2007 May archive at Conceptualist.com, By Sahar Sarid

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Archive for May, 2007

The TechnoPinkos Are At It Again

Published by Sahar Sarid 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 by Sahar Sarid 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 by Sahar Sarid on May 27, 2007 in Domain Names. 1 Comment

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 by Sahar Sarid 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 by Sahar Sarid 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