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It’s a Busy Saturday

Elliot Silver
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3

As my friends and family know, I can be a workaholic. I love what I do, and if I am not working on my laptop, I am generally on my Blackberry pretty much non-stop, especially during the week. I try to lay off on the weekends, but when I have a big project, I can usually be found working. This weekend is a working weekend, as you will see below in my Saturday updates:

  • I’ve been reading about the domain theft and hijacking situation on Domain Name Wire and Patrick’s Blog. As a friendly reminder, there are a few companies that offer extensive protection against domain theft like Name.com featuring a security key fob. I wrote an article about domain security last July, and you may want to check it out to see what some companies offer.
  • After a couple of months worth of work, Lowell.com has been re-vamped and re-launched with the help of Mike McAlister of Six One Five Design. Businesses will now be able to sign up, create listings, and pay on their own, much like I have successfully implemented on a couple of other websites. There are still a number of links that aren’t working and things that need to be fixed, but it’s almost there. If you have a few minutes and check out the site, please let me know if you see any bugs (I know the site is running slowly right now).
  • I want to send a BIG THANK YOU to Tony Kanakaris of eCyberMedia.com and SocialDomainers.com for making a $500 contribution to the Ronald McDonald House for our 5 Boro Bike Tour. Not only is this the largest contribution to date, it also put us over our $2,500 goal. The Ronald McDonald House does some great things for children with cancer and their families, and they can use all of the funding people can contribute. I think Karen and I may raise our goal since some friends and family haven’t contributed what they pledged in private.
  • If you are celebrating, I want to wish you and your family a happy Easter. I hope you are able to enjoy the holiday with family and friends.

Send a Card to Mattie and Make Her Day Special

Elliot Silver
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0

After I posted my article about raising funds for the Ronald McDonald House, I received a message on Facebook from a high school friend with whom I haven’t spoken in quite some time. Sarah thanked my wife and me for what we are doing because her Sister and Brother in Law used the resources of the Ronald McDonald House with their four year old daughter Mattie. I wanted to share Mattie’s story with you if you have a moment.

When Mattie was 2 and 1/2, she was diagnosed with Meduloblastoma (malignant brain cancer) the size of a golf ball. She had it removed the day before Thankgiving and was transferred to St. Jude’s, where she remained for almost a year, and she was discharged without success.

Mattie’s mom and dad then enrolled her in an experimental study at Sloan-Kettering in NYC where she lived at the Ronald McDonald House. She was discharged with no cancer. Mattie then traveled back to St. Jude’s twice for body scans/MRIs/spinal taps where she remained clean until her 2nd round of scans. She was then transferred back to St. Jude’s where she was taken as a candidate in a special experimental study.

Heartbreakingly, Mattie became overcome with pain in her leg and she was found to have cancer consuming her leg and in her chest cavity, and at that point, further treatment was not possible.   She is currently on hospice at home, in a wheelchair, because her leg is due to break at any moment. Mattie has a blog where you can learn more about her and read her story. You can also read more on Cincinnati, Ohio’s News 9 website.

Since Mattie LOVES receiving mail (like any child her age), Sarah and her family organized a “card shower” for Mattie for Christmas, and she received over 2,200 cards from around the world. Mattie’s fifth birthday is coming up on April 4, and we would like to make it more special for her. In the next few days, if you happen to visit a card store or supermarket and can send Mattie a birthday card, she would be absolutely thrilled. You don’t need to send anything other than a birthday card and a little note, since she has everything else she needs.

Mattie’s address is:

Miss Mattie Powell
16725-TU
Fayette Ohio 43521

The Ronald McDonald House is a great organization that helps children and their families, and I am even more glad Karen and I are supporting it with your help.

A special thank you goes out to the following domain industry friends and colleagues who have contributed to help us achieve our fundraising goal:

You’re A Fool!

Elliot Silver
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6

Yes… another April Fools’ Day post, but this one has a twist. The “You’re” to whom I am referring in the title is actually me, and the things below are some of the foolish things I’ve done recently (that I can remember). This isn’t the typical attempt at humor post that most others are trying, although Rick’s new venture is hularious (.com).

  • I bought a targeted keyword geodomain name on Snapnames over a year ago and never changed the DNS. I just realized this last week.
  • I kept complaining about how TropicalBirds.com was not making much money, but then I worked with Craig at WhyPark, and it’s now making 1.5-2x what it made per day on Adsense. We’re not talking big money at all, but it’s bigger money. More on this to come, but after around one month of the same site with different monetization strategy/feed, I am realizing that I left a couple of nights in New York City on the table in earnings every month for the last year plus.
  • I stopped invoicing   my hotel advertiser on Lowell.com in January because I was hoping the new site would launch in mid February or early March at the latest, and I was concerned that they would be upset paying for a banner on a newly launched website that wasn’t the exact same as the current/old site. Well, as all development projects go, my design requests grew, and we’re now in April, and the old site is still up, so I lost out on two months of payment… again, not a whole lot of money, but a couple of nice dinners.
  • I spent a lot of time building my own mini sites, and when all is said and done, I shouldn’t have been so cheap and left the work to the professionals. Even if the results were equal to mine, it wouldn’t have been a waste of my time.

I am sure I’ve done more foolish things than those listed above, but I can’t really think of others off the top of my head right now.

What foolish things have you done that you’d like to share?

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

Quick Tip to Buying Good, Saleable Domain Names in the Aftermarket

Elliot Silver
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8

One thing I look for when buying a domain name is to see how many companies use that exact term as a part of their domain name. If companies are using more specific domain names for their websites, the generic term will usually be highly valuable to at least one company that wants to be THE exact match .com. With this exact match name, you can usually command top dollar.

For example, there are a lot of law firms that use the term “DefenseLawyer.com” in their domain name. You have everything from descriptive names like CriminalDefenseLawyer.com to geographical like NewYorkDefenseLawyer.com and everything else in between. Owning the primary generic term would presumably be of interest to many of those companies. This is generally the case with most exact match .com domain names.

By doing a Google search for the exact match .com name, you will see all of those developed websites that use that term in their domain name. There is your first round list of end user prospects when you look to sell the domain name. You can also search for that exact term without the domain name, such as “defense lawyer” in my example, and then you can see what I did to sell one of my domain names to an end user company.

Obviously the term needs to be generic, so something like VolvoDealer.com wouldn’t pass that test, even though there are a number of dealerships that use the term “VolvoDealer.com” in their domain names.

Successful End User Sale From Start to Finish

Elliot Silver
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112

I want to share information about a successful end user sale I made with a domain name I recently acquired on Snapnames. Out of respect for the buyer, I am keeping the name and price private, but that’s not really important for the sake of this article.

I was looking through Snapnames a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a niche category defining domain name with one bidder. The name is one aspect of a large industry, but there are companies that specialize in this area. The GAKT numbers are decent, and there are a lot of companies that use this term in their domain names (CityXxxxxxXxxxxx.com for example).

As the auction progressed into its final minutes, it shot up from under $100 to several hundred dollars, but I was the winning bidder. I know the domain investment company I was bidding against, so I knew that I wasn’t battling an end user who would have more knowledge about the actual industry value than I could have.

As usual, I offered the domain name for sale to some of my clients, but there wasn’t interest. I was concerned that I possibly over paid for the 10 year old domain name, but I thought a company that specializes in this would be willing to pay above what a domain investor could justify. I did some Google research using the term (in quotes to ensure this exact term was being used), and I sent prospects the following email:

Good afternoon,

I noticed that your company is listed (used the word “advertising” to companies that are paying for Adwords) on Google for the key phrase “xxxxxxx xxxxx,” and my company is selling the exact match domain name “XxxxxxxXxxxx.com. The domain name was created back in January of 2000, and developing it could provide a SEO boost.

If you are interested in acquiring XxxxxxxXxxxx.com, please let me know. I am offering it to several xyz companies in the next few days.”

Regards,
Elliot

– –
Elliot J. Silver
Top Notch Domains, LLC

===============

I sent a total of 24 emails to prospective buyers using the contact forms or email addresses available on their websites. In total, I received 7 replies, all of which were from people that were interested. A few people said they’d love to buy the name but times were tough. A couple suggested I hold the name for another year or so to increase the value because that particular business is just now seeing a recovery.

I received two offers – one for under $1,000 and the other in the thousands of dollars range from a NYSE publicly traded company that happens to be the leader in the industry. Although I attempted to negotiate, they stuck to their initial best offer, and I agreed to sell them the domain name. We used Escrow.com for the transaction, and the transfer/sale was finalized this week.

I believe I sold the name for much more that it would have sold to another domain investor. I know there are people doing this type of thing every day, and I want to share my approach from start to finish.

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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

2010 Domain Conferences: Are You Going/Have You Gone?

Elliot Silver
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3

Much has been made of the abundance of domain conferences on the 2010 calendar, and more seem to be added every month. With the first quarter of 2010 almost finished, I am wondering how many people have attended at least one paid domain conference so far this year, and/or if you plan to attend a conference during the remainder of the year.

A couple years ago, it wasn’t all that unlikely for many domain investors to hit all of the conferences in one year, as there were somewhere around 3-4 of them in total. In the coming months, there are a whole lot more, including many new conferences.

Upcoming conferences include Traffic Milan, GeoDomain Expo, Traffic Dublin, Traffic Vancouver, Traffic Florida, DomainFest Ft. Lauderdale, DomainFest New York, DomainFest Prague, Domainer Cruise, Domain Roundtable, Domain Convergence, and probably a few others I am forgetting about (sorry).

I am still in the process of making plans for upcoming conferences, although my summer travel schedule is pretty booked for personal things. I am nearly certain I will be going to Hong Kong for Traffic, and although I have a commitment back in New York on Friday, April 30th, I hope to be able to be in New Orleans for the GeoDomain Expo (next earlybird end date is March 31). I also would like to get up to Vancouver for the June Traffic show.

Have you been to a conference this year or do you plan to attend one? Please feel free to leave a comment about why you haven’t gone or why you plan to attend one.


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Please help me raise funds for the Ronald McDonald House

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