2007 May archive at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

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Archive for May, 2007

The TechnoPinkos Are At It Again

Published on May 28, 2007 in Domain Names. 5 Comments

Following The NYTimes’ NameMedia article, the technopinkos at slashdot got out of their holes again. Here’s few comments from that thread..

I think I speak of everyone, when I say: WTF

You just found out you missed on the biggest opportunity in the world? I thought so.

They really show Google ads on these pointless pages?
If I did that my adsense account would be terminated.

There’s no comparison between content pages to direct navigation. Direct navigation is as close as it gets to user’s intent.

At the end of the day all of us pay for the clutter created by domain names which exist only to capture page views. Presently to put a domain on line you just need to pay for registration and hosting on two DNS servers. The distributed nature of DNS takes care of the rest.

Should a way be found to make domain squatters pay the true cost of their collections?

Hey, I’d like to own all houses in my neighborhood as well but “At the end of the day all of us pay for the clutter created” by other property owners who are there just to occupy the property, some regularly, and some, as here in South Florida, a couple of months a year.

So now this kind of domain squatting has become respectable? Yeah right.

Better get some education before you keep talking. This is really an ignorant comment all around and besides making the writer look like a total fool it doesn’t say a thing.

There are a couple of positive comments here, one I really like..

>An obscure Web address may have four or so visitors a month

Dude, I need to invest in this.

Very rare on Slashdot’s domain discussions. Finally someone is thinking here!

Domain Registrations Can Tell You What The Competition Is Up To

Published on May 28, 2007 in Domain Names. 1 Comment

In past years I came across discussions related to companies, especially Google as they are in the center of the internet, where curious netizens speculate on domain registrations before a product appears on the market. It is mostly for fun and not in order to gain any competetive advantage.

This morning I came across a discussion, in relation to Where 2.0, a mapping conference.

To that end, Garrett Rogers speculates, based on domain name registrations, that Google will be announcing a “street view”? mapping capability at the show.

Over the years, in the domain business, we used to monitor what our competitors were up to. Learned allot of information, things to do, things to avoid. Domain registration knowledge isn’t going to make or break your business, but at times it will give you an extra information your competitor is underestimating, a truly unique opportunity to gain an unfair advantage.

How to monitor your competitors domain registrations?

1. Find out their DNS where they host their domain names. If it is public you are out of luck. If DNS is private then continue to step 2.
2. Monitor DNS daily
3. Compare day by day to see what’s being added

Or, for those who rather use a service rather then do it manually, DomainTools has a section on their site called “Name Server Spy“. In their own words:

What is Name Server Spy?

Name Server Spy is Domain Tools new, powerful name server monitoring technology that lets you monitor the daily activity of .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info domains on any name server under 50,000 domains.

Monitors come to you by a daily email with a list of changes for the previous day. You can adjust when emails are sent and what data it contains.

It won’t work at all times as sometimes domain registrations are private, or DNS points to a public and busy servers, but with zero or tiny costs invovled and a little time to set up, it’s definitely worth a shot.

NameMedia In The NYTimes

Published on May 27, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

NYTimes has published an interesting article about NameMedia.

NameMedia Vital stats:
CEO: Kelly P. Conlin
Traffic: 60m unique visits per month
Revenue : USD 60m per year
Domain Ownership : 725,000 domains
Ownership : Privately held

Analysts suggest that NameMedia and its competitors could represent the next wave of Internet initial public offerings, while also providing a peek at a significant change in what people see when they stumble onto obscure Web properties.

No doubt in my mind. IPO is coming end of year or next year.

Behind this suddenly active business category - which includes companies like iREIT in Houston, Marchex in Seattle, and Demand Media in Santa Monica, Calif. - is the recognition that not all Internet users turn to a search engine when they are confused about where to find something online. Rather, 5 percent to 10 percent of people will simply type in a name that sounds as if it might suit their needs.

It’s more like 100%. We all type internet addresses in the browser bar to find old or new destinations. It is the nature of the internet and the curiousity of surfers to ask “What’s there?” or say “The company I want must be there” and they type the domain in.. and walla, a type-in.

NameMedia has a number of competitors in the space such as Demand Media, Marchex, Ireit, and a few private investors, although have less domains, have greater value per domain.

Fabulous.com Steps Up To The Plate And Explains..

Published on May 27, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

Michael Robertson, our account manager @ Fabulous.com sent me Fabulous.com response for the ten questions I posted earlier this week.
It’s great to see someone from the PPC industry stepping up and addressing these publicly.

Fabulous.com is an outstanding company with outstanding people which I highly admire. If you ever want to get good at customer support, technology, all you have to do is try your best to copy what the folks at Fabulous.com are doing.

So without further delay, here’s Fabulous.com response..

Hi Sahar,

I hope all is going well.

Sorry for the delay in reply, it’s been crazy busy here lately.

I’ll try and answer as many questions I can for you:

1. Why don’t we tap into the long term value of the user (lead gen forms, browser extensions, etc)

- This is something we have been discussing for some time, and hope to be able to offer CPA type solutions integrated into our landing pages some time in the future.

5. Why don’t you push for long term deals with portfolio owners? Isn’t it true that long term deals allow you for better optimization, better focus then you have now?

- We are not adverse to doing long term deals, and would be open to such partnerships. It is common knowledge within the market that we are very selective when it comes to the domains we monetize. From my experience, people looking for long term, fixed deals are wanting to partner with someone that will take ALL of their domains. As I’m sure you are aware, no one has a perfectly clean book and as such we often can not cater to their needs.

If someone came to us and asked for a long term deal for all their generic/commercial domains only, I’m sure we could bring something to the table; we would definitely be interested in deals of this nature.

6. Why don’t you provide better customization for your users then you already provide?

- We are about to launch an update to our Premium program in the coming month which gives customers more power of how their landing pages look. We will be introducing our Dynamic Generator, a suite of website building tools designed to maximize the earning power of every domain across your whole portfolio. The new range of templates are highly configurable giving you the choice of a range of page structures, color palettes and contextually relevant images.

Be sure to stop by our booth at TRAFFIC New York to see a preview of the new program.

7. Why not have “labs”? within your platform to show your partners the things you experiment with, take feedback, and improve?

- We are constantly asking customers for feedback and looking for ways improve our service. A lot of our updates are a result of requests from our partners. Our program has already been through many iterations and we will continue to make changes/advancements.

I welcome any comments/suggestions or general feedback customers (existing or prospective) may have. We highly value feedback from our clients and aim to offer the best service possible.

8. Why don’t you innovate enough? I haven’t seen much innovation from anyone yet for years now. We have so much upside here I would really like to see someone taking it to a whole new level.

- Although it has been over 12 months since our last major update, within that time we have been constantly making minor changes/additions to our program. I will be pushing to make more regular updates to our platform in the future, to ensure we remain at the forefront of the industry.

9. Why don’t you treat domains in different categories differently in relation to automated content? for example, information type domains should not have the same feel/look of commerce domains

- With the new program we will be launching at TRAFFIC New York, customers will have the ability to configure domains like never before using our system. A number of new templates will be available, however, customers will also have the ability to configure and save their own templates.

10. Why your company doesn’t have a blog to keep your partners updated daily about progress and innovation?

- Fantastic idea and something I will definitely take to the guys here. Watch this space.

Look forward to catching up with you at TRAFFIC New York.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mike

Thanks Michael for the quick response!

Sahar

Rick Schwartz On Domain Appraisals

Published on May 25, 2007 in Domain Names. 3 Comments

Rick Schwartz I asked Rick Shcwartz, AKA Domain King, AKA Webfather, for his opinion on this discussion, here’s his take.

I’ll keep this short. I have yet to see anyone reputable or qualified actually give an appraisal. There is really no such thing. The closest is Moniker who has been recognized by the IRS as qualified. But it does not change my view.

Let’s start here…….EVERY appraisal service I have ever seen is little more than a scam. Sorry if you appraise domains, but why are YOU qualified. I would say there are less than 10 people on the planet that “I” would consider qualified to give appraisals and NONE of them go around giving appraisals and they don’t sit there and charge folks $20 for SMOKE! Most wouldn’t know a worthless domain from one worth $1 million if it smacked them upside the head. btw, this is one of the reasons you hear a lot of negative stuff about me. I am not afraid to call them as I see them and I just made enemies with every appraisal service out there. Sorry guys, I agree with Sahar, you are just a bunch of scams. Can we be friends now? Didn’t think so. I just don’t think any of you are actually qualified to give an appraisal. There is only one appraisal and we all know what that is.

There are too many factors. There are many questions to ask. When someone emails me waving an appraisal in my face, I look at them as tainted, gullible, silly and unrealistic.

So if you have an appraisal, IT IS WORTHLESS and you are a fool to believe anything else. But hey, knock your socks off when you get a $20k appraisal for your worthless domain or get the same $20k number for a domains worth hundreds of thousands.

Appraisal service = scam = don’t be fooled = 100 less friends for Rick.

And 100 less for Sahar

Well said, thanks Rick!

Domain Appraisals Make No Sense

Published on May 24, 2007 in Domain Names. 13 Comments

Kat writes:

Dear Sahar:

Thanks for keeping it real and being so open to the public.
My husband and I own wanted.com and have paid for several apprasials from some of the top companies and even listed it on eBay to get an idea of what it is worth in todays market. My question is why is there so much difference in these apprasials between different companies? Are they using all the same data and then just adding there own ideas of the market value or what?

Thanks again,

Kat

Hi Kat,

I don’t like appraisal services, I think they are all grey-ish at best, and at worst, complete scam operations. There’s nothing real in giving a market value on a domain without knowing the UNIQUE CIRCUMSTANCES SELLER IS FACING IN LIFE.

In regard to real estate, when it comes to valuation, these are not similar at all. Real estate is limited by governments, strict laws, physical space. Domains are only limited by one’s imagination. You can build a small honey shop as well as building the next Google, MS, or something ten times of these companies combined. The sky isn’t the limit, it’s the UNIVERSE!

In my opinion Appraisal companies do nothing but GUESS a price. It has nothing to do with reality. The value of your domain is very much depandant on MANY other factors besides the domain itself, therefore, there really ISN’T a way to value a domain based on the word/extension by itself.

Some of the things that count in terms of valuation that appraisal companies pay no attention to:

1. Most important, CIRCUMSTANCES. IF you MUST SELL then the value drops fast. Must as in you must have X$ tomorrow morning for some urgent need such as illness, rent, travel expenses, etc.

2. BUYER. The value of a domain isn’t the same to different buyers. One can afford more then the other, one has different visions/plans then another.

3. SELLER. Are you bullish about the business? Are you bearish? Do you need to sell? Do you want to develop? Do you HAVE to sell? If you are looking to replace the income you currently make, what price would you need in order to get the same ROI on a different investment, and which differnent investment?

4. Where else can you get the same ROI? If wanted.com makes 1,000$/month, what price you need to get in order to get 1,000$/month from other type of investment, such as CD, stocks, gold? This is really an important question if your motivation is to move to a differnet investment with same or better ROI.

See, all these points are UNIQUE to the situation at hand, not to the property itself, and they are what MAKE the real value of your domain name. Without knowing and understanding the unique circumstances at hand the chances of guessing the value correctly are slim to none. That is why the value between appraisal companies vary so much.

Mark Jeftovic On The TechnoPinkos

Published on May 24, 2007 in Domain Names and General. 1 Comment

A very well put article by Mark Jetfovic. We all have seen it for years but Mark is the one that put this philosophy together in a way your average TechnoPinko may actually understand.

This morning I was forwarded a link to the Business2.0 article on domainer Kevin Ham about a half-dozen times and one sent the reddit comment thread on it (titled “This guy is a piece of s**t”) and I had to chuckle and replied “I see Techno-Pinkos are out in full force”?.

Some of the comments are just classicly clueless:

“He’s just a parasite. Someone gaming the system for their own financial ends without providing a useful service to anyone, and making it worse for many.”?

and

“If you don’t see anything wrong in the concept of “speculator”?, I don’t think I can possibly explain it to you. It’s wrong and hurtful for so many people that it should be obvious to anyone.”?

Newsflash: Speculation is any time you choose one path, good or service over another in the hopes that you will do better with it over time than you will the alternatives. Deciding to go to college and becoming an accountant instead of dropping out of high school and becoming a garbageman is speculating that over time, you will have a more secure, financially rewarding career as an accountant than as a garbageman (which may not be true)

The techno-pinkos hate it when they see the speculation of others pay off and compound their irrationality by denying that they ever partake in speculation themselves. Pretty well most productive endevours in life, including ALL investments are a form of speculation, get it over it.

Continue reading here.

Los Angeles Angels Loses UDRP Roulette

Published on May 23, 2007 in Domain Names. 1 Comment

Not much “UDRP Luck” to Los Angeles ~~Angels~~ Devils here.

From DomainNameWire.com:

The Los Angeles Angels Major League Baseball team has lost its fight for Angels.com. The organization filed for a UDRP in February claiming rights to the trademark “Angels”? and that the current registrant was using it in bad faith. The Angels filed for arbitration after the owner of the domain, Lee Dongyeon of South Korea, offered to sell it for $300,000 to an unidentified agent. Dongyeon purchased the domain for roughly $25,000 in 2005.

And..

By filing a UDRP, the Angels were trying to spend a few thousand dollars to get the domain rather than a few hundred thousand. By losing, they might end up paying a few million. Such is UDRP roulette.

Hey, it’s UDRP. You win some you lose some. Try LosAngeles.com maybe? You never know.

IS Google Pushing Spyware? And If They Do, Is It Of A Better Quality Then Competitors’ Spyware?

Published on May 23, 2007 in General. 1 Comment

(Found via Frank Schilling site)

Google, the company you love, wether for the funky logos, the relevant results (if you believe they are), or the culture, according to OpenDNS and with a partnership with Dell, is “turning the page.. in a bad way”

About a year ago Google and Dell announced a partnership to include the Google Toolbar on new Dell computers. At the same time, Google was trying to convince the Department of Justice that changing the default search engine in the (then) new IE7 was too difficult (when in reality it’s really simple). Installing the toolbar meant that users would have Google as their default search engine in IE7. It also meant that Dell and Google would share some of the revenue from the advertising clicks that resulted from these installations, much like The Mozilla Foundation does with its Firefox browser.

The computer hardware business has razor-thin margins which means making a profit is tough. So the opportunity for Dell to get a recurring revenue stream from an existing customer long after the sale of the computer is more than just enticing, it’s huge. It also means a couple other things:

1. Dell and Google have an incentive to make it very hard for users to turn this off.
2. Because users can’t get rid of it, Dell and Google can get away with putting more ads on the page and pushing user-relevant content off the page.

They’re now doing both of these things.

Franky says: “This is not the Google I know and love.”

You are too naive Franky. They do whatever they can get away with for a long time. They push the boundaries every time as far as they can and if users complain more then they predict they retract. Remember Florida update, web accelerator, personalization, and few other products/services in between that were pushing boundaries? They are at it again.

Few user comments from OpenDNS:

“This is just bad news all around. Two of the companies that I love and recommend to people the most are acting slimeball-ish on this one…”

“..Rats, now I have to add Google to the gray list.”

“Google’s new slogan - “Don’t be Evil. Be very Evil.”?”

“Hmm, the “Browser Address Error Redirector”? or “GoogleAFE”? are not in my “Add/remove”? list. How can I get rid of this?”

Doesn’t look promising for Google image at all.

(Note: I have 3 dell laptops in the family, I doubt I will have another one)

Yahoo Outsmarts Google, Google Gets Pissed

Published on May 22, 2007 in Domain Names. 0 Comments

From Paul Sloan’s “The Key“:

Yahoo takes a lot of heat for always playing catch up to its cross-valley rival, Google (GOOG). But Yahoo did do something back in 2004 that, while small, deserves some credit–it registered the domain name Yahoo.cm. That’s right, .cm, which is the country code for the West African country of Cameroon and one easy typo away from the all-powerful .com. Google, on the other hand, never did register its domain name with Camtel, the registry for Cameroon–and that little oversight has become a bit of a headache for Google.

And continues..

But Google wasn’t happy to discover the .cm play. A Google spokesman told me the company very much considers Google.cm an infringement of its trademark, and that its lawyers had been in touch with Ham’s attorneys.

Those Googlers have the nerve to say anything here? Just amazing! These are the biggest opportunists on the planet. How about Google taking advantage of Yahoo and all the rest of the internet?

Google has partnerships with computer hardware makers like Dell or Gateway to set the default search and the homepage to Google on new computers. By default, if you type a non-existent address in Internet Explorer’s address bar, you’re sent to a special Microsoft homepage that suggests some related links. Google decided this is a lucrative feature, so they install a Browser Address Error Redirector that replaces Microsoft’s redirects. Here’s the explanation:

This page was generated because of one of these two reasons:
* The web address you typed did not resolve correctly.
* You typed a keyword query in the browser address bar.

This page is meant to provide you with helpful related content, including web search results and paid advertisements, based on the meaning of the web address/keyword query that you typed. This program can be uninstalled from the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs. Look for the application named “Browser Address Error Redirector”. Older versions may be called “GoogleAFE”.

And what about domain searches on the google.com homepage, where they do not list the domain but instead list other sites, even though the intent was clearly a specific web address?

See examples for “sevenmile.com” search where the first result is:
“www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/blogs/show/14209″

I find this ironic to say the least.