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NY Domainer Get Together – Thank You

Elliot Silver
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WhyPark Domain Capital
The New York Domain Investor get together was held at the Boat Basin on the Upper West Side last night, and we had a pretty good turnout. It’s always fun seeing old friends, and it was also great to meet other domain investors for the first time, some of whom came from pretty far away, like Ohio, Florida, and New Jersey (kidding about NJ).

I want to give a special thank you to a couple of leading companies who helped sponsor the event:

There was an extensive spread of appetizers sponsored by WhyPark. This helped to keep the party going since many people came straight from work. Gregg and Vince from Domain Capital were able to attend the get together, and I want to thank them for taking care of the bar tab.

There’s nothing like comped food and drinks to help keep a party going, and we all really appreciate the support of WhyPark and Domain Capital. It’s great to do business with companies who support our industry’s events.

TylenolRecall.com Owned by J&J But It Still Sits Unused Despite Tylenol Recall

Elliot Silver
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Tylenol Recall

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a Johnson and Johnson subsidiary, announced a major recall of Tylenol products today. According to an article on CNN, Tylenol recalled 21 kid’s and infant’s liquid medicines, which will be pulled from stores and warehouses as a precautionary measure to protect against possible contamination.

Incidentally, J & J owns the domain name TylenolRecall.com. Instead of using the domain name for a website to provide information about the products and brands, serial or lot numbers, and other recall information, the domain name is sitting undeveloped, and it goes to a dead page.   In my opinion, at the very least, the company should forward the domain name to the press release to provide information to worried consumers who type it in to their browsers.

Johnson and Johnson does understand domain names. The company owns gems such as Baby.com, ThePill.com, Cancer.com, and many other consumer-related domain names and websites.

LMG Launches CBS Real Estate Website

Elliot Silver
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CBS has launched a new interactive Real Estate website in conjunction with LMG Digital Media, a leading boutique web development and social networking company based in New York City. The real estate website they created can be found by visiting CBSREM.com or CBSRealEstateMarket.com.

LMG Digital Media may be familiar to domain investors, as the company’s CEO, Simon Mills, is a regular at domain investment conferences, and Internet entrepreneur/domain investor Gregg McNair serves as a Director. At the moment, Gregg is on a tour in Kenya with a group of domain investors supporting TheWaterSchool.org charity (noted in DNJournal).

Congratulations to the LMG Digital Media team, which also includes family friend, Daniel Modell, VP Creative Director.

Domain Dispute Hits New York City Night Clubs

Elliot Silver
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This morning’s New York Post reported that the owners of Greenhouse, a beautiful downtown NYC night club, “bought the Internet domain name Provocateurnyc.com.” Provocateur is the name of another nightclub that is expected to open in the Hotel Gansevoort very soon. The Whois registration for ProvocateurNYC.com is private, and the domain name forwards to the Greenhouse website.

The Post should keep in mind that virtually anyone could register a domain name like this and forward it to any other website. Since the registration is private, there isn’t much of a way to know who owns it, unless a court order or UDRP filing requires the domain name registrar to reveal the name of the owner. Hypothetically, a third party could own the domain name and be looking to stir up trouble between night spots.

One thing about this is certain. Although I haven’t been to the Gansevoort rooftop for a drink in a couple of years, it sure sounds like Provocateur is going to be a hot spot in the neighborhood.

How Fast Do Hot Chicks & Dogs Go Viral

Elliot Silver
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By now, many of you have probably seen PeopleOfWalmart.com, a viral website with photographs from interesting folks doing their shopping at Walmart. After being live for a short period of time, a number of news organizations wrote articles about the site, and it took off from there. Millions of visits later, and it was another viral phenomenon.

When I first heard about the site, I didn’t bother to check out the registration date to see just how quickly the word was spreading, and it was something I wished I had done just out of curiosity. This morning, a couple of friends sent me links to a new viral site as well as its sister sites. Some of the links might be inappropriately suggestive for some, although there isn’t any nudity in them:

  • HotChicksWithHotDogsInTheirMouths.com
  • HotChicksPickingUpDogShit.com
  • HotChicksWithDogsWithBoners.com

The links are for websites that have stupid funny sophomoric photos, which is probably why I found them amusing. The domain names were all registered between September 15 and today (September 24th). I don’t know just how viral they’ve gone, but I am sure it’s spreading pretty quickly.

It would be interesting to have followed the route it took to get to me. I bet there are people studying how quickly something on the Internet goes viral. If not, I think it’s something that should be studied by big brands and marketers.

Perhaps this is actually a case study in the making, since the registrant’s email address is associated with Mekanism.com, a NYC and San Francisco-based production company.

Rick is Right About Development

Elliot Silver
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When it comes to development, Rick made a good point yesterday. One of my biggest obstacles when it comes to development is myself. With domain sales down for me, I have been spreading myself thinly in an effort to build revenue generating businesses on my domain names.

  • In the last two years, my company has built Lowell.com, Burbank.com, and Newburyport.com into full-fledged businesses, which require frequent updates, client meetings, sales calls, and time devoted to city research.
  • I have my domain blog, which I update every day with news, advice, and commentary. This takes a considerable amount of time, but it’s a good outlet to share and learn.
  • I am in the process of building out Torah.com into a fully operational website, which will have a whole host of features that one would expect to find on a website of this nature.
  • I have a bunch of mini sites, which don’t take a whole lot of time to manage, but they do take some time adding content, testing layouts, researching topics…etc.
  • I spend time acquiring good domain names and looking to make deals to sell other domain names.

I find myself going in circles sometimes because it’s not easy to manage all of this. Building businesses takes time and effort, and I am finding myself having less time to do the things I enjoy. There is a fine balance between spending the right amount of time building a solid business and spending too much time getting few things done.

I completely disagree with Rick about his belief regarding search engine traffic, and I can’t understand how his domain names would lose traffic with mini-sites, because one would imagine the type-in traffic would at least stay consistent, however, that’s a topic for another day.

If you are a domain investor, you need to figure out what you want to do with your domain names before you do it, especially if they may be difficult to re-sell quickly. If you are planning to develop them into a business, it might be best to focus on one and make it into the best business possible before you start another project. Staying focused on one project is difficult, especially when you are working alone.

Take it from me, buying and selling great domain names isn’t difficult. Building a business on a domain name is a completely different story, and while I don’t regret any decisions I’ve made, I am finding it much more difficult to gain traction with some of my projects, since I can’t always focus on one project at a time.

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