Saturday Morning Snipets

Elliot Silver
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Looks like it’s going to be a super hot day in the City today, so I am getting out of town and going to sit by the pool and drink margaritas or beers or something cold. If you post comments or email me today (or tomorrow), I will probably be very slow to reply, so my apologies in advance.

I was in a bar room brawl last Saturday and ended up tearing ligaments and breaking my pinky, so it’s been a bit difficult to write this week.   If you think that’s bad, you should have seen the girl I beat up. Only kidding about the brawl. I did the finger damage when I dropped a football pass on the beach, but the bar fight makes for a better story.

Anyway, on to some updates:

– I finally had the chance to meet my web designer (Mike McAlister) in person in New York City yesterday after 3 years of working together. The ironic thing is that despite never meeting face to face before, it felt just like old times when we got together. It’s cool getting to meet someone you’ve known for years but haven’t met before.

– Snooki should have registered the .com domain name before announcing that she’s writing a “Snooktionary” to help “Jersey Shore” viewers understand what she is saying on the hit television show. A guy in Pennsylvania registered Snooktionary.com on August 6th, the day the book was publicly revealed.

– If you are thinking about going away on a last minute trip this summer, you might want to think about attending the Traffic conference in Dublin in a couple weeks. It can be written off as a business expense, Aer Lingus is offering summer travel deals, and Rick Latona has always said if money is an issue he would try to work something out.   There are also some cool domain investors who live in that area and will probably be at the conference.

– People always seem to be interested in learning what new names I’ve acquired recently, so here goes.   In the aftermarket in the last week or so, I bought NassauHotels.com, ChiliFest.com (to go along with TequilaFest.com and ChampagneFest.com), DrugAdvertising.com, FloatingStorage.com, and WarStrategy.com.

– Totally unrelated to business, but does anyone have a recommendation or two for wine tasting in the Napa Valley (not going to Sonoma this trip)? We’re going out to San Francisco next week and are making a trip to Napa on Saturday.   We plan to visit Stagg’s Leap, Qunitessa, and Artesa, but have time for one or two additional stops.   Any suggestions?

IHG Fought to Control Domain Names But Parks Two of Their Own Generics

Elliot Silver
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5

A while back, I wrote about Intercontinental Hotel Group’s massive UDRP filing for 1,529 domain names that they believe infringed on some of their hotel brands. They ended up winning a large majority of the domain names in this filing, and the few domain names that I checked smartly forward to the proper IHG website (see staybridge-suites-reno.com and hotel-indigo-london-paddington.com as examples).

I was doing some domain intelligence today, and I came across something that was very surprising to me. Intercontinental Hotels Group owns at least a couple of fantastic generic domain names such as NashvilleHotels.com and SanAntonioHotels.com, yet they aren’t forwarding them to any of their own websites. Instead, they are parking them.

Sure, they are making money when a visitor clicks on one of their competitor’s links, but they are losing potential customers. According to the IHG website, there are 32 hotels within 30 miles from San Antonio and 18 hotels within 30 miles from Nashville. With all of these hotels, you’d think they would at least try to drive dollars instead of earning pennies (and even paying for their own traffic since Holiday Inn is a PPC advertiser and a IHG hotel).

I don’t understand why the company would park these names instead of forwarding them to the IHG main reservation website. It doesn’t seem to make sense that they would meticulously forward the UDRP-won names to the proper place, yet they haven’t done anything with these two great generic domain names.

PS, if someone from IHG reads this, I would love to buy these domain names. You know how to contact me.

Rick Schwartz Floating TRAFFIC Without Sponsors Idea

Elliot Silver
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59

I received an email from Rick Schwartz this morning with the subject, “BIG News from T.R.A.F.F.I.C.” and I immediately read the email.   Rick and Howard are expecting a big show in Florida in October (I am not surprised about this), and they are already discussing the format of TRAFFIC in 2011.

According to Rick’s email.

“In 2011, T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is strongly considering the possibility of having a “Non Sponsored” event. That means NO SPONSORS! Domainers only. The purpose is to keep the advertising and commercial part out and the ideas in.”

First off, I dig the idea of the more relaxed conference. I’ve hosted a few get togethers in New York, and because the crowd is made up of from anywhere between 15-35 people, it’s very relaxed and cordial. We haven’t had many sponsors for the events and that is usually intentional.

I think there will be a few big issues with doing a non sponsored event and I hope it doesn’t happen.

Most companies will still send representatives to meet with clients who attend the show. Right there, the idea of a non-commercial event is kind of thrown out the window. Even if Rick and Howard would try to limit the event to domainers and exclude larger companies, that would prove to be a difficult challenge in and of itself since many domain investors have become providers of some sort.

If sponsors are let in without booths and/or event sponsorships, it’s still going to be commercial, except sponsorship revenue won’t be there. This brings me to my next point. TRAFFIC is already known as the most expensive domain conference. The current rate for South Beach is $1,295, which is double what DomainFest costs (Howard corrected this in the comments). Without sponsors to defray some of the costs, I can only imagine the price increasing. Nearly every company is either facing cutbacks or not spending more, and a price increase or a smaller conference would probably keep attendance very low, which in turn would dissuade fence sitters from attending.

One of the reasons I think DomainFest has been so successful is that domain investors want to meet with their account representatives face to face at least once a year. Oversee has very long tentacles when it comes to the domain space, and they have thousands of clients in their lines of business. Having a personal relationship with certain account representatives is very important in a business like this, and attending DomainFest is that opportunity to meet with account reps in addition to other domain investors. Without the commercial sponsorships, it’s one less reason to attend.

I realize that many people who have been in this business for a while remember DeanFest (the first real conference), and most would relish the opportunity to relive that experience. Unfortunately, this business has grown so much over the years that reclaiming the old days is as likely as going to a college reunion hoping to relive the college experience of staying out drinking until 4am. Unless you happen to be Gregg McNair, you probably won’t be doing that and will wake up the next morning with a massive hangover.

Times have changed. Domain investing has become a larger industry in and of itself. New people have entered the space, and it’s not as collegial as it once was. The growth of domain investing has made a lot of people very wealthy, and there are plenty of negatives that come along with this. I don’t think having an unsponsored TRAFFIC event will draw a big crowd, and I think it could hurt the TRAFFIC brand.

Why Don’t Some Startups Use Their Domain Name to Brand Their Company?

Elliot Silver
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10

I don’t get it. I was reading another article on TechCrunch yesterday about a startup company whose brand name is different than the domain name that is being used by the company. I understand that many “cool” domain names aren’t available in the .com, but in my opinion, the company should use another domain name that matches their brand, even if that means coming up with a unique name.

Take the payment company known as Square for example. Square.com has been registered for many years, so they had to use SquareUp.com.   Why not just brand themselves as Square Up instead of causing consumer confusion. Should the company grow extensively, they can afford to spend the money to buy Square.com and then rebrand as Square. This way, there’s no confusion and they’ll control both domain names. Sure, customers who go to Square.com will realize they’re in the wrong place, but why would any company want to take a chance that they would lose a customer.

Yesterday I read about a startup called Lookout, and I visited Lookout.com to check them out. As you can probably tell by the title of the article, they aren’t using Lookout.com, which was registered many years ago. Instead, they are using MyLookout.com, which isn’t a bad domain name. I would think they could match it up and use My Lookout as their brand.

Assuming 15-30% of a start-up’s traffic is type-in traffic, it doesn’t make sense to add confusion to the market while increasing the value of the other .com that is parked and will earn more ppc revenue. As a result of this, the domain owner would be less likely to negotiate to sell the domain name, fearing that the company would try to entrap them by negotiating. Further, there is little reason to sell a domain name whose traffic and revenue consistently grows.

Many people will argue that the domain name isn’t as important as the product or service being offered, and I agree wholeheartedly. However, I think it’s silly to be known as one name but have a different domain name. Square and Lookout are just two of many start-up examples.

Saturday Afternoon Updates

Elliot Silver
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9

This week was extraordinarily busy for the mid-summer. I feel like a lot of things were accomplished and there were quite a few big news stories. Here are a few updates and some advice for domain development and sales.

  • I received several emails from people letting me know they bought a .CO domain name (or many), and now they want advice on what to do with them. I hate writing multiple email replies with the same content, so I will just post it here: “It’s really a wait and see game to see how the aftermarket develops.” It’s like that commercial with an art auction where the winning bidder says, “I’d now like to sell this piece of art I just won.”   There will be an aftermarket, but I don’t have much of an idea about what pricing will be like nor do I know for sure whether they will become valuable or when they will be desired by end users.
  • Similarly, I saw that Francois has expanded his domain investment reach and launched Flipping.co, a website dedicated to .CO domain sales. If you feel the need to cash out now and/or test the waters, that could be a good place to list your names for sale. Knowing Francois’ MO, he will market the hell out of that site in the very near future.
  • Speaking of MO (modus operandi), Mike Sullivan and Brian Null from MO.com interviewed me last week. People frequently ask me about my background, and I hope this interview will answer any questions you may have. Additionally, there are some great entrepreneur interviews on MO.com as well. Brian Null is the owner of MO.com and former owner of GolfCourses.com, and Mike Sullivan is the blogger behind SullysBlog.com.
  • I was watching a baseball game the other night when I saw an advertisement for a pet food company appear behind the batter on the green screen, and it made me think of something I don’t always consider. When using affiliate banner advertisements on websites, it’ smart to coordinate them with national advertising campaigns. I have been using 1800Flowers campaigns coordinated with their ads on tv – especially during the holidays. They may not pay as much as other affiliates for example, but consumers will presumably be more apt to buy with a brand they know and trust.

Use Your Analytics Data to Buy Domains

Elliot Silver
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6

One of the neat things about owning domain names with websites that get a good amount of traffic is the ability to analyze traffic data, especially the traffic that comes from search engines. Google Analytics is a great tool to see what information people are searching for in Google and Yahoo, and where they visit on your site.

This data can also be a great way to find domain names that you may want to register to take advantage of the search engine traffic. Instead of looking at the GAKT data, you can see the “real data” from your own experience, and since the traffic landed on your site, there’s a good chance you already know the field/vertical.

Yesterday afternoon, I was looking through my search data, and around 68% of the daily traffic was from Google. I dug deeper, and I noticed that a lot of traffic was coming from variations searches for the name of a concert tour that was coming through Lowell. I quickly searched to see if anyone owned the domain name, and it was a huge domain company that picked it up a few months ago, likely after noticing the same trends.

Although the term may not exactly be generic, it’s likely it will earn far more than the cost of the name, and of course if this is done over a huge amount of domain names, the overall risk is mitigated and a business decision can be made.

However, you can also do this for non-trademarked search terms. For example, if I see that I am getting a lot of traffic for “Lowell fireworks,” it might be a good idea to buy the .com and either forward it to the fourth of July page or build a one page site with info about fireworks every year and back link to the main site. It would be cheap to host, easy to build, and as the exact match domain name, it would probably rank pretty high. This could be beneficial to your domain name.

Whether you opt to park, redirect, or use for backlinks, the domain names you find via analytics data could be very valuable to your company.

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