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Some Sunday Afternoon Thoughts

Elliot Silver
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34

I am upset to see Pete Lamson leave NameMedia. I’ve done a considerable amount of business with the company over the last few years, and whenever I had a question or issue, Pete was always there to help out or point me in the right direction. I wish Pete all the best.

Back when I was doing more hand registrations, my friend Gregg) and I would email each other back and forth with some of the names we picked up. It was always fun to share what I had purchased and to see what he bought. We’ve also done some business in the past, although I wish I was able to get him to sell Puggles.com to me! Anyway, Gregg is selling close to 16,000 domain names, and he will give one free domain name to the first 5 of my blog readers who respond with “free” in the comment section (sometimes I have to manually approve comments, so it will be in order of posting, not necessarily the first 5 to show up). If you’re interested in getting his list (or interested in a free domain name), post a comment asking for it, and I will forward your email address to him.

I’m still working on the development of my first automated sign-up directory. I didn’t use eDirectory for this, and I will ask my developer/designer to write up a post once it launches. It’s very cool seeing requests I make for customizations getting completed. Depending on the success of this site, I may make some changes to other websites I own and alter my acquisition and sales strategy a bit.

With a month and a half remaining in the year, now’s a pretty good time to see if you can do anything that will make an impact on your 2009 taxes. Perhaps it’s a good idea to book flights for 2010 or pay for tickets to conferences and tradeshows in the coming year. Based on my schedule for next year, I am fairly certain I will be attending Targeted Traffic in Vancouver in June, and I hope to book the flight before year end.

Problem with Pricing Your Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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15

There aren’t a whole lot of domain investors or domain sales companies that list their prices on site. They don’t do this because if for some reason the value on a particular type of domain name increases, they won’t have to sell it for that price. This allows companies and investors to base their prices on a wide variety of factors that can only be calculated at the time of the sale.

A few weeks ago, I received a list of domain names for sale from a company, and I looked through the list and made a few purchases. After a second and third look, I found another name I want to buy at the list price. Apparently there have been some larger sales recently in a similar vertical, so the company hasn’t decided whether to sell me the domain name at their listed price.

I am in the midst of working with the company right now, so I won’t mention the name, but this should be a warning to both buyers and sellers. If you price your names, you either need to be constantly on top of market fluctuations or risk taking a possible presumed loss on a sale. In my opinion, it’s bad form to price a domain name and then change it after a buyer agrees to pay the list price.

Domain Investors Need to Take Better Care of Valuable Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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28

In April of 2008, Jay Westerdal announced that his company had the exclusive sales listing for the generic domain name Harmony.com, and the reserve price was $5,000,000. I don’t recall seeing whether the domain name was sold or not, but I just saw that a UDRP was filed at NAF for Harmony.com on November 12, 2009 (Case #1292225).

Since the NAF doesn’t list the Complainant yet, I can only guess it is the parent company of eHarmony.com who would file a complaint, as they seem the most likely to want the domain name. At first, it would seem like a company is making a grab at this great generic domain name, but if you take a further look at the parked page, it looks less like that. Not only is there a link to learn about purchasing the domain name, there are also dating site links, including one for eHarmony.com. This was just on the main landing page, without even having to do a search to influence the results.

Harmony.com Screenshot

I believe this is similar to a recent case involving Dolphins.com, where the owner had football-related PPC links, and the Miami Dolphins filed a UDRP for Dolphins.com. Although the domain owner does have very limited control over what content is displayed on parked page, owners need to be very careful not to put their valuable domain names at risk.

In a UDRP, a trademark owner needs to prove three things: 1) the complainant has a trademark right that is identical or confusingly similar to the domain name in question, 2) the domain owner has no right or legitimate interest in the domain name, and 3) the domain owner registered and used the domain in bad faith.

Sure, virtually any company can file a UDRP for any domain name they would like (as we’ve seen many times with cases like Pig.com for example), but we shouldn’t make it any easier for them to use the UDRP process to acquire domain names. Harmony.com is a good generic domain name, and it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Two Ways to Find a Developer or Designer

Elliot Silver
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8

If you’re like me, at some point you’ve been paralyzed in making a business decision about development because you don’t know any developers or designers. When I wanted to develop my first website with a friend, we posted a wanted ad on Craigslist, only to be inundated with responses from all over the world. How the hell were we suppose to find a developer when there were 200 responses, with basically the same content but prices varying from a couple hundred dollars to ten thousand dollars?

Although web templates at design sites such as ThemeForest.net are great for people who have some development knowledge, they’re still a foreign language to people who don’t have this background (like me a couple of years ago). In the past couple of years, I’ve found two great places to find developers. Forget about posting help wanted listing in domain forums, which you probably do just because you don’t know where else to turn.

I found my first designer Mike (Six One Five Design) after holding a contest at Sitepoint, which is now called 99Designs.com. You can basically create your design brief and set a price for your work, and assuming your offer is reasonable, you will receive submissions from which to choose. Your design brief does not have to be technical. Write down your ideas, mention other sites or features you like, and be as specific as possible.

99 Designs is especially good to find logo designers. Instead of paying a single logo firm $2-300 for 4-8 designs from 2-8 designers, you can allocate $300 for your project, and you’ll get dozens of designs (or more) from hungry designers. As people submit their designs, you can eliminate those that don’t work for you, giving contestants more of an idea about what you want. You can also browse around other contests and ask designers you like to compete in yours. This is a great way to find a designer.

If you have a project that requires programming knowledge, eLance.com is another great site to find a developer. You can search for a developer based on level of expertise, and some have even taken exams given by eLance. They have a ratings scale, where past clients have given ratings, and they also have an earnings scale as well as the number of repeat customers. This is great because trust is such an important factor when developing. eLance also handles escrow to further protect you (although downpayments may be required upfront).

eLance also allows you to create a brief and invite companies to participate. Give explicit instructions about the work you’d like to have done, and search for potential companies with which you’d like to work. At the end, you can choose a winner after communicating with the different providers.

One downside that I have found to development is that it seems to be much cheaper to work with a company located outside of the US. As a result, language barriers do exist, and communication can at times be a bit difficult. However, with all things considered, you can find a great designer and/or programmer to help develop your domain names.

Please remember these two pieces of advice that I have learned:

  1. Most successful developed websites owned by domain investors require work. You can’t generally build it and make money without work (PalmSprings.com and Bobbleheads.com are two examples)
  2. It might behoove you to work with a programmer and designer that work well together. While their work is akin to someone working on a car’s engine and someone else working on the paint and interior, both need to work together smoothly, otherwise you can waste time and money.

My Experience with Forums

Elliot Silver
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8

On two of my more heavily trafficked websites (Burbank.com and TropicalBirds.com), I added forums for people to chat and have discussions. Since the domain names were fairly targeted, I assumed that people would be happy to join and begin interacting, which would help build brand awareness and recognition. I was wrong.

On TropicalBirds.com, I added the forum and paid a company to seed the forum with posts. I also added links to the forum on the sidebar of every page, and in some of the text as well. While the comment seeding initially spurred a bit of discussion on TropicalBirds.com, that didn’t last long. There were heavy periods of quiet, with the occasional sign-up. Not a very good result.

Likewise with Burbank.com, I added links on the home page and side navigation. I also added a “discuss” icon and link on news articles, after I created a topic in the forum. Although there is more traffic to the Burbank.com forum than TropicalBirds.com, there is little discussion.

I had heard spam could be a big issue with a forum, but I don’t really have that problem. I had a bunch of spammy sign-ups with TropicalBirds.com, so I made it so that I need to approve all new members.

Forums can be successful, but those require significant moderation efforts and time to contribute. If you are thinking about adding a forum to your website in order to make it come to life, it could be a waste of time and money if you are committed to running it. Forums can be very good for a developed domain name, but they certainly aren’t a magic bullet.

Google & Yahoo Appeal for More Online Drug Advertising

Elliot Silver
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1

Executives from Google, Yahoo, and dozens of pharmaceutical companies are in Washington DC today appealing to the Food and Drug Administration to expand online drug advertising. Although drug companies spend huge sums of money on marketing and advertising in media outlets such as television and print, they hardly spend money online.

According to a Yahoo Finance article where this news was reported, pharmaceutical companies “spent more than $4.3 billion on patient-targeted advertisements last year, though online marketing represented about 3 percent of that amount.”

If their budgets for online marketing grew to the same percentage as most other advertisers, this would be a boon to web publishers who would be able to display drug-related advertisements with their Adsense accounts, and parked domain names could have more competitive PPC bids.

Don’t get your hopes up yet though. According to experts, the FDA isn’t expected to make policy changes until 2011.

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