My Biggest Fear as a Domain Investor

Elliot Silver
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45

I become a full time domain investor in November of 2007. At the time, I was advancing in my marketing career, but looking at my options since I needed a change. Just prior to resigning, I had worked out a couple of deals that were to be finalized in January of 2008, so I knew I was going to be in a good financial position for 2008.

My thought was that I would be a domain investor for at least a year and see where I net out after that first year. Worse came to worse, I would mess around for the year and begin to look for another marketing job in corporate America if things didn’t work out.

Well, now it’s been three years, and my business has grown. Although my income is not quite as high as it was in 2006/2007 (primarily because this wasn’t my main source of income), I am very fortunate to make a good living at what I do, and I won’t complain about the financial aspect of it for a second.

The issue is that this business is unpredictable. Every day is a risk, and nothing is guaranteed. I do have liquid assets that could be sold if necessary, but I don’t want to sell core assets unless I have a strategic purpose for doing so.

As the days go by, my friends continue to advance in their careers. They are getting promotions, pay raises, and taking on more challenges and responsibilities at their companies. They are positioning themselves for leadership positions in their companies or getting ready to start their own businesses with their deep experiences to support them.

Should my business begin to fail, I feel like I’ve put my career on pause. I have a lot to show for it, but I don’t think my “TRAFFIC Best Blog Award” will be impressive to a recruiter or HR department.  I think failure is my biggest fear, but the fear of failure is one of the biggest things that drives me.

Lalaloopsy Dolls: Top 2010 Christmas Gifts But Not Good Domain Strategy

Elliot Silver
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1

Lalaloopsy Dolls offered by MGA Entertainment are some of the hottest Christmas toys in 2010. Retailers are selling out of these Dolls left and right, and people are turning to the Internet to buy these dolls for Christmas gifts.

Although the company that sells the dolls registered the difficult to spell domain name,  Lalaloopsy.com, back in August of 2010, it didn’t register other domain names that are important to its brand. Both  LalaloopsyDoll.com and  LalaloopsyDolls.com are registered to people who don’t appear to be affiliated with the company.

Both these descriptive domain names have advertising on them with links to Christmas gifts. Additionally, typos of the brand domain name have also been registered and have PPC links on them.

Had the company spent less than $100 more, it could have bought a number of strategic domain names to protect the brand (and control visitors) online. Instead, private individuals appear to control these key Internet assets.

With childrens’ brands, it is even more critical that companies understand domain names and domain name strategy. Nefarious companies and individuals can easily take typos and other domain names and send visitors to any website they choose. They can also generate PPC revenue by putting ads on the domain names.

Perhaps a corporate domain registrar like Mark Monitor (where Lalaloopsy.com is registered) could add a tool that shows potential domain name typos at the time of purchase and warn registrants that others could buy similar sounding domain names. It would help generate revenue for them and would provide a service to registrants.

When Selling Domain Names to End User, Use the Whois Email Address

Elliot Silver
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5

I’ve written extensively about selling domain names to end users, and one thing I want to recommend is that you use the registrant email (or phone number) found in a Whois lookup as a means of getting in touch with the proper person.

Oftentimes, a business website only offers a contact form to contact them. If the company is larger or if it’s a company that would need a customer service contact (ie an ecommerce company where most people are writing to check on orders), your email may be lost in the process or reviewed by someone who doesn’t know how to handle your request.

Instead of taking a chance and sending the email via form that may not be read by a decision maker (or calling the wrong department), use a Whois service like Domaintools and find the email address on record. Chances are good that it’s a person in the executive offices or possibly the actual business owner.

I’ve also found the History tool to be helpful, since many companies change the Registrant email once they grow sufficiently enough that the owner/founder is more hands off. The History tool costs $15/month as part of the Silver membership, and if you are serious about buying domain names and need to check on a domain name’s history, it’s an essential tool.

Marketing Aside, Behind the Scenes of DomainQuestions.com

Elliot Silver
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2

Let’s put the marketing of DomainQuestions.com aside for a second. Like I’ve shared with my other web development projects, I want to give you a behind the scenes look at DomainQuestions.com to help you with your own projects.

The reason I felt that a site like this is needed is because of the amount of questions I get on a daily and weekly basis related to domain names. Most people aren’t domain investors and their questions can be answered in a number of ways. I felt that I could help more than just the one person asking the question, but others who might be looking for the same answer. I also hope that friends and colleagues in the business will contribute knowledge as well.

In terms of monetization, I have gone direct to the advertisers in lieu of affiliate banners or Adsense. I will be committing my time to answering questions, and the site’s traffic will grow. As a result, advertising on the site is not expensive now and it should be a very good bargain a few months from now, especially for those companies who lock in longer term deals at today’s rates.

I chose to build DomainQuestions.com on a different website than my blog for a couple of reasons.

I want others to answer questions, and I felt that people might be reluctant to do so on my blog. I didn’t want people to feel that this was an extension of Elliot’s Blog, which although it’s a domain blog, is a personal blog. I felt that the branding of the site gives it more of a community feel than my blog might give.

Secondly, from a business perspective, it’s better to have it on its own website. If I decide that I don’t have the time to run the site in a couple of years, it’s more saleable than my blog. I think my blog’s value is tied in with my personal association with it, and while the content may be valuable to someone, Elliot’s Blog isn’t Elliot’s Blog if Joe Shmoe is running it. DomainQuestions.com could be managed by other domain experts and will still be a community site with many different perspectives.

I chose to advertise on domain blogs because I believe they are a very cost effective way to reach my target audience. Not only will I want other domain investors who read the blogs to answer questions, but it would be great if some of the blog owners refer questions they can’t or don’t want to answer to DomainQuestions.com. The more domain knowledge that contributes to the site, the more beneficial it is to the people seeking answers.

You know me well enough to know that I am generally happy to answer questions and respond to most comments, so feel free to do so. If you’re wondering how it was built or the platform, you can check out a question that was asked.

Monitor How Quickly Google Indexes Your Website Articles

Elliot Silver
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3

I wanted to share a way for you to easily monitor how quickly Google indexes articles and posts on your website. You can set up a Google Alert for your website, and as soon as a page is added to Google’s index, you will receive an alert. The alert should be set up like this: “site:YourSiteName.xxx.”

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a considerable amount of lag time between posting an article or dog walker listing on DogWalker.com, and I asked my developer to look into a couple of thing. I also worked in Webmaster Tools to see if I could find an issue. A few tweaks were made, and I wanted to know if they helped, so I set up a Google Alert.

After these two weeks, I know for certain the tweaks helped, as I now notice Google indexing new articles within 12 hours +/- a bit every time I post something. I am not 100% sure whether the indexing had to do with the tweaks or just that the Google Alerts made me more vigilant, but they’re good to have anyway.

If you are concerned about the health of your website or if you want to know if there are issues preventing Google from indexing your articles, you should set up site:YourSiteName.xxx Google Alerts.

Fox Rothschild Website Needs WWW Redirect

Elliot Silver
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1

The father of one of my best friends was featured in a newspaper article this morning about being a state powerbroker. A couple of years ago at a dinner, I told him he  should own his exact match domain name, so I bought it on his behalf and forwarded it to his attorney profile at Fox Rothschild, one of the nation’s best known law firms.

After reading today’s article, I wanted to make sure that his domain name was still forwarding correctly, and I was perplexed (and slightly embarrassed) when I saw that the domain name forwarded to an error page.  The domain name had previously resolved to his profile, but that was no longer the case this morning.

I did some checking, and it turns out that at some point in time Fox Rothschild stopped redirecting its WWW traffic to the website. Instead of a redirect if visitors forgot the www or if someone linked to the site sans www, all traffic that doesn’t have www goes to an error page that says “The page cannot be displayed Explanation: There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed.”

This is a common error for webmasters, and it’s something we all need to think about when developing our websites. I already added the www to the domain forward, so his domain name resolves correctly now.  Hopefully someone from Fox Rothschild will fix this error ASAP. Time to check on your websites to make sure you’ve got it covered.

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