I hate online advertising that gets in the way of my work. This includes page takeovers, fly-ins, pop ups and pop unders. I don’t think much can be done about page takeovers or fly-ins since the website is responsible for that annoyance, and you can’t really stop them since they’re tied in with the site. However, you can stop pop ups with pre-installed browser programs.
While doing some online research today, I noticed a NetFlix pop under had appeared on my screen. Apparently the pop up blocker doesn’t help with a pop under. I wondered whether there was a program that could stop pop unders, and then I wondered whether someone had registered PopUnderStopper.com. Surprisingly, nobody had registered it. I wondered whether I should grab it and thought about whether anyone looks for “pop under stoppers.”
After doing some research, I found that nobody looks for “pop under stoppers” – but instead, searchers are looking for a “pop under blocker” or “pop under blockers.” I quickly did a Whois check, and strangely enough PopUnderBlocker.net was taken, but PopUnderBlocker.com was available, as was the plural. I don’t know whether these domain names will be worth a lot of money, but the more pop unders that appear, the more likely it is that people will be searching for a pop under blocker – not a stopper – and I have the domain name.
I also got PopUnderStopper.com just in case.
How Keyword Research Helps Me Buy Domain Names
AIG Parallels to Biggest Domain Investors
AIG survived a close call when the federal government agreed to give them an $85 billion loan in exchange for equity. As I understand it, this will allow AIG the opportunity to find buyers for some of its assets rather than force them to sell for rock bottom prices in a fire sale. Because of AIG’s global reach, a fire sale would have impacted worldwide markets in a huge way. From my experience working with AIG, I know AIG has relationships with many of the biggest financial institutions and companies throughout the world. Without the US government’s intervention, there would have been a huge impact never seen or felt before on a variety of industries.
Let’s look at it from a domain perspective. There are several major holders of premium domain names. While domain names can be highly valuable assets, most don’t generate a ton of incremental revenue compared to their actual value. If a major domain company made bad hedges (maybe TM investments resulting in lawsuits or some other debt problems) and they needed instant capital to pay this down, they would be forced to sell their valuable assets. If they needed cash immediately, it wouldn’t be easy to get hundreds of millions of dollars in a short time frame from other domain investors.
That said, if they needed to liquidate their domain names immediately, domain values would plunge as not all domain investors would be able to eat the hundreds of millions of dollars in domain names that were poured onto the market. Good luck trying to convince a bank or lender to give you $5 million or $25 million to buy domain names. The best performing names would probably be bought, but the mid-level names and lesser names would flood the marketplace. Those in a strong cash position would buy a small percentage of the best names, but the others would be available, causing everyone elses values to decline.
There wouldn’t be a ton of money to go around in the aftermarket, so domain sales would be difficult. Since we live and thrive in an industry where the most avid buyers are those who own the largest portfolios rather than outside investments, if the money well went dry, it would be hugely impactful on us all.
The next several months are going to be difficult for many. The best advice I can give is to be prepared. Keep enough cash on hand to survive for a bit of time just in case. Irrational thinking and anxiety can cause periods of massive uncertainty and chaos, and we all need to be prepared. Unfortunately, we are all in uncharted territory now and there is no telling what tomorrow will bring to the financial markets.
Caught the Domain Fever
As most people in the domain industry know, as soon as you tell friends what you do, most immediately start naming names asking if they’re available. Sometimes this lasts for just a few minutes, sometimes a few days, and sometimes the friend decides he wants to get started in the business. I’ve know of a number of people who heard about the domain industry and “caught the bug.”
A good friend of mine in the finance industry has been trying to cut his teeth in the domain industry. I’ve been giving him pointers along the way, and I think he was able to buy a few good names along the way. Since my opinion might be a bit biased, I would like others to let me know what you think of some of his domain names:
SweetAndSweaty.com
YenInvestments.com
CanandianDollarInvesting.com
CanadianDollarInvestment.com
ChocolateTaco.com
LeverageInvestment.com
MarginInvestment.com
MarginInvesting.com
PimpMyFinger.com
PesoInvesting.com
PoundInvesting.com
USDollarInvesting.com
USDollarInvestment.com
So do you think my friend registered some decent names, or should he stick to his day job?
Domain Investment Fund
I just read an article in the Wall Street Journal about a former UBS banker who recently started a wine fund. According to the article about former Wall St. banker Jorge Mora,
Mora joined with several former friends and clients to buy Italian Wine Merchants, an upscale New York wine retailer. He also is part of a new, four-man group that founded a $50 million investment fund, The Bottled Asset Fund, which will invest in “‘blue chip’ wines in inefficient markets,'” around 75% of which will be in Italy.
To me, the most interesting part of the article was the strategy of investing in inefficient markets. When I was in Italy, I saw first hand these inefficient markets. There are a ton of vineyards with great wines, but for someone (like myself) who likes wine but isn’t familiar with the different vineyards and various differences in the wine production, distinguishing a great wine from a good wine can be extremely difficult. I probably couldn’t tell the difference between a $40 bottle of wine and a $500 bottle.
This is very similar to the domain industry. There isn’t an MLS like in the real estate world, so the market is very inefficient. Unless you know the marketplace, it can be tough to tell the difference between a $5,000 domain name and a $50,000 domain name. Oftentimes, the main difference is how badly the buyer wants the name for a company or specific project. The wiser investor would own the more valuable domain name, while others would own the lesser valued domain name. This takes experience and deep pockets to make smart investments in various verticals.
Other companies have tried to create something like a domain fund, but more often than not, the domain names that were purchased were bought based on revenues that were generated from parking, and as parking decreases, the value of the domains and funds decrease, as there isn’t always value in the domain names beyond the revenue generated. Also, many large purchases have been riddled with domain names that have trademark issues. These are huge liabilities, as trademark holders see a company with deep pockets as a very large target.
If someone decides to start a domain fund like a wine fund, it won’t be based on PPC revenue. Like the wine fund, the value is in the actual assets rather than interest the assets are earning passively. Wines aren’t earning money as they sit unopened. They increase in value as people realize the value in the particular vintage. Domain names increase in value as people realize how important they are to businesses. Wines need to be marketed for people to realize the value, just as domain names need to be marketed or developed so people can see how they would help their business.
I see significant value in domain names, and this inefficient market could really be exploited if someone had the finances and time to wait to capitalize. It’s just a matter of time before an “under the radar” company buys the best domain names in the world for tens of millions of dollars. Perhaps that is already happening 😉
Back to Reality
Karen and I had an amazing honeymoon, and I want to thank many of you for your emails and notes while I was away. Although I did spend a bit of time keeping up with the domain news while Karen was at the gym, I didn’t respond to emails. I now have a few hundred emails to go through, and I hope to be back at full speed by the end of the week.
For our honeymoon, we spent two weeks in Croatia and Italy and an evening in London. I am still recovering from the trip, especially that last night in London (barely made the flight home yesterday!) In the meantime while I recover and catch up on some business and emails, here are a few domain observations from my honeymoon:
Country code domains are MUCH more popular outside of the US – I would estimate about 40% of the Crotian websites I saw advertised used .hr (Hrvatska) and about 85% of the websites I saw advertised in Italy used .it. I also saw several .gr, .eu, .info websites on billboards, television, trucks, boats…etc. You don’t see much of that in the US with the .us extension.
Companies reaching out to a more global audience (tourism, international companies, real estate companies) used .com much more than other extensions.
Almost everyone we met spoke at least a bit of English, and most were able to understand what we were saying.
While buying country code domain names might seem to make sense, I think it’s essential to determine the proper spelling/meaning or foreign words before investing – (Yeah, I know… “Thanks, Mr. Obvious.”)
I saw quite a few Internet cafes in passing, but even the very nice places I stayed had limited wireless capabilities. Le Meridian in Split, Croatia had wireless in the lobby, but they didn’t have wireless in the rooms. Villa San Paolo in San Gimignano – Tuscany – (by far the nicest spa hotel I’ve visited) didn’t have any wireless that I found. Even the Copthorne Tara in London didn’t have wireless in the guest rooms.
After seeing many advertisements for villas and villa rentals in Croatia and Italy, I believe the recent sale of Villas.com could be considered a steal. Not only did I see websites advertising villas (DalmatianVillas.com and DalmatianVilla.com), many of them were targeting international travelers and used the .com extension.
I had great Blackberry mobile email service throughout the trip – even in Cinque Terre, Italy and Tuscany. No, I didn’t do business while away, but I did get Red Sox scores and other news remotely.
The biggest domain surprise of the trip was seeing a billboard advertising a .tv website at the Dubrovnik (Croatia) airport. Not surprisingly, it was the only .tv website I saw advertised for the entire trip 🙂 Sorry, had to mention it.
Well, that’s it for now. Time to get back home and get caught up with everything.
Fandango Buys Movies.com from Disney
The Washington Post is reporting that Fandango recently purchased from Disney for an undisclosed sum. Fandango is a subsidiary of Comcast, a company that unsuccessfully tried to acquire Disney a few years ago. The article cites Disney’s desire to remain focused on its core brands (ABC, ESPN, and Disney) as the reason for selling Movies.com.
I understand that one needs to remain focused on its core competency, but doesn’t Disney make movies still? Doesn’t Disney have more than enough talent to be able to continue operating Movies.com without impacting its other businesses? I think this is a big buy for Comcast. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Fandango become rebranded as Movies.com, giving it more of a presence in the full movie market, rather than being a movie preview and movie ticket facilitator.
While the price may be undisclosed at the moment, the purchase price may be revealed at a later date, as both Comcast and Disney are publicly traded companies, and the price for the domain name and accompanying business could have an impact on earnings, albeit minimal.