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Where is Rick Schwartz?

Elliot Silver
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31

I noticed that Rick Schwartz hasn’t posted an article on his blog in over a month. His last post was published on January 27, and it is pretty clear that the graphics he shared were related to domain investors having to make decisions about the new gTLD domain names. Since the article was published, it has become an active, ongoing discussion with over 125 comments to date.

Over the weekend, I reached out to Rick to check in and make sure he’s doing alright since I had not heard from him in a while. I thought perhaps he was on his annual cruise and had taken an extra long vacation. Turns out, he is not on an extended vacation, and all is well with him.

With his permission, here’s what Rick shared about why he hasn’t written anything on his blog for over a month:

“After spending a year and a half articulating all the pitfalls of the GTlds, I decided once they came out, to sit on the sidelines, not say anything so no one can blame me for anything that might happen,  as some already started to do.  The pitfalls, both known and unknown that they are and will be experiencing, will be even bigger and greater than anything I have said so far.  

I am on record and I won’t say another word. I’ll let the numbers and the events speak for themselves.”

New gTLD Registries Doing Tradeshow Marketing

Elliot Silver
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6

Shortly after starting my blog in June of 2007, I wrote about the idea of selling domain names at industry tradeshows, although I never even thought about new top level domain names when writing the article. At the time, I said this:

“Small business owners are accustomed to dealing face-to-face with account representatives from the companies with whom they do business. Much of their business is done with a handshake in person at a tradeshow – especially when opening a new account with a supplier. For the most part, this is impossible to do on the Internet. To many small businesses, learning how to successfully operate with the help of the Internet is a daunting challenge. Why not meet with these business owners in person, make them feel comfortable and win their business? All of this can be accomplished by attending industry specific tradeshows.”

Meeting with business owners at industry specific tradeshows could be a great way for domain sellers to connect with end user buyers. In most cases, this isn’t cost effective since most domain sellers don’t have enough inventory to justify the cost of attending and exhibiting at an industry specific tradeshow. New gTLD registries, on the other hand, have the inventory for targeted marketing efforts like this, and I believe they are beginning to do participate in these events.

Here are a few tweets I found from new gTLD registries that have been participating in tradeshow marketing:

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Share Your Recent New gTLD Purchases

Elliot Silver
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135

Yesterday, I shared some of my recent domain name acquisitions. All of my recent acquisitions have been .com domain names, which is in line with my investment strategy. I shared that I purchased four new gTLD domain names, which are:

  • Silver.Ventures
  • N.Ventures
  • N.Holdings
  • G.Holdings

I don’t have plans to do so yet, but I will most likely purchase a few or several more new gTLD domain names in the near future as interesting roll outs occur. The main issue for me is that I don’t see enough short term opportunity to make enough profit to make investing in the new TLDs worthwhile.

Frankly, I don’t believe that

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Forbes Covers New gTLD Cybersquatting

Elliot Silver
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4

I am not at all surprised, but apparently there have been a number of people who went out and hand registered trademark domain names in some of the new gTLD extensions. People and organizations who were opposed to the new domain name extensions cautioned brands about this happening, and Forbes has an article covering the problem.

The article, Cybersquatters Rush To Claim Brands In The New GTLD Territories, which was published today on Forbes, highlights a number of domain name registrations that it believes should be considered cybersquatting.

This type of thing happens every day,

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What if Domain Investors Buy the Good gTLD Domain Names?

Elliot Silver
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112

Domain investor (and ‎Founder & Director of the Intellectual Property Division at Heritage Auctions) Aron Meystedt shared something interesting this week: “With all of the gTLD rollouts, it’s obvious that domainers are buying all of the word combinations that actually make sense.” He further added, “The gTLD program was supposed to ensure that EVERYONE could receive the domain they wanted. In reality, domainers are going to buy all the good word combinations and end users are back to square one.”

After doing quite a few searches, it seems like he might be on to something. It’s not surprising that domain investors have purchased so many of the new gTLD domain names. Despite the fact that domain investor losses were considerable following previous TLD launches, domain investors seem to be buying new domain names en masse. Some see the potential in these new TLDs and others don’t want to miss a buying opportunity they regret in the future.  Whatever the case may be, there seem to be more new domain names ending up in the portfolios of domain investors rather than being registered by end users.

In my opinion, this

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BBC Confused About .Plumbing

Elliot Silver
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15

Joe Alagna shared an article about preparing for the new gTLD domain names, and in the article, he wrote, “Although I like most of the vertically targeted domains, I am concerned about a few like .plumbing and .contractors. I was recently tasked with writing an article about each of those two TLDs. Forgive me, but as I sat at my computer, I couldn’t recall if the TLD was .plumbing, .plumber, or .plumbers.” It appears that the BBC has this very issue.

The BBC published an article today discussing whether anyone cares about whether England gets its own .England domain name extension. It’s an interesting discussion, but what caught my eye (and the attention of others) was a photo caption with a typo in it: “Tippers, a chain of builders merchants based in the Midlands, now has a website with the .plumbers suffix.”

As Joe Alagna predicted, the BBC

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