General Domain Information

I think I found a sales representative in Lowell, and he is expected to sell advertising to local businesses. My guy has 15+ years of sales experience, with the last 3 being online sales. The best part is that he lives in Lowell, and he knows the city of Lowell.   This will hopefully help to take the site to the next level.

Yesterday, Rick Latona introduced DigiLoan.com, a longer term loan company which will help people finance large domain purchases, primarily domain names that are sold via his auctions and newsletter. This is going to bring more liquidity to the domain industry, which could and should help to drive more sales in the near term.

I have always had a personal aversion to debt, but I had a long conversation about the benefits of debt with a friend who does hotel asset management. While I don’t wish to use debt as a means to buy domain names yet, I do see the value it can bring to a company – especially when a domain name comes on the market for a limited time, never to be for sale again.

Jamie had some success selling domain names to end users. I’ve discussed this before in blog posts and in a couple of interviews, and I think this is a great way to sell a domain name. It might be a bit more labor intensive and require some educating, but those sales can still be had if you have great domain names.

The auction list for the GeoDomain Expo was released last week.   There are some pretty good names on this list, although I think I have enough work on my plate…. Newburyport.com is almost finished and then I will have to start adding more time-sensitive content.

It’s 76 degrees and sunny here in NYC right now… time for a walk in Central Park.

I think a whole lot has changed in the domain investment industry since I started a few years ago. I would love to hear from domain investors who recently started out in the industry about how things have been going for them. If you are new to the business, I would love to hear about some of these things:

1) How did you get started?
2) What types of domain names are you buying?
3) Where are you buying and selling most of your domain names?
4) Are you buying in the aftermarket or new registrations?
5) What are your domaining goals?

Thanks for taking the time to respond – and of course for reading my blog.

I see people posting about Estibot appraisals in a variety of places, but I haven’t used the appraisal service much. Personally, I don’t think there is a way to appraise a domain name accurately in an automated fashion. I’ve seen that there are other tools offered by Estibot, but I don’t believe I have ever used any of them in the past.

Today, Jamie from DotWeekly said that he is beginning a new series to review several of the tools Estibot offers, and I look forward to seeing what he has to say about them. Every once in a while I learn about a new domain tool, and it’s good to know about helpful tools that are at our disposal.

Seems like even more companies than usual are filing UDRPs for generic domain names. Wonder how many companies have been successful in “acquiring” similar names using scare tactics like C&D letters or letters threatening litigation without even having to file a UDRP.

I’ve done some reading in the past few days about .Tel. As much as I “fooled” on April Fools Day, I do think there is a good reason for some people to buy a .Tel. From what I understand, it’s very easy to set up a site and takes no development knowledge. I sometimes take the development skills I’ve learned in the last year and a half for granted because I still consider myself to be a rookie, but I couldn’t have set elliotsilver.info up without this knowledge. Not needing coding/programming skills is a big plus.

Domain investors really need to learn a little bit of programming language like HTML or have someone on staff (or a reliable family member) that can assist. I’m no genius when it comes to web development, but learning the basics isn’t too painful. It makes us much more self reliant, and it would be similar to a homeowner learning basic things like changing a fuse or using a plunger if the toilet overflows instead of paying a repair guy for a simple fix.

It’s pretty neat to see President Obama on his European trip being embraced and welcomed by foreign leaders. I despise politics and political discussions, but thought it was cool to see during the past few days.

I really hope other people don’t begin using Twitter as a call for help. It’s so easy to miss a message/reply.

If you are trying to complete a domain deal and the price seems too good to be true, use Google to search for the person’s email address, full name (in quotes), and the domain name itself. See if anything sets off any alarm bells before you move forward with any kind of deal. Just because the economy is bad, doesn’t mean people are willing to give away great domain names at well below market value.