March 24, 2013
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If you are familiar with the saga of the domain Cowboys.com then you will truly appreciate the irony of this. One of my favorite television shows is The League. Season 4, Episode 1.... One of the characters (Taco) in the show gets a call from Jerry Jones (owner of the Dallas Cowboys and playing himself in the episode). Taco tells his friends (who don't believe it is Jerry Jones) that Jerry probably is interested in the domain name DallasCowboys.com that he bought and was squatting on.
Taco and friends go to Jerry's office and Jerry writes a number on a slip of paper to pay for the domain DallasCowboys.com. That number is $250,000.
I'm not explaining this so if you get it cool, if not then not. I was chuckling up a storm and I'm not a normal chuckler.
February 4, 2013
Comments (11)
I contacted a domain owner about their name and asked them if their domain was for sale and if they had a price for the domain name. I got an email back that said "Not available for under $10 million".
If you are going to quote a price on a domain name you should start high and this way you have the ability to come down. But when you throw out a ridiculous price like that you run the risk of turning the potential buyer off. I am not writing back to this domain owner. The ridiculous price quote shows me two things... First, the domain owner is unrealistic and more then likely I will get nowhere with them other then have a frustrating few back and forth emails. Secondly, it shows they do not understand the market and they don't know about (or care about) comparable sales. It can be very hard to attempt to deal with an uneducated owner. They read the headlines that Sex.com sold for millions of dollars and that is their basis for their pricing.
Negotiating is an art, one that very few master and I still have a long way to go in. But what I have found works best for me is when I am able to make concessions in pricing as the buyer feels like he has haggled me down, yet I am still getting a price that I knew all along I'd be happy with. If you're going to set that first price you need to balance throwing out a realistic number that won't turn the buyer off and that can also allow the buyer to knock down the number enough to be happy with, while you land in a spot you wanted to land on.
January 25, 2013
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I was direct navigating to domains last night and I landed on one that has the GoDaddy expired landing page on it says the domain expired on 1/14/2013. I looked in GoDaddy auctions to see if an auction was going on for it but it wasn't there so I got curious as to how long after a domain expires at GoDaddy will it take to go to GoDaddy auctions. After a little searching the answer is 26 days after it expires it will hit the GoDaddy auction block.
There's a list of what happens after Day 1, 5, 12, 19, etc... when a domain registered through GoDaddy expires so if you're interested in seeing all the steps in the process you can check out
THIS PAGE on GoDaddy.
January 15, 2013
Comments (6)
I normally keep to myself and ignore what others say because life is too short to get caught up in non-important stuff so this will be my only post on the subject. Everyone in domaining has the right to their opinion, but there always seems to be one guy who enjoys writing about why someone else's opinion is either wrong or silly or foolish or (insert whatever word here). This person too has a right to their opinion, but he isn't writing for the sake of writing an opinion, he is writing for the sake of writing a rebuttal. There's some people who love to disagree and he seems to really enjoy taking the opposite side of what other people think. Do you have nothing else to write about other then critique someone's point of view? It's kinda lame and getting old. If you don't like someone's opinion then simply do not read their blog. Last time I checked no one appointed you the opinion police. And your 'holier than thou' attitude should be reserved for 16 year old kids who don't know any better instead of a grown man.
I wrote a post earlier today about the top 10 reasons why I, let me say again, why I do not use domain forums anymore. Some people may agree with my opinion, some people may disagree and that's ok because in life you won't always see eye to eye with everyone else. But acting like everyone else is wrong and you always know best is immature and childish.
The same person this past week chided people who took part in the GoDaddy Groupon when the deal fell apart. I don't feel like visiting his site to get the exact quote, but it was something along the lines of "you should have known better and you got what you deserved". Nothing like a nice guy to rub your nose in it, huh? Again, grow up.
But what really got me and rubbed me the wrong way had nothing to do with my blog or my point of view. I am very good at ignoring people who deserve to be ignored. I would have been more than happy not to say anything, but I mentioned those two recent incidents to show a trend of what this guy does. Now what I have problem with is this guy's rebuttal post to a post on TotontoDomainer.com today (see first post here
http://torontodomainer.com/is-domainnamesales-com-minimum-100-dollar-payout-for-ppc-earnings-too-high-for-reg-fee-domainers-the-answer-is-yes/). The TorontoDomainer post was an innocent post asking a simple question and trying to make a simple statement. The statement was that maybe a parking platform's minimum payout should be decreased from $100 to something less. Is this post hurting anyone? Is it meant to offend anyone? Not at all. But of course our Mr. Know It All decides to do a rebuttal post because, well, I don't know why. Maybe he is bored and can't come up with topics on his own other than trying to start a disagreement with someone. Maybe he is a grumpy old man. Maybe the normally scheduled rerun of Gossip Girl wasn't showing tonight and he had free time. I have no freaking clue. But he writes his rebuttal post. As a side note, in his rebuttal posts he also seems to like to brag. In this specific rebuttal post he mentions how he was making thousands of dollars a month in parking in the past. In the rebuttal post to my Top 10 Reasons why I don't visit domain forums anymore he likes to mention how he's the #1 poster at a forum and he's done hundreds of deals and yadda dadda da. Who cares. I mean are we in high school? So in the rebuttal post to the Toronto Domainer post he goes on to say that the parking platform should raise the payout to $250. And he refers to people who earn less as "domainer riff-raff". Very classy. You're not in his league so you are "riff-raff". If you want to read his post you can find it on your own because I'm not giving him a backlink here.
Later Toronto Domainer wrote a follow up post (see here
http://torontodomainer.com/what-is-a-reg-fee-domainer/). He makes a few comments that really hit home when you think about them.
"A good chunk of Reg Fee Domainers are not from USA, UK, or Canada. They live in parts of the world where earning a dollar could mean the difference between going hungry for days!"
"51% of the world makes less than $2 dollars a day. Thanks to micro-investments over the last decade a lot of third world country residents are out of the slumps and earning $0.50-$2 a day working."
"He doesn’t make the type of money we make here in North America! $20 dollars to him will feed his family for weeks! He doesn’t expect anyone to understand his level of Domaining but I do!"
"Domaining is an international industry not just for those who make the big bucks and think they can push anyone off the cliff just because they make less than $100 a year."
When I read this followup post by Toronto Domainer I got really pissed and decided to write this post. It takes A LOT for me to get pissed and I usually keep my nose to the grindstone and pay no attention to what others say. Reread those quotes I took from the Toronto Domainer article, go and read his full article and let it sink in. And then think about how this one blogger had to write a rebuttal and say that the minimum should be raised to $250. Talk about having an inflated sense of self-worth and not considering any one else. First off, there was no need to write a rebuttal against the original Toronto Domainer article. Seriously, FIND SOMETHING BETTER TO DO ALREADY WHY DON'T YOU. Secondly, how do you feel saying that the minimum should be raised to $250 now? And saying that if you don't earn enough you are "domainer riff-raff". Still proud of your article? Knowing that the minimum payout could be putting food on the table of people in different countries. Maybe $100 isn't a lot to a big baller like you, pushing $3000 in parking a month, writing 30,000 posts in forums, and whatever else you do. But that money to some people (who I guess you feel aren't as important as yourself) means something in their life so how dare you. You should be ashamed of yourself. Maybe you should spend less time critiquing people's opinions and more time on growing up.
I'm not going to get into a pissing war because I have better things to do so there won't be any follow up from me on this. Normally I try to be the bigger person and ignore people who need to be ignored, but even a low key guy can reach him limit. I'm glad that TorontoDomainer took the time to eloquently rebut a domaining bully and bring to the attention of all of us that we are very fortunate to have what we have and there's a whole world of people out there that work just as hard as us for a fraction of what we make. It definitely hit home with me.
January 14, 2013
Comments (4)
In the past I'd go to a few of the domain name forums and check out what was going on. Once you do this for a while you quickly realize a few simple truths about them.
1. The domainers who have good domain names know what they are worth and at a minimum the prices they are asking (or if they ask for bids the prices that they have in their head that they would accept) are at least what they could get for them in a Great Domains auction. Makes sense, not sure why anyone would sell their domain for less then they could get for it at a monthly auction. You're not going to get any steals from a seasoned domainer.
2. The majority of domains people are trying to sell there are crap. They are hoping that some new guy to the game will come along and buy them. It's a pain in the ass sorting through the crap.
3. You'll see a thread that has a good domain name asking a price you're happily willing to pay. Then you go into the thread where they tell you it is an IDN. Why do you do this? Do you really think once I'm in the thread I'm going to be more likely to buy it? Save everyone time and just put IDN in the title.
4. In the rare event that someone is willing to part ways with a good domain name for a price you like you always have the thought in the back of your mind that the domain might be stolen. By the time you do a quick check on the domain history someone else has already jumped in there and posted "SOLD".
5. If you want to sell a domain name you only get stingy domainers offering pennies on the dollar for it. I've seen domains that would sell at auction for $5,000 and when someone lists it in a forum the opening bid that someone makes is $1. The next guy might "jump" the bid to $25 if he's feeling crazy. And then you'll have 5 more ridiculous offers until one of the more seasoned members will jump it up to a grand, and then the offers fizzle out and it does not get sold and you'll see it at auction a month later.
6. My time is better spent elsewhere. Whether it's finding and contacting potential end users for my domains, or searching for domains that I want to contact the owners about and see if they'll sell, or arranging my sock drawer... my time is better spent elsewhere. For all the time it takes you to buy a great domain there, or to sell a domain for a great price there you probably could have done 5-10 transactions in the real world.
7. The great deals are few and far between and there's people who are scanning the new threads each and every day like it is their job (maybe it is their job) so if you manage to grab one of these it was pure luck that everything was timed up right for you. Most likely these constant scanners will snap up everything almost everytime.
8. If you manage to sell a domain you can't celebrate yet. There are tons of times when people who post "SOLD" don't end up paying for the domain. Either they want to send it to you from an unverified Paypal account, or they want you to push the domain to them first, or you set up an Escrow.com transaction and after two weeks it's still sitting out there because the buyer disappeared.
9. The appraisals section is filled with random figures which rarely make sense and people take it to heart. I've seen people say things like "Wow, you got a great deal on that domain paying $5k, it was a steal, it is worth much more then that". The ironic thing is that the domain was in a public auction so anyone could have bought it for that price. People who CHOSE not to buy it are telling the buyer that it is worth a ton. Really?
10. A number of times a person offers up a domain name for sale and asks for bids. He'll get bids and after a week he sets a Buy It Now price of 20 times the top bid. Do you really think that is going to sell? And what the hell kind of strategy is that anyways. Again, a waste of time for people to bid or be in that thread. If you have a BIN price just state it up front and stop playing games.
January 4, 2013
Comments (1)
One of the most important things that an auction company needs to do is ensure that the bidders are qualified to bid and I had an experience with the Moniker/Snapnames auction that ended the middle of November that was a BIG FAIL.
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December 31, 2012
Comments (7)
I posted about this Groupon deal back on December 27th and today I've seen many people say the deal is dead, but it's not, there's still cities alive and well and you can buy from them (pay $25 and get a $70 GoDaddy credit). You can buy 1 groupon maximum FROM EACH CITY so you get save yourself a few hundred bucks if you do that. These will expire later today so it's now or never because then the deal with be officially dead.
Windsor Deal
Niagara Deal
Waterloo Deal
Kelowna Deal
Saskatoon Deal
I lied, found a sixth and seventh:
Regina Deal
Abbotsford Deal
September 14, 2012
Comments (2)
GoDaddy sent an email around offering a credit to customers and now they are offering a 30% code for your domain name renewals. A lot of times the codes they offer are only on new purchases so a 30% off of renewals is not something I see every day. This code is good for 7 days from today.
Go To GoDaddy.com
Use Code: Apology4a
June 8, 2012
Comments (0)
Just caught a short but interesting article about people buying up the domain names for political front runners for the 2016 and 2020 election. I like the comment how one guy would laugh in the face if someone asked him for the domain. You can see the article here:
http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/08/technology/campaign-domain-squatters/index.htm?source=cnn_bin
December 16, 2011
Comments (8)
Every month I contact domain owners through their Whois email for some domains that I either want to develop or where I see a trend and think the domain will become more valuable in the near future. My contact email is very simple. I tell them I am interested in their domain. I ask if it is for sale. And I ask what their price expectations are for the domain. In about 33% of the replies I get the question "What are you going to do with this domain".
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December 9, 2011
Comments (7)
At DomainNameSales.com you can now see the quotes that were given for domain names and I personally find it very interesting. I understand that you never want to leave money on the table and you want to maximize your profit, but some of these quotes make no sense to me.
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October 19, 2011
Comments (2)
The TRAFFIC auction results were disappointing as none of the big ticket items sold. This could be blamed on one of two factors (or a combination of both)... reserves too high, or the right buyers not being present. Personally, I think Cheese.com is worth $1M to a company like Kraft but unless there is a representative from Kraft then the bidding won't come close to $1M. Domainers are not going to buy a domain name for near what an end user would so the domain goes unsold.
I personally did not like the mix of all the extensions there. Touchdown.co, sub.co, goldjewelry.co... we see what the .co's are selling for and having these names in the auction lessened the quality of inventory IMO. If you want to have a fancy restaurant you don't put a hotdog on the menu for a few bucks. The .xxx names did not do very well and I didn't like them being there either. My personal opinion is that the addition of all these extensions is ridiculous and fragments the internet. But that is an article for another day.
When I think of a top live auction I think good to great .coms, and great .nets and .orgs. If you want to branch out to another extension or two then only allow the best of the best domains that make sense in that extension. GreatDomains.com had listed last month Cable.TV, Satellite.TV, etc... These names would have made sense to me to be in TRAFFIC.
I also think that a lot of people (and I do it myself sometimes) think their domain names are the greatest thing under the sun and set unrealistic reserves. If you want to move your inventory you set a price that will appeal to people. If you want it to sit there and gather dust you don't need to list it at TRAFFIC for a high reserve, just keep it on Sedo and let it sit there for years until you find a sucker or until you come to your senses. Or get a broker who will contact the end users that might (and I say might) pay in the range you are looking for.
July 28, 2011
Comments (0)
Something interesting which I have not seen before. The domain GoldAppraisals.com was for sale at the GreatDomains.com auction. It had no bids. I can't be sure what the reserve was, but if memory serves me correctly it was one of the $1-$499 reserves (which usually means no reserve). And now you cannot bid on it. Was someone able to remove their domain from auction because it wasn't going to sell for a price they wanted even though it was listed with either no reserve or a small reserve?
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June 10, 2011
Comments (4)
What happens when a domain is listed in two live auctions (one of them has met reserve)... well for WOP.com you should try to get yourself removed from the auction that nobody has bid on yet me thinks...
WOP.com has a bid and has met reserve on Sedo.com, and WOP.com is also listed in the extended auction for Domainfest Barcelona. If you're interested in the domain I'd check out the Sedo page (since the current price is $5k less). When you list your names in auctions make sure you keep good track because you don't want to sell the same domain twice and got stuck in a pickle.
Comments (4)
Rick Latona left the domain game. His message (to the world) says in part, "We feel that domains just aren't worth that much anymore and the only way to sell one for a significant amount is to get a little lucky." I can't help but hear that quote (from The Dark Knight but probably from other sources too) in my head that says "You make your own luck."
The irony is that he is paying to post this message on the top section of Domaining.com since Tuesday (it is now Friday).
IMO, if you're going to post a message on a site about domains that is read by domainers you may not want to bash their business model. It's not going to leave people feeling warm and tingly and anxious to hear your message. That is Business 101.
