Subscribe

Tricks to Find Domain Owners

Elliot Silver
-
10

I frequently run into the problem of locating domain owners when the Whois information is invalid or outdated. When I want to purchase a domain name, I generally send personal notes to the Whois email address on record – or the historic information if necessary. Oftentimes, I receive the “Delivery Status Notification (Failure)” message that is standard for invalid or inoperable email accounts.

When this happens, I typically call the phone number of the registrant to make contact that way, but I often find that the phone numbers aren’t working either. Depending on the domain name, I will either give up and consider it a lost cause, or I will use a few different ways to get in touch with the owner.

1) Search for the owner’s last name and city on WhitePages.com to find a current phone number. A big DING goes off in my head if the phone number listed is different than the Whois.

2) Search for the owner’s name in Google (in quotes). Oftentimes you will see that the owner is either associated with other companies or email addresses, and you can use those to get in touch.

3) Search for the email address in Google. Sometimes you will find the email address associated with different websites or listed on a particular website along with a more current phone number or alternative means of contact.

4) Search the domain name’s website for info – both the current site and archive.org record. Sometimes the most obvious way of contacting the owner is overlooked.

If all else fails and you need the domain name, you can always visit the last known address. Usually this doesn’t work out, but it is a good way to get information. Sure, most people are reluctant to spend $1k+ on travel and associated expenses to visit a location, but if it can help you buy a $250,000 domain name, why would you give up so easily?

A whole lot of effort went into purchasing Customs.com in September of 2007, and if it wasn’t for going the extra few miles, I would not have been able to acquire it. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to get in touch with a domain owner, but if it was easy, someone else would have acquired the domain name long ago.

Thinking of Being a Full Time Domainer?

Elliot Silver
-
16

I left the corporate world in November of 2007 to focus on my domain investments, and I couldn’t be happier. Although I consider myself a domain investor more than a developer, I have been experimenting with development and learning how to make money from my domain names, in lieu of simply flipping them. Over the past year and a half, I’ve learned a lot about domaining and development, and I’ve tried to share as I’ve learned.

If you’re thinking about starting your own company and becoming a full time domain investor in 2009, here are some things you should consider:

You are going to work non-stop. Every tv show, commercial, email, shopping trip, dog walk, sporting event, night out, vacation…etc will turn in to work for you when you think about things from a domain perspective. You’ll see domain names you like and names you hate, and you’re always going to think about how it relates to your business. I put in 10-14 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week. People may comment about my travels, but even when I am on vacation, I usually work wherever I am.

Whether you are buying names to flip, buying names for PPC, or developing, there will always be current projects and things on the back-burner calling your attention. While my geowebsites have seen some pretty incredible growth, I can’t simply let them lay low. I receive emails with events and press   releases every day, and I do my best to add content to each site daily. My “breaks” consist of writing domain blog posts, testing mini site development, reading about domain news, and making domain inquiries.

You will talk to your friends about domain names until they’re sick of hearing about them. Subsequently, at least one conversation a night will revolve around someone asking you if a specific domain name is available or if a domain name would be worth some money if they register it. Most people you meet won’t understand exactly what you do, but they will either think you are a cybersquatter or a genius. Either way, most people will end up thinking you are lazy and don’t do much, which is ironic.

99% of newly registered domain names are worth what you just paid – or less. If you go all out and register hundreds of new domain names, you’ll go broke quickly. Generally, about 95% of newly registered domain names will not receive any traffic or earn any revenue if you don’t develop them. Once you realize this, you will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to develop – and there’s no easy solution yet.

Although this business is lucrative, you probably will not consistently earn the same amount of money every month. There are great months and there are not so great months depending on your focus and your domain names/websites. Some months I have several great private domain sales, while other months I focus on development and don’t sell many domain names.

Overall, I love what I do and I love the freedom I have as a domain investor. I’ve been able to build 3 geodomain names into popular local websites that continue to receive increased local recognition each month, I have a domain blog that receives great commentary from people doing the same things I do, and my work doesn’t usually feel like work.

The downside is that there isn’t much easy money and your new boss will probably be much more demanding than your current boss.

How a Domainer Does Link Building

Elliot Silver
-
9

I will preface this by saying that I am not anything close to being an expert in link building. As with most of my development projects, my budget is tight and I am experimenting with everything, so what I write might not be the best way to go about things, but it’s a learning experience. I know that link building is a great way to drive traffic to a website, and depending on the links, it can create trust and add SEO value to a website.

I receive at least one email per day requesting a link exchange for either my blog or my other websites. People seem to think that because they added a link to one of my sites, I should automatically add one back to theirs – regardless of who they are or what their site is about. Some emails are friendly and others seem to think I would be obliged to link back, which is certainly not the case. More often than not, the link requests are for obscure websites that aren’t even relevant to any of my sites, which is more annoying than anything.

With my geodomain names, I started building links by contacting local bloggers and websites that would benefit from having a link. With Burbank.com and Lowell.com, both sites had decent pagerank when I started (Lowell.com was PR4 after my first launch and Burbank.com had been a PR4 site when I bought it). I contacted people in the area I found via Google who had equal or lower page rank and introduced myself, introduced the site, and asked for a link exchange. I felt these bloggers were either getting a better deal, or it was completely fair, and I just wanted people to see the sites.

This worked well for most commercial sites, but it did not work for city-related websites, which have some of the most trust, but have policies of not permitting outbound links on their websites to commercial sites. However, there are work arounds – like providing specific content that they want or need to link to in order to get information out to the public. In fact, my geowebsites have links from .gov and city-owned websites – whether it was intentional or not. This is the reason why good, unique content is essential! Link building works best when a site links to you because you have the best information.

One of the neatest ways I have been link building (in my opinion) is on huge websites that encourage article sharing and networking. For example, NBC Studios and Warner Bros are both located in Burbank. On the Tonight Show website (on NBC.com), and on the Ellen DeGeneres Show website, there are huge social networks, which include blogs, forums, and article postings. I signed up for accounts as Burbank.com, and I have been able (and encouraged) to post articles – which include links – on the sites.

On NBC, I posted 2 articles, which drove somewhere in the ballpark of 2,000 visits in less than a month.   On the Ellen community website, I posted a couple of articles in the past 2 days. The links in the articles are not “no follow” from what I can see, but I don’t know if it will help with my PR. Whether it does or not doesn’t matter as much as the exposure my sites are getting. The posts are geared towards travel in Burbank, and if people book hotels through the site or find restaurant coupons on the site, it ultimately helps build the brand.

Other places where I’ve posted links might not help with PR and SEO, but they do bring traffic. I have accounts for all of my fully developed websites on Twitter, and I post articles there. I also have a ShareThis button on my articles, allowing people to send links to others. Additionally, I have links on Wikipedia, which I added by signing up for an account. I know Wikipedia won’t help with the PR, but the links bring traffic.

With my blog, I have never really done any link building. I can’t recall ever asking someone to add my blog to their blogroll, and I remember how excited I was when Frank Schilling added a link to my blog. I want to provide good content that people wanted to link to, and I thought it would be tacky to ask so I never did. The only link I think I ever applied for/asked for was the DMOZ link in the domain section. Maybe this is detrimental to the SEO of my blog, but I do have a large amount of incoming links.

This information doesn’t really help anyone, but it’s my opinion on the fine line between looking tacky and trying to get some link exchanges.

With link building as with many other aspects of development, I think good content is essential. Whether you request a link or not, others will agree to link to you if they think you are going to provide their traffic with good information.

If You Develop a .org, Buy the .com

Elliot Silver
-
4

To me, this is common sense, but to many outside of the domain industry, it might not necessarily be standard operating procedure. While developing my geodomains, I worked with a number of local non-profit organizations in order to add free listings to my websites. Oftentimes, the organizations have a website which uses a .org domain name. Generally, I recommend that .com is used when available, but .org is the right choice for most organizations because of the trust factor and consumer awareness of the .org “brand.”

One thing which I’ve also noticed is that a lot of these organizations that use the .org don’t think about registering the .com of their website, and it’s available for anyone to purchase. This is bad in my opinion, and at the least, they should own the .com and forward it to their website. Not only are most people trained to type-in .com, but some web browsers automatically enter the .com at the end of a keyword string. Having the .com unregistered can lead to a bad web browsing experience if the .com is assumed to be the correct address.

Organizations who use .org domain names and leave the .com available to register are taking two risks. The first risk is that a visitor will assume .com, and when they type it in, they will be taken to a page that doesn’t resolve. Additionally, if they leave the .com available, someone with ill-intentions can register it and do a number of malicious things.

When I see this happen, I do my best to let the organization know that registering the .com is important, although I am somewhat surprised at the resistance. Recently, I noticed a few Jewish synagogues owned TempleBethXXXXX.org and the .com was available to register. I ended up buying these domain names and forwarding them on to the .org website as a friendly gesture without telling them. IMO, they probably won’t ever know, but if one person types it in, I am happy to help.

For those who are more technically inclined, I’ve also encouraged organizations to monitor the .com registration (if it’s taken and not developed) using DomainTools and to place a back order for it at Snapnames. Owning the .com is not essential for an organization operating online at a .org, but it’s important.

Make Money Doing What You Enjoy

Elliot Silver
-
11

While it certainly wasn’t intentional, I believe I have walked into a good business model with my blog. Everybody wants to have a job where they love their work. This can lead to less stress and a nice work/life balance. When you are doing what you love, it doesn’t feel like work and you can perform at a higher level than if you wanted to be doing something else.

When I started my blog a couple years ago, the goal was to help people learn about the domain investment industry. At the time, there were just a few strictly domaining blogs, and I thought I could offer a different perspective than the other bloggers. I hated posting in the public domain forums, and I figured I would start up a blog where I could post commentary and insight as I continued to grow my business, and it would be cool if I could learn from others as I shared what I was learning.

Along the way, I have experimented with many strategies, met with some of the most successful leaders in our industry, and have learned quite a bit about the industry and related industries. I have done my best to share what I’ve learned, some of which has been successful and some of which hasn’t been so successful. I’ve received considerable support, people continue to read my blog, and traffic numbers seem to increase just about every month. As a result, I have been able to sell advertising space on my blog to companies in our industry and related industries.

Although my blog doesn’t generate the majority of my revenue, the revenue has been increasing, and it’s beginning to pay for the time I contribute to keep the blog updated daily. For me, this is growing into an ideal Internet business model because I love blogging and talking about our industry, and now I am getting paid to do it. Not only this, but because I am discussing domains and domain development on my blog, my wife and friends don’t have to listen to me discuss it when I go out with them at night… it’s a win/win for all – good work/life balance!

The point of this is that no matter what you are passionate about, there are others who are just as passionate as you. Start a blog and make it your outlet to talk about your passion. Make smart business and marketing decisions along the way, but don’t let those drive your overall blogging decisions. People will be able to tell that you are passionate and knowledgeable about the subject, and if you are lucky like me, you will have a great readership that contributes to your blog. Even when my thinking is flawed, I am lucky to have enough readers who offer their opinions, making all of us smarter as a result.

It’s a win/win when you love what you do, continue to learn about the industry, grow your business, and generate revenue as you do it all.

Morgan Stanley & Smith Barney Not MSSB.com

Elliot Silver
-
5

Morgan Stanley Smith BarneyOne of the pieces of fallout of the US economic situation was the merger of Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney, two of the largest investment and financial management firms in the world. The new company dubbed Morgan Stanley Smith Barney began notifying customers of the name change earlier this month via USPS, and the letters were written on Morgan Stanley Smith Barney letterhead, although there is no url cited in the top or bottom of the letter.

The renamed organization does own the long MorganStanleySmithBarney.com domain name, but that’s a pain in the ass to type in and not typo. Clients can still log into their accounts by using MorganStanley.com or SmithBarney.com as they did before, but I would imagine something will change once the rollout has been completed to help with brand cohesiveness and recognition.

Although the domain name MSSB.com was registered and owned well before the merger, MSSB has done itself a major disservice by not acquiring the domain name already. Since the merger came together quickly and was announced quickly to help stem consumer concern, they didn’t have time to negotiate to buy a domain name during this period of time. However, in the months following, they have had plenty of time to acquire it as well as the resources.

The owner has one obvious buyer, and MSSB has an obvious motivation to get a deal done. Let’s hope both parties realize this and work out something beneficial. Every day that the new company operates, the domain name becomes more valuable.

Both companies do seem to understand the value of short domain names, with Morgan Stanley owning MS.com, and Smith Barney owning SSB.com (short for Salomon Smith Barney), although SSB.com doesn’t resolve any longer for some reason.

1...174175176...211Page 175 of 211
© Newspaper WordPress Theme by TagDiv