The consumer product review site SharedReviews.com will announce tomorrow that it has taken an undisclosed sum of investment from parties in the domain buying industry. Those investors include Frank Schilling, one of the world’s most successful domain buyers, Seattle based early-stage VCs Monster Venture Partners and the big domainers at Internet Real Estate Group.
Content from SharedReviews will subsequently be leveraged to populate a vast swath of parked domains. Genericly named domains, misspelled domains, random domains that show up in search results - now they’ll have real live (syndicated) content on them, in addition to contextual advertising. Though it’s easy to look with suspicion on anything that big domainers do, this might not be so bad for the rest of us.
There’s too much good material to quote so I will keep it short, but be sure to read the whole interview for more. It is a fascinating read.
1.) EJS: Development seems to be one of the “hot topics”? at recent TRAFFIC conferences, and you’ve indicated that you will be developing some of your domain names. What names in your portfolio are at the top of the line for development, and what type of development options are you considering?
RS: “I think Property.com, Candy.com and Widgets.com are the ones that are ripest for development. I have been in discussions with companies on two of these domains. However nothing concrete at this point. Like most things, it all is about the timing. iReport.com is also high on my list. I have experimented with other development. RumorMill.com for one. But development does not automatically mean more revenue. RumorMill.com will likely morph into another type site and be a PPC page during the transition. What most people don’t realize is I had developed sites in 1996 and 1997 when I still had my real world businesses. I have also developed sites that just stay in orbit and I even forget I have them.. eRealestate.com was one of my early sites and I have left much of that largely as a time capsule with only some obvious updates. But most of what was written there came from 1996-1999. I have about 10 other developed sites that I don’t talk much about. As the net matures, matching a great domain name with a profitable formula for development will become easier
Which is why parking pages are so popular. You may collect a little less but you tied up zero time and that alone has value. So every time you discuss development, it circles back to 100% automation. Parking = 0 minutes per month. Development = much more time per month. Eventually there will be some other options as businesses realize just how potent type in traffic is. No matter how you cut it and how well folks think they are doing the fact is the traffic domains produce is worth 10x the current payout rate and sometimes much much more. When the true value of traffic is fully exploited then you will see payouts explode. 2 cent visitors will be worth $20 or $200 or more. What kind of an increase is that? What does that do to the price of domain names with targeted type in traffic? And as parking pages get more sophisticated they will begin to capture data and email addresses and do mail outs and do other things to aid in developing databases of buyers. So development may not be what we expect it to be and it sure as hell is not easy to develop AND be profitable. But like solving the Rubix Cube”.we keep trying.. And when folks laugh at those payouts above, they will just show their lack of vision. If I have somebody looking for a $1 million property and I hand delver them to the agent that could make a $60,000 commission, you going to tell me that is worth 2 CENTS?? 2 DOLLARS. $200?? BS! I would rather sell him a 25 cent piece of candy for that 2 cents or just give the visitor to charity. But when the DAY comes that the Realtor says you can make me $60k and I can pay you THOUSANDS for that lead”.THEN you will see what a visitor is REALLY worth.. And if a domain can produce just 10 of those people a year, what is the value of that domain? We will laugh when we look back at this period of pennies. Wait until they actually figure it out. How can I be so sure? 2+2 =4. Just because we are in a time in which they have not figured out that 2+2 =4 does not mean WE have to change anything. 2=2 IS 4 and when they figure it out our job is to just be there waiting and the key ingredient is patience. So overpaying for a domain today is still a HUGE bargain when you look down the road and see what I believe will unfold.”?
We see that every single day with FuneralHomes.com. A click that used to be valued at 10 cents now converts to a funeral of USD10K revenue and for the funeral home, potential life-value of a consumer of much more.
In 2004, Citibank unveiled their “Thank You“? program, a rewards program that thanked customers for banking with Citi. I worked with some great creative people at Wunderman (Gus Tejerina, Barry Dickson, and Terry Pierce among many others) who came out with some great catchy advertising based on the “Thank You”? theme.
At the time, I hadn’t purchased my first domain name, so suggesting that Citibank should buy ThankYou.com was never something I considered. In retrospect, with such a huge branding initiative undertaken by Citi, this domain name was critical for Citibank to own. Up until 2006, the domain name was owned by a company called 800 Brands, Inc. Sometime in late 2006, the domain name was purchased by Citibank, where it now anchors the “Thank You”? rewards program.
And he concludes:
When a company unveils a new campaign or marketing slogan, they should always prepare for the best case scenario. They should ask, “if this becomes huge, will people expect to find more information at slogan.com?”? If the answer is yes or maybe, they should buy the domain name before the campaign is dropped. Not doing this can result in missed contact opportunities or added expense when the name is needed.
100% in agreement here. a multi-billion dollar company was inquiring about a certain generic domain we have before they initiated a brand change, renaming their company. They could not reach an agreement with us for the domain (we priced it relatively cheap, USD 300K range) and they could not cope with the price. After a couple of months email-negotiating, they went ahead with a different domain, “new-co-name+tech.com”. Smart move? We have hundreds of email inquiries from suppliers, manufacturers, potential partners, that prove otherwise.
“The World’s Most Ridiculous Sports Team Names”, via Cracked.com:
It used to be easy to name your sports team; just pick a dangerous animal and go. Unfortunately, there are way more sports teams in the world than there are cool animals, and the result is a lot of names that range from lame to laugh-out-loud retarded.
“Made-Up Words” (winner): Webster University Gorloks
“Trying Too Hard To Be Hip” (winner): Philadelphia Soul
The Asbury Park Press is one of 83 Gannett Newspapers and the domain name was purchased back in 1994 when an “app”? wasn’t nearly as important a term/phrase as it is now.
What would this domain be worth to a propsective purchaser? 2 Million? 5 Million? 10 Million? More?
However, App.com wouldn’t just be a domain sale, it would be a heck of a business opportunity for someone (in the same vein as Cowboys.com except many times better).
It appears that the domain name is owned by an arm of Gannett and a $10 million domain sale might cause them to yawn. But, what if under the right management, App.com could be developed into a $100 Million business in which Gannett could be a partner? A $500 Million business? A Multi-Billion Dollar business? Would they still not care?
Gannett already owns Asburyparkpress.com and they could rebrand that domain as the flagship domain of the newspaper. All the content on App.com can be 301″˛ed to Asburyparkpress.com and though it would be one heck of an ugly job, the transition is technically doable since other than the home page, the old website and new need not share any common page names.
Will Gannett ever realize the amazing business opportunity they possess with this domain name?
For many of us, being in the PPC business, we understand the importance of matching user’s intent to related content. Todd is making a valid point here. Owners of generic domains which use the domain for other purposes then the generic meaning of the domain should rethink the usage on their website. They could use a different domain for their brand and link from the top of the generic domain to another domain. In many of these instances, the potential usage, as in the example above, may provide better opportunities then the current existing business. Last I heard, the newspaper industry is declining rapidly.
Do you know of any other such cases, examples? And if you were to visit App.com, what would you expect the content on the website to be?
Online mapping is one of those few applications which I believe will be the driving force behind the “local internet”. Over the years I noticed some of our mapping domains go from few dollars a day (2001) to few hundred dollars per day (2007). I believe the value of mapping traffic will continue to grow exponentially over the next few years.
Their business model seems to be about getting local business owners to purchase personalized tours of their businesses. From our experience with FuneralHomes.com and dealing with local businesses I would think this may prove to be a tough offering, however, I believe EveryScape pushes the envelope just a little further for someone like Google, MS, or MapQuest to pick up on the concept, possibly buy EveryScape, and run with it.
I was at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show yesterday and on the way, on the Jungle Queen shuttle boat which took us to the show, we passed through Fort Lauderdale Millionaire’s Row. To those who don’t know, Fort Lauderdale Millionaire’s Row is a strip of private real estate houses on the intercoasal near the Riverfront.
During the boat ride the captain pointed out who lives where and some of the stories behind some of the houses. One of the interesting facts I picked up on is the land on Millionaire’s row (which now is being refered to as “Billionaire’s row” due to cheaper money) was given away for free back in the 20’s. The first thought of course is how people overlooked this great opportunity back then? Then the second thought took me back to 1994, when Network Solutions was still giving away any domain you wanted for free, if you just asked for it. Can you imagine? You could have picked up million dollar names only 13 years ago, as many as you wanted (could have structured within different companies at ease) as long as you asked for it.
That brings me to today. People back in the 20’s overlooked Fort Lauderdale real estate. People 13 years ago overlooked domain names. What are people overlooking today? Maybe IDN’s? Maybe SMS numbers? I’m curious to know what you folks think, predict.
A lot of people have left other industries to join the booming domain business, but we may see a case of reverse osmosis with DomainSponsor exec Joe Higgins - we may lose him to the world of rock and roll. If you were watching the 12 finalists compete on the Fox TV reality series America’s Next Great Band that was televised coast to coast in the United States last night, you caught a band formed just five months ago called The Likes of You. Though the band has a great front man in Geoff Byrd (who, as a solo artist, has opened for Hall & Oates), people in the domain business were focused on the group’s superb drummer - one of this industry’s true nice guys - the multi-talented Joe Higgins. Viewers across America were able to vote for their favorite bands last night and two will be eliminated when the final vote is tallied. If you haven’t seen the show yet, catch it next Friday night at 8pm (US Eastern time) and be sure to phone in a vote for Joe’s band - The Likes of You. You would never believe these guys have been together for such a short time. They have a real shot at going all the way in this competition.
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