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Hand Domain Registration Today, Hoping for Sale Today

Elliot Silver
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40

Maybe I will look smart with this, and maybe I won’t.   We’ll see…

I was looking for a long tail domain name to register today with the hopes of re-selling it to an end user later on today. One domain name I found was PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com, and I registered it at Godaddy this morning. I chose Godaddy because almost anyone who buys domain names has heard of them, and the trust factor for an easy domain transfer/push is there and could reduce any anxiety.

I chose PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com for a few reasons:

  1. Philadelphia is a historical city with plenty of tours
  2. There are a whole lot of tour guides in the city, especially with a bad economy.
  3. There are very few barriers to entry to be a tour guide, so having a good domain name can propel someone to a higher search engine ranking, generating more business
  4. Large companies own other big city TourGuide.com domain names (ChicagoTourGuide.com is on sale for $2,388
  5. It’s a .com and .com is still king 🙂

FYI…Sorry for going back and forth with past and present tense in this post. As I am writing this, I have not yet sent out any emails, but I am in the process of finding people the email.

I am going to send the following email to prospective buyers of this domain name:

Dear XYZ,

I saw that you are a tour guide in Philadelphia, and I think you might be interested in buying PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com, a domain name my company owns but doesn’t have plans to develop. When someone is looking for a Philadelphia tour guide, they are likely to search Google/Yahoo/Bing for “Philadelphia tour guide” or something similar. Have a website built on the exact match domain name can be very helpful to your search engine ranking for related searches.

Additionally, I believe it would be cool to be known as the “Philadelphia Tour Guide,” and that can be done more easily with PhiladelphiaTourGuide.com. You can build your brand with this great generic domain name. I am offering this domain name to several Philadelphia tour guides and tour companies over the next few days, and the first one to agree to buy it for $1,800 will get it. The domain name only costs around $11/year to renew at Godaddy, the world’s largest domain name registrar.

I hope you consider buying this domain name. Please get back to me ASAP, as it will sell to the first person or company who agrees to the asking price. Payment can be easily made using Paypal or a trusted escrow service like Escrow.com.

Regards,
Elliot J. Silver

I am going to search Google and Philadelphia’s Craigslist to find people who are advertising themselves as a local tour guide, and I will send them an email about this offer.

Should I not be able to sell it, I plan to park the domain name at Parked, and I will have a for sale notice on it in case people are interested in buying it.

Could Intuit Buy GoDaddy?

Elliot Silver
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13

I read an article about possible GoDaddy buyers on Fool.com written by Anders Bylund, “Who’s Hot for GoDaddy?” In the article, Bylund mentions Google, Amazon, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM as potential suitors for the domain registrar who, according to the Wall Street Journal, may be coming up for an auction with a starting bid of $1 Billion.

One company that I thought might make an interesting buyer of GoDaddy, purely based on synergy, is Intuit. Intuit is a publicly traded company with a market cap of nearly $14 Billion. The company offers small business financial management tools and services, such as Quick Books. Intuit primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses, which seems to be the same audience as Godaddy’s domain registrants.

In 2007, Intuit shelled out $170 Million for web development company, Homestead. The company offers web building services primarily for small or medium sized businesses. In a way, this actually competes with GoDaddy’s Website Tonight offering.

I don’t think I own stock in Intuit, and I am not a finance guy, so I have no idea if they could even make this work. It’s just one company I would think could possibly be a suitor for the largest domain registrar.

Flashback to My First TRAFFIC Conference

Elliot Silver
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I’m not sure if I’ve shared this story before, but with the Jewish high holidays happening and my planning my trip to the TRAFFIC conference in Miami, I wanted to share it with you.

I am generally an outgoing person, especially when I am in the company of friends and colleagues. I may be a bit reserved when I am with people I don’t know. Keeping this in mind, I was somewhat hesitant to attend a domain conference. I knew a number of people through domain forums and private deals, but I had met just a couple of people in person. When I learned that the TRAFFIC conference would be in New York a few years ago, I decided I would make the most of it and bought a ticket.

In the same way that it’s fun to attend an event that you know will have sports stars signing autographs or movie stars milling about, it was neat to see domain investors I had heard so much about. I was a bit shy at first, but I soon introduced myself to the people whose names I recognized, and to those with whom I had previously done business. Some people were friendlier than others, but most people were seemed happy to chat and learn more about who I was and what I did.

When people asked me if I had any domain names for sale at the time, I told them I was there to meet others and not to make any deals. Truth be told, I just wasn’t comfortable negotiating in person, but since that time, I’ve realized domain conferences are great opportunities to lay the groundwork for future deals rather than to strike deals on site.

Just before the big Moniker auction, I used the restroom and held the door for someone as we were both exiting. He was wearing a yarmulke, so I knew we both had something in common. We introduced ourselves, and after a bit of small talk, he asked me if I had any Jewish-related domain names for sale. I remembered I had recently hand registered a Hebrew phrase (in .com), and I offered it to him. He asked me what I wanted for it, and I replied that I would take whatever he wanted to give me, and I would donate it all to charity. I also let him know that my company (AIG at the time) would match his gift. He offered me $1,000 and the deal was done.

After we made our way back to the conference room, this person introduced me to his business partner, Lonnie Borck. Lonnie was happy to learn about the deal, and Lonnie and I spent some time chatting about the domain business. It’s been over three years since that chance meeting, and Lonnie is not only a good friend, but he’s one of my most trusted business colleagues with whom I speak and/or email almost daily.

As I am making plans for the TRAFFIC conference next month, I am re-connecting with friends and colleagues to confirm that they will be there. Had I chosen to remain private, I am not sure I would have been able to make the personal connections that helped enhance the awareness of my blog and my business.

I know that attending a domain conference is an expensive proposition, especially with the uncertain economy. One thing that is certain is the fact that if it wasn’t for attending a conference, my business wouldn’t be the same. If you have plans to attend TRAFFIC Miami and want to say hi, please let me know.

Sunday Afternoon Updates

Elliot Silver
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I’ve been out of town for a few days but just returned home to the city, where it’s time for beers, wings, and the Patriots game. As always, thanks for checking out my blog today.   Here are a few updates.

– It’s only been live for a few days, but I find Google Instant extremely annoying and distracting. The problem is that generally as I search, totally unrelated listings come up until I complete the first related word or phrase. It’s distracting to my eyes, and it seems to make Firefox run much slower for me. I really don’t like it and am only keeping it live for now to see if I can learn something from it. I will probably turn it off in Firefox but keep it on in Safari for the time being.

– The first acting coach signed up for a directory listing on ActingCoach.com. I know the $4 net revenue is only enough to buy me a couple cups of coffee every month, but the first paid sign up always feels good. It shows that there is at least some interest.

– One big test of ActingCoach.com is whether clients will stick and pay each month.   The annual cost is a bit more than on DogWalker.com ($60/yr vs. $49/year).   It’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges since the professions are paid much differently, but learning about sign up and cancellation habits will be important, and it will be interesting to see, especially when renewals come around on DogWalker.com in a few months.

– Congrats to my developer Mike McAlister (aka “Threat”) who was named a Featured Author on ThemeForest this week. Mike works as hard (or more) than I work to build his business. It’s great to see him recognized for his dedication to his clients and projects.

– I am going to be migrating my blog to a new hosting company some time this week. I don’t anticipate any down time at all and have a backup plan in the event something doesn’t go as planned, but I want to give a head’s up in case you see anything funky.

What’s the Least Valuable Domain Extension?

Elliot Silver
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78

Aside from some small speculation in new TLDs, I don’t really buy anything other than .COM domain names. In fact, I looked through my Moniker account where the bulk of my domain names are registered, and around 2% are not .COM names. 2% may even seem him to some people, but keep in mind that this includes personal names like ElliotSilver.net/.info and other protective registrations rather than investments.

I recently saw a couple of decent keyword domain names for sale in a domain forum, but because they were in an “alternate” (not ccTLD) extension, the price was pretty low and there were still no bids.   One name would be a high 6 or low 7 figure city.com domain name, but the owner was asking for under $2,000 without any interest or public offers. I also think this domain name in its country code ccTLD would be worth several thousand dollars.

It got me thinking about the value of non-.com domain names (I was not considering ccTLD domain names). In your opinion, what is the least valuable domain extension? Feel free to post the reason you think the extension doesn’t have much value. This is more out of morbid curiosity than anything else.

NFL Does it Right With Ticket Exchange

Elliot Silver
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TicketmasterI’ve written three different articles about this topic before, criticizing large companies for advertising either Twitter or Facebook urls in lieu of their own brand. For instance, I think it’s dumb for Best Buy to advertise Twitter.com/twelpforce, despite having control over that Twitter handle.

In this case, I want to give props to the NFL for the way they are advertising the new Ticket Exchange program.   During the Saints vs. Vikings game Thursday evening, the first regular season NFL game of the year, the NFL advertised the url for the Ticket Exchange program, directing visitors to NFL.com/TicketExchange.   Instead of landing on the NFL’s website, visitors are immediately directed to TicketExchangeByTicketmaster.com, a website owned by ticketing company, Ticketmaster.

Not only is the NFL url easier for people to remember than the long Ticketmaster url, the NFL can also control this traffic. They should be able to track this traffic, and they are building the NFL brand rather than Ticketmaster’s brand.

The only bad thing is that the NFL does not seem to own NFLTicketExchange.com. I am not sure if this is a result of too much traffic or if the site isn’t set up, but when I visited that website, my browser was unable to connect to it. That domain name was registered back in 2004.

Kudos to the NFL for some smart marketing.

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