. but I was not fabulously wealthy, far from it. I just took a risk that paid off.
2. I really want to answer this for you but out of respect for somebody who’s writing something fairly detailed about all that I will hold back. There is nothing with a freshness date in the answer that will hold you back from succeeding in the current environment or I would answer you now.
3. When I started the company I thought I would be doing alot more work managing other people’s names/portfolios. We still do some of that, but the name just sort of stuck. We started building a reputation in the space. When people live in a place like the Cayman Islands and rebrand their company they have a tendency to look like their running from something. We just didn’t want to give that incorrect impression. Our website is just there to explain what we do. You would not believe how many clever folks just don’t understand this space or what we do. They think there must be a catch. We’ll get around to redesigning at some point. I promise (thanks for your kind words)
Mind me asking about the company?
?
is your staff also located in cayman?
If so, are You hiring
At the moment we are fully hired. We have staff in Cayman/BVI and we use the same services you guys do to get drops buy lists etc.
>>”2. I really want to answer this for you but out of respect for somebody who’s writing something fairly detailed about all that I will hold back.”< <
So you are saying, between the lines, that there’s your autobiography coming out soon
(Or at leats a book about the industry’s biggest players?? 
Well, fair enough.
And if it’s not too much to ask, two more quick ones I forgot to include previously por favor.
4. There’s an impression that you don’t buy domains from small players at various domain forums, and I mean domains that you would ordinarilly find very attractive (quality wise and price wise). Curious why that is? Why only acquire through bidding (eitheir in drops or in auctions)?
5. What’s your take on IDN’s?
And inre: “kind words”
, there’s plenty of those from me too trust me, but those are easy. Besides, I have a feeling you get way too many kind words and admiring glances from those who have some vested interest in you, but far less more straight, honest feedback. When you’re on top there’s tendency to be sheltered from the ordinary.
There are at least 2 books being written about the domain (Domainer) space that I have heard of (Perhaps more coming)
#4 will be answered in the next issue of Domainer Magazine and I can answer #5:
I like IDNs I think IDN traffic exists now, in the form of error traffic going to ISP’s in countries where non latin keyboards are used. Ultimately they are regional though. If you are going to sell things globally you need latin characters. In the final analysis IDN’s are valuable because of type-in traffic… Type-in traffic depends on user behavior. You are not going to get people in Mexico typing Arabic symbols and you are not going to get the French typing Chinese.
Thanks for answering my question!
This might be a stupid question but if I hear it from you, I’ll take it more to heart.
Is it better to purchase domains privately (person to person and places such as pool, snapnames, etc) versus publicly (through forums)? I seem to waste time scouting public forums for that “one great domain” that someone is willing to let go for a discount. And I’ve had a tad luck with that.
However, I always feel like I’m wasting my time and money (because I seem to pick up a few duds on the way from impulse shopping).
Would I be better off saving my money for the private purchases versus scouting public forums? Or in other words: where is the best place to shop for domains for domain investors?
Shopping privately almost always guarantees you the best deal (and the most upside appreciation) Like those companies advertising on latenight TV going town to town buying estate jewelry.. or garage sale shopping – you never know when you’ll find that vintage Patek wristwatch or a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the back of a picture. But its hard work. Shopping the auctions is easier but that ‘ease’ comes at a premium.
Where did this car blog go:)?
Filed under ‘Wretched Excess’ to make way for domain stuff
I really hope you’re enjoying this because another question popped into my head! Knowledgewise, I really feel like I’ve outgrown the beginner’s nest (hanging out at domain name forums) but I don’t feel ready to pursue a place such as Rick Schwartz’s community.
Now that I’ve flown the beginner’s nest, I’m beginning to network and read like crazy. However, I’d still like a community that I can learn more from. I’m not saying that I could ever learn anything again from the forums I began at; it just seems like I’m reading repetitious things and giving advice more than learning.
Is there a place for people like me who are somewhere in the middle?
Thanks again!
Tia
Domainstate.com has excellent info.. as good as any TIA. It’s not the forum necessarily it’s what’s inside that counts.. You should really try to go to Targetedtraffic.com as an attendee next week. You will meet so many people. So much opportunity at a show like that. Really. + Vegas is cheap fun and easy.
Everyone knows you “dont sell” , however I’ve seen names appear on the radar that have “changed hands”. . . .So ….really how often do you sell domains? What determines wether or not you make a sale? How do you/your company value a domain and wether or not its time to sell it?
That’s a really great question Adam. You know names sales are a funny thing. I tell all who care to listen that selling domains is not my core business. I really don’t want an offer to sell our names (I would be sooo happy if nobody ever emailed again with an unsolicited name-sale proposal). We are still building out the network (and you are going to see some significant changes in regard to the network in the coming months). Alot of our names are search terms with huge Overture style (search) rank so while a name like SexualDysfunction.com only gets 1 unique a day, it has a huge search phrase rank of people looking for it in the search engines. We don’t get any traffic from search engines right now. We’re too big and PPC pages don’t meet the engine’s criterial so they actively work to block us. As a SIDEBAR: we don’t necessarily want that traffic. If we are providing useful products the traffic will find us (and Google (for example) blocking all URLS’s ultimately serves to weaken Google’s usefulness not ours (if people are typing our [and your] URLs in Google’s search box and Google gives back any result but y[our] URL website [because their algo says 'Eeek ppc'], thats not useful). So we get our browser type-in traffic and we improve our pages. Anyway, I would be shooting myself in the foot if I sold a name with a reasonance and brandability such as SexualDysfunction.com (both feet if I sold it based on PPC value). The sales you do see (and let me be clear that we have sold names), occurr when respectful well minded attorneys and investors (or companies) put forth a polite considerate and meaningful proposal that justifies us stopping what we do to consider the value proposition in selling a particular name. It rarely happens. But it it does happen. Then again we have received offers in the last two weeks for $120,000+ which we have flatly rejected because the names are too valuable (in those particular cases it equated to 100+ years PPC revenue). Hope this adds some color.
1. I know you’ve mentioned that the next step for you is development, but can you be more specific on your future intentions? I know with such a large portfolio of names, scalability is a problem. With a portfolio of names in the hundreds of thousands like Name Administration, it seems that is will almost be impossible to develop and customize each domain asset to maximize it’s fullest potential in terms of overall earnings. What is your take on this issue?
2. It seems that your revenue model is strictly based on PPC income (correct me if I’m wrong)… what are your thoughts of expanding into the affiliate marketing game and Click-Per-Action revenue model to compliment PPC? I’ve been exploring this method myself and found that with very little development (paid $75 for custom landing page), Ive increased my ROI dramatically ($10/mo in ppc v.s. $150 in first 2 weeks with CPA). I’m sure you have a ton of generic domains that would kill it in the Affiliate Marketing game with little development and maintenance. Any interest in this arena?
I look forward to your response and many more blog posts in the future!
Thanks Gabe! CPM and CPA are problematic at this point because they are time consuming.. there are alot of little moving parts.. If one could automate the whole affair you’re right, you’d really have something and revenues would go way up. Thats not an option for large commercial registrants without lots of staff or automated tools. We have expirimented with rudimentary development lately.. personalloans.com makes almost twice the revenues it did when we ran it with the template at blackgold.com. The extra development (right side content) at personalloans.com now has added alot to the party (nearly 100% improvement). The next step is blindingly simple so obvious.. it incorporates content.. paid search listings.. It will dramatically increase return visits.. You will see that across our health vertical shortly (1 month) and I’ll blog about it when I get it live.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Here’s a hypothetical:
If you absolutely had to sell your domain portfolio, but the buyer said they would let you keep any 10 domains…which would you keep?
That is a tough question Gabe.. mostly personal names.. mine, my wife’s, sevenmile.com < –myblog, that sort of thing. It might have come up in the past
Hi Frank,
Just to re-visit your take on IDNs.
Traffic to IDNs is slowly increasing, not up there with ASCII keywords yet but Im sure it will equal or possibly even outperform ASCII at some point. When you say they are regional, that is true but when you consider that English is not the most widely spoken language it kinda puts a different spin on it. There are 2 or 3? times the number of Mandarin speakers for example.
Certainly internet penetration is not on a par with the US or Europe when compared to China or India for example but this demographic is changing and the ‘playing field’ as it were, will eventually level out. IDNs are an area where there are a lot of detractors and this is a natural human reaction to something that is not fully understood. I guess it is also an attempt, whether conscious or subconsciously to protect the interests of ASCII domainers as IDNs will only continue to encroach on ASCII domain territory. I also believe IDNs offer the best (And possibly the last?) big opportunity for a novice domainer to grab a piece of the action without having to find $xxx,xxx – $x,xxx,xxx to buy a half-way decent ASCII keyword. Yes it is more difficult for someone who doesn’t speak the language of their target domains but that is a hurdle easily overcome with a bit of work and willingness to learn. As for selling things globally I wouldn’t really mind too much if my Chinese character domain cracked the 1.3 billion Chinese market and fell flat on it’s face in the Latin character using world.
All the best Frank
PS. If you’re looking for some top notch IDNs you know where to get hold of me .. ;>)
http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/international_d.html
What type of tool do you use to manage all of your domains?
We use a simple internally developed database.. Think of a large server-side excel sheet with lots of columns and data.
A common theme with successful entrepreneurs is the ability to go against the crowd…buck the trend – place all your chips in the pot while everyone else is passively standing by, waiting to jump on the bandwagon once the road is already paved.
I started investing domains back in 2000 but soon after the dot com crash in 2001, I (regretfully) lost faith in the long term value of domain names and decided to focus more of my time in other ventures. It wasn’t until January of 2006, that I got back into the domain arena thanks to a brilliant Business 2.0 article on the booming industry of virtual real estate by someone that you know fairly well, Paul Sloan. This was my “Epiphany” – my sudden realization that my investment focus should be in domains, not real estate, stocks, gold or other commodities.
It’s been well documented that leaders in this industry like yourself, Rick Schwartz, Yun Yee and a few others had the intuition and foresight to go “all in” when it wasn’t necessarily the popular thing to do. What was your “Epiphany” – that moment that triggered the light bulb in your head to believe that quality domain names would be the best commodities to invest in?
I was so late in domains. I was online in 1994 and actually had the thought when typing my 20th name that didn’t resolve: “I wonder how you get that website name in .com?” I even worked for a small tech co in 1995.. Then I went back to some chatroom and surfing for porn. I could have just as easily missed all this. Rick Schwartz had made his fortune before I had good names. There is a book coming out which is quite evocative (I don’t want to spoil that because I think it will be an interesting read) The catalyst moment was when Gary Chernoff (Friend of mine who was earlier in names than I) mentioned the Overture search tool. Big names (dictionary words) were gone but search terms (eatingdisorders.com etc) would expire or go to auction and nobody would really target these because they were not deemed that interesting. Many great ones were still available. I was really late. Being late in this space has actually taught me alot about market timing. In alot of respects it’s better to be late than early. If you’re too early you can miss it too by giving up when things might have gotten better or by not having momentum on your side. You’ll be hearing alot about the ‘domain book’s’ coming out on a forum near you as the year draws to a close. There are so many substories and inticacies that you might find fascinating about it that it does no justice to tell it to you now, in this venue.
My question:
When I take a trip to visit Cayman, do I get to share a beer with Frank?
**** For you Havey always F:)
Is it true or just an urban myth that you started the cinqo de mayo event at the Roxy in Vancouver?
That is true Mike! I beleive I’m also still the holder of Vancouver’s Port Mann Bridge speed record.
Well Frank, if I ever come to the Caymans, maybe we can shatter the 7 mile speed record together!
***** sounds good sir! Its so slow you could sprint for it
Hi Franky,
I see you quite often you consult your wife about your business dealings (“The white house”, fruit.net purchase, etc).
What are the relationship dynamics between the two of you when it comes to the way you invest, the things you do?
**** Same as any successful relationship I guess. I get to buy the car I want.. then she’s the boss
Frank,
Since, you have some great Cuba domains and live so close to Cuba, do you have an interest in Cuba on any level?
Above Gabe mentioned something about successful investors being “all in” when everyone else is waiting on the sidelines. I like that quote since I feel that I am close to being “all in” with my Havana Journal and Cuba domain portfolio. I have been buying Cuba domains since 1998 and publishing the Havana Journal for four years. LOTS of time and money are “all in” for me.
If you do have an eye on Cuba, do you have any advice on how to play Cuba for the near future and/or longer term?
Thank you.
Rob
(Same Rob from SearchDomainsForSale.com
***** Cuba is going to be huge if and when they open up. There are weekly flights from here.. you should go.. They do not stamp your passport.
Thanks. I have been there, legally on business on US Treasury license. Maybe TRAFFIC 2008 South… in Havana
**** Ha! That would be cool!~
Hi Frank-
Why the love affair with .net domains?
-Russ
P.S. kudos on the blog, I hope you’re still getting some “real work” done!
***FS*** I like .nets cuz they have traffic.. and alot of the world that identifies .com names as US centric, prefers the agnostic .net (not to re-ignite the IDN debate, but alot people may find they have more success with .net in IDNs for the reason that theyu seem more international and non-us centric). Also .nets are relatively cheap so there is more headroom for relative appreciation. All things equal I prefer the .com tho.
Hi Frank,
I really appreciate your blog, it is very insightful and brings very valuable information.
I’d like to ask you two questions, I’d like to hear your take on these:
1. Have you ever drilled down into the differences in demographics for a typical search engine user and a typical person typing in domains? My take is that the latter tends to have a bigger representation of females + tends to be of older age, do you see this the same way?
2. My second question sort of builds up to this. Have you noticed that different countries have different type-in bahaviour. My observation is that for example Americans are more likely to type in a domain name than a UK citizen (I am obviously taking into account the differences in populations here as well so the data can be compared). Also my belief is that when an American arrives on a landing page, he is more likely to click than a Brit for example. Do you have the same observation? What do you think the reasons for this are?
Thanks in advance,
Jan
***FS*** That is a Super good question Jan. I think the gender/age question really comes down to the type of name inventory you own. Our ‘Games’ vertical is mainly kids, probably boys. Our ‘Cars’ vert is probably 18-34 Men. Then we have a faily large ‘Beauty’ vertical that attracts women. Its funny you should mention the UK.. We run a portfolio of about 4000 pretty good .co.uk names .. they get very consistent type-ins and generate strong revenue. The pound is much stronger than the dollar and we monetize through Yahoo (Europe).. I have never looked very closely at the percentage of people clicking through based by geographical IP address. I do think different cultures have different expectations of product quality. Your average Opel has a much higher level of fit and finish than your average Chevrolet because Europeans demand it. So it stands to reason if you run a uniform “one style fits all countries” page implementation, you might not draw as many clicks.
Frank,
Can you share with us the earnings seasonality for traffic domains? In general, how do you expect earnings to be this year?
Hi Frank,
You commented “We don’t get any traffic from search engines right now. We’re too big and PPC pages don’t meet the engine’s criterial so they actively work to block us.” My question is about a domain that does not have the benefit of being a type-in domain, but benefits from search traffic because of its history. The domain is well indexed in the search engines because it had a business website on it for years.
January was the first full month it was parked, and it got 2803 uniques and 308 clicks. But in February it dropped drastically to 160 uniques and 18 clicks. I dont think anything changed except that Google, for instance, probably detected that it is now parked. Do you think that is what affected it? If so, it makes me think that I cannot park a name like this…I need to have a developed site to continue to get the traffic from the search engines. If I go that route, will the search engines still clobber it if the developed site has some Google ads or affiliate links on it also….or will that not be used against it? OK, now my accountant suggests a question…could the search engines be ‘de-listing’ it because the DNS has been changed to point to a parking company…as opposed to simply checking the content of the site to determine whether it is parked content or true developed content? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.
If you had to start all over again, and had $100K in your account, what would be your strategy?
***FS*** Great question Edwin… I would try to buy high quality names 50 of them by making $2000-$5000 offers through whois.. calling registrants and emailing.. then I’d put them into a PPC and reinvest the profits into more buying names.. resell the odd good one for a profit and again reinvest as much as possible (plowing all the money back in). You do all this part time until you get critical mass. That’s the trick of the biz.. get to the point that you can do it full time. Once you’re a full timer you have an instant advantage over many others. You can take some time to develop. I am reasonably sure that even today you could buy 50 names like those I am picturing at 2000-5000 each. (names like rumcakes.com <–i just paid 4k) I could live off that one name.. Name gets 10 visits a day. You could put up a simple site shipping prepackaged rumcakes.. Dropshipping. (I gave away $18,000 worth of rumcakles last Xmas).. 10 visits a day is 3650 customers a year looking for rumcakes (with no content there really) you could make $2,000,000+ per year off that one single domain by developing and creating a rudimentary business at the name.. That’s the power of the internet. Levering the built in type-in-traffic embodied within the name into something bigger.
Franky, I miss you and wish you were here. It’s just not the same here without you.
G
***FS*** Save me a chair at Slack’s Vern and I are coming into Penticton this summer .. then maybe a vegas trip together? I miss you too sir
Great answer! The one last question I have is: Why do you register names like BootDiskFailures.com and SeattleVideoSurveillance.com. Names like this get few to no searches (according to WordTracker and Overture), have 0 incoming links, and I’m guessing very few (if any) type-ins. Why do you buy these sort of names? How exactly are you making money if they receive little to no traffic?
Edwin Sherman
PS: Your rumcakes.com example reminded me of this rags-to-riches domain story in Newsweek:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17030580/site/newsweek/
***FS*** What’s funny about that particular link you chose is that I sold him ‘unicycles.com’ (brokered the sale in 2002).. small world. I like names like those you illustrated because linguistically speaking there are not alot of search term combos that make sense:
boot disk failures: 543 <– gets some overture rank and you can sell highly bidded ‘hard disk recovery’ paid search listings.
seattle video surveillance is actually an anomally .. it was bought with a third party in mind.. but that name notwithstanding, we are not perfect.. we do make mistakes. Check the Overture rank though and you’ll see most of our search-term style names have a ‘user search’ heartbeat as with bootdiskfailures.com. Still last point.. many of these names represent future opportunities we believe in, but don’t constitute the bulk of our revenue generating inventory. Thats why we want low renewal fees for our names..
A great deal of the names we (and others) own have no revenue at all.. If renewals go up we start saying, why are we carrying this weight? A great deal of Verisign’s recent revenue increase has come from low renewal fees and tasting.. as they raise the bar they are going to have to be careful to pick the magic level where they don’t loose too many renewals as a result of price increases (Sidebar item but relevant to your question).
In regards to PPC/domain parking, no advertising, straight type in traffic only; how much of a role does the TLD play in the success of a parked domain? Logic would dictate that a .com always outperforms a .net/.org, etc.
I have a healthy mix of several TLDs, yet i’m wondering if i shouldn’t just capitalize on .com domains and sell/drop the rest?
any advice appreciated!
***FS*** alot of this comes down to common sense.. Mortgages.org gets one unique a day. If I owned the .com it would be more like 1000-2000 a day. If I owned a name like charity.org it might actually do better than the .com … some .net’s do as well as the com but by and large .com is king for type-in traffic. Everytime a user watches tv everytime they see a print ad, a billboard , that gets reinforced.
It seems that your blog is getting quite popular since your first entry less than a month ago…great stuff – keep it coming! By the way, any big purchases at the auction today?
***FS*** I actually didn’t buy that much.. I took seven names for 142,000.. the best one I bought was homeforeclosures.com for $90,000. There were alot of great names but I honestly have alot of trouble opening my wallet at these auctions because of the auction fever dynamic that goes on. Still its great fun to attend one and to get a sense of the size of the industry.. Maybe 5% of those in the domain business attend these things.. maybe 1% of global participants.. Its exciting to watch the industry mature.
Frank:
I found it interesting given his company’s Canadian presence that Geo Sign founder Tim Nye said that when he saw a “.ca domain on a flyer, I think small-term local firm”
I am not sure what small-term local firm means exactly but I’m assuming its a typo and the reference was to small-town or small-time or something like that.
I personally think Tim underestimates the inhernet value in country code traffic. While .ca suffers from a demographic problem due to a lack of population the traffic generated there when targeted converts very well.
Yahoo, ebay, amazon…don’t think Canada too small and even though he says it says small time Tim’s company saw fit to register geosign.ca.
As you have ties to Canada and an investment in the .ca namespace yourself I wanted to ask your thoughts, experiences and opinions on the value and future of .ca domain names specifically.
There is no question that .com is king but after that where do you think cctlds fit in to the future of the web.
***FS*** I think you’re right. .ca is everywhere in Canada. My opinion is: .ca names are good in Canada, but if you want to do substantial business globally you don’t need (but should have/try to acquire) the .com .. In America .us will never be as popular (never catch on) like .de did in Germany or .ca did in canada because .com is so entrenched in the culture. You have a decade of branding, a trillion+ dollars in global marketing pushing the.com brand. I think Tim believes there is value in some CCtlds and alternate tlds, but if you want to Lever-up borrow money against your internet business.. during this early phase, .com is it. .com has the traffic. Follow the traffic, follow the money. I think certain CCTlds do well because of currencies and languages. The visitor can expect the British pound, the Canadian Currency or German language and Euro prices.. like that. I like .CN names because the Chinese are nationalistic/’middle kingdom’ oriented. They will want the .cn but if they want to do business blobally, .com will still have the advantage for a few decades
I wanted to hear your thoughts on typo names and traffic. More and more I’ve been hearing the whisperings that new smarter browsers will eliminate typos – and that domain holders with typos should unload them now before they are worthless. Now what I can’t comprehend is that how would the browser tell if the domain is actually a typo? I mean, look at all these names that are being branded into full fledged successful companies; freindster.com, flickr.com, digg.com. I can understand that there are browsers that can correct the tld’s like if someone typed in .cm instead of .com, but I can’t see how a browser can automatically assume that I meant to type in forsalebyowner.com when I actually typed in forsalebyowener.com.
Now I understand that branding a typo name to represent your online company is probably not the best route (only companies that don’t rely on type-ins, i.e. digg, can get away with this), but ultimately you can always brand a catchy name that gets few if any type-ins and redirect the typo domain to point to your branded name (ex. Brand FSBOHomes.com and redirect forsalebyowener.com which gets over 300 uniques/mo.). Ultimately, instead of having to pay Yahoo/Google $2 per click ($600/mo. for 300 visitors), you just saved yourself $7200 a year on advertising since you already own that targeted traffic. You would think that advertisers that buy this type of traffic at Yahoo/Google would be knocking on the door to buy this domain for $14,400 so that they could own this traffic for life rather than pay $14,400 for 2 years of advertisement via Yahoo/Google. Yet, the number represents over 8 years ppc earnings and paying this much for this typo would be foolish to many “domain investors”. (This brings it back to the whole Sendori business model – eliminating the the two middle men, ppc company and Yahoo/Google, and going straight to the traffic buyer).
What I’m getting to is even though generic typos have little “brandable” value, they ultimately have “traffic” value which we all know is the alpha denominator in generating sales online. With this said…I have 3 questions:
***FS*** Very well thought through comments Gabe!
1. What is your take on the feasibility of future browsers being able to somehow recognize and correct a typo name which would dramatically decrease typo domains?
***FS*** Highly unlikely IMO.. its too problematic because as you pointed out “what exactly is a Typo?” Flickr, digg and even deel.com example I used in this post: http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/when_is_a_typo_.html .. its very hard for the browser to modify user intent without ramification. Sites change and today’s typo becomes tomorrow’s brandable variant. Consider that its 2007.. they can’t stop spam (I have a spam filter and still get it), they can’t stop pop-ups (i have ie7 popblocker and still get them), how are they going to stop folks from navigating to the sites they actually want.. the action is so benign.
2. What valuation models do you use to value your typos – 3x, 5x, 7x years ppc revenue, etc.?
***FS*** Depends on the viewpoint of the party taking on the risk I suppose. For me, I don’t like trademark typos (they have a minus multiple because I actively try to avoid or delete problems), but a brandable variant like deel.com if I could get it.. I’d pay whatever I could within reason.. We don’t really use the “multiple of ppc” rule because my deal may be different than the sellers. ie. sellers 10x may be my 3x. I don’rt like typos that aren’t brandable or are overt such as: dfeal.com <— deal.com primarily because they are not brandable… I guess I would focus on typos that are “not really typos” like dogz.com (yes, the ‘s’ is next to the ‘z’ on my qwerty keyboard.. but being a typo is just not what ‘dogz’ is about. Its street-slang .. see where I’m going with that?
3. Do you see advertisers in future bypassing the big boys Yahoo/Google and going straight to the domain owners to buy or lease TYPO traffic (if so, we are greatly undervaluing typo domains – don’t you think)?
***FS*** We are seeing that now.. savvy advertisers approaching to buy verticals direct. Its a very easy sell.. You can hear the lightbulb going on, on the other end of the line and the excitement in their voice as they contemplate the prospect of all these potential leads “refreshing” to their site. We sell verticals of traffic that include generic brandable variant names like dogz; so yes.. I could see aggressive advertisers coming after typos as well as generics.
Your insight is always appreciated and I hope you still got time to finish your “real work” now that you got this blog going.\
***FS*** Its hard.. but rewarding.
I have a few undeveloped 1999 adult and bodybuilding domain names how on earth do i get them valued when they would only be of interest to those guys very familiar with those two fields.
***FS*** I would not worry about getting you name ‘valued’ appraisals don’t help sell names. The person buying your name will not care about your appraisal. the only place appraisals work is in the mortgage/housing business where they are standardized and required for borrowing. Try selling your exgirlfriends engagement ring when you have an approaisal for $5000, you’re asking $3000 and there are 20 of them that are bigger and better on ebay for $1000.
Plug your names in through a parking service, see if they have any traffic/make money; then write the aggregator saying you have a generic name that gets (for example) 12 uniques a day, making $X a month.. What’s it worth? You will get an email back.. and that number will be a lowball wholesale.
Dear Abby,
What’s your position on hyphenated keyword names.
Sincerely,
Concerned bystander.
***FS*** Ha!~ I likem’ skate-boarding.com one of my fav’s these get traffic but its clearly more muted than no dash (with rare exceptions)
Frank,
This is not really a question. It is a suggestion.
If you have any aspirations in the IDN market, this is an opportunity you should not pass over.
http://www.idnforums.com/forums/2112-a-bold-foolish-experiment-entire-japanese-idn-portfolio-for-sale.html
If you think Edwin is close associate of mine then ask around, he is not, but this is one of the best Japanese Domain portfolios in the business. Maybe even the best! In 12 months time selling this will look like an act of suicide.
Best Regards
Dave Wrixon
Frank – I work for a very large company that has many businesses, including media properties. From what I can tell, I am the most knowledgeable person in the entire (very large) organization about domains – I’m probably also the most passionate.
I have had little success in convincing my company (or even my business unit) that we should be spending a lot of money to lock up the good real estate before it is gone. The general response is, “we don’t have the cash right now and need to make the numbers for the quarter. Besides – all the media companies are consolidating their properties under one domain – they aren’t going to multiple domains “(games.yahoo.com, movies.yahoo.com). I tell them that it isn’t a single expense for one quarter – that we can write it off over 15 years and that we need to own the category – blah blah but nobody gets excited.
This company could spend millions on names without any troubles but I’m having trouble getting buy-in.
Any suggestions? Any data / examples (especially from media business) of people going the many domains route v.s. single domains? I think barry diller is a good example – they have all sorts of similar businesses using different names (tickets, loans etc) – but any suggestions would be great.
Thanks in advance,
Brad
***FS*** and just try buying a good name.. I know folks who have tried to buy launch.com and altavista.com from yahoo.. no traction. They are scared to sell in case the give something up that they handn’t anticipated. I really don’t have a further piece of advice that I haven’t already given on this.. Even if I had a great one it probably wouldn’t be in my best interest to give it out as I’d still like to try to capitalze in the secondary market (buying names) over the next few years myself. Prroctor and Gamble got it a few years ago buying alot of great domains .. so did J&J (baby.com) Kay Jewelers (Gold.com) .. I can honestly say I don’t have a convincing statement that you can make to a quarterly focussed company in order to illustrate the potential in locking up the right domain names now.
“T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West’s Live Domain Auction organized in conjuntion with http://www.Moniker.com yielded over $4,000,000 in sales on Wednesday this week. Rumors have it that the domain name porn.com did exchange hands privately after the auction ended for $7,000,000, making it one of the largest domain transactions so far.”
Just read this on domainnews.com. Have you heard these rumors that porn.com actually did sell after the auction?
***FS*** I have not.. but I know that Monte tried very hard to make the deal go on the block that afternoon. That’s a huge purchase and would not surprise me to hear that it in fact closed. As a quick aside, I have heard of several deals for millions of dollars (hotel.com, hotels.com etc) That went for many millions, but you will never hear about them due to NDA’s.