Generic Domain Names Archives - Page 28 of 35

Domain Names are Undervalued Because…

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July 16, 2009

I think domain names are considerably undervalued when compared to other business asset classes. Most companies would rather spend money investing in a quality piece of land rather than a category defining domain name.

As a domain investor, I would rather own the domain name Candles.com than buy a piece of land where I can build the biggest and best candle store. No matter how great this candle store is and where it’s located, it still can’t reach 1/100th of the people a domain name like Candles.com can reach.

I believe domain names are undervalued for a few reasons:

Many business owners still don’t understand how the Internet works. You could give many business owners the best category defining domain name, but they would have no idea what to do with it or how to build a website. There is also still a tremendous amount of disparity in web development. I could put out a bid on a fully interactive website and you can bet I would get bids ranging from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands of dollars for the exact same quote. If a business owner doesn’t know how to approach this, it’s easier to focus on what is tried and true.

Many people would prefer to build their own unique brand than to spend an extraordinary amount of money on a generic domain name. In marketing classes, people are taught to differentiate themselves via their brand, and if they name their company XYZ Swimming Pools, business owners seem to want to stick with their brand. Perhaps it’s ego or lack of knowledge about direct navigation traffic and web conversion.

Although there are at least a couple of easy ways to finance a domain name acquisition (Domain Capital or DigiLoan), I imagine it would be tough to convince a bank to give a large loan to finance a domain purchase. It’s easier to take out money to expand a small business in a local community than it would be to buy a domain name to enhance a company’s presence online.

There is no MLS-like system that can give consistently accurate domain values. Even similar domain names can have hugely different values, and there is no way to get an appraisal that is totally accurate. You can’t expect someone to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a domain name when he has no idea if the domain name is worth the price.

What do you think?

Interesting Branding Decision by Citrix

Elliot Silver

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July 5, 2009

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One of the most useful online meeting websites is GoToMeeting.com, which offers a wide variety of online conferencing services. During the past year, I’ve been hearing more about the company, and I have participated on a few conferences using their services. In 2003, Citrix acquired ExpertCity, Inc (GoToMeeting’s founding company) for a reported $225 million in cash and stock.

Recently, I noticed a television campaign for GoToMeeting, although most of the time I am not paying attention to the screen. It’s fairly easy to remember the company name, but there is no guarantee that someone who hasn’t used the service will remember the brand name when they are looking to set up a web conference. Someone could also accidentally type in “2” instead of “to” or do some other typo.

In my opinion, the absolute best domain name for a meeting service is clearly Meeting.com. It’s the industry defining term and it’s simple to remember. Sometime towards the end of 2006, ExpertCity/Citrix acquired Meeting.com, and the domain name currently resolves to the GoToMeeting website. If someone types in Meeting.com, they will get to the GoToMeeting website.

This begs the question, is Citrix making a branding mistake by using GoToMeeting.com when they already own Meeting.com?

Bing’s Gain on Google Good for Domainers

Elliot Silver

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July 1, 2009

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Microsoft Bing I’ve been reading many articles about Microsoft’s $80-$100 million marketing campaign and about how Bing’s search market share continues to grow. If this trend continues even when the marketing campaign ends, this could be very good news for generic .com domain investors.

Based on a small sampling of searches I tested, it seems that Bing gives generic domain names higher rankings than Google or Yahoo. It’s the case with my websites, Burbank.com, Lowell.com, Newburyport.com, and Torah.com. It’s also the case with a number of other generic .com domain names that I checked in both search engines.

Bing’s market share is still very low, so the impact is minor. In fact, I highly, highly doubt Bing will overtake Google in the near future. However, if Bing does grow and eats into Google’s share, and/or if Microsoft buys Yahoo’s search business and the generic domain name rankings of Bing transfers to Yahoo, we could see more companies valuing generic domain names for their SERP value.

Here’s a comparison of the rankings of a small number of websites with generic domain names in Google and Bing:

Casino.com: – Google: 6 – Bing: 1 for Casino
Burbank.com: – Google: 5 – Bing: 2 for Burbank
Lowell.com: – Google: 10 – Bing: 2 for Lowell
Newburyport.com: – Google: 8 – Bing: 2 for Newburyport
Mortgage.com: – Google: 9 – Bing: 1 for Mortgage
Soccer.com: – Google: 1 – Bing: 1 for Soccer
DogSupplies.com: – Google: 3 – Bing: 1 for Dog Supplies
Airfare.com: – Google: 7 – Bing: 1 for Airfare
Fly.com: – Google: 7 – Bing: 2 for Fly
Chairs.com: – Google: NR – Bing: 3 for Chairs
Torah.com: – Google: 20 – Bing: 8 for Torah
HomeFashions.com: – Google: 7 – Bing: 2 for Home Fashions

One thing that is especially good is that most of the websites above wouldn’t be recognized by consumers as the brand leader. In the Lowell market for example, most people would probably consider the Sun newspaper to be the market leader. Likewise, in the pet marketplace, people would probably choose Pet Smart or Pet Co as the market leader.

Skip Hoagland’s Expansion Plans

Elliot Silver

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June 20, 2009

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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.

Legal Eagle “Gets” Domain Names

Generic Domain Names

Elliot Silver

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May 24, 2009

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I’ve been hearing quite a bit on the news lately about the Chinese drywall situation, which is impacting many American homeowners. The short story is that many home builders used Chinese-manufactured dry wall in homes (cheaper and was more readily available), and now this drywall may be causing major problems. Some homeowners are complaining of various illnesses and there have been issues with electronics and appliances as a result of the drywall.

I haven’t done much research on the topic, so I don’t know if the reported issues have conclusively been related to the drywall, but these issues have been attributed by many to the Chinese drywall. Of course, because of all of these issues that have been reported, litigation is very likely.

One website that has a considerable amount of information about the situation is the category defining generic domain name ChineseDrywall.com, which appears to be owned by an attorney. The Whois is private, but the first Domain History archive in December 2008 shows an attorney as the Admin, and the copyright notice on the bottom of the page is that person, as is the information on the Legal page of the site.

I often see companies buy trademarked terms for pharmaceuticals that might face litigation, and I don’t know if that falls under the scope of Anti-Cybersquatting laws. However, owning the generic term should not be a problem, and having a developed website on that domain name will help in Google – currently ranked #1 after Google News entries, for the term.

This attorney “gets” domain names, and she got the best one for this legal issue.

Thanks to Gordon for sending this over!

She’s a Bonehead!

Elliot Silver

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April 25, 2009

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I apologize in advance because I can’t use the specific brand or domain name in this story, but I wanted to share a funny story with you about how some brand managers just don’t take domain names as seriously as they should.

After the party at the GeoDomain Expo, I went out to drinks with some friends at a Jazz restaurant in the Gaslamp Quarter of San Diego (which is a very cool area if you’ve never been). As we were wrapping up our drinks on the patio, a lady came over to the table and started talking to us, and my friend asked if she was attending the conference. She said she wasn’t, and that she worked for “XYZ Company,” which we all know is the the leading brand in the “ABC industry.”

Ironically, my friend happens to own the ABC industry’s category defining domain name, and he mentioned it to her. She was excited about that, and she said that she was a Marketing Manager for the company and they should definitely discuss how they can work together. As luck would have it, she just changed her purse and didn’t have business cards, but she wanted to give my friend her contact information.

My friend said that sounded great and we waited outside on the patio for a few minutes when she went in to the restaurant. After a couple of minutes, I went in and saw the woman dancing by the piano, clearly not even thinking about that category defining domain name that was just mentioned to her. This was a bonehead move and one that could cost them dearly, because it’s without a doubt the best category domain name in her industry.

Generic Domain Names

Domain Names are Undervalued Because…

Interesting Branding Decision by Citrix

Bing’s Gain on Google Good for Domainers

Skip Hoagland’s Expansion Plans

Legal Eagle “Gets” Domain Names

She’s a Bonehead!

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