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Quickly Sell a “Faddy” Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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24

There have been a number of times where some new faddy trend or buzzword comes out, and I’ve looked up the Whois only to see someone beat me to the punch and registered it minutes before or a while back. I usually tip my hat and congratulate the buyer on his intuition – especially if it was registered months or years prior.

A problem that some people have, most of whom are domain investors capitalizing on trends, is that they often don’t sell at optimal value, hoping or anticipating that another better offer will be received. When a fad dies off and it’s no longer the lead story in the news, the domain name will drop significantly in value and interest in the domain name will wane.

Instead of rejecting every offer hoping for a better one that might not come, it might be a good idea to sell the domain name for a strong offer that’s received in the first few days/hours of the trend, and some of the money should be used to buy a great generic domain name that will stand the test of time (keep in mind you’ll owe taxes on the profit so don’t use it all).

If you can turn an $8 investment into a $10,000 profit in just a few weeks, it’s silly not to do so. Sure, you might leave some money on the table, but nobody every went broke selling domain names at a profit.

Domaining Pet Peeves

Elliot Silver
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12

I have two domaining pet peeves. Actually, I probably have a bunch more, but there are two that I see more often than others.

I get annoyed when I see people trying to sell domain names for exorbitant prices simply because they are similar to a domain name that sold for big bucks. Just because Rick sold Candy.com for $3 million doesn’t mean that the domain name SugaryCandies.net is worth anything. It’s especially silly to see on a domain forum because it either means the seller doesn’t know much about domain names or thinks at least one other person is dumb enough to buy it at that price. 🙂

There are great names that are “similar” to Candy.com, such as Sweets.com, Chocolates.com, or even HardCandies.com, but those are great because they are well searched keywords. Just because a name may be similar in appearance doesn’t mean its worth anything close to the original domain that sold – or worth anything at all for that matter. The key to domain value is that it means something and can/should be used commercially.

My other pet peeve is when I see someone referencing Google results without quotes – or part of a Google search when the quoted term makes no sense. In the first case, Google returns every page that has those words on them, but not necessarily in that order. For example, wicked cool bank returns 106,000 results, but the quoted term yields just 2 results.

In the second case, it references part of a term but not the entire term. For example, quoting “York Stock Exchange” and its 6,190,000 results is stupid because people would generally search for “New York Stock Exchange” or “Stock Exchange” rather than “York Stock Exchange.” In my opinion, a name like YorkStockExchange.com, despite its 6m+ results in Google for the keyword, is worth nothing.

What are your pet peeves – (other than domain blogs where the writer complains about pet peeves!)?

BTW – I am away right now, so comments will be moderated when I get an opportunity.

WordPress 2.8 Bug? Missed Scheduled Posts

Elliot Silver
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17

The scheduled post feature on my blog no longer seems to work, and all scheduled posts pass their post time with a “Missed Schedule” error message. I spoke with a couple of friends who have blog websites, and I mentioned this issue and that I recently upgraded to WordPress 2.8. Both of them said I should have waited for a couple weeks to upgrade to make sure there aren’t any bug. Well… too late for me.

I am wondering if anyone else who upgraded to WordPress 2.8 is experiencing the same issue as my blog. If you are, is there a way to fix this, or do I need to wait for another version with the bugs fixed?

Secondly, if you don’t have this issue – or if you haven’t upgraded to WordPress 2.8 yet, apparently it’s a good idea to wait until a couple of weeks after a release to upgrade.

Skip Hoagland’s Expansion Plans

Elliot Silver
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3

I received a press release from Skip Hoagland’s company today detailing their expansion plans. Hoagland’s companies own some of the best generic and geographic domain names, including Atlanta.com, BuenosAires.com, Cuba.com, Fishing.com, Shooting.com…. and many, many more. While people like Skip have the best domain names to move forward with their plans, all of us can look at news releases like the ones below to see how we can emulate what Skip is doing, just on a smaller scale.

Congrats to Skip and his team on some big moves!

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Domainsnewmedia.com CEO Skip Hoagland announces the newest expansion plans for his company. Hoagland says we have been very busy these last two months finalizing our plans and new alliances for full development and management services of these very valuable brands for our company. We turned down many multi million dollar offers over the years and finally decided to launch them ourselves with companies we felt had the abilities to maximize the full potential of these leading brands for us, versus just selling out.

Fishing.com, Flyfishing.com, Shooting.com, Shotgunsports.com will be run by Patagonia Publishing and Media in Argentina. This company has built and manages some 50 Hunting and Fishing industry websites worldwide, as well as produces coffee table books for these huge enthusiast sports in Argentina, Mexico and working on others for Worldwide Destinations. CEO and President of PP Corp said they are very excited about this project and feel within two years they will be able to add enough content and resources to become the Amazon, Facebook, Ebay of these   sports and do so for every Country, State and city in the world. Our strength’s will include searchable databases for species of fish, guides, lodges, outfitters, ecommerce and much more. We will even tell you how to pack for the trip, what lures, rods and other equipment is best for these fish species and destinations.

Chamberofcommerce.com will be run by Databanq.com headed by CEO David Bayer. Bayer says COC.com will become a leading brand to come to for trusted information on some 7000 cities plus worldwide for our current database. CVB.com { Convention And Visitors Bureaus} will also be incorporated for Travel and Tourism. Our plans in detail will be announced soon. We will focus heavily on the Geo Domain Industry in its entirety.

Hoagland ends in saying he has never understood why owners of great brands sell these very valuable industry assets versus trying to launch them with others. Toys.com , Art.com, Cameras.com, Hotels.com, Wine.com, Cigars.com,   and many others like these have and will become huge multi million dollar companies as the Internet expands and these keywords become more and more important to these owners. The prices paid for these ranging from 1m to 8 million were real steals for the buyers that could afford to buy them. When the buyer of Toys.com bought this name, they basically assured themselve protection from Wal-Mart and many others in the future for this product line. Enthusiast Magazine titles will also be hugely effected as they already are as sites like Fishing.com can provide global distribution,   Video, Radio, TV, information in different languages and instant up to date information, blogs, Social Networks, link to all advertisers websites and much more.

Liquid Web Hosting for Websites

Elliot Silver
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0

Liquid WebAs a domain investor, I don’t know much about web hosting or hosting companies. When I was looking to set up a Virtual Private Server (VPS) to host some of the websites I was building on my domain names, a friend of mine recommended that I try Liquid Web. He had been a happy customer of theirs, and he knew they would be helpful to me as well – and I am sure glad I use them on my geowebsites.

Liquid Web maintains a call center that is up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Their technical support and customer service staff is knowledgeable, and they are always helpful when I call them with a question or a request. More often than not, my request is minor in nature, but the tech team is always willing to help me out and provide assistance. Whether I need an installation of a particular software library or a specific redirect that I can’t figure out, they’re able to help me quickly – and with very little hold time and no language issues.

For my somewhat limited web hosting needs, I use a Virtual Private Server, which costs around $50/month. What is a VPS? A VPS is a way of partitioning a server computer into multiple servers, each appearing to be its own individual machine rather than a shared server. The VPS manager can operate the system as if it was his own, while others share the same system. From what I understand, a VPS can help keep websites running faster, and they can also help with SEO because you manage what other sites run on your server.

Liquid Web also offers other options for domainers and others who want to have control of their hosting needs:

VPS Hosting (Linux & Windows)
Dedicated Hosting (Dedicated Servers)
Shared Web Hosting

There are a ton of standard and add-on features as well, including firewall, load balancing, e-commerce solutions and technology, Guardian Continuous Backup, Private Switch, Terabyte Backup, Remote KVM, and a whole lot of other features.

In over a year of working with Liquid Web, I can’t remember any down time on any of my sites. It’s good to work with a company that has great support and products.

There are other companies out there if you are looking for month to month web hosting providers for your web development needs.

Domain Inquiries Over the Phone

Elliot Silver
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9

On occasion, I will get a phone call from someone who wants to buy a domain name I own. While I do think making a phone call is far better for domain buyers to get in touch with a domain owner, I would recommend that domain owners work out their deals online in emails rather than over the phone.

The primary reason is that you can respond to the inquiry on your own time, allowing you to research the value of your domain name and do some research on the buyer. Additionally, you don’t have to make a snap decision over the phone if you hadn’t intended to sell the domain name.

The secondary reason is that your emails are all trackable. You can easily archive offers for domain names, allowing you to remember what offers came in the past. Additionally, if you have no intentions of selling the domain name now, you can have the person’s email and email address readily accessible when the time to sell comes. It’s much easier to lose a phone number and/or forget who a person in your phone book is after a period of time.

It’s in the best interest of a domain owner to work out a deal online.

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