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Re-Contacting Domain Owners

Now might be a great time to re-contact domain owners if they were previously reluctant to sell a domain name. With the credit crunch, rising unemployment rate, depressed real estate values, and the dropping Dow (aside from the past few days), people may wish to cash in their virtual domain assets. This might make it easier for you to convince someone to sell a domain name they have been holding out on selling.
While most domain investors archive their mail messages, allowing them to contact buyers who made offers in the past, many passive domain owners may not. Recontacting these people may be the only way to get back in touch. As long as a respectful email is sent, I don’t think you will have any problems in terms of annoying someone or having them think you are spamming them. In fact, some might welcome the fact that you are checking in with them. I have found that being persistent (but not in an annoying way) works wonders. I prefer saying something to the effect of:
We haven’t spoken in a while, and I am still interested in buying xxxxxxxxx.com. Would you consider selling it at this point? If not now, please let me know if you change your mind in the future.   I am willing to buy it for $x,xxx.
While I don’t like to capitalize on someone else’s loss, your offer may come at a good time for them, and they may have decided to sell their domain name.

Lowell Update: Change in Execution Strategy

I apologize for not updating the Lowell.com development blog in a while. For the last few weeks, I have been busily trying to finish, revise and edit the Lowell.com website, and I think we are getting very close to launch now. Basically all of the pages are done and set, but it’s just a matter of going through to make sure there aren’t typos, ensuring that all of the links work and take people to the proper places, and just cleaning everything up. There will be many tweaks made after launch, but I want a presentable website launched before I begin soliciting advertisers.
Since the last update, I made a major change in the execution strategy of Lowell.com. Previously, I intended to use phpMyDirectory to allow me to include a full directory site that would be easy for businesses to update and enhance their listings. After spending quite a bit of time thinking about this – and even starting the work on this, I decided to change course and not use a full directory. There were several reasons for this decision, and I expounded on them on the Lowell.com blog.
I plan to write a couple more updates in the next few days, and hopefully the Lowell.com beta site will be launched by the end of March or first week in April! We are only a couple of weeks behind, but I think that’s pretty good!

Props to Domaining.com

Although I don’t always agree with Francois’ industry viewpoints, I think he started a great website with Domaining.com. The site makes it very easy to see when domain blogs/news outlets have updated, and it’s very easy to navigate to those sources. I have a few industry resources in my RSS feeder, but Domaining.com makes it much easier for me to get domain industry news quickly from sources that I don’t necessarily read daily.   Thank you to Francois!

Domain Industry Tsunami

In 2004, Thailand, Indonesia, and nine other countries suffered one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, when a tsunami killed well over 200,000 people. Thousands of tourists and other people in the area were killed when an unexpected giant wave quickly swept onto land and through their villages. There were just a few seconds available to decide whether to climb a tree, enter a building with a solid foundation, or run as fast as possible to beat the wave. Many who made the wrong decision died while trying to survive. It was a terrible tragedy, and the affected areas are still in the process of recovering three years later.
An interesting thing happened just moments before the tsunami reached land that saved countless lives. As the ocean began to recede, many natives who saw this began running in the opposite direction. They grabbed their children, warned their friends, and they booked it as fast as they could run, leaving most of their possessions behind. They knew that a receding ocean meant a tsunami was about to devastate their area, and they didn’t stick around to see what would happen. They grabbed what they could and took cover as far away as their legs could take them in the five minutes they had.
While changes to the domain industry certainly are not

Rick's Last Blog Post

Rick posted that yesterday’s blog post will be his last. While Rick offers some poignant thoughts, I think one of the comments on his blog post sums things up best:

I hope you all realize what is going on here. The message should be loud and clear. Rick has been warning everybody all year to help him mount a defense against what is coming. Very few are paying attention, and very few are helping him build the fort to protect against the coming invaders. So, rather than waste is time blogging to people who don’t listen, he is leaving us to fend for ourselves and he will use his new found time to mount his own defense (probably by developing some of his domains and selling others). We have lost our visionary and a big industry voice.
WAKE UP PEOPLE! Rick stops blogging, Frank stops blogging, Yahoo kills arbitrage, Ask/Google, Snowe Bill.
The writing is on the wall.
Fast forward to 2010 and do a “Where are They Now” on the domainers of yesteryear. Some will have cashed out and be wealthy and happily retired. Some will have developed domains into businesses worth millions or maybe even billions. Most, however, will be EMPLOYEES working for a BOSS, wasting their hours thinking about the good old days and wondering what went wrong.” – Posted by: Robert Pearl

Everyone really needs to think about what is going on here. Our industry is changing. We had a much better chance a year ago when Rick first started discussing the problems that were on the horizon. They are no longer on the horizon – they are here. I hope it isn’t too late.

IsraelVacations.com – For Sale

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I’ve decided to list IsraelVacations.com for sale. Israel is currently celebrating its 60th anniversary throughout 2008, and there has been a big tourism push. With the cost of booking a trip to Israel at several thousand dollars per person, this could be a great name for someone willing to take the time and effort to create a few informational pages and open an affiliate account with WC Travel or Ian.com.

I would even suggest installing a blog on the IsraelVacations.com website and adding information about various destinations in Israel. The more content you add, the more rapidly the name will get optimized and ranked in Google. Obviously that will increase your traffic organically.

I will probably do that if the name doesn’t sell. SO… IsraelVacations.com is available for 24 more hours (5pm on Friday). Otherwise, I will develop it.

***UPDATED BY ELLIOT***
I forgot to list the price in this post. I had it listed here with a group of other names a few days ago. The BIN price is $10,000. I sold AsianVacations.com for $15,000 a few months ago, and I think this is also a great name. I will keep this sales thread opened until 1pm EST on Saturday.

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