Sunday Update

Elliot Silver
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I’m out of town this weekend, and I hope you are enjoying some time off from work. Big week coming up.

A few people have posted comments asking for   rationale for some of my domain names’ asking prices. It’s a combination of gut instinct, comps, and even market saturation. Sometimes I want to sell a name quickly, and will price it accordingly. Other times, a rapid sale isn’t necessary, so I will price a name on the high side and slowly reduce the price, letting buyers figure out a fair price between my listed price and bottom price.   I don’t always sell names at the list price, but I sell a lot of domain names.

Just to give you an idea of my company’s domain sales for 2010, the average sales price for me has been $2,616.36. This includes everything from selling names as cheaply as “6 hand registered names for $100 total” to a number of large sales.

I have a great restaurant recommendation for you for the next time you’re in Paris. You’ll want to visit Le Hide near Champs Elysees. Not only will you have a great dinner, but you won’t break the bank either.

Thanks to Fairytale Brownies of Brownies.com & Brownie.com for the box of awesome brownies they sent me. I let them know that Brownie.com wasn’t resolving anywhere, and I hope the DNS fix will bring them additional business this holiday season.

If you like drinking good beer, I have a suggestion for a beer you might want to try. The other night, I had a bottle of Supplication from the Russian River Brewing Company. It was the most expensive beer I’ve had ($22 for a 12.7 oz), but it was great. You can probably get it in stores for $10/beer, and it’s worth a try.

Get Back in Touch With Previous Inquirers

Elliot Silver
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9

I recently saw a good reported sale of a domain name I had inquired about a couple of years ago. I made an offer via email and the domain owner told me it wasn’t for sale. I have no idea whether it wasn’t really for sale at the time or whether my offer hadn’t piqued his interest.

The sales price looks reasonable, and it wasn’t that many thousands of dollars from my offer. Had the previous owner given me that price when I first inquired, I am almost certain I would have bought it, since my opening offers are generally not the most I will pay for a given name, and it was certainly in the ballpark.

The moral of the story is that if you receive an offer that makes you want to sell the domain name, you might consider getting in touch with the people who previously inquired about the domain name. Even if you set a price higher than the high offer, you can possible make more money. Circumstances may have changed and it may bring back interest in that particular domain name for someone who had previously inquired.

At worst, you waste a day or two waiting for a reply. At best, you can generate some incremental revenue or create a private bidding war between two interested parties.

Hosting Companies Should Not Be Listed as Domain Owner for Clients

Elliot Silver
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16

I was looking through some upcoming NameJet dropping domain auctions via FreshDrop, and I noticed something that I found to be appalling. Hosting companies either dropping the ball on renewals or not doing enough to help their current or former customers with their domain name assets.

I generally do a historical Whois search for domain names I might have an interest in bidding on at auction. From this, I can see who previously owned it and try to figure out why they either didn’t find the domain name valuable enough to keep or why the domain name may have been allowed to expire.

On four consecutive searches today, I saw that the previous registrant email was a hosting company. What this means to me is that the hosting company didn’t pay the renewal bill either because they didn’t realize it needed to be renewed, their client no longer works with the company, or, probably the least likely of the bunch, the client no longer wanted the domain name.

Since these were very good domain names I searched, it’s unlikely that the client simply opted to not renew the domain name. Another unlikely thing is that the hosting company dropped the ball. I presume they manage other domain names and they would certainly get emails, so it’s unlikely they simply forgot because there would be some severe liability for that I would think.

What is likely in my opinion is that the client no longer works with the hosting company, and the hosting company didn’t feel compelled to let the client know their domain name was going to expire. They probably just didn’t feel like going through the effort of ensuring a safe transfer. Instead, since they didn’t have orders to renew the domain name, and since they wouldn’t be compensated for renewing it without those orders, they took the easy way out and just let the domain names expire.

Of course it’s the client’s job to keep tabs on its assets. However, I think it’s irresponsible or a hosting company to register a domain name on behalf of a client and keep the Whois information in the name of the company – specifically the registrant email where renewal notices are sent. If a relationship ends, the hosting company shouldn’t have to pay for a former client’s renewals, but the responsibility shouldn’t become theirs either.

Using the iPad as a Sales Tool

Elliot Silver
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When I walked into a photographer’s studio in Lowell a few years ago to speak about my new website, the photographer was very interested in what I planned to do. I wanted to show him the first concepts of the site, and after taking several minutes to load his computer, we loaded the site on his browser. Unfortunately, due to some browser issues, the site looked like crap and he wasn’t exactly impressed.

Fast forward a few years to a couple of months ago when I was invited to have a representative of DogWalker.com stand outside a new pet store in Manhattan to hand out magnets with the website listed on them. Smartly, I brought my iPad, and when people asked how the site works, the person who was standing outside the table was able to use the iPad to walk them through the site to show them how it works and looks.

There was no need to rely on a wifi connection. We simply hooked it up to AT&T’s 3g network, and voila!   It was a helpful sales tool, and after talking with my friend and fellow domain investor Tony Casella whose company owns Tampa.org, I expect it would work for local sales agents in places like Lowell and Burbank.

If you rely on one-on-one sales for your websites, the iPad is a helpful tool you can use to show off your site. The only caveat is that Flash movies and ads won’t show up on the iPad.

Brownie.com Should Forward to Brownies.com

Elliot Silver
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11

I’ll be honest with you right now. I have somewhat of an ulterior motive for writing this Sunday blog post. I want some fresh brownies… hint hint…

I like brownies. I also like generic domain names. It was nice to see a great generic domain name like Brownies.com being used by a company that makes and ships brownies. Fairytale Brownies is brownie company founded by friends, David Kravetz and Eileen Spitalny, who started it in 1992. The company has 30 year-round employees and 100 employees during the peak season.

The primary reason I found this company is that they own Brownies.com, which is where the company operates its business. In addition, and the impetus for my post, the company owns Brownie.com, but it does nothing with the domain name. There’s no 301 or 302 redirect, nor is there even a forward to Brownies.com.

If you visit Brownie.com by mistake, you may either end up on a dead page or quite possibly a ISP error page loaded with pay per click links. To make matters worse, since Fairytale Brownies is an Adwords advertiser, they could actually be paying Google to send what should already be their visitors to Brownies.com!

The company was smart enough to register both great generic domain names Brownies.com and Brownie.com to prevent another company from operating on the alternate, but they should be doing something with Brownie.com instead of having it error out.

PS: I love brownies 🙂

Domain Spam Using Fear of Domain Investors as Scare Tactic

Elliot Silver
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9

I get a lot of spammy emails from people who are trying to sell me things I don’t need. One particular email I get often is from companies who claim that someone is trying to register domain names in Asian ccTLDs that could infringe upon my “trademark” since the registrations are for a domain name I own in .com.

Today’s email is funny because there’s a bit of a twist. This company claims it wants to help me prevent someone from registering similar domain names to a .com I own, specifically because they suspect the person who is supposedly trying to register these domain name is… gasp… a domain investor.

If this was legit, I would probably be happy if someone bought and built a website in an alternate TLD to my .COM.

Dear Sir/ Madam

I’m sorry to disturb you so abrupt. We are a domain name registration service company in Asia,

On 15th September. we received a formal application submitted by Mr. John Zhang who wanted to use the keyword “independencemortgages” to register the Internet Brand and with suffix such as .cn /.com.cn /.net.cn /.hk /.asia / domain names.
After our initial examination, we found that these domain names to be applied for registration are same as your domain name and trademark. We aren’t sure whether you have any relation with him. Because these domain names would produce possible dispute, now we have hold down his registration, but if we do not get your company’s an reply in the next 5 working days, we will approve his application

As authorized anti-cybersquatting organization we hereby suspect Mr. John Zhang is a domain investor. so we need you to attach importance to this issue.

In order to handle this issue better, Please contact us by Fax ,Telephone or Email as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely 　　　　　 　　　2010-9-16
Rachel
Oversea Marketing Manager
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Room 1008,
International Building,
No.38 YueLong road,NanTong City
Tel:+86(513)85330968
Fax:+86(513)68099585
Email:Rachel@ntchinanet.com
Website: www.ntchinanet.com

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