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Domain Partnerships

Elliot Silver
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Partnerships can be a great way to leverage a domain name with another company’s labor, intellectual property, financial accumen, and experience.   When successful, they can lead to substantial revenue growth and a well developed website. There are a number of partnerships within the domain industry including:

Monster Venture Partners & Castello Brothers – Traveler.com,
WashingtonVC & Internet Real Estate – Phone.com & Software.com

There are a few things I can think of when it comes to partnerships that people should consider.

Set benchmarks – If you agree to a partnership and you give up ownership in exchange for a website that doesn’t drive additional revenue, there really is no purpose for the partnership.   Make sure you set benchmarks for revenue, and reward more based on success.

Create contingency plans – If for some reason, one partner will not be able to fulfill obligations, there should be something in writing that determines what will happen.   Many things come up, and you want to protect your rights.

Set timelines – If your project suddenly becomes backburnered, you should have recourse to ensure that you aren’t obligated to continue a partnership when it’s clear that your site isn’t a top priority and won’t be ready when expected.

Reward excellence – If the new website generates much more revenue than expected, you should want to pay a larger percentage of the earnings to reward   success and encourage outperformance.

What else do you think is necessary when working with a partner?

Back by Popular Demand: Google Analytics Webinar

Elliot Silver
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0

Last week, Buy Domains offered a free webinar called “Analytics for Your Small Business Website” and over 400 domain developers and businesses joined the discussion.   Due to a scheduling conflict (DomainFest), I was not able to attend, although it was something I wanted to attend.

Because of the large demand and the fact that many people couldn’t attend who wanted to attend, Buy Domains is offering a second webinar.   This isn’t going to be the recorded version from last week – it’s a live webinar. The details are as follows:

Date: February 10, 2009

Time: 2:00pm EST

Cost: FREE

To register for this event, visit the event registration website.   I will “see” you there.

Dollars.com Bidding at $400k

Elliot Silver
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2

With a little about a day and a half left in its auction at Sedo, Dollars.com currently has a high bid of $385,990.   This domain name changed hands in July of 2007 for $650,000. This is a strong domain name, and I predict it will close near the previous amount at which it sold.

Two Tales from the Playboy Mansion

Elliot Silver
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2

I am sure a few people read this headline, and said “uh oh!”   Don’t worry, no secrets shall be revealed in this blog post!

I wanted to share two stories from my evening at the Playboy Mansion last Thursday – one of which I think is funny and one of which is pretty cool.   As expected at the Playboy Mansion, there were a number of celebrities and athletes hanging out. I am sure some of them were there simply because it was the Playboy Mansion, while others probably attended because there was a charity auction for Autism Speaks.

One of the professional athletes that was there was Coco Crisp, and as a Red Sox fan, I wanted to thank him for his playing for the Sox and helping to bring a World Series to the team in 2007. As you may recall, he was benched in favor of rookie Jacoby Ellsbury, who had a break out playoffs. I thanked Coco for being a “mentch” during that time for not bitching about being taken out of the starting lineup. He told me that he couldn’t hate on Jacoby because of their friendship. He seemed authentic, and was a gentleman.

I mentioned that Sox fans will remember his selflessness and would cheer for him when he returned to Fenway. He thought they would cheer until he got a hit or scored a run, and I told him we would always cheer for him – especially my mom (who has been a Sox fan since the Ted Williams days). He said, “I love your mom!”

Since he is now playing for Kansas City, I asked him if he likes BBQ. He thought about it for a second and with the famous Coco grin, said, “not as much as I like chowder!” Not only was he a friendly dude, but he let me take a picture with his World Series ring (thanks, Adam Strong!)

Later on in the evening, I was walking into the tent to grab a drink, and a few girls perked up and smiled at me. I smiled back and cooly continued my walk to the bar to grab a drink as more girls smiled my way. Awesome. Well… until I turned around and about two feet behind me was Jesse Metcalf. Guess they weren’t smiling at me.

Anyway, the Playboy Mansion lived up to its billing, and it’s one of those experiences I don’t think I will have again. Much thanks to Ron Sheridan for putting on such a fun night.

DomainFest Auction Wasn’t All Bad

Elliot Silver
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1

I think we can all agree that the Moniker live auction at DomainFest was pretty much a bomb, but I don’t really think this is a bad thing for the industry. There weren’t many bargains in the live auction, which shows that domain owners aren’t necessarily losing faith in their investments and selling their domain names for whatever the market will yield as a consequence.   This shows that there is strength in domain assets, especially those that are of high value.

For the most part, it seemed that the high priced domain names that were listed were priced far too high for other domain investors to purchase.   Sure, they may be worth the amount to someone with a solid business plan, but most domain investors don’t have business plans for names they plan to buy.   Many have them for names they own, but it can be fruitless to build a business plan around a name that isn’t owned by us.   This coupled with just a short amount of time between the final list publication and the auction, it’s not very likely that a plan can even be built.

Also, many of the names up for sale at auction have either been listed at other auction(s) recently or had been privately marketed recently.   There were a couple of names I made private offers on in the last couple of months, and I decided against bidding on both (even though my offers would have equaled or superseded the reserve).   Personally, I don’t like to buy at public auction, and I’ve only done so once.   With a market in flux, I didn’t want to be the price setter – especially in a public auction.

So how can live auctions be improved?   Mike and his readers have some good suggestions. I’ve also made a few additional suggestions in the past, mostly related to end user education.   I still think it would be wise for a domain ambassador to attend a non-domain tradeshow and run small group sessions discussing the importance of generic domain names.   Every single industry has tradeshows, and most tradeshows have opportunities for educational seminars.   Why hasn’t any company made in-roads with end users yet (with the exception of when an end user already knows that he wants to buy a particular domain name)?

Over the past several years, it always seemed that live domain auctions would yield seven figures no matter what.   Well, this isn’t really a reality any more.   Domain owners are more picky about what they buy in this tight market, and without domain owners continuing to be speculators, it is much more difficult to produce eye popping auction results with domain investors being the primary target audience.

Times are changing, but I don’t think this is a bad thing for our maturing industry.

DomainInvesting.com a “Top Drop”

Elliot Silver
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8

I just updated my picks for “Top Drops” on Snapnames.   One name that might be of particular interest to domain owners in the name DomainInvesting.com.   Although DomainInvesting.com does not appear to be a standard dropping domain name, it is certainly one that could be used by a domain investor in a variety of ways.   It’s in auction through February 3, and the current auction price is just $240.

***UPDATE***

Bidding is now up to $675.

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