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The Challenge for Larger Companies

Elliot Silver
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One thing that has happened in the domain space in the last few years is that many companies have grown quite a bit from their roots. I’ve only been in this business since 2003 and serious about it for just the last 4-5, but I’ve already seen significant changes at some of the larger companies.

I don’t have the experience working within one of these companies, so this perspective is an outsider’s point of view rather than from someone on the inside.

Sustaining growth is a big challenge that every company faces as it grows. Some companies need to take outside investment, and oftentimes the investors’ goals don’t align with the needs of the company’s clients. Companies need to drive a positive ROI, and that can cause it to stray from its roots in order to achieve its financial objectives. In a small industry like the domain space, that can pose challenges.

As domain companies grow, they should continue to reach out to its clients to ensure their needs are being met, just as they always have been met. Hiring people who have experience in the domain industry is one way to do this. Surveying customers is another great way to make sure needs are being met. I think the best way is to have customer service representatives and account managers who know their clients and can make sure client needs are being met at all times.

With growth comes certain expectations from those who have ownership stakes. Companies need to constantly evaluate whether customer needs are being met, and if they aren’t, they should re-think how business is done. Companies grow for a reason, and they need to realize it’s the loyalty of their core customers that have enabled this growth and will sustain it in the future.

Sedo Sells StreetArt.com / You Can Buy StreetArtist.com & StreetArtists.com

Elliot Silver
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0

I am a big fan of art. One of the downsides of living in Manhattan is that I don’t have a whole lot of wall space for art, although I could certainly fill them up if I did. Ironically, when I was in graduate school (before domain names) I bought and sold art. I didn’t do it to make money, but I did it to finance my art obsession (ie buying a bunch of limited editions at wholesale cost and selling them for a small profit each to keep an edition for free).

Some of my favorite artists include Agam, Sol Lewitt,  Charles Fazzino, Peter Max, Keith Haring, and several others. Most of these guys are more mainstream artists, but a couple of my favorites are not.

One such artist that is not really mainstream yet is Mr. Brainwash. He is known as a street artist, but also has some very cool non-street works.  He had a very cool exhibit/show in NYC for a while, and I am a fan of his work.

When I was looking into some street art, I saw that Buy Domains is selling StreetArtist.com and StreetArtists.com, each of which is priced under $3,000. I was close to buying them, but I felt that I would have to build websites to sell art in order to make the most from these domain names, and I am not interested in getting in the art biz right now

In its recent sales RSS feed, Sedo just announced the sale of StreetArt.com for $12,000. I think this was a pretty good price for the seller, and the buyer should look into acquiring the other two domain names, which are pretty cheap  comparatively. If you happen to like art, perhaps you should look into buying these two names. If you have an interest, connect with Sonia and ask her to set you up with a good price for the pair.

WIPO Results: Typos VS. .CO

Elliot Silver
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9

I want to point out two UDRP filings that were based on the same primary domain name but had different results. The first case involves a .CO domain name that matches an established .com website, and the second case involves several .com typos of the same .com domain name as the first case.

The former case involves a domain name that was recently registered, while the later involves domain names that were acquired prior to the complainant’s  acquisition. As you can see in the arguments below, the date of registration/acquisition was important in the panels’ findings.

A few weeks ago, a WIPO  UDRP decision awarded PokerStrategy.CO to the owner of PokerStrategy.com. The UDRP was defended by Raj Abhyanker, and    this case was decided by a single panelist. There were a few comments I found interesting in the discussion:

“Previous UDRP panels have found that where a domain name is purely descriptive, even where it is part of a registered trademark, then a respondent will have a right or legitimate interest, unless there is evidence that the respondent is targeting the complainant.”

“In this case the term “poker strategy” is comprised of two common English words and the combined term is purely descriptive and based on the evidence before the Panel is commonly used in the industry. Without more this would be enough to find that the Complainant has not demonstrated that the Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in the Disputed Domain Name and to deny the Complaint. However as discussed below, there are supervening circumstances in this case which lead the Panel to infer, on the balance of probabilities, that the Respondent has in this case sought to target the Complainant and that therefore the Respondent has not acted in good faith.”

“Based on the Respondent’s own acknowledgement of the success of the Complainant’s website at “www.pokerstrategy.com” and that the site had been in operation for a number of years prior to the Respondent’s registration of the Disputed Domain Name, the Panel infers that the Complainant’s domain name has most likely developed some degree of source identifying significance, at least amongst the Internet based poker playing community.”

The second UDRP filing involves a number of domain names that would appear to be typos of PokerStrategy.com. The owner of PokerStrategy.com filed a UDRP for:  pokersrategy.com,  pokerstategy.com,  pokerstratgy.com,  pokerstrtegy.com, and  pokrstrategy.com. This UDRP was defended by John Berryhill, and there were three panelists who agreed on the findings.

There was some interesting discussion in this decision as well, and it seems that the date of the domain registration was critically important to this particular decision. Here are some findings and discussion:

“It may well be that in non-English speaking jurisdictions the relevant authorities were unaware that the term “Poker Strategy” was an unregistrable descriptive term referring, flatly, to poker strategy, but the United States Trademark Office had no such language difficulty.”

“UDRP Panels have repeatedly found that the use of common words and phrases utilized as domain names to advertise relevant subject matter is legitimate.”

“Here, the Complainant has taken the unusual approach of simply “wishing the facts away” by stating that it “assumes that Respondent has acquired the disputed domains well after the Complainant’s trademarks have been applied for.” This statement is false and is readily and demonstrably false, and was explained to the Complainant’s agents prior to this dispute, upon their attempt to acquire the disputed domain names on behalf of the Complainant. A printout of the WHOIS data for  as of the stated “Cache Date” of November 6, 2005 clearly demonstrates that the Respondent had been the identified registrant thereof well prior to the Complainant’s later purchase of the domain name.”

Congratulations are in order for John Berryhill, who was also able to get a reverse domain name hijacking decision since the complainant gave statements that:

“were clearly designed to convey the impression that the Complainant itself had been using  for a website from 2002, before registration of the disputed domain names. Whereas the Complainant could hardly have been unaware of the fact that it had only acquired  in 2006.“

One thing I learned from the first decision is that if you own .CO domain names, you need to use them if the .com is already established. Descriptive domain names are generally protected when it comes to UDRP, but if a panel thinks you registered a name to capitalize on an established website, you had better be using the domain name as it should be used based on its descriptive nature.

Why Do Domain Investors Get Such a Bad Rap?

Elliot Silver
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77

It irks me sometimes when I hear people refer to domain investors as cybersquatters or other nasty insults. The general impression about what we do seems to all negative, and people assume we monetize trademark domain names, sit on valuable domain names to hold them hostage, and we do other things that are blights on society.

Some of this may be true for some people, but the sad thing is that this behavior is not limited to domain investors. I think a lot of this reputation comes from regular people who happen to own domain names.

Every year during the election season, many political campaigns turn nasty. This happens at every single level of politics – from small local alderman elections to big national campaigns. Inevitably, some dumb politicians (or their lackeys) thinks it’s brilliant to register the domain name (or something similar) with an opponent’s name in it.

They may only be doing it for political gain, but somehow this cyberpirating makes domain investors look bad. Sure, many politicians have slimy reputations themselves, but it doesn’t seem fair that these people get put into the same bucket as domain investors, making us look bad in the process.

Let’s now discuss the perception that domain investors horde good domain names and hold them hostage when some other parties could be using them better. First off, this is complete and utter horse manure. Nobody with any intelligence would say this about someone with undeveloped prime real estate or beachfront property.

What irks me about this perception is that I’ve  tried to buy plenty of domain names from people who registered them 10+ years ago and still haven’t done anything with them. They aren’t domain investors, and many of them aren’t even monetizing these names.

When I make an offer I think is decent, I often get crazy price quotes in reply. Are these people holding domain names hostage? NO! They are capitalists with similar goals as me.

I do realize that there are domain investors who monetize trademark domain names, do nasty things with sensitive domain names, and do hold some domain names hostage. However, I believe that given many circumstances, almost everyone would do the exact same thing, whether they were identifying themselves as domain investors or not.

Some Sunday Updates

Elliot Silver
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Just got back home after a weekend away, and I want to share some Sunday updates with you. Hope it’s been a good weekend for you.

– .XXX was approved last week by ICANN, and there have been a number of articles in the mainstream media written about the extension. It’s interesting to read some of the comments written by readers. I personally don’t see an easy/smooth adoption, but what do I know.

– Andrew Allemann wrote a guest post on TechCrunch about the approval of .XXX. TC publisher (Michael Arrington) has roots in the domain business, but he invited Andrew to write the article, and I always think it’s good when well-written and spoken domain investors are given a platform in a more mainstream publication. Take a look when you get a chance.

– I really hope this domain privacy dispute is squashed soon. I think it’s good that the information is out there, but it’s tough to read some of the personal insults that have been made by commenters.

– Unfortunately, there’s been silence from the one source that really matters to me at this point, which of course is Oversee. The company spokesman acknowledged that there was a policy violation (which led to an employee being placed on “administrative leave”), but there was no follow-up statement about how the company will prevent such  occurrences  from happening again in the future.

– I want to say thank you again to those of you where were able to donate money to the Ronald McDonald House in our effort to raise $5,000. We’re almost there – thank you!

– I have a general request for you to consider. Take it easy in your comments and interactions with others over the next few days. A shaky economy, the disaster in Japan, and the uncertainty in the Middle East and Africa have a lot of people on edge right now. Let’s try to be good to each other and limit the vitriol and negativity. If you can cut someone a bit of slack, now’s the time to be generous. You don’t know what burdens others are shouldering right now.

My Current Strategy With Hand Registrations

Elliot Silver
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I am feeling a bit more bearish about the short term domain aftermarket than I have in a while, so I’ve found myself hand registering domain names more frequently than in the past. Aside from privately acquiring domain names like BikeTours.com, TaxConsult.com, MonthlyPaymentCalculator.com, and HumorForum.com in the last month, my  acquisitions  and inquiries have been fewer than in prior months.

Instead of spending significant amounts of money on domain names with plans of quickly flipping them, I’ve been focusing on hand registering domain names I think are pretty decent, and I’ve changed up my strategy on what I do with hand registered domain names once I buy them.

I am not aggressively looking to re-sell these domain names, but I am doing something passively that I haven’t done before: I am immediately listing them for sale at Sedo. I am not simply parking them with a message that says the name may be for sale. I am actively putting them on the market right from the get go.

I will likely begin listing these names on Afternic as well, since they have a pretty broad footprint with BuyDomains. The downside from my perspective is that the BuyDomains brokers generally prefer names that are priced, and I don’t want to go through the trouble of doing that yet.

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Please help me raise funds for the  Ronald McDonald House

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