Switching to http://DomainsAndKeywords.com moving forward (notice #2)

Please now refer to http://domainsandkeywords.blogspot.com/ for the future of this blog. This blog will go into retirement and probably eventually into the deletion world. Just thinking also , but it wouldn't be a bad idea of blogger.com or another great blog site like wordpress would have a service where you can move from one blog to another transferring over the posts, pages, etc. so you could have a smooth transition and the original dates on the posts. I remember making the switch from Xanga to Wordpress on another blog I write and it kind of looked stupid when I first copied over the posts. Just an idea...

For Domainers (advanced topic): So, what does it take to justify buying a domain

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Switching over...

I thought I'd buy the actual .com domain as well in addition to reserving the subdomain within blogger.com. When typing in Keywords and Domains (all one word) .com, I noticed that the two "d's" in a row may be confusing for future typers of the domain. So, I switched it around, found the domain was available and "Wallah!," it's now Domains and Keywords.

So, please now refer to http://domainsandkeywords.blogspot.com for the future of this blog. This blog will go into retirement and probably eventually into the deletion world.

Just thinking also , but it wouldn't be a bad idea of blogger.com or another great blog site like wordpress would have a service where you can move from one blog to another transferring over the posts, pages, etc. so you could have a smooth transition and the original dates on the posts. I remember making the switch from Xanga to Wordpress on another blog I write and it kind of looked stupid when I first copied over the posts. Just an idea...

Introduction to the team

Greetings...

Bradd, the GM for this new blog asked me to write up a little bit about myself before he hired me to start writing for the blog. He thought it would be a good idea for future readers of the blog so they would know the qualifications of the person who was writing about these posts which may have a large impact on the domain industry moving forward.

Briefly, I am currently a Director of a small company in South Korea. Before starting work at this organization, I worked in the dot com field for about 8 years in one of the largest online advertising companies (where I first met Bradd), the largest retailer online and the largest (at the time) travel company online. I have been doing off and online property valuation since 1993 and have even spent a couple years in Real Estate to apply the offline expertise where I successfully built a business that attained the #2 ranking in production in our office. Our office, by the way, was the city which included Bill Gates little suburb Medina.

I got my first taste for domains & their value in 1996 when the Internet boom started to take off. I didn't stick with it because I didn't have the capital to support all the interest along with the little bit of cynicism that perhaps these would not be as worth as much as they are now. And boy was I wrong with that small thought -- I should of gone with what my gut tells me & from this point on, I'll be writing about what my gut tells me for all the readers benefit here.

In terms of Keywords, the other topic we will write about, I fell in love with these at my time at Expedia (oops, did I let the cat out of the bag? I'm sure you can guess the other two companies as well). A coworker of mine who was the SEM Manager at the time introduced me to Overture's Keyword suggestion tool & since then, there's been no turning back. Keywords to me basically represent what people want online. The trends, the numbers and the statistics in one form or another represent the human psyche in the virtual world. While it may not be keywords forever or Google dominating the world wide web landscape in terms of search forever, there will always be something that translates our semantic seaches into websites or whatever provides us the information we are seeking. I love spending time evaluating keywords.

Thank you for taking the time to read my writings & good luck with all your purchases of domain names. Like offline real estate, property is limited online in domain names & until the future tells us differently, the value will only go up. If you even slightly believe in the economic principle of supply & demand, you should definitely believe in the value of domain names moving forward.

Lawsuit could change the domainer landscape

A party called "Vulcan Golf LLC" is trying to sue Google and it's adword program, along with 4 leading Domain registration services companies: Oversee.net, Sedo.com, Dotster.com (aka RevenueDirect.com) and Internet REIT (d/b/a [doing business as] IREIT). The lawsuit primarily says that the defendents (everyone above minu Vulcan Golf LLC) are violating Vulcan Golf's trademark. The lawsuit also contends that the AntiCybersquatting Consumer Protection Act applies in this case as well.

I just typed in both vulcangolf.com and searched for "vulcan golf" (with and without the quotes). In all cases, this company seems to come up first in the results & there doesn't seem to be any pages that mislead the consumer to think there is "another vulcan golf" or anything that seems to "diluted their trademarks" in any way. It looks like Vulcan Golf is just a little jealous they didn't buy some Google stock before it shot up over $500 a share. They know that Google has money & thus, their need to file an overzealous & unreasonable lawsuit. What's the use of filing 121 pages of complaints. Honestly, either the legal system is getting out of hand or jealous little companies who see riches are being abusive.

Regardless, if you want to read more of the 121 page filing, feel free to go here: http://claranet.scu.edu/tempfiles/tmp32687/vulcanvgooglecomplaint.pdf

Domain gold rush?

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Some issues to worry about moving forward for Domainers

Problems for the future:

• Browsers are fixing typos
• IE catches unregistered domain names
• Microsoft Vista (the new Operating system for PCs) may change the rules of the game
• Legal issues are rising daily regarding trademarked names or squatting

Do you want to be a Domainer?

If you're searching for a great name, think of what people would type directly into a browser. First thing you probably want to find out is how often the term(s) is being searched. Yahoo (Overture) has created a tool for the world and it's been used over the years by all the people in the domain field. Click here to visit the Inventory Suggestion Tool[1]

There are online forums for "Insider Tips" in the Domainer business. Namepros.com has some good basics; DomainState.com is geared more toward pros. [1]

Do you think a Typo Play would be profitable? Be warned that Trademark typos are under attack. A few generic typos can be taken advantage, however. DomainTools has a tool that lets you generate new ones on the fly. [1]

Are .com domains the most valuable? Well, some are taking a chance on the main new domain suffixes like .mobi, for mobile phones or International ones like .uk (UK), .cn (China), and .eu (the European Union) among many others. [1]

Sources:
1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm

Domainers statistics

• From 2004 to 2007, the number of dotcom names has soared 130% higher to 66 million names registered. [1]
• Domains are registered every 2 seconds [1[
• The market for registering and trading domain names could reach $2.5 billion this year (2007) [2]
• Sales of 5,851 domain names generated $29 million in 2005[3]
• Sales of 3,813 names only generated $15 million in 2004[3]

1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm

2. http://money.cnn.com/2006/08/29/technology/nextbigforeign.biz2/index.htm

3. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-09-domainers_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

Domainer's Jargon

"direct navigation," when people go into the browser url bar and type in what they're looking for and just add ".com" to the end like "weddingshoes" and then add ".com" -- according to source 10 below, millions do it [1]

tasting, Tasting takes advantage of a provision that allows domain-name buyers a free five-day trial period. Intended to protect customers who mistakenly purchase the wrong name, it handed aggressive domainers another means with which to expand -- and exploit -- their portfolios. [1]

"typo-squatting," it's a practice now coming under the same intense scrutiny long faced by cybersquatters. Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500) and Neiman Marcus are just two companies whose lawyers have brought anti-cybersquatting lawsuits, charging domainers with intentionally profiting from variations of their trademarks. [1]

Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price. [2]

parking, the main way that domainers make money: they fill their undeveloped domains with relevant pay-per-click ads that throw into their pockets steady cash [1]

Sources:
1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_squatting

TOP PLAYERS IN THE DOMAINERS INDUSTRY

Kevin Ham, profiled in the Business 2.0 article (dated May 22, 2007) referenced below, was trained as a Doctor at the University of British Columbia. He is considered to be "the top player" in the industry. He owns "300,000 domains which generate about $70 million in revenue annually" (combined with a few other ventures) . His sites receive 30 million unique visitors a month. Agoga.com, one of the main sites, receives about 8 million unique visitors a month. His portfolio is estimated to be worth $300 million.

• His start: one of the first to write software that let him try the domains on a free trial
• at the beginning: created an online directory of Web hosting providers called Hostglobal.com (around 1998)
• six months after Hostglobal.com was launched, he was earning $10,000/month in advertising sales
• one of his advertisers who was generating 15% of the revenue, a domain registration service convinced him he would get into that too
• started a second Web hosting providers online directory called DNXindex.com which gave customers a way of registering domain names
• with DNXindex.com, he provided weekly lists of available names using free sources on the Internet and charged anything from $0 to $50 building up a customer base of 5000 within 2 months
• by June 2000, he was making $40,000 a month
• then recognized how to exploit dropped domain names: learned about the master list of all registered names at the time, a list published by Network Solutions called the "root zone" file (now owned by VeriSign); names that disappeared, he thought, were being placed "on hold" and then would drop to the public 5 or 6 days later & he would attack them
• struck deals with several discount registrars writing them software to guarantee they would capture the names Ham would buy through them in late 2000; in a 6 month period, he registered more than 10,000 much to the disdain of his competitors
• in 2004, took all his domains from 3rd party registrars and launched his own registration service creating the company Hitfarm which did "a better job of matching ads with domain names" for himself and 100 other domainers
• the man behind the scheme of mistakenly typing the domain name like '.cm' instead of '.com' (.cm is the domain suffix of the West African country of Cameroon) - this process is spelled out in a patent application filed by Seeman (business partner below)
• currently working on .co (Columbia), .om (Oman), .ne (Niger), and .et (Ethiopia)
• focusing currently (2007) on a new company called "Reinvent Technology" which builds Internet Businesses around his domain names
• uses yahoo.com (overture) for his online advertising instead of google adwords
• owns God.com, Satan.com, Weddingshoes.com (worth $9100/yr), Hoteldeals.com (paid $171,250 for it), FruitGiftBaskets.com (paid $26,250 4it), Religion.com (leased an entire 27th floor, hiring 150 engineers, salespeople & editorial folks to support this venture which will focus more on "meaning" and less on keywords)
• knowns how to code in Perl
• business partner Colin Yu, business partner Robert Seeman (behind .cm & chief adviser at Reinvent Technology), domainer partner Steven Sacks

Other Individuals:

Amy Schrier, sold Blue.com in March 2006 for $500,000.00 [2]

Craig Lovik began exploiting the generic typo in 1998. No he owns 200,000 names, including lucrative misspellings like peircings.com and Pheonix.com

Frank Schilling made his mark buying generic .com names in 2002 and 2003, when others were fleeing the Internet. Today his portfolio of 320,000 domains is among the world's biggest, and he works out of his home in the Cayman Islands. His portfolio is estimated to be worth $20 million. Represented by Atty. Berryhill (listed below)

Garry Chernoff bought his first domain Netincome.com in 1995. By 1999, he'd quit his job as a hospital electrician, and now lives on a 10-acre lakefront spread in B.C.

Gary Kremen, sold Sex.com to Escom, an adult-entertainment company, for $12 million. [2]

Ken Carey, a longtime autoworker in Grand Rapids, MI, and a part-time inventor owns 200 names including LowCostImports.com[2]

Rick Schwartz, a.k.a. the "Domain King" runs the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference annually.
His portfolio includes HotDates.com, Property.com (cost him $750,000 in 2005), Candy.com and Widgets.com. He sold Men.com in late 2003 for $1.3 million. He originally purchased the domain for $15,000 in 1997.

Scott Day, a watermelon farmer from Waurika, OK, discovered domain names in 1997 when he bought watermelons.com for $3000. Today, he holds one of the most admired portfolios in the business

Steven Sacks, domainer based in Indianapolis - works for Kevin Ham

Yun Ye was among the first to write code to automate domain purchases. In 2004 he sold his portfolio of 100,000 names to Seattle-based Marchex for $164 million.

Corporations:

Bob Davis, Managing General Partner at Highland Capital Partners which spent $20 million on YesDirect, a holding company with 600,000 domain names. YesDirect is developing content using those names according to Davis. [2]

Bob Martin, President of Internet REIT (iREIT), a domain investment firm that has raised $125 million from private investors including Maveron, the venture firm backed by Howard Shultz (Starbucks founder).

Lawrence Fischer, vice president of business development for SmartName.com which owns thousands of domain names like Stockquotes.com.

Vendors:

John Berryhill, a top domain attorney sounds like an ass in the article[1]

sources: 1. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/06/01/100050989/index.htm
2. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-05-09-domainers_x.htm?POE=TECISVA

Sex dominates the top keywords on the Internet...

There are obvious daily basic needs: food, shelter and clothing. Then there are other needs that are quite regular, but are optional depending on our personalities and ability to control ourselves. Maslow explained in 1943 that as humans our most important and basic needs are physiological and they are: breathing, food, water, sex, sleep, homeostasis (achieving "equilibrium") and excretion (going to the bathroom). Through the Internet, we are able to ascertain the 4th one here, sex, the easiest.

Currently, if you do a check on top keywords that are searched on the Internet, you'll find a good number of them being related to sex. For example, in a recent Wordtracker report (June 19, 2007), the top keyword queries included at #1 porn, #5 was pussy, #9 was boobs and I would say a good 30 to 40 percent of the rest of the top words were related to sex.

Interesting personal anecdote: Back in 1996 when I used to work for a large dot com (actually, it was a dot net), I got my first start into domain speculation (a little), but wasn't rich. So, I bought only a few domains. One of the biggest Internet companies at the time was Doubleclick and a popular porn movie I recalled was called Deepthroat. I mixed the two together and got "deepclick.com." Well, back then, there weren't the same tools, as much regulation and the Internet was literally the "wild, wild west." Despite registering the domain, it was hijacked from me and I lost the online receipt I kept for the first 3 months somehow and was never able to retrieve the name again. Looks like it's some guy in Bangalore, India who now owns the name. I did a whois and got: Shuhaib Shariff (domain@metafusion.com). Interesting...