5 Newsletters for Domain Investors

Elliot Silver
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There are a number of great newsletters to which I think every domain investor should subscribe, and I listed 10 of the most important ones below. Not all of the newsletters contain sales listings, but all of them contain important domain-related information. Whether you are new to the domain investment industry or a seasoned veteran, the newsletters below are the best of the best.

10 Favorite Domain Investment Newsletters (in no particular order)

DNJournal Newsletter – Domain industry updates, including notifications about the weekly domain sales report and special reports on DN Journal.

Domain Name Wire Newsletter – Domain industry news updates and special reports on Domain Name Wire.

 

WIPO Domain Name Decisions – Recent UDRP decisions made by the World Intellectual Property Organizations, with links to each decision.

National Arbitration Forum Monthly Newsletter – Monthly email with NAF updates and recent decision summaries. You must email them to subscribe.

Domaining.com Daily Email – Links to the ten most popular articles written by domain bloggers and news providers.

Do you receive another domain newsletter that you think provides great information? Please feel free to drop a link   and let us know domain investors should subscribe.

My Next Venture – Is it Crap?

Elliot Silver
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There’s nothing like starting out on a new venture that is going to be huge. This is really going to leave a mark on the world. Since leaving my corporate job, I’ve been looking for a project that will leave me satisfied. I thought I had that with my developed geodomain names, but alas, these are nothing compared to my newest project, which has really moved me.

I know this may make me the butt of your jokes, and some of you may pooh-pooh this idea, but I do – do not care that you may think it stinks. This has been brewing for months, but I feel like its finally ready to be released.

Together with the help of a few friends, I am set to push out FecalPhotos.com, a website dedicated to crappy photos and all sorts of shit like that. A friend of mine owns RateMyShit.com, and I think these two ventures go hand in hand. I will soon travel to the bowels of this country to meet with him in New Jersey, and hopefully we can work together on a successful venture.

Yes… I am shitting you. This foul idea was brewed up over a few beers and I decided to post it (in poor taste). Enjoy your weekend and be safe.

Sunday’s Quick Thoughts

Elliot Silver
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Red Bellied PiranhaHere are some quick thoughts on this nice Sunday. I hope you enjoy the last day of your weekend! Rest up for a successful week.

When you’re buying domain names, you should check to see if there’s a website developed on the domain name. I get annoyed when people email me asking if I would sell “the domain name Lowell.com” or another one of my developed websites. Clearly it’s not just a domain name and if I get annoyed as a domain investor, it’s probably going to annoy people who have businesses on their domain names.

I want to welcome LuxuryNames.com as a new header banner advertiser. Take a minute to sign up for their newsletter. The company owns great domain names such as PrivateAirplanes.com, HomeInsuranceRates.com, MicroLenders.com, and many other great names and you want to be subscribed when they offer names for sale.

I think it’s great that guys like Mike Berkens and Rick Schwartz write blog posts many times per week. These guys have sold incredible domain names for large sums of money, have deep portfolios with top domain names, and they could be sitting on the beach or playing golf all day. I don’t always agree with everything they say, but their posts make me think about this industry and my business, and I really appreciate their willingness to share with us.

When you develop a website, it can take a long time to start seeing results. As mentioned before, I’ve been blogging for over two years, and I am just starting to generate a decent amount of revenue. Likewise, Burbank.com has been launched for about a year, and traffic, revenue, and advertising inquiries are up quite a bit in the past few months. Developing a business on a domain name isn’t easy, but it’s a great way to increase the value and generate revenue over the long haul.

I just bought RedBelliedPiranha.com and RedBelliedPiranhas.com, and I am psyched to create a mini site for one with a forward of the other. As you can probably tell, I like building mini sites that have vivid pictures. I haven’t done much CTR testing with Adsense, so I don’t know if the theory about having an ugly site leading to more clicks is accurate with mini sites, but I enjoy searching for cool photos.

Speaking of mini site testing…. has anyone tested design layouts for increased revenue/click throughs? I’ve wondered if someone has tested layouts, images, content length…etc to find the “perfect” mini site. This is something that would be very interesting to me. The website would have to have enough traffic to make the results statistically significant – and it would probably have to be done using several mini sites over several months with a straight up A|B split. I would be happy to post results here for others to see if the test is legit and not just a sales pitch.

Red Bellied Piranha Photo Source:

Sunday Quick Hits + Billy Mays Dies

Elliot Silver
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Billy MaysMy short Bahamas vacation was great, although I would have preferred to go in-season. Alas, with my wife in graduate school, our vacation weeks are fairly limited, so I will take any vacation time I can get! It’s good to be back to work though.

As a direct marketer, it was sad and surprising to hear that pitchman Billy Mays died today at age 50. He and Ron Popeil were two people whom I looked up to when I was at NYU (Direct & Interactive Marketing). They always had cool inventions for sale and were using the direct marketing techniques I was learning. I was always especially fascinated by Popeil and his infomercials. I wonder if yesterday’s airplane runway scare could have caused a problem. I won’t forget Billy’s trademark entry, “Hi, Bill Mays here…”

In the appraisal section of the popular domain forums, I frequently see feedback from members saying a domain name is worth “reg. fee,” short for registration fee. While saying a domain name is worth “reg. fee” is somewhat of an insult, it can also be misleading. I think a worthless domain name isn’t worth reg fee, but is actually worth negative reg fee!

With the year just about half way through, now is a good time to re-contact owners of domain names you’ve tried to acquire this past year. Some people may be falling short on specific revenue goals, and now might be a good chance to get those deals done. As an example, I offered $18k for an ecommerce name a month ago, and the owner asked $50k. I received an email from him a couple of days ago offering it for $30k.

If you are a domain investor, choose the domain names you develop wisely. For most people who are buying websites and paying for development, the upfront costs of development can be expensive, and development isn’t necessarily the magic potion.

Quick update on TobagoVacations.com, a mini site I developed a couple of weeks ago:
6/1 – 6/12 on Fabulous – 122 visits and $2.76 revenue
6/15 – 6/27 developed (Adsense) – 323 visits (18% search engine traffic) and $18.29 revenue
SE Keywords: tobago tour and hotel, tobago vacations… currently on page 1 of Bing for “tobago vacations”

It’s a big day for US Soccer today. This afternoon is the first FIFA Tournament final for the US team, and they are playing Brazil. Should be a fun match.

Skip Hoagland’s Expansion Plans

Elliot Silver
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I received a press release from Skip Hoagland’s company today detailing their expansion plans. Hoagland’s companies own some of the best generic and geographic domain names, including Atlanta.com, BuenosAires.com, Cuba.com, Fishing.com, Shooting.com…. and many, many more. While people like Skip have the best domain names to move forward with their plans, all of us can look at news releases like the ones below to see how we can emulate what Skip is doing, just on a smaller scale.

Congrats to Skip and his team on some big moves!

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Domainsnewmedia.com CEO Skip Hoagland announces the newest expansion plans for his company. Hoagland says we have been very busy these last two months finalizing our plans and new alliances for full development and management services of these very valuable brands for our company. We turned down many multi million dollar offers over the years and finally decided to launch them ourselves with companies we felt had the abilities to maximize the full potential of these leading brands for us, versus just selling out.

Fishing.com, Flyfishing.com, Shooting.com, Shotgunsports.com will be run by Patagonia Publishing and Media in Argentina. This company has built and manages some 50 Hunting and Fishing industry websites worldwide, as well as produces coffee table books for these huge enthusiast sports in Argentina, Mexico and working on others for Worldwide Destinations. CEO and President of PP Corp said they are very excited about this project and feel within two years they will be able to add enough content and resources to become the Amazon, Facebook, Ebay of these   sports and do so for every Country, State and city in the world. Our strength’s will include searchable databases for species of fish, guides, lodges, outfitters, ecommerce and much more. We will even tell you how to pack for the trip, what lures, rods and other equipment is best for these fish species and destinations.

Chamberofcommerce.com will be run by Databanq.com headed by CEO David Bayer. Bayer says COC.com will become a leading brand to come to for trusted information on some 7000 cities plus worldwide for our current database. CVB.com { Convention And Visitors Bureaus} will also be incorporated for Travel and Tourism. Our plans in detail will be announced soon. We will focus heavily on the Geo Domain Industry in its entirety.

Hoagland ends in saying he has never understood why owners of great brands sell these very valuable industry assets versus trying to launch them with others. Toys.com , Art.com, Cameras.com, Hotels.com, Wine.com, Cigars.com,   and many others like these have and will become huge multi million dollar companies as the Internet expands and these keywords become more and more important to these owners. The prices paid for these ranging from 1m to 8 million were real steals for the buyers that could afford to buy them. When the buyer of Toys.com bought this name, they basically assured themselve protection from Wal-Mart and many others in the future for this product line. Enthusiast Magazine titles will also be hugely effected as they already are as sites like Fishing.com can provide global distribution,   Video, Radio, TV, information in different languages and instant up to date information, blogs, Social Networks, link to all advertisers websites and much more.

Pressure is on Oversee.net

Elliot Silver
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Oversee.net LogoBased on events and announcements throughout the domain industry during the last couple of years, as well as declining PPC earnings trends and harsh economic conditions, I believe there must be considerable pressure on Oversee.net. Here’s a quick third party view of things that have transpired.

Oversee.net purchased Snapnames, which was the leading platform to purchase expired and deleting domain names. They had many exclusive drop catching deals in place with some of the leading registrars.

A few months later, Enom launched Namejet, a direct competitor to Snapnames. Some of the exclusive registrars later shifted from Snapnames to Enom, costing Snapnames some of the better dropping domain names.

Oversee purchased Moniker a leading domain registrar and auction house that primarily held its live auctions at TRAFFIC shows during the year, grossing millions of dollars. TechCrunch reported the purchase price at $65 million.

Oversee announced staff layoffs.

Oversee holds a great annual domain conference in January, DomainFest, which is held in Hollywood, California with considerable fanfare and high praise from industry professionals.

Crowd favorite and Director of Business Development, Ron Sheridan departs from Oversee’s DomainSponsor.

Rick Latona enters live auction business directly competing with Moniker auctions at some TRAFFIC shows.

Rick Latona signs exclusive deal with Rick Schwartz and Howard Neu to partner on the TRAFFIC shows, leaving Moniker on the outside. In 2009-2010 TRAFFIC will expand to 6+ domain conferences annually, and it doesn’t appear that Moniker will be the auctioneer.

Fabulous announces free security feature which will compete with Moniker’s expensive Max Lock program ($19.99/domain or $124.99/portfolio), and Fabulous also announced a free privacy protection service that will compete with Moniker’s privacy, which costs $4.00 per year.

I know Oversee.net is managed by some smart people, but it seems that many deals they’ve made haven’t worked out as well as they wanted them to work out, and in other cases, competitors are offering better products/services at better prices. Oversee companies were the best of breed in some categories, but now it seems that’s being chipped away rapidly by nimble competitors. Oversee is a well funded company with big time VC backer Oak Hill Capital Partners, but who knows how much of that investment remains and how much previous investments are currently worth.

The people that make up the company are a primary reason why I do business with more than one Oversee company. However, with tough economic times, there are difficult business decisions that have to be made. The pressure seems to be on Oversee, and it will be interesting to see their next move.

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