General Domain Information

Braden Pollock is one of the most successful entrepreneurs I personally know. He has a killer portfolio of DUI and other legal domain names, which support his lead generation and monetization business.  He’s a Board member and investor in Epik and has founded a couple of other companies (like  Smart Start of California), which operate online and offline.

As one might expect, Braden’s fiancee, Lisa Bloom, is equally (if not more) successful as an attorney, legal commentator, and writer. Lisa’s recently released book, “Think: Straight Talk for Women to Stay Smart in a Dumbed-Down World,” continues to climb on several of Amazon’s popular book lists, including in the top 10,000 of Amazon’s 4 million+ books (#9,130 today). The book is also in the top 100 of four Amazon categories. You can read more about the book on Think.TV.

Lisa is the CBS and CNN/HLN legal analyst, opining on hot legal topics and can be seen on virtually every other news and talk show as she does daily tv appearances.  This afternoon, Lisa is a featured guest on the Dr. Phil show. In the audience and mic’d up is Braden Pollock who is on camera speaking a couple of times. Although I don’t think he will be talking business, it will be neat to watch him on television.

In addition, Lisa will be at a book signing and speaking session at the Barnes and Noble on Manhattan’s Upper West Side tomorrow evening at 7pm. If you’re in the area, you should drop by and check it out.

Anyone who watches the news in the US knows that real estate tycoon Donald Trump is considering a run for President. Although “The Donald” has not officially declared his candidacy yet, there are plenty of people anticipating that this will happen, and they’ve been buying Trump related domain names.

For instance, here are a number of registered presidential election domain names not owned by Mr. Trump:

• VoteTrump.com
• ElectTheDonald.com
• VoteForTrump.com
• Trump12.com
• PresidentTrump.com
• TrumpPalin.com
• TrumpRomney.com
• RomneyTrump.com

It does seem that Mr. Trump is preparing for a presidential run, at least in terms of his domain names. ElectTrump.com is registered to The Trump Organization. The domain name was created by someone in New Jersey in October of 2010. It appears that The Trump Organization acquired the domain name sometime between December of 2010 and February of 2011.  In addition, The Trump Organization also owns Trump2012.com.

I don’t know whether the company bought these two domain names or if it acquired them via legal means (cease and desist letter for instance), but it now owns these two prime domain assets.

Ironically, despite the fact that Mr. Trump has not even declared his candidacy yet, it appears that at least one person is betting he will win and do a poor job. ImpeachTrump.com was already registered by someone in California in January of this year. Talk about putting the cart in front of the horse!

I want to re-share a post I wrote in November of 2009 with details about how I got started in the domain investment business. There are two reasons why I want to share this article with you again.

The first reason is that it’s a question I am frequently asked, and I often send people to this post when they do ask. Secondly (and quite sadly), the person who I credit with pushing me to start my own business was diagnosed with  Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, an incurable and fatal disease.

My parents are visiting with him in California this week, and I want to give a special thanks again to him. If it wasn’t for his advice, I would probably still be a Marketing Manager in corporate America.

How I Became a Domain Investor

I feel like I’ve probably told the story a bunch of times (which I am sure I have), but since a number of people have asked me recently, I want to share the story of how I became a domain investor.

When I was a NYU in 2002-03, I went to help a family friend clean the movie ride curtains at the Empire State Building since I lived less than a block away. For two days, we talked about how expensive the City was – especially for a grad student. My Dad’s friend recommended that I find some sort of product to sell and that I should sell it easily on Ebay. I looked around for a number of things – custom pencils (no margin), art (did some buying and selling) and finally I saw people selling domain names.

I would see names selling for a few hundred dollars, and when I went to Network Solutions, I saw that similar names were available for just $35.00. I bought my first name, and for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I think it was a legal name with a hyphen. I remember I sold it after two auctions and broke even. Shortly thereafter… Read More

When I heard about the devastating tornados and storms that tore through Birmingham, Alabama earlier this week, I was particularly concerned about domain investor Gregg Ostrick, who resides in Birmingham. When I called him to check in the day after, the phone lines weren’t working.

Gregg was able to get online later on in the day, and he responded to my email to let me know he is okay. According to Gregg, “the storms hit very close, but no major damage to our property.” He was one of the fortunate people, and I am very glad to hear that he made it through with limited damage.

I guess this type of disaster is another reason why intangible domain assets can be better investments than physical investments.

Gregg sent me a link to some photos he took of the aftermath, and I wanted to share them with you to show you an example of how bad the storms were. There are organizations like the American Red Cross that are helping people with the recovery, and I am sure they could use donations if you are able to help.

Fred Wilson is one of the most well known and successful venture capitalists, and he is currently a partner at Union Square Ventures in New York City. Some of the best known investments his company has made include Foursquare, Etsy, Meetup, Zynga, and Twitter, among many others.

On Wilson’s blog today, he discusses domain names and their importance to a startup. Although a domain name is not on “The 10 Golden Principles for Successful Web Apps” he wrote, he believes it’s something that could be listed.

In the article, Wilson makes an interesting observation about prices of domain names:

“We’ve noticed the average price of a good domain has risen fairly dramatically in the past year. We used to advise companies to spend $10k or less on a domain, then we upped that recommendation to $25k. We recently upped it again to $50k. I suspect domain prices and pre-money valuations of newly launched startups are highly corrrelated <sic>.”

If a startup builds its brand on a confusing domain name, they are actually building value on someone else’s domain name. For instance, when Del.icio.us was launched, it made the already valuable Delicious.com even more valuable (and expensive) due to the lost traffic and likely revenue generation for the previous owner. Had the startup bought Delicious.com earlier, the cost would likely have been significantly less, although it still may have made a big dent in its budget.

For domain owners who own a name coveted by a startup, they should realize that perhaps taking equity in a company is a good idea in addition to the cash. This is especially true when a startup is backed by a guy like Fred Wilson or his team at Union Square Ventures.

Perhaps if more startups are upfront about who they are and what their plans are, domain owners would be more amenable to working out mutually beneficial deals.  In fact, here’s a piece of advice for operators of startup companies looking to get a good domain name without spending a lot of cash up front: telling a domain owner you’re a poor student or a single mom trying to buy a domain name doesn’t work).

Whether you’re a domain investor or you are operating a vc-funded startup, Wilson’s article is a good one to read.