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British National Speedway Changes to .CO, Almost All Teams to Do The Same

Elliot Silver
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103

A friend sent me something interesting and I thought it would be interesting to share for those who follow .CO developments as well as those who don’t think .CO has a chance of catching on in the “real world.” If you aren’t aware, Speedway is a popular motorcycle sport where the bikes have no brakes, can accelerate to 60 mph, and have just one gear. It’s a fairly popular sport throughout the UK.

According to the official British Speedway website (SpeedwayGB.CO), there are three speedway leagues in the UK:

  • The Elite League (The top league).
  • The Premier League (The middle League).
  • The National League (The league to hopefully train the youngsters).

In the Elite League, there are ten professional teams. Each of these ten teams (except for one) uses a .CO domain name for official websites. In the Premier League, all 14 teams use .CO domain names. Similarly, in the National League, all ten teams use .CO domain names. The British Speedway also recently changed from .com to .CO.

According to the former Edinburg Monarchs team website, the team recently rebranded to the .CO domain name per instruction from the BSPA. It seems that almost all of others have done the same.

From my perspective, I would imagine they did this for a couple reasons. First and foremost is that with .CO, all of the names they needed were available to register, allowing them to maintain uniformity among all teams in the three leagues. Secondly, .CO would allow them to have more of an international branding rather than .co.uk, which is more limited to just the UK. Perhaps this was done  more so  for the first reason, but both reasons would make sense.

With speedway racing a very popular sport in the UK, this is pretty big for .CO and gives quite a bit of exposure to the masses.

Domain Negotiation Tip: Justifying Your Offer

Elliot Silver
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10

When you are in the midst of negotiating to purchase a domain name on Sedo, one of the prefabricated replies you can select is something like “justify your price.” It’s always made me laugh a bit to see that reply, but when you think about it, justifying your offer or price is a great way to get the price you need.

Oftentimes when I am negotiating with a buyer or seller, the price we both have in mind is different. For times when the price gap is significant, there’s usually little reason to engage in a discussion. Why waste time on a name I want for $2-4,000 and the seller wants $100,000. Either he’s crazy and/or doesn’t need the money, or I am not as enamored with the name as he. Whatever the case, it would likely be a fruitless discussion.

However, there are times when we are just a few thousand dollars away from a mutually agreeable price, and the actual negotiation is critical in getting the price I want/need for the domain name. Discussing why you value a domain name the way you do can lead to you getting your pricing, or at least seeing the flip side to why the name is worth more or less to the other party.

One thing I like to include in my negotiation strategy are favorable comps (using DNSalePrice.com, DN Journal, or NameBio.com). By favorable, I mean that the names have similar results in Google, similar search volume, and are in the same vertical (ie: two real estate domain names).  It helps if you have more than one comparable and they are recent comps.

Another thing I include is information about developing the website. When I am the buyer or the seller, I let the other party know my plans with the domain name and why I think it’s worth what it’s worth. I give them a bit of insight into my development plans and justify why I can’t offer more money or offer to sell it for less money.

I know that some sellers get annoyed when a buyer asks them to justify the price, but I think it’s a good way to discuss a domain name’s value and possibly come to terms.

What types of things do you discuss when you’re trying to buy or sell a domain name to bridge the gap?

NewOrleans.com Focusing on Tourism

Elliot Silver
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12

NewOrleans.comOne of my favorite cities in the United States is New Orleans, and I’ve always been a fan of NewOrleans.com. I’ve also had the chance to meet the team running the website at the GeoDomain Expo and via email afterwards. While  planning a June vacation in NOLA, I noticed that NewOrleans.com had undergone a major overhaul to almost completely focus on tourism.

I think this was a very smart move for the company, which previously employed many journalists and other overhead-intensive staff (expensive).

From my perspective, people who are doing the main searches for New Orleans are those who are planning vacations. They want to book hotels, make fight reservations, and research great restaurants. News and sports does drive traffic, but it’s difficult to monetize without significant sales staff (as I have experienced). Additionally, with New Orleans being somewhat of a gritty city, home page news articles aren’t as enticing as hotel and attraction images.

I’m not sure how I missed it, but NewOrleans.com and Vegas.com  announced a partnership in January “to launch a full-service New Orleans vacation booking site.” Vegas.com is probably the highest producing geodomain name, and I would imagine the tourism to local search ratio is probably similar for both cities. Smart move partnering up with a leading site like Vegas.com.

One of the best things about a city.com domain name (vs a city keyword domain name) is the versatility it gives the owner. Aside from what looks to be an  anomalous drop in traffic in April (only according to Compete), NewOrleans.com appears to be chugging right along with its new business model.

Kudos to the management team for trying out a business model and quickly changing when it became necessary. As they say in New Orleans, laissez les bon temps rouler. Looking forward to my trip in June.

Use a “Domain for Sale” Landing Page

Elliot Silver
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36

One of the reasons I like to use Parked.com for almost all of my undeveloped domain names is that I can have a nice “domain for sale” message at the top of the page. On BoracayHotels.com alone, I’ve received 4 offers in the last 3 weeks, and for that reason alone, having the link is beneficial.

On some of my domain names that make very little revenue but receive traffic, I have been thinking about not parking them, and instead, I would put a domain for sale landing page. This would require hosting, but if you get an inexpensive VPS that costs under $50 a month, you can host all of your domain names you want to sell. Heck, you can probably get even cheaper hosting on a per domain basis at some hosting companies. Some registrars like Go Daddy offer a free hosting option, but you will have a hosting company banner on the site.

I was checking out ThemeForest yesterday, and I found a few landing page templates you may consider using (affiliate links affiliate links have been removed):

I believe the key elements on a good landing page are the domain name, a contact form or your phone number, perhaps some sales points, and possibly the price (I don’t like listing a price). People who don’t know about the Whois database (many end users) may search to see if a domain name is available simply by visiting it.  If you make it clear that your domain name is available, you may receive additional inquiries.

Using a landing page template may help you close more deals than you’re currently closing. It’s a bit of a process to set up, but once you get going it’s fairly easy. You may forego some revenue, but it’s a short term cost for hopefully a greater gain.

Taryn Naidu Promoted to EVP and General Manager of eNom

Elliot Silver
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8

Taryn NaiduThis afternoon, Demand Media announced that domain industry veteran, Taryn Naidu, has been promoted to the position of Executive Vice President, Registrar Services and General Manager of domain registrar, eNom. Taryn  has been with Demand (working on the eNom line of business) since 2006.

Before working at Demand Media, many domain investors got to know Taryn  through his former positions at Pool.com. Taryn  started out as an engineer with the company and worked his way up to CEO. He’s been active in the domain industry for a number of years as his ICANN Wiki profile can attest.

The full press release from today’s announcement is below:

SANTA MONICA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Demand Media ® (NYSE:DMD – News) has named Taryn Naidu to the position of Executive Vice President, Registrar Services and General Manager of eNom, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Demand Media and the world’s largest ICANN accredited domain name wholesaler. Naidu was promoted from Senior Vice President and will take on executive leadership of the eNom business. Michael Blend, who previously held this position, will continue to work full-time on special projects for Demand Media, reporting to the CEO, Richard Rosenblatt.

“Working with the eNom team to build a $100 million in revenue business and expand our lead as the world’s largest wholesale registrar has been a remarkable experience,” said Blend. “Coming off a record quarter for eNom in Q1, this is a great time to turn the leadership over to Taryn. We have worked closely together developing this business for nearly five years, and Taryn is the ideal person to lead eNom through its next phase of growth.”

Naidu joined Demand Media in 2006 as an executive advisor to the eNom management team, before taking a full-time position to drive business and product development strategy and corporate growth.

Prior to Demand Media, Naidu was the CEO of Pool.com, where he joined the domain marketplace company as an engineer and worked his way up to become president and ultimately, CEO. Naidu has a computer science degree from the University of Regina.

About Demand Media

Demand Media, Inc. (NYSE:DMD – News) is a leading content and social media company. Through its owned and operated web properties reaching more than 100 million monthly visitors, global network of digital partners, and innovative content studio, Demand Media publishes what the world wants to know and share. Founded in 2006, Demand Media is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA, with offices in Bellevue, WA; Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; New York, NY; and London, UK. For more information about Demand Media visit http://www.demandmedia.com

Remove Pages from Wayback Machine

Elliot Silver
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11

In more than one UDRP proceeding, pages from the Wayback Machine (found on Archive.org) have been submitted as evidence against the domain owner. The Wayback Machine is an Internet archive that takes snapshots of a website at various points in time, and the pages are indexed on the site.

In the case of the Cleveland Browns UDRP for Browns.com in May of 2011, the team shared results from the Wayback Machine from 2005, which showed links to football related links and merchandise. This was one major factor that seems to have doomed the domain owner.

People might ask why someone would want to have their site removed from the Wayback Machine, if not for nefarious reasons. Let’s say you purchase a descriptive domain name today, and the name may also be considered part of another company’s trademark. Perhaps you love apples and bought AppleStore.com (only an example).

The fact that the registrant change might be considered by a UDRP panelist as a “new registration” could be one strike since it wouldn’t pre-date the trademark.  If there were previously links on the site that may have infringed on the technology company’s usage, it could be strike number two. If you are planning to utilize the name in a way that does not infringe on another company’s marks, you shouldn’t have to worry that the company will come after you with evidence of previous infringement.

As we all know, there aren’t necessarily three strikes in a UDRP proceeding, and these two facts might satisfy the three elements required in a UDRP. That being said, you should be able to remove those pages from the Wayback Machine to avoid future problems, and there’s an easy way to do it.

Full details can be found on Archive.org, but the  gist  of it is that you need to add a special command in your robots.txt file that most websites have. According to the removal guide:

To exclude the Internet Archive’s crawler (and remove documents from the Wayback Machine) while allowing all other robots to crawl your site, your robots.txt file should say:

User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /

It’s pretty easy to do, although I haven’t done it with any of my sites. I am not sure if there are downsides to this, and if so, what those downsides are, so you should look into this before undertaking this.

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