Domainer's Gazette-Home

I’m high on geo-domains these days.. Mainly for the development potential. From a ‘building business’ perspective, it’s pretty darn easy to establish instant credibility if you mention you’re from, say, ‘TellurideColorado.com’..

After grabbing a beer today with Charles from Snowcap Labs (thanks for the beer Charles), I came home to Rick Latona’s Daily Domains email.. he’s been serving up some gems lately, and today he served up one I began instantly chewing on..

Gadsden.com — for $19K — not a bad price in my book, really..

Gadsden Alabama is only a short trek away from Atlanta, and has a population over 100,000 - which means there’s plenty of small business advertisers who’d possibly be interested in advertising on a local blog/resource..

So I began digging.. What’s Gadsden like? There a college there? Industry?

Before I even got started, I stopped.

Why?

Cause of Rand McNally.

In 1989, Rand McNally listed Gadsden as one of the “Seven Worst Cities to Live in the United States.” (per wikipedia)..

oye..

A fantastic domain name? Yes, no doubt. Potential? Definitely.

For me? eh… I’d rather build an empire on - at least - the 8th worst or better city in the U.S. ….

I’m trying to get my hands around Macromedia Fireworks, and hacking away testing it’s features..

cutting, pasting, modifying, stretching, zooming, … you get the point.

As an exercise, I decided to drop in all the domainer blogs and publication logos out there, and mess around with those..

rather than delete my newbie masterpiece, I thought I’d dump here (as I tend to dump all my research here as well)

how about that fancy cropping on the ricklatona logo.. classy.

my apologies to elliot, frank, and modern domainer, as their logos are a bit grainy - had a bit of stretching issues.

oh, and whoops, what do you know, DG got the biggest logo..

I mentioned it a few months back, but it’s now official.

DomainerCon

…a domainer networking conference.

and it’s free. Just register and show up. (See the site for all the details)

We’re tentatively scheduling it from 5-7pm, but chances are it’ll last longer than that.

Why don’t you drop by, say hello?

in no specific order:

• For the most part, .ws .biz and .cc domains are worthless.
• SEO domaining is not easy. I’m not saying this to discourage competitors. I’m saying it cause it’s starting to beat me, rather than me it.
• Network Solutions sucks.
• There are too many domaining blogs that report ‘breaking news’. If you hit Domaining.com at the right moment, a large percentage of the headlines will read the exact same thing.
• Monte Cahn likes bowling shirts (with the Moniker logo stitched in).
     
• When you buy a domain direct, if at all possible, create your own account at the same registrar. Why? Transferring into another account usually takes a few hours. Transferring away, to another registrar, takes up to 5 days. In other words, 5 days for the seller to get cold feet and back out.
• The more I domain, the more I like Geo names.
• Ron Jackson, of DN Journal, works his butt off and should be thanked by every domainer for his efforts.
• And since we’re on Ron, I wish he’s only sell static ads on his site. There’s only so many swirling, swooshing, rotating, flashing ads my brain can register. (I just counted 15 on his homepage)..don’t get mad Ron, I’m just sayin’…
• Domainers LOVE conferences.

And finally -

• Domainers, for the most part, like to live 1. near a beach, or 2. in Canada.

..so, do you domain? what have you learned?

thought I’d throw in my two cents on the state of the domain name market. It’s a small microcosm of the rest of the industry, but I think it speaks volumes where this market is (and where it’s headed).

On 3/15, I was in NameJet attempting to win the domain TourismOfIndia.com. It got a bit out of my price range, though, so I passed. It ended up selling for $8,888 to bidder ‘ amitabhbachchan’.

Curious to see what the new owner would do with the property, I continued to visit the domain every other day. And each time, I’d find nothing.

After a few weeks passed, I was surprised to see the name re-enter the auction process at NameJet (guess the original buyers flaked). The new auction completion date was scheduled for 3/31.

I watched again. I bid again. And the domain jumped out of my price range again. Like any second round auction’s I’ve typically seen in the real world, or online, the second go-round price tends to drop a bit from the original sale.

Guess what? The darn thing sold for *more* on the second go-round.. $9,100 to be specific, from a bidder who was silent during the first auction (alias is ‘vanuatu’).

how’s that for proof of a strong domain market?

I’m in an inspired state lately. I splurged and hit the Elite Retreat last week, and it lit a fire under my arse (pardon my french).

High level, I needed some direction for this small business of mine. I’ve got great names, but I was a little gray on how I should properly monetize each property. Elite Retreat is designed to give folks like me direction. And it did.

My direction, now, will involve Wordpress heavily, and building out a majority of my domains on that platform (which DG runs on as well)

I understand high level use and management of WP, but could use some in-depth education. This lead me to buy Lisa Sabin-Wilson’s ‘Wordpress for Dummies’ book (which has been well reviewed - - - Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Wordpress, even wrote the forward)…(and coincidentally, Matt was even a speaker at Elite Retreat..)

So… third part in, she’s covering the establishment of self-hosted Wordpress. First step, you guessed it, buying a domain name. She quickly runs through the steps of buying a name. Then as I turn the page, there’s a highlighted section titled ‘Domain Names: Do you own or rent?’.. I read on..

In reality, when you “buy” a domain name, you really don’t own it. Rather, you’re purchasing the right to use the domain name for the period of time specified in your order.

..textbook stuff, but worthwhile to highlight, as this would be a muddy aspect of the business for newbies. The next paragraph I read made me smile, but slightly miffed as well.

Be aware. however, that when your registration period ends and you don’t renew that domain name, you lose it - and most often you’ll lose it right away to someone who preys on abandonded or expired domain names. Some people keep a close watch on expiring domain names, and as soon as the buying window opens, they snap the names up and start using them for their own websites, in hopes of taking full advantage of the popularity that the previous owner worked so hard to attain.

wow. I guess you could say I disagree with this statement.

I hope she understands that we buy names that have been abandoned. We’re not stalking these things from a dark alley way. And Lord only knows how many times a registrar will email an owner reminding them to re-up. It’s not like these things are vanishing from their accounts..

She’s entitled to her opinion, though. But if she stands by it, she should give the registrars some grief for allowing them to be auctioned off..right? They’re the ones creating the marketplace.

and another thing, Merriam-Webster defines ‘prey‘ as

one that is helpless or unable to resist attack

do we prey? eh, nah.

are we opportunistic? um, yes.