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Working Hard – or Hardly Working

Elliot Silver
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14

There is a stereotype about domain investors that they don’t work hard, but they do party hard while hardly working. This might be true for a lucky few, but this is false for most.

These days, I spend most of my time developing my websites, making phone calls with local organizations and businesses, writing on my blog, domain consulting, and sending emails to acquire domain names. I am probably working more hours now than I was while I was working at AIG and moonlighting for myself! The purpose of this (of course) is that I want to keep my overhead low. It’s the same reason why I work from home instead of renting (or buying) an office.

The best things about it are that I love what I do, I can work from wherever I want, and I can make my own hours.

The worst thing about it are that I always am driven to work more and to get more done, although that is something on which I am working – as my wife told me when we were out for dinner with friends last night, my work life balance is improving (certainly good news that she notices!).

For anyone with the desire to get involved in this industry on a full time basis, you should know that just about everyone I know is working long hours again. Many had stopped after they had acquired great names in the late 90s and early to mid 00s. Long hours are back once again, but we are building stronger businesses. For some of my friends, long hours means 4 hours a day, but that’s longer than 30 seconds a day 🙂

Two Dangers of Twitter

Elliot Silver
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6

One of the dangers of Twitter, which I suppose is a danger of all technology, but is more public with Twitter, is that if your account is hacked, other people may think you are posting things that you aren’t. All of your followers will see the post, and if there’s a link, others may visit that site, not knowing that it’s not legitimate. Depending on the nature of the post, it could hurt your relationship with anyone who follows you – especially because they may not really know you.

Yesterday evening, I was looking at my Twitter feed, and I noticed a friend’s Twitter account had links to adult material. Since his   website is a mainstream site, I knew it wasn’t legit, so I let my friend know about it. After looking into it a bit more, I found a second danger of Twitter – more like a danger of a Twitter set up.

My friend’s account hadn’t actually been hacked. What happened was that he set up a feed on his website’s forum that posted the title of topics and a link to the topic in his Twitter feed. Since this set-up automatically posts all topics from the forum to his Twitter account, it posted the spam from the forum. People need to be wary of this type of set up, as it can give the website a bad reputation.

Twitter allows people anf companies to have a “personal” relationship with other companies, celebrities, and   people with whom they do not know. By opening a brand to Twitter, a company can put its reputation at risk if they do not closely monitor its Twitter account.

Important Factor When Selling to Domainers

Elliot Silver
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2

When you are selling a domain name to other domain investors, I believe the most important thing to consider is the price. I frequently see good names come up for sale, but price expectations are far too high for the audience. Perhaps a domain name would sell for that price to a company who plans to rebrand and use it for their company, but realistically, end user prices will not fly with other domain investors.

Most domain investors want to buy domain names that will either generate revenue that can bring them a quick ROI, or they want to be able to re-sell the domain name at a profit sometime in the future. If the domain name isn’t generating revenue from parking or an affiliate deal, and the price is higher than the potential buyers think they can sell it for, they won’t want to take the risk, and the name will stay on the market.

Of course there is a risk that you will price the name too low, but this shouldn’t really be a consideration when a domain owner wants to raise capital by selling to another domain investor. Sure, you could be leaving some money on the table when you price a name lower than you might ideally like, but you should price it based on what you paid. I would personally rather have a quick sale at a slimmer profit margin than a sale that takes a long time to make at a heftier margin. Oftentimes when a domain name doesn’t sell quickly, other domain investors will avoid it, knowing a price ceiling has essentially been set.

If you want to sell a domain name, and your target is the domain investor audience, you should price your domain name accordingly.

Quick Hits for the Weekend

Elliot Silver
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1

Wedding season has started again, and I am in another one of my best friends’ weddings tonight. I am in Detroit (well, Dearborn), and from what I can see, Ford branded everything around here. Apparently the Mighty Ducks are staying at this hotel tonight… kinda neat I guess.

I think the WhyPark/Parked deal makes a whole lot of sense for both companies. They each have a very large number of domain names under their “control,” and both have different experience in monetizing these names. I don’t know any terms of the deal, but from the outside, it looks like they have created a stronger company.

Every time a huge world story hits, its amusing to see all the different variations of domain names that are created. On the domain forums, Ebay, and other venues, I can’t help but laugh at the long tail keyword swine flu names that are being sold and/or discussed….

They’re almost as bad as the swine flu jokes I am seeing all over the place – one of the downsides of Twitter 🙂

Congrats to Moniker on selling Ad.com for $1.4 million. It goes to show that Moniker (and other companies) do work hard to get bids from people outside of the domain industry, as I’ve heard the bidder was a large advertising agency that wanted to rebrand.   You can now see the auction of Ad.com in a video posted by Rick.

Sorry to keep this short, but I have to head out to lunch with the guys. What other quick hits did I miss from the week?

What Are You Buying These Days?

Elliot Silver
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25

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I have been buying much less and focusing on developing my websites lately. Instead of spending money externally, I am investing internally, continuing my effort to build a steady alternative revenue stream.

I am still buying great domain names at great prices in order to resell, but my investments are more cautious because I want to make sure I have enough liquid on hand to pay the bills for the next xx months – how ever long xx ends up being. As highly as I value domain names, I would rather have $20,000 sitting in the bank than a domain name I know is worth $20,000 because even those $20,000 names can’t produce $20,000 when you need to liquidate.

I am still primarily buying one and two word category defining .com domain names, because I think there will always be a market for them. Some of my friends aren’t buying anything right now as they wait out the storm, but I have other friends who are buying a variety of different type of domain names – alternative extensions, numerics, ccTLD…etc.

So… my question to you… what types of domain names are you buying these days and what’s your rationale?

Please post the types of names you are buying rather than examples, as most examples will end up in the spam folder.

Names Added to GeoDomain Auction

Elliot Silver
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2

Usually in the closing days of an auction, a few domain names receive interest and the remaining names go untouched. Domain Consultant hasn’t gone the way of a typical auction, and that is obvious with their announcement today.

Reserve.com was listed in the extended domain auction at No Reserve. In addition, some other great domain names were added, including Massapequa.com (a wealthy town in Long Island), Zodiac.com, and Fargo.net.

If you haven’t checked out the extended auction, you now have a great reason. You should also check out Moniker’s extended auction. I will have some picks from that tomorrow if I have time, as I will be traveling to Detroit for another wedding.

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