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Who’s Getting Your Research Secrets?

Elliot Silver
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A few months ago, an acquaintance of mine shared a link with me to a private research tool he was offering,   which I was told that very few other people had access. The information this tool provided was valuable, and I thought it was great. That is, until I realized the primary purpose for this tool – it was something that allowed the tool’s owner to learn about what searchers were searching, giving him an inside peak at what other domain investors were researching in real time.

Every domain investor has his “secrets,” whether it’s a specific type of domain name that’s earning strong revenues, knowledge of a new client buying domain names, tool that can provide traffic numbers for expiring domain names, method for contacting end users…etc. It’s also inevitable that we need to use other companies’ products to do specialized research, such as Whois lookups and traffic tools such as Alexa or Compete.

However, there are plenty of companies out there who offer a host of products and services that can also be competitors of domain investors. These companies could potentially use the information gleaned from your research to help advance their own domain investment strategies. There may not even be a way to tell for certain if a company is using your information for their own domain investment advancement.

Next time you are doing some research, completing a transaction, or using someone else’s tools for your domain investments, keep in mind that it might be a competitor in disguise, and you should do what you can to mitigate your exposure.

Eat Healthy & Get Exercise

Elliot Silver
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Ever since my Dad had a heart attack a few years ago, I have been even more vigilant about my health. Fortunately for my family, my Dad fully recovered from his heart attack, but it served as a valuable lesson for me, and it’s something I urge you to take to heart.

As a domain investor, I sit behind my computer for much of the day – drinking coffee of course. Running a business can be stressful, and with the tough economy, things can be even more stressful. Working on a computer for 10+ hours a day can lead to bad posture, poor eyesight and carpal tunnel. I really don’t think there is anything physically good about working on a computer all day – except the fact that I am not spending my day lifting heavy objects. Coupled with added stress, this can lead to bad health and physical conditioning.

Anyhow, it’s important the we realize how much we need to take care of ourselves. I do my best to eat healthy meals and get enough exercise. Since my wife is a great runner who encourages me to run and work out, it’s not too difficult to stay in shape. However, if she wasn’t pushing me to do so, I would probably never get any exercise, while drinking and eating too much.

This is just a friendly reminder that you need to take some time to look after yourself and stay healthy. Get an annual check up and cholesterol test, and make sure you listen to your doctor’s advice.   Working alone can be somewhat isolating but it’s important to do what you can to maintain your good health.

I am now training for a biathlon, so it’s now time to go for a run at the gym and then take a 12 mile bike ride in the park. I challenge you to challenge yourself physically. It will stimulate you mentally and gives you time away from your computer to de-stress.

Could Sedo Parking Page Put Jets.com at Risk?

Elliot Silver
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Jets logoWhile watching the New England Patriots play the New York Jets today at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, I have been catching up on some domain news from the past week, including an article about the Jets.com domain sale.

I read that Jets.com was sold by Sedo for $375,000 last week. According to the Whois information, the registrant is currently “Sedo  LLC Domain  Transfer  Escrow  Service” which is standard for domain names that are undergoing an ownership change with Sedo acting as the intermediary.

I also saw that the nameservers are currently set to Sedo’s DNS, ns1.sedoparking.com ns2.sedoparking.com, although I am not sure when those nameservers were changed. Previously, the domain name was owned by a private jet charter service, and the website was a jet airplane booking engine.

At the moment though, it appears that the domain name has advertising related to the NFL’s New York Jets (see screenshot below). There are PPC ads for the following football-related offers:

HSN.com: “New York Jets Shop for Jet’s Gear at HSN Low Prices On NFL Team Merchandise!”

NFLnewsline.com: “Patriots vs Jets Matchup Our NFL Game of the Week! Get the Latest Info & Week 2 predictions.”

Justbuytickets.com/Jets: “NY Jets Tickets Just Buy New York Jets Tickets New York Jets Tickets All Games”

I am not an attorney and have very limited legal knowledge, but I am wondering whether this usage could put the domain name at risk. If there is any risk, I am wondering who has responsibility for this risk, since the domain name is technically registered to Sedo right now pending transfer to the buyer.

This would certainly be a moot point if the NY Jets purchased this domain name, but if they didn’t, I sure hope the new owner will take steps to mitigate the risk ASAP. This is somewhat similar to the Dolphins.com UDRP (domain now owned by the NFL), although the Dolphins still aren’t using Dolphins.com. Incidentally, there was a UDRP filed for Dolphins.com and Jets.com back in 2000, but it was terminated.

Jets.com Screenshot

Major Facebook Announcement on Tuesday

Elliot Silver
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Facebook AnnouncementI was checking out my Facebook page this evening, when I noticed a sponsored advertisement suggesting I become a fan of Facebook Marketing Solutions. The banner encouraged me to become a fan, which will give me the chance to see “Tuesday’s Facebook announcement you don’t want to miss.”

I clicked through to the actual FMS page, and there was a wall posting that said:

“We’re packing our bags and heading to Ad Week! Stay tuned for live updates from NYC next week and a special announcement from Sheryl Sandberg broadcasted live from our page Tuesday 9/22 at 11:00 AM ET.”

As an FYI, Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, so the news must be fairly important. I read that Facebook is now cash-flow positive (and with 300 million+ members), so I highly doubt that the announcement has anything to do with that “old” news.

Since the announcement is from the marketing group and geared towards users, perhaps they are going to let members monetize their Facebook pages, since it is being made during Ad Week. Whatever it is, there will be a lot of people watching.

What do you think Facebook is going to announce?

Facebook is Personal & Twitter is Public

Elliot Silver
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Facebook TwitterA few weeks ago, I received a message on Facebook from a domain industry friend with an urgent message. Apparently I had befriended a person who was posting Anti-Semitic links on his Facebook page, and my friend wanted to know if I knew the guy and/or if I had seen the links he was posting. The answer to both questions was, “no.”

I receive a number of Facebook “friend” requests each week. I typically look to see if we have friends in common, and if so, I approve the request without anything further. I figured, if you’re a friend of a friend, you can be a friend of mine. I had around 500 Facebook friends, and when I went through the list a few days ago, there were many names I didn’t recognize, let alone consider a personal friend.

I thought about it for a few minutes and realized that I generally use Facebook to keep up with my friends. I was a late adopter and didn’t really use it until a year ago, (although I established my account in grad school), but it has allowed me to keep up with high school friends, college friends, and other random friends I’ve made over the years. Of course, there were also many domain industry friends, too. However, I really don’t do any business or talk about business on Facebook to spare my friends from seeing business updates in their news feeds.

Twitter, on the other hand, is a very public outlet for me to share information. A majority of my posts are business-related, and I don’t post much in the way of personal information. I am not against posting personal things, but my primary Twitter objective is business and marketing. I have a lot of followers, and I follow a whole lot of interesting people. The more information I can get from Twitter, the better.

That said, I’ve decided to draw the line and make Facebook more of a personal spot, only accepting friends and colleagues I know on a personal level. I feel that I share much of what I am doing on my blog anyway, but I wanted to draw the line, and I think Facebook is the place to do it.

If we are no longer connected on Facebook, it’s nothing personal. Connect with me on Twitter instead 🙂

Thoughts at the End of the Week

Elliot Silver
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As the week is coming to a close, I wanted to write a little bit about a few things that I thought about this past week. I bet some of you are thinking the same thing, and I welcome your thoughts in the comment section as always.

I booked my flight to New Orleans for Domainer Mardi Gras in February. For those of you from New York, Jet Blue is offering round trip tickets for around $229 after taxes – not a bad deal at all.

I wish DN Journal accepted comments. There are so many great articles and news stories posted by Ron, and it would be great if we had the ability to discuss some of them on site. I bet this would surely be a big traffic driver and would be interesting to many.

It really annoys me when bloggers and other news outlets have a comment section and don’t approve them – or they only approve the favorable comments. I wonder if these people are naive enough to think that nobody notices this – or if they simply don’t want to feel put down by people that disagree with what they are saying.

I don’t think people should develop domain names simply because others are doing it. The reason I develop mini sites is that I am a full time domain investor, and this is a way to build/add value to my domain assets in a down market. The reason I fully develop geodomains – and will be developing Torah.com (very soon) is to build businesses on them so. Anyone can sell a good domain name, but not everyone can build and manage a business. I want to challenge myself while building a revenue stream for the future, and this is an ongoing process.

If you are going to make it as a domain investor, you need to look outside of the typical domain “hang outs.” Check out webmaster forums, browse SEO websites, read up on new technology, and think about things differently than others.

I believe there are many good potential domain deals in the high end of the industry, but most of the low hanging fruit under six figures has been picked, and there aren’t nearly as many deals to be had in that area. You need to have steel stones to invest in 6 figure + domain names these days without a development/business plan, and you need a back up plan if your primary plan is to flip them.

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