We’ve all had our concerns about Facebook and other social networking sites. This is based on watching them evolve, and how our privacy is being invaded and sold, without it actually “looking” like it is.  You can be paranoid. Facebook IS stealing your privacy, and the media encourages the promotion of Facebook (and Twitter) as online mediums “for change and salvation”. This is based on several MidEast countries supposedly overthrowing dictators or rulers who were abusing their citizens because the “revolution for democracy” was enabled by Facebook.

The redirection of that logic is this:  If the “revolutionaries” used their Facebook account to inform their friend and co-revolutionaries of where to be, what to do, and posted pictures and other information, that information is now owned by Facebook.  So tens of thousands of “rebels” have their information logged into the largest compilation of personal data in the world.  Will their particulars be protected by Facebook against “counter-attacks” by potentially “favorable dictators” who know how to manipulate friendships with United States’ interests?

Who knows? But I do embrace this singular truth: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Some people attribute this quote to Lord Acton in 1887, but this understanding of power and control was already being accepted as a “truth” by many people during this time. English Prime Minister, William Pitt The Elder, the Earl of Chatham, said a similar phrase in 1770. So for at least 250 years, intelligent minds have realized this fact.)

Facebook’s lure of easy communication with friends, family, and the world has built it into a singular source of almost 1 billion humans today. At least a percentage of them have read or worried about the placing of personal information into the hands of Facebook, who forgave the company for its trickery, slow re-visiting of disliked invasive features and clandestine rebuilding of them to be introduced in a more “acceptable way”.

However, this article isn’t about the sad addiction of Facebook users, and the false impression marketing professionals have bought into “social media” advertising. My blog instead will hopefully reveal to everyone how stupid major companies are by thinking social media as being the golden path to follow.  The monkey spit of what’s happening on Facebook with advertisers is:  The path of social media isn’t supposed to be the path that diminishes the company’s brand.

There are tons of stories from those who know, regarding how dangerous FB and other social networks like MyLife.com, MySpace.com and many other, can be.  Check out this story about how social networks assist hackers to get easy access to your personal info.

First comments here is for investors in domains:  The Domain Industry really has one path to take to gain financial profits on their investments. That is communicating directly with END USUERS for your domains.  It won’t come from other domainers trying to pick off your domains for cheap, or if you let them expire. (HugeDomains.com is mistakenly picking up all the domains I let drop because those domains don’t have a realistic chance as prodserv domains, but hey, if HD likes them, let them waste their dollars registering them and hoping for a future sale.)

Domain names are being replaced by Facebook account backlinks, which are actually being promoted on national television and magazine ads. Think about it: Facebook lets these companies come in with their own account, and allows any advertising company to have “open season” on every sucker who “likes” the advertisers’ Facebook site, based on their commercials.

Here’s the rat in the pudding: Facebook, and the advertisers who you just “liked” are  releasing everything you had set as “private”. Why? Because privacy for your records only applies to regular Facebook users, NOT those companies who you end up “liking” or connecting to because you want to be informed of their newest prodservs. In essence, when you click on a company’s Facebook link and “like” them, all your private information will be released to that company.  Facebook can actually hone down their advertisers’ searches to a particular type of demographic, and you can imagine the thousands of separate niche categories Facebook has compiled.

As the facts of this “advertiser intrusion” leaks out and becomes well-known amongst Facebook members, will there be a backlash against those companies that tricked Facebook users to “join” or “like” them, just to have that company/advertiser be able to collect your likes, dislikes, photos, school contacts, business contacts, friends, family, and other ridiculous information you put up on Facebook?  I think once people realize that when they respond to the commercials asking people to visit Facebook sites and sign up or “like” them, that ALL their private info no longer applies , they will be very very angry.

Already, major corporations are starting to think twice about advertising with Facebook, although the above “concerns” aren’t what is pulling them away from Facebook. There seems to be other facts that are surfacing in the marketing space that are making advertisers hesitate using Facebook.  According to a new AP/CNBC poll, over 50 percent of Facebook users believe that Facebook is a “passing fad”.   More than 3 out of 5 Facebook users do not click on ads in their Facebook account.  Ouch.

Beyond that, let’s just discuss the stupidity,  and moronic decisions, made by some ad agency or company marketing director to include FACEBOOK.COM in their national TV commercials, actually placing Facebook’s domain name (brand) in front of their own!  I’ve attached more than a few photos of TV commercials where well-known brands end their commercials with a request for people to contact them through the advertiser’s Facebook account.  Think about it. The advertiser pays Facebook for the data collection rights (and Facebook does their typical toady two-step telling their users they’ll “never sell their private data”, but says indistinctly that they don’t “control third party privacy usage” if you click on their ads.

I would like to hear from at least one advertising VP who will state, on the record, that placing another company’s website or name in front of their own, in a paid advertisement, is a smart move, and is actually working for them.  Please, let Successclick.com hear from ONE marketing expert who thinks that the “benefits” of Facebook information trumps the “backseat promotion” of their company BEHIND FACEBOOK. Please, someone stand up for Facebook or any of these idiotic ad directors who allowed the following TV ads to be placed nationwide.  Or, agree that each should be fired for being this lame to allow the following ads to appear:

The facts regarding advertising are simple:  Your brand, your brand, your brand.

Stupid advertising techniques and “branding” mistakes have happened thousands of times, but now they are happening in huge groups of Dumb.   NEVER, EVER, PUT ANOTHER COMPANY’S BRAND AND WEBSITE ON YOUR COMMERCIALS AND ADVERTISEMENTS. EVER.  Now all these companies are completely dependent on Facebook to continue their “relationship” with their consumers.  What’s wrong with the company forming their own “social network page”? A forum? A simple “share your story and photos here” page? “Login and have fun!”   That’s not possible anywhere but at Facebook or Myspace or 100 other completely ridiculous privacy invading wannabee social network websites?

Speaking of MySpace, anybody remember them and how huge they were?  More to come on this same article.

Outside of the biggest corporations, such as Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Barnes & Noble and thousands of others, the majority of all global businesses don’t own their basic prodserv domains. They’re missing out on the best backbranding investments they’ll ever make.

However, every once in a while I come across some domain I think will be big, although it is an obscure name in the present to most, in the FUTURE, it could be worth thousands of dollars.

I was reading a story about researchers finding a “protein” that could be connected to hair loss. This discovery could help find a cure for baldness . I noticed this newly discovered protein was called prostaglandin.

Being in the business of buying “future trend” domains before they mature, I did a quick whois on the name of this protein.  Lo and behold, the humungous drug company Pfizer, Inc. owns the domain name in the .com extension. Good for them.

So, where’s the gold rush by businesses on all the great future trend generic domain names hundreds of domainers already own? Are these companies “waiting it out” as to not tip their hand that they definitely realize the value of generic domains? Are they afraid they might drive prices up? It’s an understandable strategy, because I’m seeing some valuable domains getting sold for cheap everyday now.

As we domainers are wondering when the companies are going to rush to contact us with their checkbooks, we find that they definitely do know the benefits and opportunities generic domains provide.  They can’t be that stupid or  uneducated. Not anymore.

I wondered if it might just be about “we big guys don’t want to start any “gold rush” on domains we find valuable that are owned by some “little” guy (or major domain-owning powerhouse) who are buying these domains for only $9 each”, and instead, are buying their domains *OOTB as opposed to putting out big money for aftermarket domains.

This means, domainers may have what companies need and want, but these companies don’t think they need us… yet.  The true outcome will simply be based on how many category and niche domains we invest in that cover every angle of marketing of those generic prodserv domains.

The Fact Is For People Who Think Domainers Are “Pirates” or “Squatters” and UDRP decisions sometimes are based on what a company can do with a domain over a domainer simply parking the domain.

• The domainer does the work for any company that wants a generic descriptive domain name by simply locating it.

• The domainer does the research to “locate” a viable phrase or word that may be valuable in marketing online

• The domainer or his domain consultant analyzes the potential value of the domain for the resale of the domain

• The domainer buys the domain name, either OOTB or from the aftermarket.That domainer may have spent over $100k or more for the domain. Domainers understand domain power, which allows them the “safe” investment of that much money in a simple domain name.

Let’s finally all say it. Many people in online marketing and those companies who want our domains for cheap are chomping on sour grapes. They didn’t act fast enough to buy the domain. It’s that simple. A domainer is WORKING to understand domain values, the correct domain to buy, and how much to pay for it. Build it out or resell it. Domainers deal with these decisions on every domain they own.

Shout it from the rooftops: Domain investing is a legitimate business, and no company interested in a domain name can snub their wallets at that fact.

If they are “holding back”, they will soon find that a domain name they should have bought for $50,000 today might be worth $5 million in two years because someone else bought it, either a competitor or a domain buildout company that will make the domain become another competitor online.  (See “Hotels Dotcom”)

I think it’s time that the gold rush on generic domains starts now, and every company that represents itself online becomes a successful prospector in buying their perfect relevant domain in the domain aftermarket.

*OOTB = “OUT OF THE BASKET” or “new registration”

I received two separate emails, a day apart, about my domain lists I have up for auction at Sedo and Afternic. In the past six years, I’ve sold over 400 domains between the two, and both auction sites worked well enough in the transfer process to keep me satisfied with their services. They take a minimum of 15% commission on my domains sold, and that’s fair, if they do the work to earn it.

Here’s the rub:  As far as I know, based on their emails to me, neither Afternic or Sedo filter their total domain catalogs on an annual basis as a matter of keeping their inventory fresh for new buyers.  Two domains I sold on my own last year, were still listed with Afternic and Sedo auctions as they had been for at least five years. This month, these two domains were “bought” again, and both Afternic and Sedo just “assumed” I still owned the domains.  (Note that I listed over 1000 domains with each auction site.)

I had to inform both companies that I no longer owned the domains.  I advised that they should have checked the whois, or at least emailed me prior to agreeing to sell the domains (which they sell through automated means) to make sure I still owned the domain. Automation is great, but you can automate a quick email to a whois registrant address asking “Do you still own this domain? We may have a buyer”.

When we broker a list of domains for a client, we always check the whois to make sure the domains are current, if they are soon to expire, and that they are, in fact, owned by the person offering them for sale. That’s a no-brainer.  I charge a range of commissions for my work, depending on the extent of active promotions I do in reaching buyers for my clients. That’s where I earn my sales commission. Then the expectation of any buyer of domains I represent is that I’m offering a domain name that I know I can sell.

However, it seems that maybe using Afternic or Sedo just means you’re only “borrowing space” from them to use their “listing service”.  You know they aren’t actively promoting your domain unless you pay extra for it. If someone happens on your domain while searching their list of domains, and wants to buy it, there is no “due diligence” made by either Afternic or Sedo to double-check whether you still own the domain after several years.

So exactly WHAT do these listing services do for you in selling your domain? Process the sale? Bring in the buyer? Are these sites actual “auction sites” where they go out and find specific buyers for the category relevance of your domain? Or do they just wait until someone comes to their site and searches to find your domain? Obviously, the latter didn’t work for the two domains I sold that were listed at Sedo and Afternic for many years, because I sold them myself first.

What I don’t like is these messages from them:  (in part)

“The revised User Agreement and acceptable use policies pages apply to all Sedo users and, where applicable, to domains listed for sale in any Sedo user account. Each Sedo user is responsible for maintaining a domain list that accurately reflects domains that they still own and wish to sell. If a user account creates failed transactions due to an outdated domain list, that account shall be suspended at Sedo’s discretion, and reinstated only when it has been reviewed and outdated domain listings have been deleted.”

Oh, OUCH. Now, are we supposed to be “scared” about Sedo making us domainers do their inventory work? Is Sedo taking this hardline stance with domainers who may have thousands of domains listed with them? Seriously? What if those big portfolio holders refuse to do this “demand”?  Sedo makes a good commission on selling their domains, and since most of the input and management of the domains uploaded to Sedo is required to be done the seller, I’d like to know where the 15% commission for Sedo is earned? Is it because we are so blessed to have Sedo list our domains, based on their media presence and solid reputation? However, the main questions is:  Has it reached a point in this industry where the “big guys” have the gall to post that kind of ‘sucker’ rules for their own SOURCE OF SALES COMMISSION INCOME?

And the message from Afternic wasn’t much different.

“Can you take a look at the attached spreadsheet and send back a list of domains you no longer own so I can bulk delete them?  I don’t want to guess on this and remove domains you do still own. Please let me know as soon as possible so we can get your portfolio up to date.”

How about this? For the commission that these listing/auction sites are charging, why force domainers who have listed over 1000 domains with these so-called “auction sites”  to waste their time reviewing every single domain in their catalog that they sold outside the domain listing service that charges domain sellers significant commission?  Why should they force their own clients  to “clean up” their catalog for them? I don’t know about any other domainer, but for me to do this, I’d have to spend hours reviewing each and every domain for whois info and check my database.

Look at it this way:  You have 2000 domains. You list them at five different domain auction/listings websites. You sell a few of those domains on your own. You now have to go through FIVE auction/listing websites, look for the domain you sold, then delete it. You have to remember to do this every time you sell a domain. And the kicker is this:  What if you never listed that domain on ANY of the five domain auctions sites, and you spent hours searching for that domain you just sold, and came up empty-handed?

The job of a listing/auction site is to check and confirm their auction items. It’s not up to domainers to go do it for them, especially when these auction sites are being paid a nice commission when they sell one of your domains.

Are you too busy to do the work your auction site should be doing for you to earn their commission? Probably. I am. Do you think it’s fair that auction sites make you do the “cleanup work” for their inventory when it should be their responsibility to make sure a domain they are about to sell is actually owned by you?

Trying to be logical and fair here. Comments welcome!

Otherwise, I truly like Sedo and Afternic, but let’s stop putting profits in their pockets when they aren’t treating the source of their income with respect and accommodation.

UPDATE FROM SEDO:

Dear Readers,

I was impressed to receive a “go-ahead” from the obviously up-t0-speed executive, Neil Kavenaugh, to reprint some emails from Sedo regarding the task of maintaining a huge inventory of domain names for sale through listings and auctions on Sedo.  I’d like to thank Neil Kavanaugh for having the guts to comment on my harsh post regarding my claim that auction sites were putting the responsibility of maintaining Sedo’s inventory, which for me, negated their right to charge 15% commission on YOUR domains you sell through their “service”.

Neil makes some strong points I have to consider, which means you do, too! Here are his remarks:

“Stephen – feel free to post and thanks for asking.  Please keep in mind the verification process is a challenge.  Between privacy settings, multiple emails per acct and large registrars blocking us from running “bulk’ checks – much of this is manual process that absolutely requires the assistance of domain owners.  Perhaps this will improve in the near future as the industry grows more standardized.

We do run WHOIS checks on our listed domains, but unfortunately many names come back as “unverified” for a multitude of reasons and we must verify with the domain owners.   In this case, Christina had sent you a list of solely the domains that we could not verify through WHOIS(see attached).   We very much need the help of our portfolio owners to verify these instances so that we do not have inventory for sale that is not owned by the listing customer.  While we certainly play a role, verifying ownership is ultimately the responsibility of the owner.  When we sell a name that is no longer owned, it obviously provides a poor customer experience and reflects poorly on Afternic (as well as our industry as a whole).  

We have a hard working Customer Service team here that has a big challenge in verifying the nearly 4 million brokered names on our platform, and your cooperation and assistance in verifying the names that Christina had forwarded to you on the 14th is certainly be a big help.  

Thanks very much in advance!

Neil Kavenaugh
Sedo – Director of Marketplace Sales
Buydomains.com/AfternicDLS

++++++++++++++++++

My response to to my readers about Neil:  Neil is a straight forward no-nonsense Sedo representative in an executive position who clearly and confidently replied to my post. That’s whats we like to see, yes? No “corporate speak”, just answers to our simple questions. Even if we have more questions, or our questions weren’t answered completely, having somebody from Sedo taking the time to address these issues is a legitimate step in CS maintenance by Sedo. This, in my book, is what all domain investors are looking for.

Score: Sedo +1

Thanks Neil, and we welcome any further communications from you regarding Sedo’s policy on keeping clients’ large portfolios maintained by Sedo at the level that Sedo assists in reviewing those portfolios at least annually, to make sure that they are current and updated. If there is a question about it, a simple email to the “past” listed owner for confirmation makes all the difference in the world.

regards.

Stephen Douglas
Successclick.com
“Successful Domain Management™”
LINKEDIN.COM RESUME: Linkedin.com/in/successclick
TitleDomains.com (Domains For Sale Archive)
“Own Your Competition™”

If anyone knows of the best way to park 1500 domains, not great PPC domains but pretty good generics and branding domains, I’d love to hear your comments on it.

Unless the PPC company has transparent PPC rev share info, I’d rather hear about the multiple-path monetization companies.(I don’t put all my eggs in one basket).

Thanks for your help on this. I’m sure hundreds of other domainers will appreciate your input too!

Don’t forget to visit TitleDomains.com for some great inexpensive generics for sale. Get your picks before they’re gone!

REFERENCE:

Andrew Allemann
January 29th, 2012 | 7:14 pm
@ Stephen Douglas -

“That’s not true. You can file a trademark anytime. You can even file an “intent to use” trademark before you even start using it in commerce.”

My response to Andrew is posted here:

@ Andrew,

My experience over the last 25 years is that the TM won’t be registered in your name until you’ve used it in commerce publicly, and within the geographic area of your TM visibility, until five years.

You can file with the USPTO all you want, but it doesn’t mean you have a TM on the name just because you “filed”, or will be given the TM for it. Many companies file for the TM thinking this will scare off competitors, but if they haven’t used the TM phrase publicly, they’re not going to get the TM issued to them.

However, promoting the phrase publicly with the “TM” mark is the first move you need to make to secure your timeline of usage of the TM phrsae in commerce. Like I said, I’m not an atty, but I’ve won three TM contests in the last 25 years using this process as advised by my atty back in the 80′s.

Also, don’t hesitate “challenging” usage of your TM phrase, because even six months of a competitor using the exact TM phrase, even your company name, is too long to wait to secure your rights to the name. That one I lost… the story is too unbelievable and long to tell here, but the judge’s ruling was basically this: “If you have a TM name being usurped, you need to file a C&D or lawsuit against them in a timely manner, so they don’t invest money and time in using the identical phrase. The defendant in this case has already invested significant amounts of money and has many respondents with their families who are now invested in the defendant’s use of the name of your company.  Six months of no legal action shows this court that complainant was not vigilant to protect their company’s name.”

Thus, another company was able to continue stealing our company’s name and identity, in my same space, copying my company’s name that had been in use for three years. They even lured a past winner of our shows to represent them… which we found out was done with a lot of cash. Everyone has their price, I guess.

Filing for a TM immediately isn’t going to get you the TM. You have to show usage. You have to fight other entities trying to get in on your “genre” using your domain name. Otherwise, cash heavy companies could find thousands of startup companies “defining phrases”, and simply buy out the TM listing from under those companies. That’s not how it works, thankfully.

Wonder what all domain atty’s we know would say about this. It’s a very important part of keeping your most valuable domains safe and secure, so all of you domain buyers who think you are safe from being reverse hijacked, think again. And if Andrew is right in his assertions, you all lose your domains to the companies with the most money to steal TM phrases by just paying for “filing”.