According to a DNJournal source, the GeoDomain Expo, put on annually by Associated Cities, will be canceled. This is disappointing, but its understandable given the difficult market conditions. I’ve been debating internally whether to make the cross-country trip, as it’s close to Burbank but it’s probably a bit too far to do both.
Once I receive official confirmation about the cancellation, I will let you know, but generally Ron is on point with this type of information.
The way to a domain investor’s brain is through his liver. Thanks for the wine, Gordon!
Say that you need to cash out your domain investments ASAP. Perhaps you need to pay some bills, and you can’t afford to hold on to some of your domain names any more. Where do you turn? Right now, I don’t think there are any absolute reliable options, but I do think Bido is going to change this.
If you put your domain name up for sale on a domain forum, it’s unlikely to sell unless it’s a great name and you price it under market value. What happens is that you list your name, and if it’s not snapped up in the first several minutes, others will pass it over, and eventually it will end up on page 5 – the annals of the domain forum. You then have to lower your price, and wait and hope that someone sees it the second time around. This is no way to liquidate a domain name because it isn’t quick and you aren’t guaranteed to sell it for what the market will yield.
When you put a domain name for sale on a site like Sedo or Afternic, you are competing with hundreds of thousands of other domain names, and a quick sale is very unlikely. It’s difficult (or expensive) to stand out on one of the leading aftermarket sales sites. These sites may be good for selling a domain name, but I don’t think they’re the right venue for a quick liquidation sale.
Auctions are also good spots to sell domain names, but they aren’t close to a sure bet, and you’ll end up locking up your domain name for weeks due to auction house exclusivity. Domain brokers can be great, too – but again, you have to work with exclusivity, and competition from other listings.
So after all of this, I really think Bido is going to be a great place to sell your names quickly. People have been commenting that the sales are far from stellar. I disagree. The names for the most part have been far from stellar, so the sales prices are in line with expectations.
Yesterday, ZJP.com sold for $4,055. I believe this is in line with what other 3 letter domain names are selling for now, and it shows that the market will set the price if the starting price is below market value, which is true with Bido’s $1 auction starts. Especially at this time, you can’t expect to get end user prices by selling to domain investors.
Domainers watch Bido and observe the auctions – whether the domains are great quality or poor quality. Domainers can bring liquidity to the marketplace, and if you need cash, selling to a domain investor is usually the quickest way to make a sale. Bido offers a great platform for domain investors to get liquidity. I would imagine they will open up for more auctions soon, and that should make it easier for people to sell their names.
Sean Stafford is at it again. Every few months, it seems that Sean is building something helpful to domainers, and I think his new service, ComWired.com can help domainers and domain developers.
The DNS service is billed as a way to split up a domain name’s traffic depending on where the traffic originates. For example, if you have a parked domain name that receives traffic from the US, Mexico, Japan, China and Russia, you can choose where to send traffic from each country, depending on where you find that it can be monetized better. This is a neat concept for domain investors, but it can similarly work for domain developers, too.
Portland.com is the online guide to Portland, Oregon. Being from New Hampshire, when I hear Portland.com, I immediately think of Portland, Maine. Knowing the brains behind Portland.com, I am sure they analyzed their traffic to know that its looking for information about Portland, Oregon rather than Maine, however, I am sure there is some traffic looking for information about Portland, Maine.
With help from ComWired.com, the owners can detect where the traffic is coming from, and if it’s coming from New England cities, hypothetically, they can send it to Portland.com/Maine, which would theoretically have a site all about the city in Maine. All other traffic can be sent to the main (ha ha) site where they would find information about Portland, Oregon. This could also be effective for country based geodomains.
I should add ComWired.com can only split up traffic by country at the moment, but they expect to be able to split it by city in a few short weeks. For now, the service is free to use, although that will probably change in the future.
As the saying goes, “the shoemaker’s son has no shoes,” similar can be said about the development of some of my websites. I am a trained Direct Marketer, but I sometimes forget even the most basic direct marketing principles when building my websites and my blog’s brand. If I was looking at some of my websites from a marketing point of view instead of a domain owner, there would probably be significant changes.
Through my involvement in the domain industry, I have learned quite a bit about forums. I am a member of several public and private domain and Internet discussion forums, and there are things about each forum that are cool, and things I find annoying. However, on most of my sites (with the exception of TropicalBirds.com), I have no forums at all. I know that forums are a great way to interact, and they can also drive traffic (and repeat traffic) to a website, helping to gain trust and build a community.
With all that said, I decided to launch a Burbank, California forum yesterday on Burbank.com – with help from Kevin @ BigTicketDomains.com. Using a customized Simple Machines forum, Kevin was able to set up a forum for me that can be used by Burbank residents and visitors. There are still a few tweaks I need to make, but I think this is going to be a smart move in the long run.
The point of this is that you should think about your own background when building your websites. If there are certain things you’ve learned in business or from your hobbies, you should consider incorporating them on your website. Think about think things you would want to see if you were a user of your website, and make it happen. If you enjoy using a particular feature, chances are good that others will as well.
Tap into your own background and knowledge when developing. Sometimes lessons you’ve learned can be adapted and adopted by your websites.
