I am lucky on so many levels. Not only in business, but I get to share my thoughts and opinions with those who care to know them; and some do. I certainly never thought I’d write a blog. Long before blogs the best outlet for venting of ideas was a magazine or periodical which might let you write for them. You had to be powerful or famous enough to convince the publisher that your opinion mattered. Readers were often left wishing that those who could write, would acquire power and that those with power, would acquire the ability to write.
Back in the mid 20th century there was a man who’s opinion mattered, who was very powerful and who could write very well. He came from a business very much like the domain name business, a world of roughnecks and fringe players who became very rich, very quickly. He thought out of the box like many of us:
“”In business as in politics, it is never easy to go against the beliefs and attitudes held by the majority. The businessman who moves counter to the tide of prevailing opinion must expect to be obstructed, derided and damned””. – J. Paul Getty
Getty wasn’t just your average lucky sperm type. He was born rich, but he was a clever guy with an ability to make money on his own, and the oil business he helped shape, rhymed very much with the domain name business of today. Wildcatters, and risk takers, ridiculed as unsophisticated speculators. Getty didn’t have a blog. He was wealthy and powerful though, and that made him interesting to the publisher of Playboy magazine:
“”Why did I choose PLAYBOY as the medium through which to express my views? PLAYBOY enjoys a very high readership among young executives and college students. These are the individuals who will be the businessmen and business leaders of the future. These are precisely the individuals who would be likely to benefit from any information I might impart as a result of my own experience in the business world.””
Getty’s reasons for sharing were very altruistic:
“”If, by writing, I have passed my message on—even if only to a receptive few—then I shall have achieved my purpose and received a very rich reward in the form of personal gratification from the thought that I have in some small measure helped spread and strengthen the principles in which I believe.””
Well done and well said Mr. Getty. 
Everyone who blogs today, shares that sentiment on some level. Consider for a moment how his oil business had great similarities and parallels to the present day domain-name space:
“”In the late fall of 1915, a half-interest in an oil lease was offered for sale at public auction. I inspected the property and thought it highly promising. I knew other independent operators were interested in obtaining the lease, and this worried me. I didn’t have much money at my disposal—certainly not enough to match the prices older, established oilmen would be able to offer. For this reason, I requested my bank to have one of its representatives bid for me at the sale without revealing my identity as the real bidder.
Surprisingly enough, this rather transparent stratagem accomplished the purpose I intended. The unexpected appearance of the well-known bank executive who bid for me unnerved the wildcatters. They assumed that if a banker was present at the auction, it could only mean that some large oil company was also interested in the property and was prepared to top any and all offers. The independents glumly decided it would be futile to bid and, in the end, I secured the lease for $500—a bargain-basement price!
Soon thereafter, a corporation was formed to finance the drilling of a test well on the property. I, as a wildcatter with no capital of my own, received a modest 15-percent interest in the corporation. I assembled a crack drilling crew, and my men and I labored to erect the necessary wooden derrick and to rush the actual drilling operations. I remained on the site night and day until the drilling went into its final stages. Then, as I’ve related, I found it impossible to stand the nervous strain and fled to Tulsa, where my friend J. Carl Smith brought me the news that the well had come in.
The lease on the property was sold to a producing oil company two weeks after that, and I realized $12,000 as my share of the profits. The amount was not very impressive when compared to the huge sums others were making, but it was enough to convince me that I should—and would—remain in the oil business as a wildcatter.””
How many of us have been down a similar road, had similar ROI’s, been just as nervous or employed familiar strategies and tactics to secure the domain-name we need? Thumbing through Mr. Getty’s exploits I came across this vignette which had chilling parallels to the paid search traffic side of the domain name business in 2010:
“”As soon as I d brought in Cleaver Well Number One— which produced an impressive 5100 barrels a day—I cast about to find a buyer for my crude production. To my dismay, the firms I approached refused to deal with me. The motives behind this evident boycott became infuriatingly clear within a few days, when I received several calls from brokers offering to buy the Cleaver Lease at a very low price. The brokers refused to name the principals they represented.
Certain interests wanted my lease. Either I sold out at a ridiculously low price, or I would be left without any market for the oil produced by the wells on the property.
Unable to sell my oil, I had to find some way to store it. The only storage facilities available in the Los Angeles area were in a defunct refinery—two storage tanks with a total 155,000-barrel capacity, which I immediately leased. In the meantime, even while I was vainly seeking a buyer for the 5100 barrels of crude my Well Number One was producing every 24 hours, Well Number Two came in for a 5000-barrel daily production. This was followed in short order by Number Three, which produced 5100 barrels a day, then by Number Four, the runt of the litter, which brought up 2100 barrels daily. This production rate was rapidly filling the two storage tanks—and I was still unable to find an outlet for the oil. I knew that when the tanks were topped off, I’d have no choice but to shut down my operation entirely.
Obviously, I was receiving no income from the four wells. My fluid cash resources—already strained by drilling costs— dwindled rapidly as I paid for leasing the tanks and for trucking my crude several miles from wells to storage. The situation could have easily turned into financial disaster. I decided to make a frontal attack on one of the biggest of all the major oil companies—Shell Oil. By a fortunate coincidence, Sir George Legh-Jones, then the Shell Company’s president, happened to be visiting in Los Angeles. In desperation, I aimed high, asked for an interview with him personally, and was informed that he would be happy to see me during his visit.
A warm, friendly man, Sir George listened attentively to what I had to say. The deepening scowl that etched across his face as he heard me was all the proof I needed that his firm was not a party to the boycott and that he heartily disapproved of such tactics. When I finished talking, he smiled his reassurance.
“Relax,” he grinned. “We’ll help you.”
As a starter, the company would buy the next 1,750,000 barrels of crude oil produced by my Cleaver Lease wells, Sir George told me. In addition, a pipeline would be constructed to link my wells with the Shell Oil Company’s pipeline network—and construction work was to commence the very next day.
Sir George and the Shell Company were as good as their word. Shell’s work crews arrived on my Cleaver site bright and early the following morning and started to lay the pipeline. The boycott was broken—and the Cleaver Lease was safely and profitably mine!””
The present day Domain Name traffic business needs it’s version of “Sir George” to reach past Google and Yahoo, unlocking the value of our traffic.
We all know that domain name traffic is the best quality crude-oil of web traffic. Increasingly the major keyword marketplaces such as Yahoo and Google have taken that high quality traffic and dumped it into the same keyword marketplace hopper with arbitrage, garbitrage, and other forms of toolbar crap. That traffic then gets smart priced and shaved down under the guise of “quality control” resulting in pay-rates for domain traffic which are held artificially low. Our traffic underperforms it’s historical averages and we get paid way less than we should. The domain name channel should be included at a parity (un-smartpriced) to Google and Yahoo Owned and Operated Search-box traffic. It is at least as good and often better in quality than Yahoo’s O&O search-box search and it has no place being dressed down and dumped in with other low quality forms of traffic.
The way to break this stranglehold is obvious, stop selling your PPC traffic to Yahoo and Google’s keyword marketplaces. That’s easier said than done because Google and Yahoo have created a system which pays out just enough to enslave network operators and keep them at heel. Their stranglehold on the market has created a strange bi-polar world which makes it difficult for new paid-search networks to gain scale and become viable. They can crush would-be competitors as they rise from the crib. We are approaching the tipping-point though, where disintermediation like that employed by Mr.Getty in the example above is not only possible, but certain. Pay-rates to domain name owners and publishers are just too low. We are at the point where it is becoming illogical to sell traffic. The consequence of pulling traffic away from PPC and selling directly to large advertisers is shrinking dramatically.
The fact that flat rate sales could be contemplated by high quality “owned and operated” domain publishers, shows you how broken the present PPC marketplaces are. Our high quality traffic employed as a crutch to carry low quality crap traffic from arbitrage, mixed with mud and laundered back into the Yahoo / Google marketplaces from 3rd and 4th tier networks. Domain publishers even tacitly encouraged by those marketplaces to consider arbitraging grey traffic in with their whitest whites as a viable way to gin revenues. It’s such a shame but a fitting tell of the times we live in; where the game is just rigged. False metrics designed to obfuscate real economic values. People deliberately turning a blind eye to logic in favor of the applause meter. All justified and guided by a broken compass.
The bright spot of name sales shows us the way up, or “out”. The values of domain names and multiple offers we receive prove that traffic is still valuable outside of the paid-search networks.
A savvy group of lead generation experts are the new wildcatters, working the fields of domains and trying to strike black gold. As the guy who owns many of the fields with pay-dirt potential, I am thrilled that there’s a healthy and vibrant marketplace for the leases I have to offer, and I’m clearly glad to be generating healthy cash-flows in such trying economic times. But I am saddened by what has happened to the nature of what was once a much more transparent and honest business.
Most advertising buyers are blissfully unaware how the traffic they buy is really generated. And most analysts reading the latest Comscore rankings are unaware how those big traffic numbers they see are generated. They imagine people dutifully typing into Google or their browser to visit all those high-ranking sites. Well there is a real mess in that slaughterhouse. Enough to turn most ad-buyers and analysts into vegitarians. Even the experts are oblivious to the gaming and buying of outside low-quality traffic in order to increase the Com-score numbers for a better quarterly story on the earnings call.
While all these things are disheartening, the biggest disapointment for me is the business I’m closest to. I’m shocked that the dominant paid-search keyword marketplaces are so greedy and short-sighted that they would risk losing control of a valuable resource like domain traffic. Lose it they will. I predict within the next 5 years or so, most high quality name traffic will leave it’s present PPC deal looking for something better. Too many operators are quietly and not so quietly milling about. The seats will change. I just wonder what these networks will use to add to the mix when the light sweet crude of web traffic: type-in domains, begins to slip between their fingers and into stronger arms. You may want to collar that search-stock price gain, if you haven’t already.
It’s great to see you blogging again Frank. I missed hearing your thoughts and insight. Thankfully I never got around to cleaning up my RSS feed so picked it right back once you started again. Have to admit though, preferred the pictures on the previous post
I bellive that the next thing will be to lease a domain.I like the vision that RootOrange has.That seems to me the better way for us domainers to look in to,but i might be wrong since i’m just a pigeon…
BlackGold.com = FS
“Roughnecks, Wildcatters, Fringe Players, Unsophisticated, Speculators” I admire that capacity and quality in an individual. Most will cling to safety and mediocrity, thus their results will always be safe and mediocre. Little venture, reaps little in the way of adventure and gain.
I am taking away a lot from this post, I will be revisiting it until I can fully understand the implications. Thank You for the insight.
Great post Frank! The future for domain investors is definitely filled with enormous change. Those among us who deliver innovative solutions will be richly rewarded.
Congratulations on your continued success!
Kevin
Why not sell our own PPC spots on our domains?
Have a script in place that lets advertisers bid for placement on each domain…it can look like a typical PPC page but 100% of profit goes to the domain owner.
I see this working for higher trafficked domains, at least.
Franky, do you know of anyone that has tried this?
Maybe I need to stop being lazy and try it myself.
Great to see the blog posts again from time to time, and the comments open again! Thank you.
This article is the most important I have read in months. Obviously, the Domaining world is oblivious to every thing has been thrown at them. How can an industry sit there and get paid pennies a month, if anything at all? The crookedness of the traffic/Parking/PPC is alarming.
I also, this this industry should have fought hard in the early 1990′s to make sure name registrations did not have anything to do with trade-marks, because that is garbage in most cases. No one should be allowed to trade mark alphabets. If someone feels that a name is important to them, they should register it or buy it from someone who did.
Agree with a lot of this post, but it’s inaccurate that type-in domain traffic is of a higher or equal quality than owned and operated search box traffic. I’ve seen the numbers.
The point is good though that type-in should not be priced along with arbitrage and error traffic. Unfortunately, many domain parking services and networks have both and do that mixing.
***FS*** That’s a great comment .. thanks sincerely.
Chad, selling our own type-ins by the click sounds great until you consider click fraud. It only has to happen once before your reputation is ruined.
Frank, great post. This post will be visited many times as we move further and further into the digital transition. Although this economic cycle really sucks, it is naturally forcing all to look at the online world in a different perspective – Opportunity!
Time will Tell.
NICE! I’m just happy to see the SevenMile blog back in action!
Here’s the point I was trying to make above:
All domain names are unique like finger prints. Let’s take for an example: ABC.COM, it is not the same thing as ABC; if someone trade-marked ABC, fine, but it is not the same thing as ABC. As you know, we also have ABC.NET, which is not the same thing as ABC.COM, nor is it the same thing as ABC.DE! So, unless someone trade marked ABC.COM, that domain name should not belong to him/her dej ure. If it does, then why should the person also claim A-C.COM? …and so on. If you are a judge or lawmaker reading this blog, please bear this in mind. I intend to solicit Howard Neu to help me take this thing to the Supreme Court, if that’s what it takes. We have to get aggressive in this industry. Domain Names are like fingerprints, no one should claim as a trademark a name simply because it resembles their name. ABC.COM contains a DOT, a C, an O, and an M, more than ABC. Besides, you have several TLDs, ccTLDs, etc etc yielding the ABC plus the corresponding TLD/ccTLD, which makes it something different.
Those keyword marketplaces are a real rabbit hole. So refreshing to hear someone cut through all that and expose it for what it is… Thanks Frank!
I love your blog Frank …
Speaking of Google and search engines …
Do you think vertical search will eventually present a good
alternative ? Will this killer app eventually become a cheap commodity
and empower challengers ?
Anthony
***FS** I really hate to sound like the magic 8-ball here Anthony, but I’m not entirely sure yet – Ask again later. Thanks for the compliment.
Hey Frank,
Great you are blogging again! Your insights and advice I’m sure have long be awaited by many judging by the comments.
I agree the PPC game is both rigged and stacked against publishers. The large ad networks have been lazy and allowed things to get out of control. Sold their souls to the devil for access to the trough.
I was wondering what you thought of the idea to sell ads and rent out PPC space directly…or is there a better way in the offing?
As an owner of keyword rich domain names I am seriously looking forward to hearing more about this!
***FS*** It depends on the size of your portfolio. If you have a small group of names it’s a cakewalk to rip the best ones out and start hand targetting. If you buiilt your portfolio focussing on one vertical such as health or education it’s easy too. Just do a direct deal with University of Phoenix or a drug company. But scattershot portfolios like mine are more challenging because there is just so much – where to start? I guess the longest journey of thousands of miles begins with a single step. Conversely I could just point everything to a page that says “Enjoy Coca Cola” or “Drudge Report” or create my own Drudgereport with an instant audience oof 26 million uniques and then sell ads.. Something like that.
“That’s easier said than done because Google and Yahoo have created a system which pays out just enough to enslave network operators and keep them at heel.”
This is so true, but I agree with your prediction that in the next five years or so we will see a huge amount of ppc traffic looking for opportunity elsewhere.
Thanks Frank, this has given me a lot to think about.
I am so very glad you are blogging again. Awesome post. Keep em comin.
[...] Schilling published an editorial recently that was well received, even proclaimed to be the most important post of the year. I would [...]
This is where flat-rate zero-click comes in. Most of the zero click implementations I’ve seen are PPV, but with time it will mature to look more like magazine advertising – they show you audited circulation numbers and you pay a to advertise in the mag for x issues.
Inspirational, well written, creative, and so much more, but I feel like everyone is totally ignoring the mobile App / iPad App / “next must have device” App tsunami that is heading right for domain names.
At no other time in the history of domain names has the future been so unclear or bleak. To put it as simple as possible, “Apps do not need a domain name”. The killer app can kill the best generic domain name. Just like domainers preach that the Web will eventually eliminate all print, I predict the App will kill the “Value” of the domain name.
***FS*** You knowTommy, I’m not nearly as bearish because the sales inquiry volume is so robust, we are still making money on traffic, and the iPad (i have 3) has a keybooard with a .com key. In the end, every site needs a unique address and there are so many more sites and sub-pages than there are useful addresses. Also, there is no work-around to email. Without domain names, there is no email. I’m merely troubled by the traffic monetization side. The traffic is ther. It’s robust, it’s valuable, but we’re all being tricked into selling intoo a rigged marketplace.
Chris says:
Why not sell our own PPC spots on our domains?
Richard says:
I bellive that the next thing will be to lease a domain.
Well I think that we’ve been looking at this virtual “real estate” in the wrong light. That ownership and advertising models will evolve through time and necessity. The result will be a model somthing like my concept – Condomains.com – “the Condo conversion of internet real estate”. Unlike fractional ownership, where each has a % interest in the whole, Condomains would allow each to have 100% ownership in a deeded area (Ad unit) on a domain. A much different equation. Think of the classified advertising business one could develop by “purchasing” the best 234×60 spaces on 50 carefully chosen sites. Advertisers would truly become partners in interest. 3rd party resellers would lose their luster. Why should the search engine be compensated for bringing you where you were going to go anyway.
I see a waterfront compound here on Cape Cod.. a solitary person enjoying a home big anough for dozens to enjoy. And I say to myself.. heck, that would be a great place for 20 families to enjoy. If they were condos, 20 people could and would benefit instead of 1.
We have placed too much emphisis on search, when the true value is in result.
Frank, ditto.
I have started the move about a year ago but it is difficult due to fact you mentioned. “Most advertising buyers are blissfully unaware how the traffic they buy is really generated.”
PPC guys, very shortsighted, losing their reputation and as we know, your reputation is all you have.
If you crack that nut send me an email. My names are ready to go and sitting on the tracks.
Of course, we badly need good alternatives to Google and Yahoo, with the best and possibly the only viable option at this time being selling ad space ourselves via our own in-house Advertising Network.
Frank had a very nice Ad Network of his own apparently running on his domains but I believe it was deactivated last year for some odd reason. I can only guess as to why.
We would like to install a network almost exactly the way Frank’s worked on all our sites but having lots of difficulty getting it programmed after considerable time and effort.
The problem is the programers we were dealing with were simply not capable of doing the job. Therefore, would greatly appreciate knowing who the programmer was who programmed Frank’s old advertising network?
Frank – why not go after microsoft hard.
For one day – Direct your traffic to them all of it to Bing.com and send out a press release – Their servers will spike like crazy – then watch the Jets roll into the Caymans with Paul Allen give you a double cheeked italian kiss – ready to sign over a cheque to you
.
i will always maintain – Microsoft will come a calling to you Frank – And you will walk away with a couple of billion for your trouble.
After redirecting your traffic. To the common man – it seems like a day of lost revenue but of course you can always peg that in to the purchase Price.
They already do it with Juice.com
Or Heck do a post on Techcrunch.com
Funny enough – I remember reading that yahoo AGAIN almost bought demand media – Instead they went after that piece of crap called associated Content. Tick Tock.. Google is going to can those guys soon.
and we all know now that Demand isnt making that much profit -… Phew good to have you back frank. Just did another 5 figure deal – and just about to do another super monthly contract.. I was driving a taxi 2 yrs ago. 
Welcome Back.
***FS*** You are actually quite correct. Something like that is possible. Congratulations on your move up.
Hi Frank,
I am one of your faithful, believe it or not. Love what you write and how you say things. Since you have your domainnamessales.com website online, I find that I too had seen the light and have many of your same type domain names in my portfolio. It makes me think I am also pretty smart. Keep on writing. You have more followers than you know.
Frank,
A wonderful post. Thank you.
A possible marketplace for domainers to use to find internal industry leverage would be to use Twitter hashtags effectively ?
Not the $ symbol that is being used for stocks.
Let’s say **domainname.com or something.
or ^^domainname.com
That way domainers would find on a daily or weekly basis, fellow domain sites that have display inventory or topic list inventory to be sold or traded for.
The oil wildcatter analogy is apt.
But direct navigation traffic, needs to lead to a step up in value.
Sending it to the sausage factory is a like an oil field well that is
declining in output.
Sending the traffic to an open trading pit on Twitter.
(not unlike the Eddie Murphy- Dan Akroyd scene in Trading Places..grin)
Example.
FS’s site here at domainnamesales.com
Just add to the bottom of the right side bar his own area, and an area for wildcatters.
Then he tweets 2 things to get something started.
Puts a widget for his own firm, and webpage widget script for a daily deal…FS’s own version of Groupon in a way.
^^domainnamesales 4 sale : xxxxxxxxx.com price $
ad placement : display $ list $
For the daily deal widget: tweet no. 2
^^domainnamesales wildcatter sale: xxxxxxxxxx.com price $
ad placement : display $ list $
The big private portfolio owners like FS need to lead a march of us penquins.
It means that an FS site right side bar has an FS company offering.
And it means that an FS site has a properly paid for offering/ ad from an FS or consortium approved wildcatter / or regular advertiser that wants to be there.
WordPress lets widgets and plugins for free listings at wordpress.org
Some party just needs to correlate keyword domains that want certain keyword party interest oriented ad placement.
Domains in the 2 word / 3 word / and hyphenated category are low risk to switch to this.
I understand that the marquis ‘candy.com’ domains of the world can’t do this.
40% of German dot de domains have hyphens.
There is no reason that the English SEO/ domain world can’t use
the power of keyword combinations with 2 / 3 word domain combinations to the powerful effect that 2 word and 3 word hyphenated domains in German are achieving.
note…that is what I am trying to do personally with my portfolio of 1000+ Chinese 1 word and 2 word IDN domains.
thanks..
Steve
Hi Frank,
Great post and, like everyone else, I am really glad you are blogging again. Would you mind sharing which book those Getty quotes came from? Your post has gotten me interested in Getty and I would really like to read more. Thanks!
***FS*** Playboy. I have all the back issues from thhe 1960′s .. They are in there. you can buy them online.
You talk about domain traffic as though it was all equal and of equally great value. Unfortunately some of your brethern have taken to muddying the waters with watered down, infringing and sometimes worthless traffic. As such the lions share you seek from the SEs is difficult to qualify from their point of view other than say by ctr or conversion. Good traffic deserves good money and worthless traffic deserves no money. Until there is a sound methodology and the SE’s downstream partners either give up or are forced to give up monetizing absolutely terrible domain names then domainers suffer. As someone you regard highly once said “one piece of —- ruins the whole stew” and that I am afraid is what has happened to the domain channel. It has been clogged up by the actions of unscrupulous parking companies and domainers and I think everyone can agree that no one likes to pay for garbage.
Frank,
Love the article. The similarities in the times are interesting. I myself have struggled with the feeling that domains and developed web properties are underperforming due to the mass market system that is domain parking and the paid content network. I agree lead generation is the next phase of the process. We as domain and website owners will need to band together to support each other in these future endeavors. Ad/site networks may be the best method for building a collective front to take to the marketplace. This is what we are seeing occur in the geodomain sphere and with companies like Marchex.
Jason
I love this kind of anecdotes and their little pictures, it’s fascinating and inspirational to read these stories about people succeeding in business! And it’s amazing how well it rhymes with the present state of the industry!
Wonderful post Frank!
Frank, great post – as always. I’d like to continue on something though you mentioned in the comments – unfortunately it seems there aren’t too many statistics on this topic yet.
Watching my friends and family, I’ve seen some of the email traffic move to social network like Facebook and there have been occasions in the past where I couldn’t find the email address of someone and turned to Facebook as an alternative messaging method. Do you see that as a thread to email?
I have been watching the rise of “social media navigation” where content is integrated and URLs are shortened. It almost feels like people are looking for a new closed network, like what AOL tried to build back in the day.
“Also, there is no work-around to email. Without domain names, there is no email.”
Thoughts on this Frank ? More and more people are using Twitter, Facebook, IM, and texting to do “emails”. I can say my own personal email communication has probably cut in half since picking up on some of these technologies. Obviously I’m bullish on domains and you do need a domain to do some of these forms of “emailing” but more and more it seems people are drifting from the good old way of doing 1 on 1 communications as well.
***FS*** all the business stuff is still email tho Adam. Pdf’s get passed that way, contractual verbiage – and it’s easier to admit in court. Email is the language of business (large and small). I’m an early adoptee too and going back to email more . Still excellent point sir. You know your stuff
Interesting reading, as always. Why not create your own Yahoo or Google? So what if it is a little stripped down. You have a huge firehose of traffic to point to it on Day 1, which is every bit as competitively significant as the early mover advantage that they had back in the 1990s.
I’d like to be another to state that domain traffic doesn’t currently convert better than search.
Advertisers are not looking for clicks or traffic they want measured sales. They want those of us in advertising to analyze everything & run campaigns that are cost efficient & have high ROI.
I believe with development CPA for domains can prove to be more cost efficient for advertisers.
Your blog’s prior posts really brings up new tactics that should be used by domainers. The problem is many domains are parked & new advertising techniques can not be used with any parking service that has Google as a feed. Google’s rules for domain parking makes it so literally the only way you make revenue is by mistake.
Great reading though. thanx
The North American markets are massive but this is about global revenues, there are countries that are not even connected yet, vast economies yet to develop the economies of scale offered by online commerce. ICANN = revenue “Globally”
North American is a big pond, nevertheless a pond.
Apps or Google by voice, the keyword aligned with the brand status.com / country code. Your only permitted one & we all want what we cannot have.
ICANN = revenue No change there then
why not simply see which google ads are being served on your domain and approach the advertisers directly.
Frank,
Give some of your money to a non-profit organization you run that educates businesses on the value of domains… or… maybe you just want that nonstop PPC revenue coming in. How much can you give back to the domaining world of little people? I don’t know, but I’m curious.
Bill Gates was once ridiculed in the ’90′s for the revelation that he gave nothing to charities for all his billions he made. Now he’s one of the largest charitable givers in the world.
That was after he married. hmmm!
And I’ll be attacked for sure, for trying to tell YOU what to do with your money. I understand that, and I’m ready. But you know as well as I do, you lucked out with about 50 other domainers back in the early 2000′s. That doesn’t diminish your hard work, smart thinking, and sacrifices, including putting everything on the line.
You know how that feels.
There’s lots of domainers feeling that same thing today. What can you do to help them?
peace bro,
signed,
The Guy Who’s Going To Be Beheaded Figuratively For Posting This (Balls To The Wall!)
Are you serious Stephen?
You and Obama are from the same line of thinking…
Anyone with the least bit of wealth should spread it around — because for some reason you or I are entitled to it.
Entitlement is what’s wrong with this country.
Charity and entitlement are two different things.
Entitlement is forced charity — which benefits no one in the long run.
I don’t comment on blogs, ever, but this line of thinking in this country has to stop.
Not one person alive is ENTITLED to what anyone else owns. Period.
If the wealthy feel like being charitable it’s up to them — but it’s not up to the government or anyone else’s whim.
Entitlement programs are dragging down the USA.
Now, people are “entitled” to:
A new car (cash for clunkers)
A home (the low/no income home loans that spun us into this collapse in the first place)
Money (welfare)
Healthcare
Where does it stop?
I guess Frank, Bill Gates and the rest of the people who have worked their butts off and TAKEN ALL THE RISK can just start shelling out their money to those with no vision or work ethic.
PS: I won’t reply to any follow up comments on this, as I don’t troll around blogs all day long.
@ Stephen Douglas says:
Judging by your website SuccessClick.com
Successful Domain Management. You profess to know the answers:
“Welcome! My name is Stephen Douglas, and my company is Successclick™. We provide extensive consulting expertise in many areas of the domain industry.”
[...] If you haven’t read it, you can find it here. [...]
Frank,
Who do you think could turn out to be the gamechanger for the domain channel (Getty’s Sir George from Shell Oil in your example) Does the entity exist today? Will it be corporate or perhaps created from domainer interests? Any prognostication to share?
PS. Those are the sorriest Playboy pics I have ever seen.
***FS*** LOL.. they really are. The logical intermediary are those paying the majority of the freight at Google and Yahoo.. Agencies like EfficientFrontier.com for example who handle the automotive advertising for countless auto manufacturers. Big quiet leadbuyers, A big retailer like Walmart – I would rather point 1 million visits a day to Walmart for a flat rate than play in the PPC casino these days. You need to find somebody big enough, and somebody bold enough – and somebody as pissed on the buy side as the sellers are on this side. IAC could, but I don’t think they have a cohesive strategy over there for their brands.. It looks like every brand for itself trying to make more than the others, so Diller doesn’t call them out at earnings time. Then you have Ask.com which rather than trying to build their brand is just a giant arbitrage play back into Google. The more time passes the more the margins get squeezed it really doesn’t matter. At some point, PPC pay rates get so low that you just pull all the traffic and use it to sell names at Godaddy, or you put up a banner that reads “Enjoy Coca Cola” and charge the times-square billboard rate. Or “visit the Wynn las vegas”.. the idea that you could make as much doing that, as you could targetting, shows the system is broken.
Most important post ever?
Really? I’m not even sure what the point is.
The most important post would have been something that stopped trying to monetize “traffic” and turned the internet into a useful resource for information. Perhaps if everyone took down every domain that provided net zero but redirection, misdirection, and unecessary ad-driven traffic shaping we can talk.
Perhaps if everyone who had a site developed something, created something, did something then the world would be a happier place. I’m not sure that 1 guy who owns a HUGE number of domains asking everyone to try and increase his PPC traffic is a big deal. So he’s not getting what he thinks his domains are worth.
Poor him. Oh woeis.me
Get over it.
***FS*** I’ll be fine. It’s about the broader space. You’re not going to be able to flip your .TV or .CO names without a healthy marketplace for .com’s .. and that healthy marketplace is partly driven by a vibrant traffic marketplace which works for the traffic owner.
Frank,
I enjoyed your post. Many thanks for sharing your insights.
Clearly, we domainers have the assets and we need to vote with our feet. We’re highly fragmented, hence, we are treated accordingly, for lack of a better system designed by us or for us. For my domains (and for others too) I’m working on a leasing/parking concept which would exclude the search engines from seeing a penny.
In the short term, I think your point of going “door to door” to sell the traffic is the way to go, and, one would think, it ought to yield higher returns, afford greater control and simultaneously create scarcity, driving up the bids for all of us. We need to recapture our inventory and price it ourselves.
Your post also motivated me to register HitsForRent.com, ClicksForRent.com, DomainerRevolt.com & DomainRevolt.com
Good to read your posts again Frank. Thank you.
dh
As usual, Frank Schilling continues to play 3-D chess while I’m still struggling with checkers. But I always learn by reading his blogs and am appreciative for his insights.
The one meagre thought I can add to this discussion is that in another life, I worked in radio.
Selling advertising.
What is it domainers are talking about here?
Selling advertising.
Companies with big budgets hired ad agencies for media buys, while smaller firms did it themselves.
What appears a fit here is either an ad agency model, or ad broker model.
Imagine how much attention, fear or respect Frank and/or a few other large scale domainers would attract, with advertisers, and also with the big search engines being discussed here. Once a template or model is in place, expect many to follow the leaders.
A broker model could also work by showing how many consumers or customers of certain domain names can be reached using powerpoint, or simple chart, or clusterplus type psychographic analysis, or whatever presentation style that confirms this is a solid media buy.
Ad agencies are typically paid by a commission percentage on the amount they spend. I imagine that if ad agencies were convinced they could get their clients results when buying cost-effective advertising using certain domains, they would do it.
The bottom line is that by underscoring the delivery of a defined number of consumers, and then by making it easy to buy to reach them, is a dynamite combination.
Keep blogging, Frank. You have many fans and most of us are taking as many notes as we did in college.
What is it domainers are talking about here?
Whats in a name anyway !!!
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/bingocom-announces-purchase-of-domain-name-payments-2010-09-02?reflink=MW_news_stmp
http://domainnamewire.com/2010/09/03/bingo-com-ltd-buys-out-bingo-com-payments-for-900000/
We’re in the stone age when it comes to quantifying traffic quality. It’s all still largely based on half-assed metricities and huckster voo-doo that’s hardly reliable or repeatable. So much of the PPC game revolves around scalping clueless merchants who know they need to ‘do something’ about their online presence, but have an immature and unsophisticated strategy when it comes to online marketing. The result is they wind up paying Latour prices for a Franzia product (or, in some cases, piss in a jar) simply because they can’t tell the difference between any of it.
Avinash Kaushik wrote a cool book called ‘Web Analytics 2.0′ that was generally intended to be a primer for the intermediate analytics layperson, but the peripheral implications are pretty interesting, as far as this discussion (traffic quality) goes.
There is a colossal effort underway by business to segregate meaningful eLeads from meaningless ones, using whatever analytics tools they have at hand (a field which is improving exponentially and will shape the internet landscape, going forward). The indiscriminate commingling of shitty ‘system gaming’ traffic in with quality traffic is akin to the reckless bundling of high risk subprime with low risk prime into the same securitization vehicle. Inevitably, this must change, if for no reason other than the hodge-podge method strongly incentivises the delivery of a more filtered, higher quality traffic product to the merchants. Someone will step up to fill this void, at the rapid expense of those enjoying Snake-Oil-Traffic profits, today.
Eventually, the quantifiables will get banged out and most all traffic will come to be properly categorized, it’s marketable value liable to whatever the actuarial math says, all contingent on it’s likelihood to generate a reliable return. Getting ahead of this traffic-categorization curve is important, I believe, especially for people like Frank Schilling who command a metric assload of valuable leads, some of which are probably being sold too cheaply.
Great Article,
With power comes greed and large American Corporations
and Governments work on perception which is not reality, Therefore
You have to destroy the perceived perception to Create the reality
and what you are dealing with is ultra capitalism which is kinda like
Communism with the mass majority of money and power going to the
chosen few, Google wishes to control everything internet wise
and put the interests of its self,share holders and the
Government above all else, Mass control IN Society is very dangerous
Tool and to the detriment to the majority , we have to work on how to
de-stabilise Google to bring it back to its original conceptive
objective to be a useful tool and not a mass control tool .
a lot of what is wrong with the world is mirrored by what is wrong
with Google unparalleled control i call it Gangster politics and its
how America operates Dont kid yourselves Iraq Venezuela weapons of
mass destruction all to steal any form of black gold in some way
USA government sets the Standards that corporations follow and no
where is this more true than were there is black gold in what ever
form .
Hi Frank,
I never usually miss your writing and if it is referred by the great DK. I remeber your Keynote Speach at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Because you always shared like Rick what you best thought about domains & its future. It helped many small newbies & domainers of our time.We get the power and vision from you guys.
Great inspiring article/story of its kind.But we are not sure how to create typ-ins traffic like you or other big domainers. We got small portfolio and the larger sharks will just eat us if not protected from. What is your advice for us with the portfolio at our arsenal?
Have a great day!