Playboy’s Smoking Jacket Website May Be Good News for Kevin Ham

Elliot Silver
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Playboy.com The Smoking JacketAccording to a report in today’s New York Post, Playboy is rolling out a website that should be safe for people to view at work or other environments where nudity and sexual content would be inappropriate. The new website will be known as TheSmokingJacket.com, and it intentionally contains no references to Playboy, allowing it to bypass work filters that have “playboy” blocked.

The article cited Theresa Hennessey, spokeswoman for Playboy who said that Playboy’s editorial director Jimmy Jellinek “will be pleased if TheSmokingJacket.com receives 1 million unique visitors a month.”   Playboy’s flagship website, Playboy.com receives around 6 million visitors per month.

The website was aptly named The Smoking Jacket because of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner’s love for silk smoking jackets. Ironically, the Post’s article joked that Playboy chose the name they did because SilkPajamas.com was already registered, but it should be noted that SmokingJacket.com is similarly registered (since 2000) and it appears to be owned by one of Kevin Ham’s companies.

With the hopes of getting 1,000,000 visitors per month, perhaps Playboy should consider reaching out to DomainBrokers.com about acquiring SmokingJacket.com.   According to a note in the Whois record, “Domainbrokers.com  is  authorized  by  the  domain  owner  to  facilitate  the  sale  of  this  domain.“

SuperMedia Launches “Super” Domains

Elliot Silver
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Super Media, LLCPat Quinn from Big Iron Design emailed me this morning to share information for a follow-up to a post I wrote about SuperMedia’s acquisition of “Super” domain names. The company spent quite a bit of money acquiring domain names in the aftermarket, and it looks like they’ve launched a number of them.

Some of their new portals include:

When you visit the websites above, SuperMedia seems to be using a redirect to AskLearnHire.com, followed by an immediate second redirect back to the website you visited (you can only notice it if you watch your url bar change). If you visit AskLearnHire.com directly, you can learn more about the purpose of these mini-websites. It appears that the company wants to build small websites for social networking and interactivity between businesses and consumers. In my opinion, this is a smart move.

SuperMedia hasn’t built all of their websites out yet, as SuperPainters.com, SuperMoving.com, and SuperFlorists.com, which were mentioned in my original article, have not been developed yet. It is very possible that they are testing these portals, perhaps supported by television and/or print campaigns.

Welcoming DomainAdvertising.com

Elliot Silver
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Domain AdvertisingI would like to welcome a new advertiser to my website, Domain Advertising. You may have previously met company representatives at a domain investment tradeshow or read about the company’s founding in a profile, written by Ron Jackson. Domain Advertising is led by domain industry veteran, CEO Dan Warner, and the company has significant financial backing from the Ashmore Group and the Directi Group.

One of the primary offerings of Domain Advertising is what they refer to as “hyper contextual parking solutions.” The company can help domain investors create and test fantastic looking landing pages with a focus on generating maximum revenue for its customers.

Each domain name is optimized with hand selected phrases based on commercial usage and search volume, and the landing page is designed by hand with individually selected images placed by designers. Domain Advertising has an extensive library of images covering hundreds of verticals.   Each image is contextually specific enough that they qualify to be used as clickable images when used in conjunction with the bound phrases – a function not allowed in Google systems. This level of customization can be tested and optimized on an ongoing basis, helping to drive additional revenue.

Although I can’t share links to specific landing pages because of the rules of sending traffic to a parked page, I can share a few sample landing pages the company created and hosts:

Domain Advertising also works directly with advertisers, allowing their advertisements to be placed directly on the sites of publishers. This helps drive additional revenue for publishers, as a layer of management is removed and more relevant links are placed directly on site, driving higher CTRs.

As one might expect from a company that is led by Warner, Domain Advertising is a technology focused and customer centric company. You can sign up for Domain Advertising services and you can also connect with Domain Advertising on Twitter. I look forward to a good relationship with them.

Vuvuzela: World Cup Horn Trademark?

Elliot Silver
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Before the 2009 Confederations Cup and the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, most people outside of the African continent probably had never heard the persistent buzzing of the vuvuzela, a plastic horn that is constantly heard during soccer matches. Announcers and broadcasters have had to make big changes to compensate for the buzz, which apparently generates a sound with decibel levels greater than a chainsaw.

Because of the phenomenon, people across the world, including in the US, have taken to the vuvuzela. In fact, a guy was kicked out of Yankee Stadium the other day because he wouldn’t give up his vuvuzela.   Of course as a result of this, people have been registering vuvuzela-related domain names to capitalize on the craze.

These registrants need to be careful of their registrations, as these domain assets could potentially become liabilities for some domain registrants. According to an article in the New York Times, the vuvuzela was created by a man named Neil Van Schalkwyk after seeing a tin trumpet in a soccer match, and in 2001, he created the first plastic vuvuzela, while trademarking the word.

Interestingly, a look into the United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) shows a dead trademark for the vuvuzela, which was filed for in 2005 and abandoned in 2008, according the the record.

The battle lines continue to be drawn, and it’s probably only a matter of time before domain names come under scrutiny, perhaps after the 2010 World Cup has finished. With speculation about the horn’s place in the the 2014 World Cup already taking place, this could be a playing field in which domain owners should stay away.

Tip to Make Money on Your Developed Website

Elliot Silver
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As I’ve mentioned in the last few months, I am not really building any more websites for the time being. I believe I have built enough websites to manage (maybe too many), and I need to focus on generating revenue from these websites.

The best tip I can give to any web developer to make money is to be proactive in seeking out advertisers. Unless you have a really popular website, it’s most likely that you will have to seek out advertisers rather than waiting for them to come to you.

Visit competing websites and see who is advertising there and contact those companies directly. Install Google Adsense on your website and see what companies are advertising on your site via Google. If they’re small (not a lot of red tape in the marketing department), try to contact those companies and work out direct deals with them.

In almost every circumstance I can think of, you should make more money from direct advertising deals than you would with Adsense, affiliate programs, or some other type of indirect advertising deal. You need to be your own advocate when it comes to getting advertisers, and you should know all the details about your site that advertisers will want to know (traffic, pageviews, % of direct navigation, SERP for key terms…etc.).

It’s nice when advertisers reach out to you to advertise (and a credit to your website), but in many cases, you need to do the legwork to find advertisers and you need to convince them to spend their marketing budget on your website rather than elsewhere.

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Just as an FYI, someone saif it might be against Google’s TOS to contact advertisers directly, so do it at your own discretion.

Producers of Master Chef Smartly Acquire MasterChef.com

Elliot Silver
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MasterChef TVThe British production company behind the BBC hit Master Chef has masterfully secured the rights to the domain name MasterChef.com, a show currently airing on BBC One and soon to be aired in the US on Fox. Television commercials advertising the show feature well-known Chef, Restaurateur, and Hell’s Kitchen / Kitchen Nightmares star, Gordon Ramsay.

The domain name is currently registered to stealth domain acquisition company, Tenpenny Group. Ten Penny is believed to work on behalf of large companies like Google (Lively.com registrant prior to Google) and Microsoft (H1N1Symptoms.com registrant prior to MSFT).

Television production companies and movie studios are notorious for not securing the rights to .com domain names that match the name of their shows or movies, which may either be related to the generic nature of their titles or their unwillingness to spend a lot of money on a production that could be short lived. It was smart of this company to get its .com domain name, especially when it had aspirations to become known worldwide.

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