Domain Owl

Oversee.net recently streamlined 13% of its workforce. Along with pending new hires, will allow the “new” Oversee.net to leverage core assets to innovate more effectively, improve competitive positioning and achieve growth.” Um, sure. I guess now they have less to “oversee”. Domainers wear so many hats, almost every domainer I know is their own Internet company. I’d like to see the actual product flow from an internet company just once with a profit model that reflects a monetary relationship what people are paid.

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DirectI, parent of BigJumbo, DomainAdvertising.com, Logicboxes and ResellerClub (amongst others) announced this week the merge with the DomainAdvertising and BigJumbo brands into a single Domain Parking Platform. The merged entity will function under the brand DomainAdvertising.com. this signals a shift in parking offerings from seller side features to a more customer based approach.

Do you need an entire company to structure a parking offering? Aren’t these generated by scripts? Where does the human factor add value? I have yet to see a compelling content generation model from any parking company, which emphasizes the metrical aspect to website and domain promotion but skips the content angle. This mirrors how I feel the parking industry should be developing. Once the arrogance of a parking company fades away, the utility of their service offering improves.

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The news reported in the Wall Street Journal regarding the Google company corporation global behemoth of interlinking departments and divisions was too little too late. Long has Big Google dominated the internet space, where SEO practices are concerned especially. For Google to defend its practices as merely one of several choices is disingenuous.

Google has dominated not only the online search engine promotion and marketing areas of business, but has also generally been responsible for the integration many of Microsoft type business applications in conjunction with their Google access.

Just try getting on Youtube without having to reset your Google password. Google has purposely penetrated the Youtube search engine of video content to enrich its search engine database holdings, at the expense of privacy for Google member users of Youtube.

There is no option to Youtube with a security parameter except to make a duplicate account upon which to host your audio/video channel or video content. Google has created massive departments of endeavor with each its own director of teams of workers to guide the mastery of the site visitation of a GoogleTube participant.

Big Google is now the Big Brother of Youtube. The appeal of Youtube is less than if it was associated with the multiple marketing levels that Google brings to bear. Why does a company that masters your gmail need to track your Youtube activity? And make no mistake, they are tracking it. Google has launched and promoted more freeware online than any other company, in the size and shape of business and desktop application intended to mimic (and eradicate) the need for Microsoft office Suite product dependence

Google might have had a good case against the antitrust fed warriors, but they have launched heaven and Earth to make themselves Number One, and must answer for those practices. I’m sure Yahoo and Bing and many other fledgeling search engines that have disappeared are watching the antitrust actions against Big Google with interest. But Google has maintained such an outside public profile, especially due to recent squareoffs against China’s online supercompanies, it is hard to accept they might argue their global presence is due to a humble, nonproprietary, unfair market advantage.

The catch-22 of modern business, as Bill Gates will be happy to tell anyone, is that success brings the sniffer dogs of the counter–revolution. federal mandatory concordance to free market enterprises business practices is the ugly undertow following every new wave of fresh success.A more conservative strategy of less rapid growth might have left the antitrust probe depths unplumbed. And with the bulk of the federal brain trust sifting through Google deals, internal correspondence, there may be food for legislative thought.

Except Microsoft Corporation has a proprietary interest in such online desktop business applications as Google Apps provides. Ironically these applications stem from basic computer interface utilities many Microsoft critics over the years have claimed Bill Gates and his merry men stole from other beginner software manufacturers in the early days of the desktop computer. It may be fruit of the poisoned tree that Google adopted this “free-market” clone of the Microsoft Office Suite as its own open access application, in a campaign of online offerings that brought federal antitrust scrutiny.

Want to access a Google apps program? Guess what- you just opened up all your data ad personal computing device security to Google. While Microsoft weathered many legal and antitrust storms by arguing the customization and free application of many of its wares to the online and program computing market, Google seems to be arguing that because a search engine is something that any entity online can operate, a search engines are equally free market enterprise.

Bug it is not news to anybody that all search engine are not alike. Bing does not have anywhere near the following and affiliate advertisement program volume of participants that Google Adsense does. If anything, many domainers and Internet entrepreneurs working in the domain space become uniquely affiliated with Google and Adsense for the length and breadth of their careers, and call it a success. This would not be possible is Google did not have such a stranglehold on the search engine apparatus online.

It looks like being Number One in the search engine stakes may have a price after all. The possibility of a new face in the SEO pace could come from GoDaddy if KKR and friends hatch their chickens at Godaddy’s acquisition table correctly. And why hasn’t FaceBook entered the Search Engine stakes? they’ve got the resources and the users already online 24/7.

Antitrust litigation ain’t cheap. Big Google will likely pass along these costs to shareholders and advertiser customers, which is bad news for the bulk of domainers utilizing Google-dominant SEO marketing strategies. This is good news for competitive search engines without the heavy burden of Google’s overhead or legal fees. Maybe some other search engine will give Big Google a run for its money.

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Amidst all the cynical backbiting taking place over the three amigos kicked from Oversee.net, I have yet to hear the logic behind Monte Cahn leaving. Is this company as much of a mess as it sounds like? I can’t quite track the convoluted history of these Internet based companies. Some of the comment show some bad blood between not only domainers in general and Oversee.net, but to those individuals in particular. Were these cost cutting measures or disciplinary measures against specific individuals?

This could make sense in the long run. I find it hard to believe any above-the-line talent in a high profile domaining company needs to be let go in such a public manner unless there is an underlying reason for having made them redundant that will be made clear in the fullness of time. Gee it’s hard to believe parking didn’t work out to be a money printing machine, right?

I still take issue with internet companies so bloated with infrastructure they can’t do more that publish parking programs and weave together parking networks. That’s just not a full days’ work for any domainer, in this domain owner’s humble opinion.

The news of these job cuts has alerted domainers to the money machine that parking is built on. Affiliate programs are always only as good as their bank balance.

At the same time naysayers are shuttering offices at Oversee.net, five figure domains sales are still taking place on public worldwide auction platform. That three of the big recent sales were .co name is serious food for domaining thought. Apple buying icloud.com for $4.5 million is the kind of sale may keyword domain buyers dream of. (What took them so long?)

Some marquee six figure sales broke profitably as well. That’s a dichotomy that should speak loudly to any domainer. The parking companies are going broke but the buyers market for big dollar domains is a blown out as ever.

eNom Expired Domain Name Software. Snap Expired Domain Names the Second They become Available for Registration.

That Amazon.com is buying single consonant domain names shows that a program of investment in domain names is still happening among large to global sized corporations. This complements the small to medium sized business purchase of a brand name or entity name to support online marketing and brand promotion.

Tap your feet three times if you “get it”. As reporters and broad stream media become more conversant in the domain name game, the open market for first time domain buyers and resales will sharpen. The recent appearance of the “Get Rich Click” author on the View reflects how this is done. It’s hard to believe the domain model for online marketing and resale profit, as well as affiliate sales derivation is still a mystery to anyone, but evidently this is so.

For domainers thinking strategically, this puts them at the middle of the demand market, behind the huge portfolio holders but ahead of the newbs with B2B needs for domains as yet to be determined. Any domainer can leverage existing domains into a worth position by multiplying their investment using coupon codes, the most recent of which was the Godaddy.com Indy car event code.

The B2B and side business potential of a domain name career continues to grow. I am surprised nobody has built a domain name shop franchise for the all the hue and cry that startups have in the world today. Today the Internet market for affiliate earnings is more suited to specialized end users, specialist webmasters,  and niche authors than ever.

For the right name the right customer is out there. Do the math: if you buy three domains a year at $1.29, and spend about $50 hosting them all, that’s a potential of $100 profit if even one of those websites sells intact with the name. On that formula, selling the right customer the right name should be simple. All they have to do is add content, link liberally to their social networking groups, and blend on low speed.

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Not every person doing business online knows how to research and obtain a factual finding for their chosen domain. Looking to buy a certain domain they may stop short of getting it. They may know how to type it in, but that is not the end of the road. But most people know very few of the domain name tools that domainers use every day.

Today I heard neighboring diners at a restaurant throwing in the towel because they saw their favorite name was “taken”. I knew instantly that the prospective buyer’s path to their chosen domain name had stopped about eight steps too early. But trying to convince someone on the fly is near to impossible. Here is the truth:

A researcher can find the estimated value of a domain name at Estibot.com, test the page ranking at Alexa.com, or use Yahoo or Google keyword indexes to compare the relative value of the content on the website.  If there is no website, an error occurs while loading it (404), there are no ads, or the page is parked with a template from a hosting company showing, the owner might be glad to have the domain name off their hands.

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There are domain research tools that might be used to acquire the most desirable name for any online enterprise or venture. just shrugging and walking off into the sunset isn’t the answer.

1. If the domain name has a website up or has been purchased by someone else, that is not the end of the  line. Non-domainers may become unhappy if they think someone is using the domain name actively or promoting it with a live website. But this may be a placeholder and the owner may be unknowing of any interest for a potential sale and disinterested otherwise.

What may look like a live website to a newcomer may be an old template programmed to show updates. The owner may be looking to get rid of it. Motivated sellers will make sure their listing or proxy is activated and working smoothly. Not every domain name owner is greedy and will automatically name a high price for any domain name.

2. The lookup record will be displayed to tell you who owns the domain name is the WHOIS database. Access to this database may be found from every registrar, or domain name online selling platform. The researcher may want to search for other domain names with similar top level domains suffixes, such as -net or -org, -biz and -tv. These are more in use than ever before.

If the domain name record has been established using privacy, a contact email will be provided for contact and anonymous forwarding. If the owner wants to entertain offers, they will check their email. If the registrar elects to offer a formal offer conveyance, the lookup researcher can click that option and their information and interest will be communicated to the seller.

3. WHOIS records detail the email, first and last name, address and company name with phone number and fax number of the current owner. This person may be contacted using this number and the administrative contact information. There is always going to be a real person for this information, as ICANN requires checkup procedures to verify ongoing accuracy in domain registration and WHOIS submissions and updates.

4. If the domain name record is incomplete and no answer to the listed email is received, contact data for the domain name may be found elsewhere. The email address, employment, even access to a hosting account and connected email names may have been lost. A phone call or even formal snailmail communication may quickly discover who owns the name and who can speak for its brokerage or sale.

5. If the domain name researcher uses a search engine to find other records of the domain name, they may find the owner using it as a signature link in a forum or blog entry.The less search engine results the researcher finds, the more possibility there is the domain name can be acquired easily. A domain name owner who has not spent time developing links or building an online presence has invested less value to lose.

Emailing the admin of the blog to find out who the link holder is might clear things up. The email address of the poster will be evident to the administrator of the blog or website. They may email the operator of the account a communication letting them know you want to open a conversation about domain name ownership for “x” name. From there, its anyone’s game.

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This is the age of the mobile domain name. Everyone has got not just a cellphone but a smartphone, an Internet portal users can hold in their hands in line at the fast food place, waiting for the movie to start in the theater, and waiting for the kids to come out of school. The mobile domain name website designer needs to feature an app for browsing site visitors to utilize. Just signalling one point on the landing page for mobile users is a start.

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Everyone has got a cellphone. Infants and pets have cellphones. barbie has a cellphone and her doll has a cellphone. But not everyone likes the navigation or reduced footprint mobile access to Internet sites offer. My take on the mobile use of websites is that the visitation to any website can enjoy huge traffic bursts as long as there is a unique, standalone, easily navigable application (app). This can build in a number of directions.

I am confronted daily at my local bus stop by people who don’t know when the bus gets there. They are all holding cellphones. The reason they can’t access the local bus routes via internet is that the website for this service (mta.net) is the most bloated internet presence ever constructed. Getting schedule information is a tough dig.

Talk about a bloated online destination. Mta.net is the worst and most overpacked online enterprise I have ever seen, and its schedules are buried under a site map sinking under the weight of too much pablum. The overdesign of this site reaches critical traffic stalls regularly and the bus schedule I normally use has a permanent error built into its Adobe page split between the 5th and 6th age of my most used bus schedule.

What if I made a website that featured the bus arrival times and schedules for my local bus stops in an easily mobile-navigable format for simplistic mobile phone users to track and access? It sounds like re-inventing the wheel. But if the data owners don’t like their wheels to be accessible to riders, someone else can showcase the wheel and its dynamics.

Navigating an Adobe brochure on a cellphone with a screen size the size of a Lorna Doone cookie doesn’t work for me. But checking the schedule of the MTA bus route 183, MTA bus route 96, and MTA bus route 222 maps tos a series of clicks which culminate in (you guessed it) the entire multipage bus schedule download. This is awful to tab through on a numeric mobile phone keypad.

But what if a local website hosted these schedules in navigable form so that mobile users could grab their data while waiting curbside? Furthermore, a fun marketing idea might be to print stickers with this url and slap them on the bus stops so people would get the idea. Instead of worried faces and unnecessary delays, bus riders could access schedules “on the hoof”.

If a vendor or internet source online offers data in an unpalatable format, there is no law that says you can’t repackage that data on your own site and garner the clicks. By identifying bad websites and poorly accessible data, webmasters of would-be mobile features can target a repackaging strategy and spread the word. And domainers promoting these sites may see some tasty traffic.

Previously posted on 7/28/2010

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Active domainers are watching the auction sales and seeing massive big ticket name sales this week and thinking about putting their Internet names on the block. But the best value estimator data for domain name sales comes from traffic and backlinks and pings from other websites of equal or greater page rank. Assuming a website is of low page rank or remains somewhat undeveloped, any linking activity will benefit the name value.

See the previous post regarding the top websites online in terms of web visitor traffic. These sites, each one of them, is a SEO weapon you can use to promote any website or domain name link. Most of them are open account and free use sites. That’s a free ad on websites of top page rank at which you can put links of your choice on. This list of top websites should be a shopping list of places to cement web links to your targeted domain.

When a domainer with SEO goals reviews the traffic referrers for a specific domain name, they should check through this list for that domain name. Any of these high volume urls that do not appear in the web traffic list go to the top of the to-do list for that domain name. Hand picked url planting works infinitely better than mechanized backlinking because the traffic is organic and naturally occurring. Yet so few domainers actually do it.

Why post your link on these popular websites? A host of good reasons. Those monster traffic websites will channel bots and visitors to your sites and hike your page rank along with the millions of dollars they spend ramping up their own. If you place an ad write a review or list an item with a proper link back to your store, that’s a promotional that can only help your site. These actions are often only briefly screened or scanned before publication.

No domainer should list a domain name at a drop list, online auction or bidding d threawithout consulting some of these sites. No domainer who claims an aggressive approach to value building can afford to skip this step in domain marketing. Even targeting five of these websites and systematically incorporating their website url over a period of three to six months will show tangible page rank improvement.

Buyers that domainers want to bid on their names will do this review. They will wonder why an aggressive price is asked from a domainer who clearly hasn’t attempted the sale marketing efforts they themselves would use. Right the most savvy of domainers are using serious strategies to target end users for traffic, product sales and site name value increase for domain resale.

Time to review your domain name strategy. Per domain name, check through this list, using a graph chart or Excel spreadsheet. There should be a pattern of websites represented by the websites used for promotion. This report should be used as a visual reminder to market websites. The density of scatter dots on a list of domain names and the cross listed pivot list of popular websites should tell their own story regarding the domainers’ real efforts toward domain name promoter.

Some webmasters might look at this list of domains as a lot of work. It is, and so is domaining. But for the professional domain name investor willing to properly put the time in, page rank and traffic can increase. The statistics of this increase in SEO value will be available for any potential buyer to review through various analytics or domain value estimators.  And then domainers can cultivate buyers using qualified data that gives new buyers inspiration to bid, with greater success and enhanced networking response.

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In my endless slog of deleting emails that are useless and distracting in my inbox, I was shocked to see  Paypal email that usually signals a banking transaction or some other communication that begs my notice.  Paypal wanted me to know about international services possibilities and some urls they wanted to visit on their site. Are you f-ing kidding me?

I know for a fact I am one of the Paypal customers who have selected opt-out when their pointless self-publicizing emails are concerned. There is no justifiable reason I should be receiving anything from email at Paypal or that url and its origins that is not connected to my personal banking. Paypal is abusing its position as a trusted email sender at this point.

Spam is not banking. It’s advertising. And since they’ve already collected their slice of my earnings, I’d prefer it if they not waste my time.

Be advised this is a full-blown rant from a domainer who is offended that their bank sees fit to use its status as a must-read email source to flog their services. Hint: I am already a customer.

Paypal has no business using their connection to me an an electronic customer to wave their shingle and beg for more fees. Paypal takes a slice of whatever I earn and I have long gotten accustomed to accepting this as a cost of doing business with them. Apparently they are greedy for more fees and this is the  communication they have sent to me, using my email address and name, url links on their site that neither apply to be or my services.

That’s a greedy bank.

Paypal should know better. One of the last things I need to spend my time doing right now is weeding through their pointless “communications” unless they are regarding critical financial transactions and money issues. That’s why I open an email from Paypal. Not because I’m lonely and just can’t seem to find a single site online to look at.

Paypal is getting like Ebay now, where they fill your inbox with things you’d rather not see and daily weigh the utility of still being a customer. I would like Paypal to be a bank and operate like  a bank, and not be weighted down by its need for attention and traffic. Paypal is a site which should wait for when it is convenient for me to go there, and not distract me in the meantime.

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Reading a book about Google was inevitable. This book was an eye opening primer in basic domain wisdom. But the knowledge inside the tome “What Would Google Do”‘ goes much further than any one online market segment. Written all the way back in 2009, much of the simplistic approaches to online business can be tooled especially to a domainer profit model.

Making smart mistakes, joining networks, and concentrating on delivering best product and nothing less is a welcome refresher. The concept that “life is  a beta” may be a soft sell to hard nosed domainers. References to the Google economy and the concept that middlemen are doomed may be up for debate or at least a half-hearted shrug.

The idea that “free is a business model” and that “nothing can compete with free” is being proven right now in realtime clicks and mortar stores with Panera bakeries. Neighboring eateries can’t compete with pay as you go prices. And Panera polishes its franchise with every chopped price. Google didn’t write the book (NPI) on business success but they do enjoy co-opting the brand.

Being collaborative is nothing new, neither is the concept of making mistakes well. Most industry advice books, especially in the tech related fields, emphasize trial and error. But this can be expensive for the everyday domainer. Thinking inside the gift economy, grabbing the freeware of the open source portal, and embracing the gift machine that is the Internet are all included.

Jeff Jarvis in “What Would Google Do” encapsulates and expands on his blog material from buzzmachine.com. If you are stranger to the blog this is all new news. Google and the Internet are indeed social media.And Jarvis explores several cases were the internet media is exploited incorrectly for public relations and profit motives. Jarvis preaches against being “evil”.

But somewhere the case is lacking that Google is guardian, the last bastion of a business seal of approval. The perception that a business operating outside the Google envelope needs to be “reformed’ may meet askance by several industry watchers. But Jarvis’ approach has brought new life to old company models. Is any business Google proof? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Domainers can best use this book as a tool to learn to think three dimensionally about to puncture and exploit captive domain traffic markets. Jarvis suggests giving control, respect and organization to customers, (which I seem to be alone in wishing more mobile customers of websites were on the receiving end of).  Information is power, but the idea that FaceBook is a “fake’ currency is intriguing.

Domainers can read this book and enjoy how Jarvis road maps certain domain markets and reveals potential domain name investment values to invest in. For a domain speculator to buy geo names or real estate names is nothing new, but it’s nice to hear a SEO expert say so too. Jarvis reports that the real estate market online is ripe for explosive development, and he’s right.

The application of Googlethink may not always heal. The case studies are contemporary, however, and deal with extremely relevant and updated business profit models such as airlines and “vanishing” newspapers are food for thought. Turning the customer experience around can make a domain (and its corresponding website) pay.

But a book spent evangelizing Googlification and Googlethink is not necessarily captivating reading. The success story wears thin because readers can’t start their own Google in the basement. Some readers may wonder how much of Jarvis’ advice can relate to markets where Google does not dominate, such as insurance and law. But maybe that’s for the next book.

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This is the age of the mobile domain name. Everyone has got not just a cellphone but a smartphone, an Internet portal users can hold in their hands in line at the fast food place, waiting for the movie to start in the theater, and waiting for the kids to come out of school. The mobile domain name website designer needs to feature an app for browsing site visitors to utilize. Just signalling one point on the landing page for mobile users is a start.

Everyone has got a cellphone. Infants and pets have cellphones. barbie has a cellphone and her doll has a cellphone. But not everyone likes the navigation or reduced footprint mobile access to Internet sites offer. My take on the mobile use of websites is that the visitation to any website can enjoy huge traffic bursts as long as there is a unique, standalone, easily navigable application (app). This can build in a number of directions.

I am confronted daily at my local bus stop by people who don’t know when the bus gets there. They are all holding cellphones. The reason they can’t access the local bus routes via internet is that the website for this service (mta.net) is the most bloated internet presence ever constructed. Getting schedule information is a tough dig.

Talk about a bloated online destination. Mta.net is the worst and most overpacked online enterprise I have ever seen, and its schedules are buried under a site map sinking under the weight of too much pablum.  The overdesign of this site reaches critical traffic stalls regularly and the bus schedule I normally use has a permanent error built into its Adobe page split between the 5th and 6th age of my most used bus schedule.

What if I made a website that featured the bus arrival times and schedules for my local bus stops in an easily mobile-navigable format for simplistic mobile phone users to track and access? It sounds like re-inventing the wheel. But if the data owners don’t like their wheels to be accessible to riders, someone else can showcase the wheel and its dynamics.

Navigating an Adobe brochure on a cellphone with a screen size the size of a Lorna Doone cookie doesn’t work for me.  But checking the schedule of the MTA bus route 183, MTA bus route 96, and MTA bus route 222 maps tos a series of clicks which culminate in (you guessed it) the entire multipage bus schedule download. This is awful to tab through on a numeric mobile phone keypad.

But what if a local website hosted these schedules in navigable form so that mobile users could grab their  data while waiting curbside? Furthermore, a fun marketing idea might be to print stickers with this url and slap them on the bus stops so people would get the idea. Instead of worried faces and unnecessary delays, bus riders could access schedules “on the hoof”.

If a vendor or internet source online offers data in an unpalatable format, there is no law that says you can’t repackage that data on your own site and garner the clicks. By identifying bad websites and poorly accessible data, webmasters of would-be mobile features can target a repackaging strategy and spread the word. And domainers promoting these sites may see some tasty traffic.

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