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Making Purchases Online

Elliot Silver
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Beat the mobs on ‘Cyber Monday’

According to the article and a study from the National Retail Federation, nearly 75% of online retailers will offer special promotions on “Cyber Monday,” which falls on the Monday after Thanksgiving (tomorrow). Up until last year, I had never heard about Cyber Monday, but apparently this is one of the biggest online shopping days of the year.

CyberMonday.com, a website powered by Shop.org and owned by the National Retail Federation, offers links to many retailers who have “Cyber Monday” deals.  

CNN.com  offers some good online shopping tips to help save money and ensure a safe shopping experience.  As with all shopping, people should use their best discretion, and they should use common sense when making purchases online.  

LegalWebsite.com & InvestingSite.com – For Sale

Elliot Silver
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I am selling the following two domain names:

LegalWebsite.com
Price: $3,000

InvestingSite.com
Price: $2,500

Buy both together for just $4,500 and SAVE $1,000!

Email me or post a comment to buy one or both of these names.

Godaddy’s WIPO Filing – A Commendable Action

Elliot Silver
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When I write about a WIPO decision, more often than not, I prefer to discuss generic domain names, and I usually take the side of the registrant/respondent. In the case of the recent WIPO decision for the domain name GodaddysGirls.com, I would like to commend the complainant, Godaddy.

In my opinion, the domain name GodaddysGirls.com is infringing upon Godaddy’s trademark, “Godaddy.” I have no legal background, so this is just my opinion. Also, knowing about Godaddy CEO Bob Parsons, I wouldn’t have been shocked if he created a special website in honor of Godaddy’s Girls. (See video clip below for more on that.)

Aside from the fact that the registrant was using the term “Godaddy” in the domain name, according to the WIPO filing, the registrant would “redirect Internet users to sponsored links to a number of pornographic websites.” Clearly this isn’t something Godaddy would condone, so of course, they wanted to stop it.

In the decision released today, I want to highlight a few noteworthy things Godaddy did prior to the filing. First, Godaddy didn’t immediately file a WIPO dispute or a lawsuit under the Lanham Act once they became aware of the usage of this domain name. Godaddy “contacted Respondent with a cease and desist and transfer demand,” which the respondent rejected. I think this was a reasonable request, and it could have saved all parties time and money if it was accepted.

The rejection could have pissed Godaddy off enough to immediately file a dispute, but instead, they “indicated that it was willing to purchase the domain name from Respondent at a “reasonable price.” I don’t know of many companies who would be willing to pay for a domain name it believes is being used in bad faith after having a cease and desist letter flatly rejected, so I was impressed with this overture.

It was only after these two attempts to amicably resolve this were rejected that Godaddy proceeded with filing a WIPO dispute. In the decision released today, the domain name was ordered to be transferred to Godaddy.

Detractors may say that Godaddy took those actions to save money. While that may have been the case, I believe they first took reasonable steps to get this domain name back, and only used the WIPO dispute process as a last resort.

I am just an outsider looking in on this, but in this day and age of companies filing legal actions first and asking questions after, I believe Godaddy did the honorable thing and should be commended.

Geometric.com WIPO – Victory with Dissent

Elliot Silver
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With the assistance of Ari Goldberger and his ESQwire.com law firm, Nat Cohen’s Telepathy, Inc was victorious in its WIPO defense of the generic domain name Geometric.com. The case was filed by an Indian-based software company whose name contains the generic term “geometric.”

There was a dissenting panelist in this case, who stated his belief that the company employs “a conscious strategy to register the domain name for eventual sale to a potential complainant or competitor, to prevent a trademark registrant from reflecting its name in a corresponding domain name, to disrupt a competitor’s business or to attract Internet users for commercial gain by confusing use of the domain name.”

In my humble opinion, Telepathy owns a tremendous portfolio of generic domain names (including Pennsylvania.com and Maryland.com), and they are in the process of developing its names. It takes a considerable amount of time and effort for each project, and it shouldn’t be assumed that there is bad intent simply because a domain name isn’t developed into a full website.

Fortunately for Telepathy, this panelist was in the minority, and the company was permitted to keep its generic domain name. I find it frustrating that some companies file a WIPO for a generic domain name simply because that particular term is contained within their business name. It seems like they are making a business decision that it is worth the gamble that they could potentially acquire the name at a lower cost via WIPO rather than contacting the owner to pay market value for a generic domain name. There is a good chance they will lose, but if they happen to prevail, they could conceivably save thousands of dollars.

In the WIPO case of Geometric.com, the responding company probably paid a few thousand dollars to defend its domain name, but it was necessary, as previous WIPO decisions may be cited as a history of bad faith. Even if the name wasn’t worth the cost to defend it, the responding company is almost forced to defend the name as a protective measure for other generic names in its portfolio.

Congrats to Nat and Ari, two respected people in the domain industry.

Argument to Remove Registrant Search Tool

Elliot Silver
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In a blog post on November 11th, Jay Westerdal asks his blog readers for their opinions on whether DomainTools’ controversial Registrant Search tool should be taken down. Although I think it is a cool tool, I believe I have a strong case for why it should be taken down, and my case is supported by evidence provided by Jay in this morning’s blog post, “Chameleon typo squatters.”

In Jay’s newest post, he discusses how some people attempt to mask their identity by registering domain names using other companies’ registration information, with the only difference being the admin contact email address. Jay cites the example of the domain name GoogleWishes.com, which appears to be owned by Google, but uses a different contact email address.

With the  Registrant Search tool, this domain name would presumably be listed in Google’s list of domain names, when someone performs a Registrant Search using “Google” as a query. Because the email address differs from the actual email address used by Google in their domain registrations, this domain name does not appear to be owned by Google. However, GoogleWishes.com would appear in the list along with other Google properties such as  Google.com,  GoogleMaps.com,  GoogleVideo.com, and many more.

I know you can whittle down your results by entering more information (such as the usual admin contact email), but if a person ordered the results based on what appears in the Whois.sc/Google.com listing – (Registrant Search: “Google Inc.” owns about 8,211 other domains), this name would probably appear.

Although the domain name GoogleWishes.com would probably not hurt the image of Google, a devious person could severely impact a competitor’s or opponent’s image by registering pornographic or trademark infringing domain names in someone else’s name. Unless a careful examination is made of each name in the list, the Registrant Search tool could be damaging to the victim of a “chameleon typo squatter.”

Art of Pricing a Domain Name

Elliot Silver
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Yesterday, I blogged about the “Art of Selling a Domain Name,” and I want to take a step back a bit and discuss an important step in the process: Pricing. If you price your name too high, it won’t sell, and it will set a price ceiling for the name. If you price it too generously, you won’t achieve as high of a return as possible. There is an art to pricing a domain name, and I would like to share my own personal process for pricing my domain names when I sell.

For the sake of this blog post, I will use my domain name AlcoholCounseling.com as an example, and I will set a sales price for the name at the conclusion of this.

When I decide to sell a domain name from my portfolio, I look at a variety of factors in order to determine the price, including:

1) Traffic the name receives
2) Revenue the name receives
3) Google listings for the “bracketed term”
4) Advertisers on Google
5) Comps of recent sales
6) Gut feel    

Although I don’t buy my names based on traffic or revenue, I know that many of my clients pay close attention to these figures. The amount of natural traffic a domain name receives is important because it shows how many people are looking for something on that domain name without having to incur advertise costs. I also use the Overture search tool to get an idea of how many people are searching for the phrase or keyword of the domain name I am selling. For AlcoholCounseling.com, the traffic is light, only receiving about 1/2 a unique per day.

The revenue is important because a name might receive very little traffic, but the revenue per click may be very strong. Conversely, a domain name might receive a ton of traffic, but the click through rate might be low and the revenue per click might be low as well. This is important because if a name has strong revenue, a developer can build compelling content, increasing search engine traffic, and dramatically the revenue produced by the name. For AlcoholCounseling.com, the CTR is about 25% and the revenue per click is around $1.50. It is important to keep in mind that revenue share and CTR will differ for each parking provider and can be very different. This is one reason I only use this as a guideline.

I use the number of Google listings for the word or term in my domain name as an indicator of how much information is being published about the topic. It is likely that there is a parallel between the amount of information available and the number of people looking to find information. In the case of “alcohol counseling,” there are 154,000 Google searches for the topic. It is important to put the term in brackets, otherwise the results will include all pages that use alcohol or counseling, which is deceptive.

The number of advertisers who are paying per click is also a good indicator of the importance of a keyword or phrase, and thus the value of it. The more advertisers, the more competitive the bidding is, and that may mean a higher revenue per click figure. In the case of “alcohol counseling,” there are 8 sidebar advertisers, and there are 2 top advertisers, which is very strong in my opinion.

In order to get comparisons of other sales (both recent and historical), I like to use DNJournal’s Domain Sales chart or DNSalePrice.com. I also reference personal sales and other sales that might not have been published. For AlcoholCounseling.com, I would compare it to other psychology, rehabilitation and counseling domain sales. I have been fortunate enough to have sold a few similar names, so I have a good internal base. There have also been several public sales ranging from $3,500 – $10,000, which is in line with names I’ve sold.

Just like a real estate broker, I spend countless hours analyzing the domain market. This has given me a good “gut feel” for certain domain names. I also take my clients’ needs into account. I think about their verticals, their needs, and the types of names they buy as well as the price they would consider for this name.

In the case of AlcoholCounseling.com, I will set a price of $5,800 for the domain name with the hopes of a quick sale. Of course, if you are interested in acquiring the name, drop me a note or post a comment.

***Updated***

I just want to add that these are the most important factors I consider when setting my prices. There are plenty of other considerations, including: whether the other extensions are owned and used, registration date of the name, prior sale price/listing of the name, amount of inquiries the name has received in the past….etc.

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