DOMAINERS: BUILD IT, AND THEY WILL COME
September 24th, 2008 Posted in General Domain News
This article is inspired by a discussion on Andrew Allemann’s DomainNamewire.com.
The topic at hand is: How Do We Educate End Users On The Value Of Domains And Get Them Involved In Domain Auctions?
I started this discussion with Rick Schwartz and other domainers back in 2005. Nothing happened because we were all caught up in rapidfire domain selling and enjoying our profits. Like Wall Street just a month ago, we are skating on thin ice. Now, we’re at the tipping point with this.
Either all domainers just accept the bottom-feeding sales of their domains they know will be bought cheap at the auction sites, either by someone from an anonymous enduser company or by some domainer who will try and park it because they think we messed up and forgot to renew the domain. A year later, the domain is up on the market again. … or we find out that the buyer was a major company who now has the domain built, and we kick ourselves for selling it cheap through an auction site to anonymous buyers because we were tired of trying to cold call companies we thought we could sell it to.
I have said this 100 times: The Domain Industry, which comprises a variety of domain investors at every level, needs to come together and create an educational source for endusers, consumers and business entities to help them understand what they’re missing by not buying the keyword generic domains of their prodserv. This website must be promoted by all the big players in the domain industry, including the parking services.
A quick story: I contacted a company that I found out on Overture was paying $3.00 per click for their adlinks for the keywords that exactly matched a domain I owned. I told them that instead of spending $300 for 100 visitors who click on an adlink, why not just own the keyword domain for their prodserv for only $1000 and get 100 visitors within 3 months and continue that same system for as long as you renew the domain?
They didn’t get it. I said “This domain gets 30 typeins a month, and the user gets sent to a landing page that features your competitors. If you owned this domain, those 30 typein users, obviously looking for this prodserv, will be all yours. Within three to four months, your user visits adlink savings will pay for the cost of the domain, and that domain will then continue to work for you nonstop for as long as you renew it. This means for a small investment up front, you can own a domain that describes the keywords you’re bidding on at SE’s and continually paying for.
“Additionally, you can continue to buy keywords, but use this domain as your contact link URL, and people will see this even if you’re rated 3rd, and be more inclined to hit your link because it clearly states the name of the keywords they just searched.”
They wrote back and said “we’re promoting our brand domain, and we don’t need to divert our brand name from potential customers by using some other domain name.”
I answered: “Point this domain to your company, and own your prodserv space and category online. Get the free users every month looking for your prodserv for years, with only a $10 yearly renewal price.”
They still didn’t get it. They were the top company buying adlinks on both Yahoo and Google for their prodserv. They were spending some serious money for SEO because they were also coming up in the top five results on the keyword phrase search. They felt comfortable on this path. I scratched my head, because $1000 is chump change, petty cash, to any decent company with 10 employees or more. It was an easy buy, but the webmaster looked at me as a “cybersquatter” and blew me off.
Payback: About two months later, a competitor to the first company contacted me about the domain and bought it for $1,000. Here’s the kicker: Ironically, about a month after I sold the domain, the first company contacted me to see if the domain was still available. Suddenly they wanted it. Stupidly, they were miffed that they saw their competitor’s products on the domain when they typed it in and actually thought they could buy the domain “from the competitor” and thought I could help them do that. This is corporate level think-stink.
I told them “sorry, your competitor just bought it, and now owns the domain of the prodserv you sell online. You will never reach the market this domain is bringing to your competitor, because they killed your category online for you. Good luck on finding a generic keyword domain name that defines your prodserv for a low price. Your competitors are laughing because they own the online description of the prodserv you’re spending millions to promote.”
80% of business and consumers don’t understand our business. We need to change that. Can we do this? Can we? Let’s talk somewhere about this. I have almost 4000 generic keyword domains and I hate having to contact 10 companies relevant to each domain and getting no response, or get that pause on the phone like I’m a crank caller.
I have a lot of construction and industrial generic domains. Ever try to explain to a company that sells $25 million of irrigation pipes on why they should own “irrigationpipes.com”? All they want to know is if they have to change the name of their company to “irrigationpipes.com” if they buy the domain.
We can make a difference. Let’s try. Ideas sent here will be printed. Use your noggins! Shroom out, bong out, take your meds, go sober, drink up, get sleep and start fresh, or write down ideas when you’re so tired you don’t know your name… but come up with some ideas and post them here! HOW CAN WE PROMOTE DOMAINS TO THE WORLD? Speak up, and let’s try and move forward with a solution!
13 Responses to “DOMAINERS: BUILD IT, AND THEY WILL COME”
By scott alliy on Sep 24, 2008
Good article Stephen,
My approach is to continually keep domain names in the news by posting domain name related news on press releases whenever I feel that doign so is timely or if that activity will stimulate end user interest.
I would strongly suggest that all domainers agressively engage in this activity to create a strong news presence for the industry.
Finally I especially urge domainers with news specific to how domains have or are or can be applied to or help a specific industry or business sector to choose a news release service and get that news out there to “plant the seeds” in front of end users that might need or want or be considering acquiring domain names at this time.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Thanks Scott. Good points, and not surprisingly, the logic of the first steps we should take are commonly shared in most the comments posted here so far — and that is… domainer involvement collectively, contacting and participating more in news and promotions to industry regarding domain values.
By WhyParkInsider on Sep 24, 2008
Stephen:
This is a great question with no easy answers. C-level executives are reactive and not entrepreneurial.
The University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently conducted one of the first statistically significant studies on the usage of media in corporations. Here’s a link to the PDF
http://www.umassd.edu/cmr/studiesresearch/blogstudy5.pdf
It’s pretty high brow stuff, but 42% of the Inc 500 CEOs participated so it’s very relevant. Only 52% of INC 500 CEOs are familiar with blogging. These are the most entrepreneurial C-level execs around!
Only 11% of the Fortune 500 currently having a public blog, as opposed to 39% of the Inc. 500. Given these facts its not surprising that almost all CEOs don’t get the value of generic domains.
Education and success stories are needed. However it can’t be delivered by blog posts because you’re target audience is not listening.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Thanks Whyparkinsider,
These are good points also. I think the promotion of domain values has to be done on a grand scale through all the domains domainers own, through the blogs, through PR and domainer involvement on marketing websites and forums.
By Susan Clark on Sep 24, 2008
I say:
1) Promote auctions in publications/venues by writing press releases and then following up with the media… NOT domain industry pubs or websites.
2) Write/have a ghostwriter write an educational column about domaining for a business publication… NOT domain industry pubs or websites.
3) Pitch ideas about this topic to tv producers looking for business-related topics.
By the way, I can do these things.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Susan,
Thanks for posting. These are all viable solutions you give. I’d like you to go ahead and re-comment and give your contact information for my readers. You can post your website if you like.
By John Bomhardt on Sep 24, 2008
This is the very thing I’m working on.
Here is something to always bear in mind.
The prospects human brain shuts down and goes into defense and cautionary mode which leave absolutely no room for introspective and logical thinking ESPECIALLY when they don’t know you from Adam.
Domain names are still a bizarre concept to most endusers.
The key here is to educate them in a non-threatening way.
Remember also, they’re buying “you” not just the domain name.
I’m gonna make a statement that million dollar salespeople do not ever want the world to get comfortable with , and it is this:
(Shortened with my own words)
Repetition breeds familiarity breeds trust.
Here’s an example of something I did in my life years ago that I’m going to start adapting to domain sales:
I was in sales for a janitorial company. I took the above concept and applied it. What I did was to visit 100 businesses over one week. I didn’t do anything. I simply visited them, looked the decision makers in the eye and asked “if I could do anything to help them with their business or solve a problem for them, no strings attached, I just wanted to learn more about the companies I might be able to service in the future.” and left my card and literature.
Thats it.
I came back for another three weeks and simply visit. I didn’t try to sell a damn thing. Sometimes I’d offer suggestions to boost their businesses. I left my card and my literature and sometimes industry newsletters. The suspicions on their part eventually faded.
Soon, something happened.
They no longer became defensive around me.
I got asked to supply bids. Then I got the accounts because they trusted me, they saw me every week, the others? Just once…
I got so many accounts this way that the company (multimillion dollars) I worked for ran out of money for janitorial startup cost for the businesses, not to mention ran out of the commissions owed to me before the invoicing even started… I had to quit, but not before they said that this kind of sales explosion has never happened to them in the history of the company before…
Do you see it?
The biggest mistake is selling RIGHT NOW. The best thing is to start a meaningful contact and dialog with numerous mid-size businesses with healthy revenues (check dun and bradstreet references)
We can send hard hitting understandable facts about domain names, case studies, and the cautionary tale that you’ve mentioned above.
We can send the dnjournal sales report and the some facts about the increase in business for companies that bought the names.
“The domains are priced high because YOUR COMPETITORS WANT THEM TOO, here’s why -” blah blah blah blah.
You’ll be the domain broker with “special insights” about gaining an advantage in advertising with domain names…
It does take a little time and some work.
Do you want rejections on the first calls?
Or do you want to reap benefits at the earliest a few weeks later.
Any questions?
John
http://unplain.com
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Nice stump speech! Good ideas, and definitely a confident calm perseverance will pay off, sooner than later.
By Ricky on Sep 24, 2008
Agree 1000% Most times when you cold call or cold email a company on selling them a domain they feel that they now have to change their website and name to match the domain your trying to sell. They dont get that its just an added tool to use to promote their already made website.
One thing I thnk must happen is not just a website because any type of website made by domainers is still goin to look down upon. If the message however came from SEO gurus, Google, Yahoo types and they came out in droves explaining to businesses that having a domain thats relevant (sp) to your companys product is crucial, they would be rushing to look for these domains in asking for “how much”. These folks must help us get the word out as again I feel any words coming from a domainers mouth is pure evil to them!
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Good points, Ricky.
By Kevin Jackson on Sep 24, 2008
Great post! It is a very interesting read. This is a concern I have always had about the domain industry.
The problem really, is the fact that the most influential people in this industry are too obsessed with domain parking.
That’s not a surprise, as most of them either own or are affiliated with parking companies.
We need to stop seeing the domain industry as just a exclusive club, and start exposing the potential of domains to eBusinesses and end users as one of the very best marketing tools.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Kevin,
The obsession with PPC is waning quite quickly with the lowered payouts this year, and seemingly getting lower. (WhyPark, who I work for, is rapidly increasing new client signups, and lack of faith in traditional PPC payouts and pages is part of this reason).
However, we need any company that generates landing pages, and domainers themselves with their own built websites, to promote a link or button to redirect people to a domain education website run by a non-profit company.
I think we can do this!
By John Bomhardt on Sep 24, 2008
Lets try this for the approach you were taking by contacting adword advertisers.
Call and tell the decision maker you are sending a FEDEX/or manila envelope with some breakthrough info for their business and that their competitors will receive it as well. But first ask this “are you open to new ideas?”, If they say no, thank them and call someone else. It becomes easy when there is no convincing or arguing. Those that say “yes” Put info in the FEDEX/manila about companies getting more business and cutting their online advertising substantially (to that effect). Call back a few days later to make sure they got it. Wait. In another week send more articles and stuff about domain names and about businesses that “got it”. Also say somewhere in the literatures that businesses will soon wake up and “smell the coffee” which will cause domain cost to skyrocket…
and so forth - you’ll slowly build relationships with the ADword advertisers…
John
http://unplain.com
By Steve on Sep 24, 2008
Yes! It would be great if domain owners could setup an organization that provided direct advertising opportunities for good generic domains to end users. Cut out the middleman. Domain co-op? The sooner the better! Thanks for the great article!
Best Regards.
Steve
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your comment! I think I have a short-start solution that shouldn’t cost too much and we can get it done in the preliminary stages if most domainers participate by investing $10 (no, it’s not something I will profit from, and nobody should profit but the collective domain industry).
I’m going to check it out and if confirmed, report on it in another blog post by next week. Stay tuned everyone!
By Steve Smith on Sep 24, 2008
MadisonAve.com is going up for auction today @ TRAFFIC… what a great domain this would be for the domain investor community to promote domains to the business world; i.e.,Y&R and other Madison Ave ad agencies, etc.!
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
WOW! This is a killer idea. (but MadisonAve.com sold for $17,000 today). Maybe we can form a “domain purchase collective” through a trusted domain company and all pick up a domain similar to the Ad and Marketing world or someone could donate a domain. Use it for a source of domain marketing value information, and even investment value, and then encourage this link to be promoted by all domain industry company pages, and domainer’s own buildout websites. But a “marketing or advertising” style domain name could help “bring the point home”. Thanks Steve!
By Kelly Lieberman on Sep 24, 2008
I suggested this sometime ago… If we could get a number of domainers with decent size portfolios together to all put up a small ad link on their site that links to a site that has educational information on the benefits of domains (auction results, news articles on domaining, the benefits of domains and SEO etc..) I think we could get a lot of people clicking on the link and learning about domains.
Think about how many domains we own collectively. I have 1200 domains that get traffic every day by end users… maybe some of them will click on that link and learn something. Multiply that times 1000 domainers with 100-10000 domains!
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Kelly, you’re right in the groove. I agree totally and this is what I’ve been pushing for since 2005. You have to talk to your parking service rep or exec to want to participate. Even though there’s nothing in it for them usually, it is a great service for promoting the value of domains through education, which can lead to more users using browser searching to find a prodserv. First, we have to find a non-profit website that will agree to set up comprehensive webpages detailing all of the areas of value that a domain possesses. In this educational effort, we have to direct our focus on marketing companies and the marketing departments of large companies to assess the value of a domain for their dollar return (ROI). I don’t see why this can’t happen, and we should all immediately put this on our plate to agree to participate. “PUT THIS ON OUR PLATE AND AGREE TO PARTICIPATE” (man, I sound like an attorney at the first OJ Simpson murder trial).
By Kelly Lieberman on Sep 25, 2008
“First, we have to find a non-profit website that will agree to set up comprehensive webpages detailing all of the areas of value that a domain possesses.”
I am not sure that we will be able to find a non- profit willing to do this. I do think that a domainer like Rob Sequin who already has alot of this info. already available on his site could be the “link”.
Check out http://searchdomainsforsale.com/domain-name-resources.htm
This kind of information, along with some other links to adword traffic estimator, google insights, google trends, etc… would be really helpful. Plus if Rob kept the content fresh… he would benefit by any other clicks people made on his site…
If we need a fresh domain - that part is easy….
By Joe Davison on Sep 27, 2008
Very illuminating story, thanks for sharing it.
You know, it’s not surprising.
There’s the other side of this coin to, which is when one of these clueless companies gets the idea that they actually want a generic domain, and then think that by default they have some sort of inherent right to it.
I just got contacted by a company whose name happens to be “[GenericWord] Software”
Now, this generic word is as generic as they get.
The thing is, they contact me saying that they want me to help them “recover” [GenericWord].com from a “squatter”.
So I ask, did you own this name before? What do you mean “recover”? And this is a generic word, why is this person a “squatter”?
Then they told me that they made a low $x,xxx offer (this name is worth at least mid $xx,xxx) and were geniunely PISSED OFF that they didn’t get a response.
They feel they have some sort of inalienable right to an english word that is probably a part of the name of thousands of businesses.
And it’s no joke! They SERIOUSLY believe it.
The worst part is, it’s a software company that *should* have some knowledge of the way things work on the Internet.
I don’t know man, this is an uphill battle.
On another note…
The reason why all the big companies are obsessed with PPC is because the agencies push it down their throat. They can sell it at a HUGE profit, it requires no work on their part (they outsource the PPC management to a bunch of rookies and interns), and frankly, everyone’s so used to getting ripped off so hard on mainstream media advertising, that the domain channel isn’t even on their radar.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Yeah, there’s always the crybabies who can’t BELIEVE that they aren’t able to get a domain that matches their company name, which they stupidly went for without securing the domain name first. What’s hilarious is that most of the pricing for domains they could buy to secure their “brand” is basically petty cash for them. Most mid-ranged business making over $500k a year gross spend at least $50k - $100k in advertising and marketing. If they don’t, they’re gone.
The ad agencies know about domain name values, and they also know that domain names STEAL potential revenue from their accounts. Instead of charging their client thousands of dollars paid hourly and from placing ads (15% agency fee kickback from most publications, including internet), they know a domain name can easily bring in the same amount of traffic and eyeballs continuously for less money than an ad campaign. Why would they want their client to own a keyword generic domain that could do that?
At some point though, the biggest ad agencies are going to try to figure out how to capture and control this typein traffic from generic domains. It’s going to be interesting to see what path they take to do this.
By jeff schneider on Sep 27, 2008
We have based our strategy on ‘”Target Market Branding ” In other words take a key word and add a branding handle , such as eBiz. This accomplishes two things it attracts Madison Avenues hunger for branded ideas and at the same targets certain market sectors.
An example would be TVeBiz.com etc. etc. We have not aggressively marketed the concept other than our website. Thank you all for sharing your ideas they sound great. We all deserve to be successful. Sometimes you have to give to recieve and to give is ultimately recieving. Good luck to all of us, for we really all are one in this crazy thing called life.
I also want to thank you Stephen for being brave enough to speak the truth in a somewhat clubby community such as ours. When the ole boys club becomes everyones club, that will mark the beginning of positive change for all of us not just a few.
XXXXXX Stephen Douglas Responds:
Hi Jeff,
Thanks for the good input, and kind words. Yes, the domain industry is somewhat “clubby,” and if that lasts too long, the “club” will become a “club foot” for our ability to grow. It’s getting better though, so hang tight! The “ole boys club” has members who are beginning to kick back and cruise on the great profits they’ve made on their smart business moves with domains, but many still are working hard and I believe most of the “club” are dedicated to seeing the domain industry blow open marketing techniques on the internet. Thanks for your support.