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Some Sunday Updates

Elliot Silver
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6

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

Great Day Today!

Elliot Silver
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5

It’s been a really great day today, and I want to share a bit about why it’s been so good… BTW, it has nothing to do with St. Patty’s Day, although I plan to celebrate later on tonight.

– While writing this morning’s article, I tried to find my friend’s obituary. Sadly, I not only didn’t find his, but I did find his mom’s, who passed away last year. Using information in that obit, I was able to connect with my friend’s sister who lives in Austin, and we had a nice chat over Facebook this morning. First time we ever connected, and I hope it was able to make her feel good.

– The auction for 2 hours of private domain consulting ended today, and the high bid was $700, all of which will be donated to Ronald McDonald House by the bidder. This surpassed my expectations, and I was excited when that bid was made. In addition, over $300 was donated to my RMH fundraising page today… thank you. Almost there!

– This morning I finalized a deal I’ve been working on since December. I was able to buy BikeTours.com, which goes along with a name I already own – BikeTour.com. The reason it was difficult was that the owner had his registrant email @BikeTours.com, which had no hosting, so the email bounced. Since the owner had semi-retired and was spending his time traveling, I had to do quite a bit of research to track him down. Since he has limited Internet access and had never used Escrow.com before, it took a long time to close the deal. I now have the name in my possession. It always feels good to close a deal.

– I have two advertising deals in the works on a couple of different websites, and I had three paid listings for another website today. These might be small deals in the whole scheme of things, but it shows that the sites are working and people want to be a part of them. It’s almost as exciting to get a new sign up as it is to close a big domain deal.

Hope you guys are having a good day today.

Moniker Seeking Account Executive / Domain Name Specialist

Elliot Silver
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9

I read a Twitter post earlier today with a link to a job posting for Moniker. The company is seeking to hire a Account Executive / Domain Name Specialist in the Pompano Beach, Florida office. I don’t think this is the same position Patrick Ruddell left, as he was a domain broker.

The company lists a number of responsibilities for this position, which include:

  • Initiate, develop and cultivate accounts to sell domain names and related services via phone, Internet based communication and face to face meetings
  • Attend client meetings and industry trade shows
  • Manage ongoing relationships with clients including regular communication, analysis of data relating to their account, monitor success of their sales campaigns and advise clients on how to increase sales through existing and new efforts
  • Work with marketing and other entities to generate sales with decision makers. Must be aggressive and willing to make cold calls into accounts.
  • Utilize social networking and all forms of electronic communications (IM, text, etc) to maintain existing and develop new relationships
  • Identify domain sales opportunities that best meet client needs, create written sales presentations and present to clients as well as potential buyers
  • Research, negotiate and secure sellers for monthly/themed domain name auctions and obtain prospective buyers.  Facilitate and broker deals between parties.
  • Report pipeline and forecast using Salesforce.com

No domain industry experience is needed to apply for this position. A college degree is required, or some sort of equivalent experience is necessary.

If you happen to be looking for a job in the domain industry, this position is available. Information about applying for the position is available on the job posting page.

Why I Support the Ronald McDonald House

Elliot Silver
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RMDHA couple of people have asked me why I am supporting the Ronald McDonald House and spending time and effort raising funds for this particular non-profit organization. I want to share a bit about my personal connection, and it’s something most of my friends today likely don’t even know about.

When I was a freshman in high school, I ran indoor track during the winter. At the time, my school district had three junior high schools, and there was one very large senior high school with close to 2,000 students. Because of the high school’s size, freshmen attended the junior high schools. To make a long story short, I was the only freshman who ran indoor track on the senior high team, and I didn’t have friends on the team when I started.

One of the older guys on the team was a popular sophomore named Ramesh, who also ran the 55m dash, and he had a ton of friends at school. Ramesh was very friendly to me, despite my receiving the typical freshman treatment from the rest of the team. Ramesh and I were not close friends outside of the track team, but he was always looking out for me, and it’s something I appreciated and haven’t forgotten. He was a focused person with a big heart.

The much abridged version of the story is that I learned Ramesh was diagnosed with cancer in his sophomore or junior year of high school. His battle with cancer was difficult, and it was heartbreaking because one of his biggest goals in high school was to attend Boston College. Just as my senior year began and his friends were starting college, Ramesh lost his battle with cancer. It was probably the most difficult thing I dealt with up until that point.

I can’t even imagine what it would be like for a child (and the family) to battle cancer, and I know the Ronald McDonald House makes it easy for them to focus on beating cancer by taking care of everything else when they are away from home.  The people at the RMH are caring, and they take care of the residents and families on different levels – physical and emotional.

Cancer is a horrible disease, and it’s especially frightening for children. RMH helps families so the kids can focus on beating cancer and not worry about other things.

In addition to Ramesh, I have also had family members who fought cancer. Sadly, my Aunt (Mom’s sister) lost her battle with pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago, and it was terribly sad to watch her and her family cope with the disease. My Grandmother also fought and beat breast cancer a number of years ago.

I think cancer probably touches most of us at some point in our lives. I want to be able to help an organization that is helping families with kids who have cancer. So far, you’ve helped me raise over $3,500 towards our $5,000 fundraising goal, and I am immensely appreciative of this support. I hope you’ll help me reach the $5,000 goal.

Exact Match Domains Can Be Brands

Elliot Silver
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22

I was reading Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com article discussing the embedded  video from Google’s Matt Cutts regarding keyword domain names and the rankings they achieve in Google. Aaron is one of the more forward-thinking SEOs, and it’s a good article for domain investors to read.

Firstly, I think Aaron should note that there is a BIG difference between “keyword domain names” discussed by Matt Cutts and exact match domain names (EMD) discussed by Aaron. To me, keyword domain names are names like BestCarInsuranceQuotes.com or WatchMovieTrailersOnline.com, and exact match domain names would be names like SkiHelmets.com or SoccerCleats.com. Anyway, more on that below.

At the conclusion of the article, Aaron posed the question, “What happens to the value of domain names if EMD bonus goes away & Google keeps adding other data sources?”

From my perspective, strong descriptive domain names will still have the same value before and after because those domain names can be brands on their own. I think long tail keyword names, ugly keyword names with lots of hyphens, non .com, and nonsensical keyword domain names could take a hit in value, assuming they had any intrinsic value prior to the algo change.

Let me explain what I mean for a minute.

Domain names like Hotels.com, Ski.com, Golf.com, Cars.com, Insurance.com, and even my own DogWalker.com**, have become brands after development and marketing. Even Aaron Wall’s own domain name (SEOBook.com) is an example of a EMD, “SEO Book,” turned into a brand. These domain names say what they are and people bypass Google to visit those sites because they know what they’ll get.

Similar but yet to be developed domain names like Cats.com, or thousands of other EMDs can be bought and built into self-branded companies that have similar brand recognition as a branded company like Catster. If a local pet shop with big aspirations buys Cats.com and invests significant time and expense into building a helpful portal that people benefit from visiting, wouldn’t Google want to reward its efforts with a strong ranking, allowing it to compete with larger brands like Petco or PetSmart? Isn’t that one of the best things about the Internet?

Many domain investors (like myself) purchase and value domain names based on the potential for brand development, weighing that higher than current traffic / revenue. I didn’t buy DogWalker.com because I thought I could game a search engine, but rather because it’s easy to remember and I saw the potential it had to become a brand in and of itself.

As I mentioned, I do think that longer tail and nonsensical domain names with keywords will suffer. For instance, a name like Best-Car-Insurance-Quotes.info, which wouldn’t make for a good brand, shouldn’t get ranked higher in Google simply because the owner bought a name with keywords in it. Similarly, a nonsensical domain name like QuotesInsuranceCar.com should not get any EMD bonus simply because the name has a random assortment of meaningful keywords.

I do think Google’s algorithm change impacting keyword domain names will be felt by some. From my perspective, it’s likely that the biggest impact will be felt by domain registrars, since there will be far less incentive for someone to register long tail and nonsensical keyword domain names.

I happen to think that EMDs can be easily made into brands and that there is quite a bit of difference between a EMD and a keyword domain name, and Google is smart enough to know the difference.

**For my DogWalker.com site, it received around 100 visits/month before development about 16 months ago.  Today, traffic is around 10,000 visits a month with 20-25% of it being direct navigation. To me, this indicates that people have learned about the brand and visit DogWalker.com in lieu of a search engine.

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Please help me raise funds for the  Ronald McDonald House

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