Ask Frank a Question:

Ask your question about domain names paid search or anything I post about, and I will do my level-best to answer you.  Select the Comments text below:

Posted on February 21st, 2007 in Ask Frank a Question: |

Comments

  1. Posted by Tia Wood | February 21st, 2007 at 10:45 am

    Lucky are the ones who recognized what value domains held 10 years ago. But not so lucky for the ones who are basically just beginning today. What is the best advice you can give domainers who are stepping onto the train today but still early enough to catch the ride?

  2. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 11:14 am

    I think the opportunities today are in the secondary market and development. The name frankschilling.com got no visits 3 days ago now it gets 200 unique a day (that’s development) You can still get great deals on names privately. That is only 200 people out of perhaps 10,000 who globally participate in this industry. Against that backdrop you are still sooo early. So you might not scoop up hundreds of generics a day at registration p[rice. But if you are persistent in this business, you will thrive Tia.

  3. Posted by HairyApe | February 21st, 2007 at 11:36 am

    Since this is your personal blog (these are the questions I always wanted to ask you):

    1. I’ve heard that you were financially successful before domains. If that’s true in what other industry you made your money before you got into administrating internet names?

    2. What made you start in this particular business? When and how did you started in it? Was your original idea to be like most others, acquire to sell for profit, or did you strictly follow what Ult was doing? Do you remember when and how did you get the vision that “law of large numbers” can only work in your favor?

    3. When you could have pretty much any name in the world, why “Name Administration” exactly (sounds a bit bureaucratically plain and boring)? And how come you don’t change NA homesite web design? It looks outdated and very early 90ish, which is fine, but I think you are deserving of much better front presence. I think your audience, your business partners and your fans sort of expect that of you.

    Thank you.

  4. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    1. I made a little money in real estate.. but I was not fabulously wealthy, far from it. I just took a risk that paid off.

    2. I really want to answer this for you but out of respect for somebody who’s writing something fairly detailed about all that I will hold back. There is nothing with a freshness date in the answer that will hold you back from succeeding in the current environment or I would answer you now.

    3. When I started the company I thought I would be doing alot more work managing other people’s names/portfolios. We still do some of that, but the name just sort of stuck. We started building a reputation in the space. When people live in a place like the Cayman Islands and rebrand their company they have a tendency to look like their running from something. We just didn’t want to give that incorrect impression. Our website is just there to explain what we do. You would not believe how many clever folks just don’t understand this space or what we do. They think there must be a catch. We’ll get around to redesigning at some point. I promise (thanks for your kind words) :)

  5. Posted by stuff | February 21st, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Mind me asking about the company?
    is your staff also located in cayman?
    If so, are You hiring :)?

  6. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    At the moment we are fully hired. We have staff in Cayman/BVI and we use the same services you guys do to get drops buy lists etc.

  7. Posted by HairyApe | February 21st, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    >>”2. I really want to answer this for you but out of respect for somebody who’s writing something fairly detailed about all that I will hold back.”< <

    So you are saying, between the lines, that there’s your autobiography coming out soon :) (Or at leats a book about the industry’s biggest players?? :) Well, fair enough.

    And if it’s not too much to ask, two more quick ones I forgot to include previously por favor.

    4. There’s an impression that you don’t buy domains from small players at various domain forums, and I mean domains that you would ordinarilly find very attractive (quality wise and price wise). Curious why that is? Why only acquire through bidding (eitheir in drops or in auctions)?

    5. What’s your take on IDN’s?

    And inre: “kind words” ;), there’s plenty of those from me too trust me, but those are easy. Besides, I have a feeling you get way too many kind words and admiring glances from those who have some vested interest in you, but far less more straight, honest feedback. When you’re on top there’s tendency to be sheltered from the ordinary.

  8. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    There are at least 2 books being written about the domain (Domainer) space that I have heard of (Perhaps more coming)

    #4 will be answered in the next issue of Domainer Magazine and I can answer #5:

    I like IDNs I think IDN traffic exists now, in the form of error traffic going to ISP’s in countries where non latin keyboards are used. Ultimately they are regional though. If you are going to sell things globally you need latin characters. In the final analysis IDN’s are valuable because of type-in traffic… Type-in traffic depends on user behavior. You are not going to get people in Mexico typing Arabic symbols and you are not going to get the French typing Chinese.

  9. Posted by Tia Wood | February 21st, 2007 at 2:58 pm

    Thanks for answering my question!

    This might be a stupid question but if I hear it from you, I’ll take it more to heart. :)
    Is it better to purchase domains privately (person to person and places such as pool, snapnames, etc) versus publicly (through forums)? I seem to waste time scouting public forums for that “one great domain” that someone is willing to let go for a discount. And I’ve had a tad luck with that.

    However, I always feel like I’m wasting my time and money (because I seem to pick up a few duds on the way from impulse shopping).

    Would I be better off saving my money for the private purchases versus scouting public forums? Or in other words: where is the best place to shop for domains for domain investors?

  10. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    Shopping privately almost always guarantees you the best deal (and the most upside appreciation) Like those companies advertising on latenight TV going town to town buying estate jewelry.. or garage sale shopping - you never know when you’ll find that vintage Patek wristwatch or a copy of the Declaration of Independence in the back of a picture. But its hard work. Shopping the auctions is easier but that ‘ease’ comes at a premium.

  11. Posted by Stuff | February 21st, 2007 at 3:10 pm

    Where did this car blog go:)?

  12. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    Filed under ‘Wretched Excess’ to make way for domain stuff :)

  13. Posted by Tia Wood | February 21st, 2007 at 3:23 pm

    I really hope you’re enjoying this because another question popped into my head! Knowledgewise, I really feel like I’ve outgrown the beginner’s nest (hanging out at domain name forums) but I don’t feel ready to pursue a place such as Rick Schwartz’s community.

    Now that I’ve flown the beginner’s nest, I’m beginning to network and read like crazy. However, I’d still like a community that I can learn more from. I’m not saying that I could ever learn anything again from the forums I began at; it just seems like I’m reading repetitious things and giving advice more than learning.

    Is there a place for people like me who are somewhere in the middle?

    Thanks again!

    Tia

  14. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 3:36 pm

    Domainstate.com has excellent info.. as good as any TIA. It’s not the forum necessarily it’s what’s inside that counts.. You should really try to go to Targetedtraffic.com as an attendee next week. You will meet so many people. So much opportunity at a show like that. Really. + Vegas is cheap fun and easy.

  15. Posted by Adam Strong | February 21st, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    Everyone knows you “dont sell” , however I’ve seen names appear on the radar that have “changed hands”. . . .So ….really how often do you sell domains? What determines wether or not you make a sale? How do you/your company value a domain and wether or not its time to sell it?

  16. Posted by Frank | February 21st, 2007 at 5:40 pm

    That’s a really great question Adam. You know names sales are a funny thing. I tell all who care to listen that selling domains is not my core business. I really don’t want an offer to sell our names (I would be sooo happy if nobody ever emailed again with an unsolicited name-sale proposal). We are still building out the network (and you are going to see some significant changes in regard to the network in the coming months). Alot of our names are search terms with huge Overture style (search) rank so while a name like SexualDysfunction.com only gets 1 unique a day, it has a huge search phrase rank of people looking for it in the search engines. We don’t get any traffic from search engines right now. We’re too big and PPC pages don’t meet the engine’s criterial so they actively work to block us. As a SIDEBAR: we don’t necessarily want that traffic. If we are providing useful products the traffic will find us (and Google (for example) blocking all URLS’s ultimately serves to weaken Google’s usefulness not ours (if people are typing our [and your] URLs in Google’s search box and Google gives back any result but y[our] URL website [because their algo says ‘Eeek ppc’], thats not useful). So we get our browser type-in traffic and we improve our pages. Anyway, I would be shooting myself in the foot if I sold a name with a reasonance and brandability such as SexualDysfunction.com (both feet if I sold it based on PPC value). The sales you do see (and let me be clear that we have sold names), occurr when respectful well minded attorneys and investors (or companies) put forth a polite considerate and meaningful proposal that justifies us stopping what we do to consider the value proposition in selling a particular name. It rarely happens. But it it does happen. Then again we have received offers in the last two weeks for $120,000+ which we have flatly rejected because the names are too valuable (in those particular cases it equated to 100+ years PPC revenue). Hope this adds some color.

  17. Posted by Gabe | February 22nd, 2007 at 3:01 pm

    1. I know you’ve mentioned that the next step for you is development, but can you be more specific on your future intentions? I know with such a large portfolio of names, scalability is a problem. With a portfolio of names in the hundreds of thousands like Name Administration, it seems that is will almost be impossible to develop and customize each domain asset to maximize it’s fullest potential in terms of overall earnings. What is your take on this issue?

    2. It seems that your revenue model is strictly based on PPC income (correct me if I’m wrong)… what are your thoughts of expanding into the affiliate marketing game and Click-Per-Action revenue model to compliment PPC? I’ve been exploring this method myself and found that with very little development (paid $75 for custom landing page), Ive increased my ROI dramatically ($10/mo in ppc v.s. $150 in first 2 weeks with CPA). I’m sure you have a ton of generic domains that would kill it in the Affiliate Marketing game with little development and maintenance. Any interest in this arena?

    I look forward to your response and many more blog posts in the future!

  18. Posted by Frank | February 22nd, 2007 at 4:19 pm

    Thanks Gabe! CPM and CPA are problematic at this point because they are time consuming.. there are alot of little moving parts.. If one could automate the whole affair you’re right, you’d really have something and revenues would go way up. Thats not an option for large commercial registrants without lots of staff or automated tools. We have expirimented with rudimentary development lately.. personalloans.com makes almost twice the revenues it did when we ran it with the template at blackgold.com. The extra development (right side content) at personalloans.com now has added alot to the party (nearly 100% improvement). The next step is blindingly simple so obvious.. it incorporates content.. paid search listings.. It will dramatically increase return visits.. You will see that across our health vertical shortly (1 month) and I’ll blog about it when I get it live.

  19. Posted by Gabe | February 22nd, 2007 at 6:40 pm

    Thanks for the quick reply!

    Here’s a hypothetical:

    If you absolutely had to sell your domain portfolio, but the buyer said they would let you keep any 10 domains…which would you keep?

  20. Posted by Frank | February 22nd, 2007 at 7:11 pm

    That is a tough question Gabe.. mostly personal names.. mine, my wife’s, sevenmile.com < –myblog, that sort of thing. It might have come up in the past ;)

  21. Posted by Murphys Law | February 24th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    Hi Frank,
    Just to re-visit your take on IDNs.
    Traffic to IDNs is slowly increasing, not up there with ASCII keywords yet but Im sure it will equal or possibly even outperform ASCII at some point. When you say they are regional, that is true but when you consider that English is not the most widely spoken language it kinda puts a different spin on it. There are 2 or 3? times the number of Mandarin speakers for example.
    Certainly internet penetration is not on a par with the US or Europe when compared to China or India for example but this demographic is changing and the ‘playing field’ as it were, will eventually level out. IDNs are an area where there are a lot of detractors and this is a natural human reaction to something that is not fully understood. I guess it is also an attempt, whether conscious or subconsciously to protect the interests of ASCII domainers as IDNs will only continue to encroach on ASCII domain territory. I also believe IDNs offer the best (And possibly the last?) big opportunity for a novice domainer to grab a piece of the action without having to find $xxx,xxx - $x,xxx,xxx to buy a half-way decent ASCII keyword. Yes it is more difficult for someone who doesn’t speak the language of their target domains but that is a hurdle easily overcome with a bit of work and willingness to learn. As for selling things globally I wouldn’t really mind too much if my Chinese character domain cracked the 1.3 billion Chinese market and fell flat on it’s face in the Latin character using world.
    All the best Frank
    PS. If you’re looking for some top notch IDNs you know where to get hold of me .. ;>)

  22. Posted by Frank | February 24th, 2007 at 8:04 pm

    http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/international_d.html

  23. Posted by Dan | February 26th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

    What type of tool do you use to manage all of your domains?

  24. Posted by Frank | February 26th, 2007 at 2:30 pm

    We use a simple internally developed database.. Think of a large server-side excel sheet with lots of columns and data.

  25. Posted by Gabe | February 26th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    A common theme with successful entrepreneurs is the ability to go against the crowd…buck the trend - place all your chips in the pot while everyone else is passively standing by, waiting to jump on the bandwagon once the road is already paved.

    I started investing domains back in 2000 but soon after the dot com crash in 2001, I (regretfully) lost faith in the long term value of domain names and decided to focus more of my time in other ventures. It wasn’t until January of 2006, that I got back into the domain arena thanks to a brilliant Business 2.0 article on the booming industry of virtual real estate by someone that you know fairly well, Paul Sloan. This was my “Epiphany” - my sudden realization that my investment focus should be in domains, not real estate, stocks, gold or other commodities.

    It’s been well documented that leaders in this industry like yourself, Rick Schwartz, Yun Yee and a few others had the intuition and foresight to go “all in” when it wasn’t necessarily the popular thing to do. What was your “Epiphany” - that moment that triggered the light bulb in your head to believe that quality domain names would be the best commodities to invest in?

  26. Posted by Frank | February 26th, 2007 at 8:27 pm

    I was so late in domains. I was online in 1994 and actually had the thought when typing my 20th name that didn’t resolve: “I wonder how you get that website name in .com?” I even worked for a small tech co in 1995.. Then I went back to some chatroom and surfing for porn. I could have just as easily missed all this. Rick Schwartz had made his fortune before I had good names. There is a book coming out which is quite evocative (I don’t want to spoil that because I think it will be an interesting read) The catalyst moment was when Gary Chernoff (Friend of mine who was earlier in names than I) mentioned the Overture search tool. Big names (dictionary words) were gone but search terms (eatingdisorders.com etc) would expire or go to auction and nobody would really target these because they were not deemed that interesting. Many great ones were still available. I was really late. Being late in this space has actually taught me alot about market timing. In alot of respects it’s better to be late than early. If you’re too early you can miss it too by giving up when things might have gotten better or by not having momentum on your side. You’ll be hearing alot about the ‘domain book’s’ coming out on a forum near you as the year draws to a close. There are so many substories and inticacies that you might find fascinating about it that it does no justice to tell it to you now, in this venue.

  27. Posted by Harvey Kaplan | February 27th, 2007 at 6:15 am

    My question:

    When I take a trip to visit Cayman, do I get to share a beer with Frank? :)

    **** For you Havey always F:)

  28. Posted by Mike in Vancouver | February 27th, 2007 at 2:13 pm

    Is it true or just an urban myth that you started the cinqo de mayo event at the Roxy in Vancouver?

  29. Posted by Frank | February 27th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

    That is true Mike! I beleive I’m also still the holder of Vancouver’s Port Mann Bridge speed record.

  30. Posted by Mike in Vancouver | February 27th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

    Well Frank, if I ever come to the Caymans, maybe we can shatter the 7 mile speed record together!

    ***** sounds good sir! Its so slow you could sprint for it ;)

  31. Posted by Sahar Sarid | February 27th, 2007 at 11:58 pm

    Hi Franky,
    I see you quite often you consult your wife about your business dealings (”The white house”, fruit.net purchase, etc).
    What are the relationship dynamics between the two of you when it comes to the way you invest, the things you do?

    **** Same as any successful relationship I guess. I get to buy the car I want.. then she’s the boss :)

  32. Posted by Rob Sequin | February 28th, 2007 at 1:09 pm

    Frank,

    Since, you have some great Cuba domains and live so close to Cuba, do you have an interest in Cuba on any level?

    Above Gabe mentioned something about successful investors being “all in” when everyone else is waiting on the sidelines. I like that quote since I feel that I am close to being “all in” with my Havana Journal and Cuba domain portfolio. I have been buying Cuba domains since 1998 and publishing the Havana Journal for four years. LOTS of time and money are “all in” for me.

    If you do have an eye on Cuba, do you have any advice on how to play Cuba for the near future and/or longer term?

    Thank you.

    Rob

    (Same Rob from SearchDomainsForSale.com :-)

    ***** Cuba is going to be huge if and when they open up. There are weekly flights from here.. you should go.. They do not stamp your passport.

  33. Posted by Rob Sequin | February 28th, 2007 at 3:04 pm

    Thanks. I have been there, legally on business on US Treasury license. Maybe TRAFFIC 2008 South… in Havana :-)
    **** Ha! That would be cool!~

  34. Posted by Russ | March 1st, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Hi Frank-

    Why the love affair with .net domains?

    -Russ

    P.S. kudos on the blog, I hope you’re still getting some “real work” done! ;)
    ***FS*** I like .nets cuz they have traffic.. and alot of the world that identifies .com names as US centric, prefers the agnostic .net (not to re-ignite the IDN debate, but alot people may find they have more success with .net in IDNs for the reason that theyu seem more international and non-us centric). Also .nets are relatively cheap so there is more headroom for relative appreciation. All things equal I prefer the .com tho.

  35. Posted by JB | March 1st, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    Hi Frank,

    I really appreciate your blog, it is very insightful and brings very valuable information.

    I’d like to ask you two questions, I’d like to hear your take on these:

    1. Have you ever drilled down into the differences in demographics for a typical search engine user and a typical person typing in domains? My take is that the latter tends to have a bigger representation of females + tends to be of older age, do you see this the same way?

    2. My second question sort of builds up to this. Have you noticed that different countries have different type-in bahaviour. My observation is that for example Americans are more likely to type in a domain name than a UK citizen (I am obviously taking into account the differences in populations here as well so the data can be compared). Also my belief is that when an American arrives on a landing page, he is more likely to click than a Brit for example. Do you have the same observation? What do you think the reasons for this are?

    Thanks in advance,
    Jan

  36. Posted by Frank | March 1st, 2007 at 9:55 pm

    ***FS*** That is a Super good question Jan. I think the gender/age question really comes down to the type of name inventory you own. Our ‘Games’ vertical is mainly kids, probably boys. Our ‘Cars’ vert is probably 18-34 Men. Then we have a faily large ‘Beauty’ vertical that attracts women. Its funny you should mention the UK.. We run a portfolio of about 4000 pretty good .co.uk names .. they get very consistent type-ins and generate strong revenue. The pound is much stronger than the dollar and we monetize through Yahoo (Europe).. I have never looked very closely at the percentage of people clicking through based by geographical IP address. I do think different cultures have different expectations of product quality. Your average Opel has a much higher level of fit and finish than your average Chevrolet because Europeans demand it. So it stands to reason if you run a uniform “one style fits all countries” page implementation, you might not draw as many clicks.

  37. Posted by Omar | March 1st, 2007 at 10:41 pm

    Frank,

    Can you share with us the earnings seasonality for traffic domains? In general, how do you expect earnings to be this year?

  38. Posted by Bob Luther | March 2nd, 2007 at 1:50 pm

    Hi Frank,
    You commented “We don’t get any traffic from search engines right now. We’re too big and PPC pages don’t meet the engine’s criterial so they actively work to block us.” My question is about a domain that does not have the benefit of being a type-in domain, but benefits from search traffic because of its history. The domain is well indexed in the search engines because it had a business website on it for years.
    January was the first full month it was parked, and it got 2803 uniques and 308 clicks. But in February it dropped drastically to 160 uniques and 18 clicks. I dont think anything changed except that Google, for instance, probably detected that it is now parked. Do you think that is what affected it? If so, it makes me think that I cannot park a name like this…I need to have a developed site to continue to get the traffic from the search engines. If I go that route, will the search engines still clobber it if the developed site has some Google ads or affiliate links on it also….or will that not be used against it? OK, now my accountant suggests a question…could the search engines be ‘de-listing’ it because the DNS has been changed to point to a parking company…as opposed to simply checking the content of the site to determine whether it is parked content or true developed content? Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

  39. Posted by Edwin | March 5th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

    If you had to start all over again, and had $100K in your account, what would be your strategy?

    ***FS*** Great question Edwin… I would try to buy high quality names 50 of them by making $2000-$5000 offers through whois.. calling registrants and emailing.. then I’d put them into a PPC and reinvest the profits into more buying names.. resell the odd good one for a profit and again reinvest as much as possible (plowing all the money back in). You do all this part time until you get critical mass. That’s the trick of the biz.. get to the point that you can do it full time. Once you’re a full timer you have an instant advantage over many others. You can take some time to develop. I am reasonably sure that even today you could buy 50 names like those I am picturing at 2000-5000 each. (names like rumcakes.com <–i just paid 4k) I could live off that one name.. Name gets 10 visits a day. You could put up a simple site shipping prepackaged rumcakes.. Dropshipping. (I gave away $18,000 worth of rumcakles last Xmas).. 10 visits a day is 3650 customers a year looking for rumcakes (with no content there really) you could make $2,000,000+ per year off that one single domain by developing and creating a rudimentary business at the name.. That’s the power of the internet. Levering the built in type-in-traffic embodied within the name into something bigger.

  40. Posted by Cherminator | March 6th, 2007 at 5:20 am

    Franky, I miss you and wish you were here. It’s just not the same here without you.
    :-(
    G

    ***FS*** Save me a chair at Slack’s Vern and I are coming into Penticton this summer .. then maybe a vegas trip together? I miss you too sir :(

  41. Posted by Edwin Sherman | March 6th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    Great answer! The one last question I have is: Why do you register names like BootDiskFailures.com and SeattleVideoSurveillance.com. Names like this get few to no searches (according to WordTracker and Overture), have 0 incoming links, and I’m guessing very few (if any) type-ins. Why do you buy these sort of names? How exactly are you making money if they receive little to no traffic?

    Edwin Sherman

    PS: Your rumcakes.com example reminded me of this rags-to-riches domain story in Newsweek:
    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17030580/site/newsweek/

    ***FS*** What’s funny about that particular link you chose is that I sold him ‘unicycles.com’ (brokered the sale in 2002).. small world. I like names like those you illustrated because linguistically speaking there are not alot of search term combos that make sense:
    boot disk failures: 543 <– gets some overture rank and you can sell highly bidded ‘hard disk recovery’ paid search listings.
    seattle video surveillance is actually an anomally .. it was bought with a third party in mind.. but that name notwithstanding, we are not perfect.. we do make mistakes. Check the Overture rank though and you’ll see most of our search-term style names have a ‘user search’ heartbeat as with bootdiskfailures.com. Still last point.. many of these names represent future opportunities we believe in, but don’t constitute the bulk of our revenue generating inventory. Thats why we want low renewal fees for our names..

    A great deal of the names we (and others) own have no revenue at all.. If renewals go up we start saying, why are we carrying this weight? A great deal of Verisign’s recent revenue increase has come from low renewal fees and tasting.. as they raise the bar they are going to have to be careful to pick the magic level where they don’t loose too many renewals as a result of price increases (Sidebar item but relevant to your question).

  42. Posted by Mike | March 7th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

    In regards to PPC/domain parking, no advertising, straight type in traffic only; how much of a role does the TLD play in the success of a parked domain? Logic would dictate that a .com always outperforms a .net/.org, etc.
    I have a healthy mix of several TLDs, yet i’m wondering if i shouldn’t just capitalize on .com domains and sell/drop the rest?

    any advice appreciated!

    ***FS*** alot of this comes down to common sense.. Mortgages.org gets one unique a day. If I owned the .com it would be more like 1000-2000 a day. If I owned a name like charity.org it might actually do better than the .com … some .net’s do as well as the com but by and large .com is king for type-in traffic. Everytime a user watches tv everytime they see a print ad, a billboard , that gets reinforced.

  43. Posted by Gabe | March 8th, 2007 at 12:17 am

    It seems that your blog is getting quite popular since your first entry less than a month ago…great stuff - keep it coming! By the way, any big purchases at the auction today?

    ***FS*** I actually didn’t buy that much.. I took seven names for 142,000.. the best one I bought was homeforeclosures.com for $90,000. There were alot of great names but I honestly have alot of trouble opening my wallet at these auctions because of the auction fever dynamic that goes on. Still its great fun to attend one and to get a sense of the size of the industry.. Maybe 5% of those in the domain business attend these things.. maybe 1% of global participants.. Its exciting to watch the industry mature.

  44. Posted by Dan Cera aka DomainTrader.ca | March 8th, 2007 at 2:48 am

    Frank:

    I found it interesting given his company’s Canadian presence that Geo Sign founder Tim Nye said that when he saw a “.ca domain on a flyer, I think small-term local firm”

    I am not sure what small-term local firm means exactly but I’m assuming its a typo and the reference was to small-town or small-time or something like that.

    I personally think Tim underestimates the inhernet value in country code traffic. While .ca suffers from a demographic problem due to a lack of population the traffic generated there when targeted converts very well.

    Yahoo, ebay, amazon…don’t think Canada too small and even though he says it says small time Tim’s company saw fit to register geosign.ca.

    As you have ties to Canada and an investment in the .ca namespace yourself I wanted to ask your thoughts, experiences and opinions on the value and future of .ca domain names specifically.

    There is no question that .com is king but after that where do you think cctlds fit in to the future of the web.

    ***FS*** I think you’re right. .ca is everywhere in Canada. My opinion is: .ca names are good in Canada, but if you want to do substantial business globally you don’t need (but should have/try to acquire) the .com .. In America .us will never be as popular (never catch on) like .de did in Germany or .ca did in canada because .com is so entrenched in the culture. You have a decade of branding, a trillion+ dollars in global marketing pushing the.com brand. I think Tim believes there is value in some CCtlds and alternate tlds, but if you want to Lever-up borrow money against your internet business.. during this early phase, .com is it. .com has the traffic. Follow the traffic, follow the money. I think certain CCTlds do well because of currencies and languages. The visitor can expect the British pound, the Canadian Currency or German language and Euro prices.. like that. I like .CN names because the Chinese are nationalistic/’middle kingdom’ oriented. They will want the .cn but if they want to do business blobally, .com will still have the advantage for a few decades

  45. Posted by Gabe | March 8th, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    I wanted to hear your thoughts on typo names and traffic. More and more I’ve been hearing the whisperings that new smarter browsers will eliminate typos - and that domain holders with typos should unload them now before they are worthless. Now what I can’t comprehend is that how would the browser tell if the domain is actually a typo? I mean, look at all these names that are being branded into full fledged successful companies; freindster.com, flickr.com, digg.com. I can understand that there are browsers that can correct the tld’s like if someone typed in .cm instead of .com, but I can’t see how a browser can automatically assume that I meant to type in forsalebyowner.com when I actually typed in forsalebyowener.com.

    Now I understand that branding a typo name to represent your online company is probably not the best route (only companies that don’t rely on type-ins, i.e. digg, can get away with this), but ultimately you can always brand a catchy name that gets few if any type-ins and redirect the typo domain to point to your branded name (ex. Brand FSBOHomes.com and redirect forsalebyowener.com which gets over 300 uniques/mo.). Ultimately, instead of having to pay Yahoo/Google $2 per click ($600/mo. for 300 visitors), you just saved yourself $7200 a year on advertising since you already own that targeted traffic. You would think that advertisers that buy this type of traffic at Yahoo/Google would be knocking on the door to buy this domain for $14,400 so that they could own this traffic for life rather than pay $14,400 for 2 years of advertisement via Yahoo/Google. Yet, the number represents over 8 years ppc earnings and paying this much for this typo would be foolish to many “domain investors”. (This brings it back to the whole Sendori business model - eliminating the the two middle men, ppc company and Yahoo/Google, and going straight to the traffic buyer).

    What I’m getting to is even though generic typos have little “brandable” value, they ultimately have “traffic” value which we all know is the alpha denominator in generating sales online. With this said…I have 3 questions:

    ***FS*** Very well thought through comments Gabe!

    1. What is your take on the feasibility of future browsers being able to somehow recognize and correct a typo name which would dramatically decrease typo domains?

    ***FS*** Highly unlikely IMO.. its too problematic because as you pointed out “what exactly is a Typo?” Flickr, digg and even deel.com example I used in this post: http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/when_is_a_typo_.html .. its very hard for the browser to modify user intent without ramification. Sites change and today’s typo becomes tomorrow’s brandable variant. Consider that its 2007.. they can’t stop spam (I have a spam filter and still get it), they can’t stop pop-ups (i have ie7 popblocker and still get them), how are they going to stop folks from navigating to the sites they actually want.. the action is so benign.

    2. What valuation models do you use to value your typos - 3x, 5x, 7x years ppc revenue, etc.?

    ***FS*** Depends on the viewpoint of the party taking on the risk I suppose. For me, I don’t like trademark typos (they have a minus multiple because I actively try to avoid or delete problems), but a brandable variant like deel.com if I could get it.. I’d pay whatever I could within reason.. We don’t really use the “multiple of ppc” rule because my deal may be different than the sellers. ie. sellers 10x may be my 3x. I don’rt like typos that aren’t brandable or are overt such as: dfeal.com <— deal.com primarily because they are not brandable… I guess I would focus on typos that are “not really typos” like dogz.com (yes, the ’s’ is next to the ‘z’ on my qwerty keyboard.. but being a typo is just not what ‘dogz’ is about. Its street-slang .. see where I’m going with that?

    3. Do you see advertisers in future bypassing the big boys Yahoo/Google and going straight to the domain owners to buy or lease TYPO traffic (if so, we are greatly undervaluing typo domains - don’t you think)?

    ***FS*** We are seeing that now.. savvy advertisers approaching to buy verticals direct. Its a very easy sell.. You can hear the lightbulb going on, on the other end of the line and the excitement in their voice as they contemplate the prospect of all these potential leads “refreshing” to their site. We sell verticals of traffic that include generic brandable variant names like dogz; so yes.. I could see aggressive advertisers coming after typos as well as generics.

    Your insight is always appreciated and I hope you still got time to finish your “real work” now that you got this blog going.\

    ***FS*** Its hard.. but rewarding.

  46. Posted by Frank's fan | March 9th, 2007 at 12:16 am

    I have a few undeveloped 1999 adult and bodybuilding domain names how on earth do i get them valued when they would only be of interest to those guys very familiar with those two fields.

    ***FS*** I would not worry about getting you name ‘valued’ appraisals don’t help sell names. The person buying your name will not care about your appraisal. the only place appraisals work is in the mortgage/housing business where they are standardized and required for borrowing. Try selling your exgirlfriends engagement ring when you have an approaisal for $5000, you’re asking $3000 and there are 20 of them that are bigger and better on ebay for $1000.
    Plug your names in through a parking service, see if they have any traffic/make money; then write the aggregator saying you have a generic name that gets (for example) 12 uniques a day, making $X a month.. What’s it worth? You will get an email back.. and that number will be a lowball wholesale.

  47. Posted by Drewbert | March 9th, 2007 at 11:56 pm

    Dear Abby,

    What’s your position on hyphenated keyword names.

    Sincerely,

    Concerned bystander.

    ***FS*** Ha!~ I likem’ skate-boarding.com one of my fav’s these get traffic but its clearly more muted than no dash (with rare exceptions)

  48. Posted by David Wrixon (aka Rubber Duck) | March 10th, 2007 at 2:32 am

    Frank,

    This is not really a question. It is a suggestion.

    If you have any aspirations in the IDN market, this is an opportunity you should not pass over.

    http://www.idnforums.com/forums/2112-a-bold-foolish-experiment-entire-japanese-idn-portfolio-for-sale.html

    If you think Edwin is close associate of mine then ask around, he is not, but this is one of the best Japanese Domain portfolios in the business. Maybe even the best! In 12 months time selling this will look like an act of suicide.

    Best Regards
    Dave Wrixon

  49. Posted by Brad | March 11th, 2007 at 4:03 pm

    Frank - I work for a very large company that has many businesses, including media properties. From what I can tell, I am the most knowledgeable person in the entire (very large) organization about domains - I’m probably also the most passionate.

    I have had little success in convincing my company (or even my business unit) that we should be spending a lot of money to lock up the good real estate before it is gone. The general response is, “we don’t have the cash right now and need to make the numbers for the quarter. Besides - all the media companies are consolidating their properties under one domain - they aren’t going to multiple domains “(games.yahoo.com, movies.yahoo.com). I tell them that it isn’t a single expense for one quarter - that we can write it off over 15 years and that we need to own the category - blah blah but nobody gets excited.

    This company could spend millions on names without any troubles but I’m having trouble getting buy-in.

    Any suggestions? Any data / examples (especially from media business) of people going the many domains route v.s. single domains? I think barry diller is a good example - they have all sorts of similar businesses using different names (tickets, loans etc) - but any suggestions would be great.

    Thanks in advance,

    Brad

    ***FS*** and just try buying a good name.. I know folks who have tried to buy launch.com and altavista.com from yahoo.. no traction. They are scared to sell in case the give something up that they handn’t anticipated. I really don’t have a further piece of advice that I haven’t already given on this.. Even if I had a great one it probably wouldn’t be in my best interest to give it out as I’d still like to try to capitalze in the secondary market (buying names) over the next few years myself. Prroctor and Gamble got it a few years ago buying alot of great domains .. so did J&J (baby.com) Kay Jewelers (Gold.com) .. I can honestly say I don’t have a convincing statement that you can make to a quarterly focussed company in order to illustrate the potential in locking up the right domain names now.

  50. Posted by Gabe | March 11th, 2007 at 9:46 pm

    “T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West’s Live Domain Auction organized in conjuntion with http://www.Moniker.com yielded over $4,000,000 in sales on Wednesday this week. Rumors have it that the domain name porn.com did exchange hands privately after the auction ended for $7,000,000, making it one of the largest domain transactions so far.”

    Just read this on domainnews.com. Have you heard these rumors that porn.com actually did sell after the auction?

    ***FS*** I have not.. but I know that Monte tried very hard to make the deal go on the block that afternoon. That’s a huge purchase and would not surprise me to hear that it in fact closed. As a quick aside, I have heard of several deals for millions of dollars (hotel.com, hotels.com etc) That went for many millions, but you will never hear about them due to NDA’s.

  51. Posted by Rob Sequin | March 12th, 2007 at 10:59 pm

    Frank,

    I have seen rumors about ATT buying Yahoo? Do you think that would ever happen and what are your thoughts on a new Yahoo run by ATT?

    ***FS*** I had heard that too but never pictured it actually happenig.. Watch.. it will happen tomorrow or something. Let me think about this and get back to you if I have a great vision or something. Hey.. maybe Google will mysteriously start loading slower web-wide ;)

  52. Posted by Franky Tong | March 13th, 2007 at 5:08 pm

    I stumbled across this: http://www.domainpreserve.org/ I chuckled and thought you might enjoy it :)
    ***FS*** Funny!

  53. Posted by Edwin Sherman | March 13th, 2007 at 5:15 pm

    Quick question: Is the ICA membership fee an annual or lifetime fee? I can’t find this info on the site.

    ***FS*** Thanks Edwin.. I beleive its annual. The good new is that ICA dollars get spent.. I personally donate alot to the group as a public service to help those who are starting out as I did once.

  54. Posted by Raymond Hackney | March 14th, 2007 at 3:06 pm

    Hello Frank, great blog have two questions if that is ok with you .

    1 Do you have any opinion on the .tv extension? It is a niche extension but one that I follow greatly and provide commentary on in the namepros .tv subforum and run a typepad blog like you at dottvnation.tv.
    Demand Media coming in to run the retail side is looking to promote the extension heavily. Wanted your opinion as other big domainers like IGAL(domainspa) and ELEQUA (FMA.com) have big .tv portfolios. .tv does get traffic too I own .tv domains that get 60 -100 uniques a day and know others that get more.

    ***FS*** I think .tv will do okay but prefer dot com. No matter how hard Demad tries they are not going to undo a trillion dollars in marketing and branding that made .com what it is. They could give the names away for nothing and it still wouldn’t happen IMO. Names that get 60 unique in .tv would get 6000 unique in .com the only thing I could see getting closer is brand encroach/typosquats like ktla.tv upnnetwork.tv .. that said you can make money in .tv land but you can make money anywhere if you exert effort.. the trend is your friend and that trend is still .com .. stick with .com and you will create more opportunity for yourself. More opportunity for traffic, more opportunity for sales.

    2) Is it possible to send you an email of just like 20 domains and get a quick opinion from you these are all .com I like your rumcakes.com idea could you really make that much with just 10 visitors a day? \

    ***FS*** The name gets 10 uniquye a day with no development ever before.. that tells me that will very little effort I could turn 10 into 100 and sell rumcakes for thousands of dollars.. so to answer your question : Yes. A meaningful name like rumcakes.com that gets 10 or so uniques consistently for nothing more than the keyword weight or gravity of the name can easily ratchet up to 100’s of unique with precious little effort and into millions of dollars in product sales.

    Thank you
    ***FS*** glad to help

  55. Posted by Anonymous | March 14th, 2007 at 9:43 pm

    Thought you might be interested in this entry from Henry Blodget
    http://www.internetoutsider.com

    Thanks for the great blog!

    Advertisers Fleeing TV, Radio for Internet, etc.

    Emily Steel of the WSJ reported startling numbers from TNS Media Intelligence showing just how fast major advertisers are pulling money out of traditional media and throwing it into paid search, digital media, and other “unmeasured” advertising. This trend has been underway for years, and the figures are backward-looking, but it’s no wonder that traditional media conglomerates like Viacom are starting to panic:

    In a sign of how major advertisers are shifting money out of traditional media, ad tracking firm TNS Media Intelligence reported that the nation’s 50 biggest advertisers cut their spending on “measured” media such as TV, print and Internet display ads by 1.5% in 2006 — though U.S. ad spending grew 4.1% overall.

    While some of the decline may reflect overall cutbacks in ad spending by big marketers, it likely signals that big companies such as Procter & Gamble are reallocating some of their ad budgets to new Internet ad venues which aren’t measured by TNS — such as paid-search advertising, social networking and online video.

    Not surprisingly, the report showed that growth in ad spending on traditional media, particularly newspapers and radio, continued to slow dramatically while spending on Internet display ads is accelerating. But it also highlighted a significant slowdown in ad growth among cable channels, after several years of robust increases.

  56. Posted by Omar | March 15th, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Frank,

    For those of us who don’t have an exclusive contract with Yahoo or Google, do you recommend we keep trying different ppc providers or just stick with one thats a great Google feed and one thats a great Yahoo feed?

    A related question would be - which ppc provider do you think is best for each feed?

    Thanks in advance (I know fellow domainers are *struggling* with this issue).

    ***FS*** I think the parking companies can can do alot for you if you negotiate.. Some of them get such good revshares (because of their size) that they can actually give you a better deal than you could get direct.

  57. Posted by Raymond Hackney | March 15th, 2007 at 4:13 am

    First off thank you for your replies to my questions. I really just wanted to get your opinion on .tv glad to see you at least thought it could do ok. I am focused on .tv as it is my niche. I own several LLLtv.com and Countrytv.org to support the .tv efforts but they are development and sales efforts the LLLTV.com get lowball offers all the time, some get traffic but I do not disagree from a domainer standpoint .com is the king.

    The one question you did not answer was if I could email you a small list but I figured I might as well post them here and you can answer. Just your opinion on my top .coms

    Fasterpaydayloans.com
    NiceTrade.com
    VideoGameTitles.com
    MarketGains.com
    Yread.com
    SouthBeachHomeloan.com
    DominioBlog.com (spanish for Domain)
    DeportesBlog.com (spanish for Sports)
    Anythong.com
    FranceMobi.com
    Italymobi.com
    Germanymobi.com
    MobileMusicVideos.com
    StraightLoan.com

    Do you think any of these make sense to build a rumcake example business out of ?
    I thought VideoGameTitles.com and I have aplan for Anythong typo for anything and perfect for Ladies Underwear.

    Lastly when I cannot get the .com I go for .org for finance/loan related domains trying to build a good network around fasterpaydayloans.com with major cities like miamipaydayloan.org detroit,La,Atlanta Do you think this makes sense I figure if I develop it I can sell as a package down the road.

    Thank you again great blog

    ***FS*** I think if you follow the traffic you will always win. I read your names “VideoGameTitles.com and Anythong ” were the ones that jumped out to me (as they did w. u) The reason is there may be traffic there. Thats the key in everything.. follow the traffic, follow the money.

  58. Posted by Gabe | March 15th, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    You got me reading Owen Frager’s Blog….smart fellow with great insights on the advertising industry. He’s got an interesting piece on the Microsoft’s acquisition of TellMe. Owen hints that if you look into the service that TellMe provides, domainers, specifically .mobi speculators, should be nervous.

    I’m not a big .mobi fan anyway, but I can see how this could disrupt future type-ins of .com/.net via cellphones in the future. Interested to hear your opinion on this.

  59. Posted by Tia Wood | March 15th, 2007 at 5:54 pm

    What’s your take on this thread:

    http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?t=215642

    ***FS*** Hi Tia.. I think intellectual property rights on the web should be respected by all.. you shouldn’t be a white hat/black hat domainer where you go out and deliberately register tm names in a profile seperate from your other ‘good’ names .. intent is important.. it shines through. That said.. i think microsoft and google should stop making money off typos of my generic domains when surfers accidentally add a .comm or .con or .cpm or .cvom after the name instead of the correct .com (that traffic is intended for my network not their error page) Just because you make a billion a month, doesn’t mean the rules don’t apply to you. Buts both ways.

  60. Posted by Drewbert | March 16th, 2007 at 5:03 pm

    Dear Abby,

    What are your reactions to this?

    http://battellemedia.com/archives/003447.php

    Love always,

    notunconcerned nonbystander

    ***FS*** Bill Gates talked about this a year ago and they are just getting started.. I think its clever.. “Everybody needs money, that’s why they call it money” [Mammet] .. Won’t kill google imo but might dent it. Good for domain traffic, bad for Yahoo ;)

  61. Posted by Patrick McDermott | March 16th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

    Hi Frank,

    Regarding getting your own Registrar,
    you said “get Snapnames, Tucows, Enom or Moniker (nod to others not mentioned) to run the cred for you”.

    What does “run the cred for you” mean?

    Thanks,
    Patrick

    ***FS*** “Running your accreditation (cred is slang for accreditation or registrar: ICANN accreditation)” You need somebody to run the registrar backend on a server somewhere unless you’re a programmer. Tucows has a product called OpenHRS, Snap can do it, Enom can do it.. You should own your own cred and not give out the registry password for the drop pool. Again … running a registrar is good for folks who are making good money from a fairly large portfolio of domains that are worth real money.. This won’t be for everyone.

  62. Posted by Bob Luther | March 19th, 2007 at 9:21 am

    Hi Frank,
    Have you seen today’s New York Times article titled “Researchers Track Down a Plague of Fake Web Pages” ?
    They refer to a report at
    http://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hchen/paper/www07.pdf

  63. Posted by Jon | March 19th, 2007 at 7:39 pm

    Hi Frank - You’re incredibly generous to spend your time responding to everybody … much appreciated. A quick question … I read below that you recommend “following the traffic” to find domains names of value. How would you reconcile that advice with a gut feel that a domain has (or may have) some inherent strategic value (to businesses, industries etc) but may garner little or no traffic?

    I’ve struggled with this dilemma as I’ve built a portfolio of 1500 or so domains that I feel have a very strong inherent value, but have turned out to generate minimal traffic and even less in earnings. I’m confident that with the proper exposure and in the hands of someone willing to spend minimal “rumcake” time (I have a day job and don’t have this time), many of my domains could be extremely valuable in the business world. Any thoughts?

    Many thanks …

    ***FS*** http://inventory.overture.com

  64. Posted by stuff | March 21st, 2007 at 6:59 am

    Frank as I understnad You don´t sell domains. But A domain containing “sex” word I am really interested. Have You started maybe dropping those adult domains like other big portfolio owners? Or what do you think? Maybe You can send me an email.

  65. Posted by Jason | March 21st, 2007 at 12:24 pm

    Frank,
    I enjoy reading your thoughts and hearing this is just beginning. However, I am young, smart, HUNGRY, and only have $1500.00 in my pocket. I am ready to invest it all in domain names. What do you suggest and why? I tried buying a name on Snapnames and some guy Bonkerstwo kept bidding it up…LOLOL

    How can I get my slice of cheese?

    Thanks,

    Jason

    ***FS*** Offer privately .. scour whois for a name than interests you and make private offers via phone, email. Sounds like you have more time than money so you’d be surprised what the secondary market holds.

  66. Posted by Jsson | March 21st, 2007 at 1:36 pm

    To follow up…Going through Whois Info and contacting people has not been as fruitful as I would like. With Only $1500 don’t you think long term 5 years from now I would be better off buying a quality .US or .INFO name which would have potentially BIG upside as opposed to buying a 3 keyword .com which still has very little traffic and revenue as the .COM market is already the HUGE dominant player.

  67. Posted by Gabe | March 21st, 2007 at 10:29 pm

    Frank,

    I’m sure you’ve got your ear to the ground and heard the news that Google is venturing into the world of CPA (Cost-Per-Action). CPA is far from new (CJ, Clickbank, Linkshare) but with Google getting involved with their massive advertiser base - this is big news.

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/21/digesting-googles-new-ppa-advertising-product/

    Looking at a few other industry blogs, it seems that there are mixed emotions on the effect it will have on Google’s earnings as well as how it will effect domainers. According to Paul Sloan, it doesn’t look to bright for domainers:

    http://blogs.business2.com/sloan/2007/03/googles_test_co.html

    I’m a little more optimistic for a few reasons:

    Click fraud is overblown since the advertisers ROI will effect the market bid price for a specific keyword. If click fraud is high, advertisers will convert less of their clicks into $ and then will adjust (lower) their bid price on future PPC campaigns. This ultimately has more of a negative effect on Google and domainers than advertisers because shrinking bid prices mean less revenue to split out with Google and domainers while advertisers always have the option to lower their bids (Google is subject to market bid price and domainers can only change advertising feed - which will most likely have the same click fraud issues).

    With CPA, an action needs to be completed in order to get paid (sale made, or application completed, etc.) - ROI calculations would no longer have to compensate for click fraud which would effectively increase the efficiency of the entire process - which will drive up CPA bid prices (advertisers always have to bid up to stay competitive in Google marketplace) to a sustainable market level.

    With a more efficient marketplace - no click fraud serving as an extra middleman - it should equate to better payouts to traffic drivers such as domainers.

    The only way I think CPA can hurt domainers is if Google does not implement a quality system that verifies that the action is complete - sale verifications can only be 100% verified if Google handles the payment (maybe through Google’s Paypal killer - Gbuy) and pays out the appropriate monies to the affiliate (domainer) and the advertiser. ClickBank, another CPA marketplace does this in order to efficiently track all pruchases. But, we do have to keep in mind, that not all completed “actions” are sales, some can be just to fill out newsletter requests - how can their be 3rd party verification for this?

    So many variables to consider to understand the total magnitude of the overall ripple effect this will have for domaining industry (our heads will spin trying to think of all the different scenarios). But one would be foolish to think that this will have no effect on domain strategies & revenues. Even with you Frank, having a Yahoo feed - you know it’s only a matter of time when Yahoo and Microsoft will get in the mix as well. Curious to hear your thoughts.

    ***FS*** Here you go: http://frankschilling.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/googles_new_cpa.html

  68. Posted by owen frager | March 22nd, 2007 at 6:30 am

    Enjoyed you on the radio yesterday. Thanks again for being so generous and sharing so much that contribnutes to our wealth and success.

    I was struxck by your comments about having a plan for each of your names. A memory of when you bought the name and what your vision was. This kind od passion is rae and found in only a select few of the domainers I know who recognize a business problem and get jazzed about the Internet’s opportunity to solve it (the name is a sidebar but a sidebar with type-ins or one that works in a NetShops model is certainly a headstart).

    Can you share what some of your favorite names and 100 years from now how you’d like to be remembered for what they represented?

    ***FS*** Wow thanks for the compliment Owen That’s a big question and if I take the time to answer it I have no time to do this AM’s company stuff.. allow me to defer and I promise I’ll post about it.

  69. Posted by Rob B | March 22nd, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    Hello Frank, here is a specific question, how would you monetize French Canadian traffic? I have some french generic .ca’s on different subjects that get traffic, right now I build single page sites with related content and Adsense type ads. I’ve found a french dating affiliate program, and amazon in french, but beyond that I haven’t seen much out there for french traffic. PPC sites rarely have french ads, so there is no point in using PPC to show english ads to french surfers. Is there anything else out there you know of?

    ***FS*** Totally depends on what the names are . You could try an espotting feed pulling french results from Europe if there are content matches but depends on the name.

  70. Posted by kamal | March 23rd, 2007 at 12:44 pm

    Hi Frank,

    A question about Godaddy. You mention in a post that you like Godaddy and Bob Parsons but in a post advising which registrars to buy from, you mention enom, domaindirect but not Godaddy.

    I have a bunch of domains at Godaddy (not worth much) and am now getting into domains seriously. Would you recommend staying with them or starting with one of the other registrars you mentioned?

    Thanks,

    Kamal

    ***FS*** I have a great deal of respect for Bob.. a veteran, served his country, built a great business.. I admire everything except the shooting of an elephant in paul sloan’s Biz2 piece. That’s unforgivable IMO. Godaddy the regsitrar is an upsell rar.. buy a registration and watch the upsell emails flood in. They are too big IMO to effectiely service commercial registrants and their unique needs. They have a policy of cancelling or holding registrations if somebody complains about them, their TOS looks punitive. For a small mom/pop registrant they are fine, but I wouldn’t use them as a mid/large domainer. Perhaps others have some real world experience and will comment.

  71. Posted by Gabe | March 24th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/03/23/police-raid-justintv-more-pranks-on-the-way/

    Smells like a trend here for .tv domain owners. Too bad Frank.tv is already taken….we could of had the Frank Video Blog!

    P.S. I’m guilty…I regged a .tv after seeing this.

  72. Posted by Bill | March 26th, 2007 at 10:51 pm

    Great blog very entertaining read. I believe I understand where you stand on the newer extensions with regards to natural “type-in” traffic, my question though is what value would you assign the prefix regardless of the extension provided that we are talking about a marquee keyword? For example if “back.com” (which changed hands five years ago at around $80k) is today worth $500,000 how much would “back.info” be worth?

    P.S. I’m the owner of neither, just using them as an example.

  73. Posted by Cohn | March 27th, 2007 at 6:57 pm

    Hi Frank,

    Don’t know if this has been covered here yet…

    Have you or anyone you know written a book about domaining that you could recommend?

    Thanks,

    Tim

    ***FS*** I think there is a new book coming. Late this year early next .. I know of two in the works actually.

  74. Posted by Johnny B. Good | March 29th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

    Hello Frank,

    In regards to selling individual domains or a whole portfolio, you said in your article entitled Reflection on the Ides of March, “The disconnect I have built to is that large groups of names are actually worth less together than their individual break-up value apart (and by a considerable margin).”

    This notion occurred to me many years back when a guy I met told me how he used to buy and sell strip clubs in South Florida. He told me that he bought these dumpy little strip clubs for $150,000 to $200,000, fixed them up a little, and built the traffic and then would sell the club for $500,000 to $600,000 to one buyer. But he soon realized he could cut up interest in the clubs into thirds and sell interest in each third for $250,000 to $300,000 and make $750,000 to $900,000 instead, or even keep a third interest himself.

    That is the moment I realized our company’s domains are better off being sold individually (if ever), instead as a bulk sale - ideally.

    But, my next thought was what about a really good set of domains in a niche that truely make an unbelievable “niche collection”? Are these better off being sold as a set, like a set of rare coins that were hard to assemble, or broken up and sold to each interested party? I lean towards thinking a set like this, if truely remarkable, would be better sold as a set.

    My question to you is, if you are able to answer it: Should a great .com niche collection be sold as a set or broken up and sold?

    I’m sure with your collection you could make some nice sets too :)
    ***FS*** I agree that sets are worth more in most circumstances. That’s what I have been building to over the years. I just launched a new website at http://www.webhealth.com yesterday that all my health names point into.. Try: eatingdisorders.com, depressed.com .. we’re sending 30+k visits a day to different pages within the site.. Its an instant portal. Yesterday they were all parked like testdrive.com is.. (same layout) .. Ad high quality content, flip a switch and BAM.. you’ve got site that can rival WebMD

  75. Posted by kamal | March 29th, 2007 at 6:52 pm

    Frank, nice work on Webhealth. I noticed that you used a wiki and I started laughing. It’s nice and simple: perfect.

    Been thinking of doing the same for some projects. Also noticed that anyone can edit your wiki. That’s created spam problems at Wikpedia.

    I’m curious as to why you’re letting anyone edit (hence deal with spam issues) rather than just keep it closed.

    Thanks,

    Kamal

    ***FS*** I’d love to take the credit but that falls squarely with a guy named Ying and his pal Ry.. It’s an experiment that we think will work. If it becomes a spam magnet we’ll lock it down.

  76. Posted by RobB | April 2nd, 2007 at 3:51 pm

    Communicate.com just listed a news release today on 2006 revenues and site stats. They own sites like perfume.com, canadian.com and so on. Here is the link, http://www.cmnn.com/news_display.php?newsID=275

    Do you know much about Communicate.com? They are a Vancouver company but they trade on the OTCBB, which I try to avoid. I’d be interested to hear what you have to say about them.

    ***FS*** Vern and I looked at these guys a while back.. they were selling names and recording sales as revenue.. Its one thing when you have 100’s of thousands of names and sell a handfull but another when you have 20 epic names and sell one. They don’t have many good names left. They get a bump from the overall mkt as name co’s go but I would not buy this stock.

  77. Posted by Margaret | April 3rd, 2007 at 1:39 am

    Thanks for the interesting and well-written blog. I was scrolling down the page when I hit the section on the report from ICANN/ALAC. I had to read it several times, and then check that it was in fact April 2nd and not April 1st. To see domain monetization described as “a fundamentally sleazy business”, and to read that we are “tricking people by the use of typos and expired domains” was such a surprise coming from supposed industry professionals.Additionally they are “calling on Google to stop paying for clicks on pages with no content”. Google already makes it abundantly clear in their TOS that the use of cobbled together (often called Made For Adsense) pages is already against their TOS, and will result in being banned from Adsense. So who exactly makes up this ALAC group, and where have they been for the past few years? Thanks for any enlightenment!

    ***FS*** Thanks for your comment Margaret.. I am not a huge booster of typo domains or the more unseemly side of domain names.. you can’t defend the undefendable.. but the comments from this ALAC bundling all forms of ‘making money’ with domain as some kind of ill are just nuts.. They have no idea why there is renewed interest in names, no idea why 100 million domains are registered, no idea why ICANN doesn’t have budget problems anymore, why verisign’s stock is up etc etc etc etc .. these folks act like they have been living in denial or smoking alot of something herbal .. or something.. it’s other worldly.. JMO

  78. Posted by Adamo | April 3rd, 2007 at 12:14 pm

    Just following on from Margaret’s comments the problem seems to be that the mindset of ICANN hasn’t really moved on from the early ethos of the net as a not-for-profit community space of anti-commercial geeks and academics (many in ICANN would qualify as both!).

    The concept that domains are public goods rather than private assets is the essence of that worldview, and was very entrenched early on - remember the pre-1995 ‘honour system’ whereby registrants were discouraged from registering (for free!) more domains than were absolutely essential for their needs, and the fact that so many accepted that. Many of those same early adopters willingly gave up their domains in protest in mid-1997 when the first NetSol imposed fee structure came into effect (and in so doing contributed to what will one day be seen as the greatest transfer of wealth from one group to another since the Russian Revolution!…and that’s no joke.com…sorry couldn’t resist the synergy of that one).

    ICANN has never really come to terms with the commercial value/potential of domains and still views domainers as akin to wartime profiteers making excessive profits from ‘hording’ goods in short supply. As for ppc, they have the same attitude that many domainers will recognize from all those domain inquiry emails that begin “I see that you aren’t using this domain”, and then expect to buy it cheaply because they plan to ‘do someone’ with the name.

    What will change ICANN’s attitude? Perhaps a new generation more accustomed to the contemporary commercial realities of the net and domainers themselves educating the broader net community about the issue. The creation of ICA seems like a good start - and all domainers owe the creators and initial supporters of that organization a vote of thanks….thanks :-)

  79. Posted by Frank Schilling | April 3rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm

    Excellent comment Adamo, I think you’ve nailed. Thanks so much!

  80. Posted by Dave Sprake | April 3rd, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    Hello Frank,
    First just wanted to say thanks for the blog, really interesting, thought provoking and enlightening.

    I have been thinking about some of your views for type in .com traffic being like water flowing over a waterfall. Will it go on for ever? It makes me uncomfortable….

    There are thousands of young (and old) people with new ideas for starting up websites and when they look for a domain name for there new idea, do they pay thousands $ for a .com, or a very long .com that is unregistered or $6 for a shorter dot- something else.

    It is not unreasonable to think some will go for another, more widely available shorter extension i.e. .info, .biz .tv whatever…….

    Fast forward 5 years future, and some of the successful start-ups might make it big- (maybe top 10 Alexia?)

    Everybody would have heard about that once unknown extension, and hears the rub…..

    Will it take a huge leap of imagination for someone to type in for example rumcakes.com and then rumcackes.info to see what’s there?

    Also if someone is looking for rum cakes, will they figer out that typing rum cakes in to Google (or other search engine) will give more and maybe better results than typing it followed by .com or .info in the address bar.

    I don’t know…… but in makes me uncomfortable. Should we diversify into other extensions to hedge are bets?

    ***FS*** Its nearly impossible to undo the trillion dollars in branding that made .com the juggernaut it is. Quick what’s atoll free number? 800, 888 then what? 800 will always be king.. even tho 888 is actually easier to remember

  81. Posted by Jamie | April 3rd, 2007 at 7:40 pm

    How do you estimate traffic for foreign tlds, like .co.uk? The overture tool seems to only address .coms, but then again I’m new. Could be an error between the chair and the keyboard..

    ***FS*** dead reckoning.. if you have experience in other GTLD’s and CCTld’s you can estimate traffic in the .co.uk space. Traffic more valuable there (from a US perspective) because advertisers pay in Pound Sterling

  82. Posted by Jamie | April 4th, 2007 at 12:58 pm

    I’ve noticed that godaddy will place ads on any url that you register with them. If you do not upgrade (i.e. pay) to their cash parking service then godaddy keeps all of that revenue. Even though the conversion rates are likely terrible, in aggregate I would think that this amounts to a good chunk of change every month. Amazing that they are getting all of that for essentially doing next to nothing. Very light hosting fee for them, some overall upkeep for their ad network. But no service complaints, since there is no “customer”. And they get branding off of each page.

    What do you think the odds would be for a class action suit against godaddy for all of the advertising revenue that they take off of someone elses parked pages? Tongue in cheek question, but I’ve been wondering about how they get away with this for a while.

    ***FS*** It depends on their Terms of Service (TOS) and the dates that they updated that TOS to reflect the parking dynamic. It’s conceivable that a smart class action attorney would see what you see, then start an action on behalf of early registrants who were hoodwinked as this parking dynamic was born. Then again, Godaddy likely reserves the right to update their TOS at any time .. so register there and just accept you have no rights. I don’t think it’s ‘right’ because the registrants did all the work in garnering those registrations. It seems inequitable for Godaddy to just take over their registrants traffic.. Read what your TOS says about the parking, contact a lawyer, or you can always move away from Godaddy.

  83. Posted by Franky Tong | April 4th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    Hey Frank can you slow it down??? I’m trying to get some work done and not spending all day reading your blog! :D
    ***FS*** HA!~

  84. Posted by Eric | April 5th, 2007 at 11:28 am

    Hi Frank,

    This may seem like an odd question but since you post about life balance I thought I would ask you for advice. Do you have any strategies on how to combat this feeling of great opportunity is right in front of you and there is not enough time in the day to do all the things you want to do. Your posts have been inspirational – so much so that I have turned what you have said into an action plan that has turned into results, (i.e. real tangible profit). Now is the building time – however like Internet time it feels like if I don’t run faster and faster the full opportunity will slip away. Have you felt this and if so what if anything has helped you manage the stress. I repeat over and over again all day long that the domain business is just like the Real Estate business and if you can go around picking up an acre of good/great land (location location location) at a great price then you are building real wealth. Do you have any sayings or strategies that help put things into perspective?

    Thanks,

    Eric

  85. Posted by pk | April 6th, 2007 at 10:40 am

    RE: “google power” post: frank —i have 5,000 plus names for about a year–Q: are .com the only ones with value???? i have tons of generic finacial related names, but parking doesnt generate much—any suggestions???
    thanks pk

    ***FS*** You need the right domain names pk… carinsurance.com <— right .. carinsuranceplanet.com <– not so right.

  86. Posted by pk | April 6th, 2007 at 2:54 pm

    thanks, yes!!! i get that, so if its about type in traffic and root words (key words) does that mean only .com work well for example futuresbroker.net vs obviously better .com and what about out of sequence like brokerfutures.com??? dont mean to be a pain, appreciate the feedback thanks pk

    ***FS*** I like certain two word phrases like that.. I paid 20k for advertisignworld.com .. but I really like generic “world “, “web”, “hub”, “net” names. They’re very descriptive and brandable. Check http://inventory.overture.com and look for generic things with high search counts (in the correct order as domains) .com is best, then net or org and the .cc tld of the most populace countries.

  87. Posted by Omar | April 7th, 2007 at 12:52 am

    Frank,

    I’m really curious to know which books you would recommend us.

    Looking forward to hearing from you!

  88. Posted by Gunnar Grimsson | April 7th, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Hi Frank, interesting use of a comment system :)
    I have the domain where.is and have been trying to get price appraisals from a few places but I don’t even get answers.

    I realise that .is is not common in the domain business but I still think where.is is worth good money. The problem is I don’t know how to evaluate the price nor where to sell it.

    Any pointers for me?

    thanks in advance
    Gunnar

    ***FS*** Hi Gunnar, I like names like these and think they are worth a few thousand dollars.. You ultimately need the .com as a supporting actor because people get confused.. delicious.com <<— got bought for that reason. They seem neat.. but the masses trust .com. It’s cheaper and easier to come through and buy the .com than it is to go around and change global human behaviour. So my advice is your where.is is worth 2k or 3k as a “neat name” but get whereis.com

  89. Posted by owen frager | April 8th, 2007 at 11:38 am

    Everyday I look at the photo of you facing the Ocean and get so touched. It really says “free to be me, I can do anything the f*** I want.” I was there once, on an island for a while with that view… know the feeling.

    I came to Florida to look after elderly parents and chill from the burst in Silicon Valley when I left. It was a stepping stone. But never starting with a PPC model, and having to cast my development plans aside until the technology, ad agencies and consumers caught up, I returned to the corporate world- really to get an invaluable dual perspective (like working undercover) to understand everything that’s wrong, so i can offer their agencies a solution they can close that makes it right. It’s a perfect storm of circumstances that are now closing in.

    But every day it’s a lot of pressure. The clients, the deadlines, the proposals, the sales calls, the parents, their doctors, the keeping up with the reading… networking…. all while taming the lifestyle I was accustommed to because the goal here was to buy the best ROI for fix and flip and save as money as I could — having experienced a bust once; and with the vulnerable weather here; I was smart enough to realize, no one is assured of the tomorrow they plan.

    Good news is that even though realty is down, I’m up over $200K in four years and this will be the fifth successon of fix and flips where I’ve made over $250K or more in two years av… including one which was a brief summer on the island.

    So my lifestyle like you suggested has been to move around, take something worth x and creatively make it worth y… and that’s kind of like the domains that have survived and thrived over that time, but also the added value of the knowledge needed to make them successful. Act two.

    So the long point of all this, and as my anchor here loosens each day my parents health declines, is I’ve been thinking, can’t go back to NY (though I’m certain that’s where my domains will be invested in the trust of others)… so where next

    I am just craving for the day when I can face the ocean turn down the jets and take that Leo DiCaprio King of the World snap.

    What does it take to move from US to Caymans? What are real estate investments like? Cost and ease of getting to NY regularly for board meetings?

    ***FS*** Thanks for all that backstory Owen. Firstly I think you did a really noble thing caring for your parents. I know this may sound foreign to guys like us but some people would just dump their folks in a hospital or nursing home. I guess it depends how your parents treated you as a kid.. my parents treated me wonderfuly and were so loving.. I would do anything for them .. sounds like you’re the same. One of the biggest reasons Michele and I initially settled on Cayman as opposed to another spot was proximity to US/Canada, Law and order society, Climate (weather and tax), and most importantly health care. There are two world class hospitals here staffed with wonderful professionals who come for the tax climate themselves. You get the best and brightest who come here to make a better life and offer what they have. The living here is rather simple (no malls and distractions) so people immerse themselves in their work.

    My wife had some abdominal discomfort. She went to the doctor in the AM and had a CT Scan in the PM.. there was no extra payment for this level of service. She had our daughter here and was surrounded by three nurses and three physicians. They didn’t give us preferential treatment.. It’s just the way it is here. Much much better health care. I joke that Cayman is the Disneyland of healthcare.

    You can find real estate here: http://www.cireba.com .. there is a new airport coming in 2010 so probably not a bad time to invest, before we start getting jetways and 15 direct flights a week from NYC. Its not for everyone here but it works for me. We’re 1 hour to Miami and 3.5 to Teterborough. you can go commercially nonstop to Newark and daily non-stop to Ft Lauderdale, Miami, Atlanta. You need a passport to visit and there’s a background check / fairly involved process in immigrating. Very British here, a lot less Calypso than your average Caribbean isle., but much warmer and safer here than Bermuda, Bahamas, Turks, Anguila.

  90. Posted by Fellow Domainer | April 9th, 2007 at 7:18 pm

    Frank

    I don’t agree with your politics but when it comes to domains we see eye to eye.

    You might enjoy my friends blog, Selwynduke.com. He probably thinks recruitment on the Internet is a problem too. LOL. He is a clever witty guy though.

    I have to give myself kudos for realizing your way with words before others as I quoted your open letter to ICANN (under the pen name Jake) on domainnamewire.com a couple weeks before you started your blog. I have been reading since day one.

    http://domainnamewire.com/2007/02/07/mgm-loses-bid-for-wargamescom/#comments

    I quoted you because I recently had to write several UDRP responses for generic domains including a 3-letter dot com. The TM issue cuts both ways and and it looks like you and I will find ourselves on the wrong end or the sword in the years to come unless the UDRP is revised.

    Love your blog Frank, enjoy it with my coffee in the morning. Thanks for sharing.

    ***FS*** My pleasure.. politics are a funny thing.. I’m more centric than you’d think .. thanks sincerely for the compliment. And it’s funny.. I wrote that quote years ago when overreaching tm interests were contemplating changing the UDRP to include last names like schilling.com or tradenames (unregistered marks) like bostonplumbing.com .. have had alot folks misinterpret that I am railing against ‘trademarks’ which I am not, I support TM holders and respect famous marks. Those are wholely different from tradenames which conceivably encompass everything under the sun. I also don’t like certain first and last names together as domains .. those may be the exclusive provence’ of one.

  91. Posted by Fellow Domainer | April 9th, 2007 at 7:33 pm

    By the way Frank, my question is: How will you or your heirs defend your domains after every possible English word is trademarked?

    I only have 10,000 domains and I am amazed at how many UDRP’s that I have to answer for obviously generic domains.

    ***FS*** I think common sense will rule the day. We really do not get challenged that often legally *knock on wood* .. we try to do the right things and steer clear of trouble. I don’t walk around with a chip on my shoulder but if a bad guy walks into my store with a gun, you can bet he’s leaving feet first.

  92. Posted by kamal | April 9th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    For Fellowdomainer,

    I respect what you’ve done with your parents. I wanted to add something to what you asked Frank. You might want to consider other islands as well. I currently live in the Dominican Republic in the beach town of Cabarete. Will probably return home to the U.S. soon but it’s a great experience to live on an island, have the type of view that people only see in photos and movies.

    It’s also relatively cheap here. Feel free to contact me with any questions.

    Frank, apologies if this isn’t the right place to post this but wasn’t sure where else.

    Best,

    Kamal

    ***FS*** Looks good to me Kamal.. thanks for being so helpful.

  93. Posted by Fellow Domainer | April 9th, 2007 at 9:29 pm

    Do you draw the line at first and last name combinations? I don’t. There are 15,000 people in the world named Robert Smith. Who should own RobertSmith.com?

    The fact of the matter is that there are at least a hundred people in the world named Frank Schilling. Let’s not even mention the the historical people named Frank Schilling.

    Recently Keith Urban filed a UDRP against http://keithurban.com/

    Don’t you see where this is going Frank? It only costs $1500 to play domain roulette.

    ***FS*** Fair comment my friend.. Recent UDRP decisions seem to be favoring respondents on generic two worders.. but what about RobertArthurKosteckie.com < — thats what I was aluding to more .. Two worders are a tough way to make a living with so many long tail generics still in the sea. :)

  94. Posted by Margaret | April 10th, 2007 at 12:49 am

    I was intrigued to read in an earlier post that Vancouver BC had been such a hot-bed of early domaining enterprise. I am from that area and spent most of 1999 glued to Network Solutions looking up all sorts of unregistered words and saying to anyone who was interested (almost no-one) what a cool domain that would be. There were no forums then and I didn’t know of anyway to make money off these domains, and at Netsol’s $35 per domain, reluctantly let them go unregistered.

    Fast forward a few years, and for the past three years I have been building a domain portfolio (wishing I could time-warp back to 1999). The questions I would like to ask you are; do you generally now concentrate on buying domains on the aftermarket or is it still possible to register a new good dot com? Secondly, if one has missed out on a good dot com, do you see much monetization possibilities in the other TLDs? If most browsers (and people also) default to a dot com, I’ve never been quite sure what the possibilities are with the net and orgs etc. for parked page income.

    Thank you again for such an informative blog.

    ***FS*** I think there are still great opportunities in .com .net and the CCtld of the country you reside in. You can’t get the great once at registration price, but then again, you never really could. Even during the expiring name days you needed to troll and work hard. I think if anything it is easier today because the map is there. There are experts all around you who can explain what makes up a good name, what gets traffic and why. Back when I began everybody was a cybersquatter. Today, people are smart enough to know the difference between a legitimate investor and a squatter. Thats a foundational shift IMO. That serves to help you as a newcomer. (i recognize you’re technically not new). Stick with .com search terms : ceilingfans.com etc etc .. try to buy one and build a small site selling something. That name will be worth a million dollars one day. You can do that too .ca for example. That’s what I would do if I had to do it again. The traffic is in .com or the search engines .. register a good .com then buy traffic for it through adwords (arbitrage) that sort of thing. Lots of opportunity IMO.

  95. Posted by Cohn | April 10th, 2007 at 7:59 pm

    How many active domainers do you think there are?

    Ideas on the average portfolio size?

    1-10 urls? - 200,000+ (registrants who think somewhat domainer like)
    11-99 urls? - 50,000ish (oldschoolers, small timers and recreational folks poking around the domainer perifory)
    100-500 urls? - 3-5,000 (individuals globally kicking it up a notch and heading domainer)
    501-1000 urls? - 1000 getting more serious.. some companies and isp’s lawfirms and marketing advertising concerns)
    1,001 to 9,999 urls? - 200 Mid tier global operators
    10,000+urls? - 100 Serious operators

    Thanks,

    Tim Cohn

  96. Posted by StudioMobile | April 10th, 2007 at 9:23 pm

    Hi Frank– Really enjoy your writing, thanks for sharing your ideas and insights. I saw your recent comments on the sale of MobileFone.com, and wanted to get your feedback on a related site we registered 7 years ago and recently decided to make available– MobileLove.com — We’ve had many inquiries about it over the years and decided with all the things happening in mobile that now’s the time to make a decision. We also own all the top-level extensions. Thanks for any thoughts/suggestions. Your blog’s become one of my first morning destinations– Best, William

    ***FS*** I sincerely thank you for the compliment William but mobilelove.com is not a good name in my opinion. Mobilefone is good because its a brandable variant of a phrase which rolls off the collective conscience water off a duck’s back. Mobilelove.com? .. not so much. I will leave this open in case anyone else wants to chime in to the contrary.

  97. Posted by Tim Cohn | April 10th, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    Excellent Summary. Thanks Frank!

  98. Posted by Hairy Ape Like Creature | April 10th, 2007 at 10:13 pm

    You know what I can’t understand about you (and your operation Frank)?

    The fact that you don’t seem to have an obvious ambition of becoming a true(r) media company. You seem satisfied of doing all this hard work just on your own (with some help by one or two people here and there).

    I mean, you are smart enough to realize that you can assemble a team of hungry, ambitious and talented individuals who would do anything for you for a modest, set salary, and opportunity to live down there? Why don’t you have a team of 5-6 extra professionals who could work around a clock for you? Imagine an operation where tons of hard and innovative work is done by these people 24 hours a day. Breaking news at 3AM? - someone at Name Admin is there to react. Latest rumor buzz? - someone at Name Admin is there to dig out the fact? Future trends? Someone other than you is there to research and report (to you)?

    After all, no matter how hard you like to work, you still have other life/family commitments that others don’t.

    So how about setting up couple of different “media inteligence” departments at Name Admin consisting of, say, two people each (12 hrs. per each person per shift).

    Say, your

    “Domain Intelligence” department - would be responsible for trawling forum boards and buying generic domains and sites (from weak holders) for peanuts. Also they could trawl expiry lists, and red flag or green flag something you might have missed etc.

    “Breaking News, Current Buzz and Future Trends” department - could be responsible for identifying exactly that.

    5-6 enthusiastic, smart people working for you 24hrs. on salary might cost you $200k-$300k per year or less, which is what you spend on a few good domains.

    I guess, what am I trying to say is that in a domain business on your scale, it might be wise to invest in people as well. That $200k-$300k or less you spend on them, might bring you several fold in return?

    Your mantra is “if you don’t keep growing, you are dying”, but you apply this only to domains, not to your own human factor in your company, even though, ,when it comes down to it really, human factor is the most valuable, because all the artificial intelligence will not be able to replace the kind of things that smart, dedicated living, breathing humans can contribute.

    Of course, you don’t even have to bring thgem to Caymans, you could hire them remotely for those same tasks, though I would imagine that for the maximum dedication and team spirit fostering, nothing would beat locally based hirees.

    Just a sugg.

    ***FS*** Wow.. great suggestion. I’m working on such a plan as we speak. I have to weigh it against personal issues and lifestyle issues but something pretty big will happen growth-wise this year.. I’ll blog about it when I get closer.

  99. Posted by Scott | April 10th, 2007 at 11:28 pm

    Frank,
    It seems that there is a very large gap between companies like Sedo who syndicate Google ads and individual domain owners who are restriced by Google from creating landing pages like yours or Sedos. How can domain owners with smaller portfolios of high quality domain names deal with this inconsistency and maximie revenue?

    Thank you.

    ***FS*** Thats a terrific question. I think many little operators are in a tough spot because they do not have the scale to negotiate.. The best opportunity is likely to grow through acquisition, or band together with your peers to form a negotiating group. If you have enough traffic you can accomplish a lot.

  100. Posted by C_Sivertsen | April 12th, 2007 at 12:50 pm

    Frank,
    As a “car guy” I wanted to make sure you’re aware of Dan Neil who manages all auto reviews for the LA Times. I’m not a car guy but I read his review each Wednesday as I enjoy his offbeat writing immensely. He’s actually won a Pulitzer for car reviews and finds a way to make them entertainng and accessible each week.

    This week he reviews Ferrari’s new 2007 599 GTB Fiorano, which he calls “…the world’s best-ever front-engine sports car.”

    http://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-neil11apr11,0,6886194.story?coll=la-home-highway1

    Here is dan’s page at LAT anhttp://www.latimes.com/classified/automotive/highway1/la-hy-neil-sg,0,5627290.storygallery?coll=la-home-highway1

    I always sell Dan Neil when i get the chance.

    Cheers!

    ***FS*** Thank-you so much kind stranger. I haven’t read him .. love that Ferrari BTW.. I would absolutely 100% own that car (sticker premium and all) if I didn’t live here.

  101. Posted by Andrew Hyde | April 12th, 2007 at 7:26 pm

    This, your blog, is just a great read for anyone in the domain industry or anyone in the IT industry for that matter. No need to post the comment, just wanted to let you know I enjoy the commentary and the perspective. It’s fresh, current and on top of the market - bar none. Specificly the referance to cutting a deal with AOL as ‘getting light from a dark star’ - perfect.

  102. Posted by Charley | April 13th, 2007 at 3:57 am

    Hi Frank,

    There is lot of information on this blog. I am impressed the way you have been a leader in the domaining world. I have one question to ask you. What is your opinion on varietyflower.com & varietyflowers.com ? I would like to list them on Moniker’s auction, few months from now.

    ***FS*** I don’t know much about flowers.. but overture says only 450 people searched for this term across Yahoo’s entire network in the month of February. Seasonality can influence the overture count but this name doesn’t bubble up through my collective conscience as it relates to flowers. I don’t hear people at the watercooler saying: “Its my wife’s birthday on Friday, I better run out and buy some ‘variety flowers’ or I’ll be in the dog-house” Also, the order could be “flower varieties”.. OV would spit back the same score. I haven’t checked the USPTO on it but if it were tm free for flowers and crossed the block at snap I might put a $60 proxy on it. It might potentially make a nice anchor name for some form of flower site. Selling privately to a third party who wants to name their biz?.. that, I really couldn’t tell you because I’m not routinely a seller.

  103. Posted by Nathan Hicks | April 13th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

    Hi Frank
    really, really terrific blog. Amazing info and foresight. ANy chance of giving us a quick run down of your technology setup that powers your business (office, hosting etc)
    \Cheers \Nat

    ***FS*** Hi Nat.. we’re a linux shop.. other than that it’s alot of proprietary DB and management stuff that was written in-house. Nothing amazing.. all fairly rudimentary. We outsource as much as possible and distribute that outsourcing across lots of different providers so no one catastrophic thing can take our lights out. Thanks for the compliment.

  104. Posted by Scott Arenson | April 13th, 2007 at 4:31 pm

    Frank,
    Since pointing your many health-related domains at your WebHealth wiki to drive traffic, have you made or lost money relative to keeping the domains as standalone properties with ad links? Or is it too soon to do an ROI analysis?

    Scott

    ***FS*** We make marginally less with the wiki.. but traffic is climbing (going to climb further, so remains to be seen how this plays out.. dev. like this is a stage we want to get to.. is this the best formula for generic name implementation?.. too early to say IMO .. but its been very well rec’d

  105. Posted by Charley | April 14th, 2007 at 7:25 am

    Thanks for the reply Frank.

    What do you think about the .Asia domain whichg should be released some time in the future. Is it a nice investment that will explode/take off for the future?

  106. Posted by paul | April 14th, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    Frank,

    I was hoping to keep this confidential if possible. I own a very high profile generic financial service name

    [kept private per your request]

    ***FS*** My advice on that name is enter it in the traffic auction with a reserve price you feel comfortable with. You can’t take the temperature of the market without sticking your toe in. The NY auction is a good location to take tat name across the block.

  107. Posted by Yoni B | April 14th, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    Frank,

    With all things equal, (no developed websites & all domain available), if you could own only 10 domain names, which ones would they be?

    ***FS*** Whoa.. lemme think about this one a while and I’ll blog about it.