Odd (or not) that this question was posed right after my vile post.
Or merely coincidence.
Is the economy making domainers grouchy?
I can not think of a sector of business that the economy is making people happy.
Case in point:
February I sold three domains on Sedo.
The first was canceled and all bids erased in less than 24 hours because the winner changed his/her mind.
I have never seen Sedo act or respond that fast to anything.
Must have been a high profile member or a Sedo employee.
Sedo saw fit to oblige a bidder who waited on the seventh day and less than 6 hours remaining to place a bid.
In obliging that one person, Sedo lost sight of the fact that they compromised 3 other people including me by not enforcing their own rules.
The other two auctions I have not heard a word from Sedo since the initial congrats letter.
As usual, I will have to make the contact and find out what the hold up is.
The point is - I will have to contact them rather than they follow-up with me.
IF the economy is indeed shrinking and businesses going under then NOW is the time to offer great customer service.
And I am not just applying that statement to domains.
I am selling and buying domains via PM here on DNF.
I really don't like doing business in the open because frankly, it is my business.
I am also trying to set up a site with WordPress and there was a member kind enough to offer help.
For two days I got a barrage of abusive PM's from a member who screwed up.
In between those barrages of PM's I had to weed through to find the information I needed to conduct business or learning matters.
Plus, I had reported this member's nonsense for those 2 days.
All of the above leads to the point of - there is a better way.
There is a better way of selling domains other than Sedo.
Toys.com was not run through Sedo.
Sure, it was a private auction.
Point is - if Sedo is the biggest and the best then why did the Trustees contact Sedo to conduct the auction .
Simple answer.
They do not know who Sedo is.
Many domainers go about conducting business as if everyone in the world is a domainer.
People do not know how wrong that assumption can be.
There was criticism I read because it was not conducted through Sedo thereby it could have brought more.
Asinine statements like that are simply asinine statements.
One of the top domainers in the world was bidding.
The opponent made no apologies for bidding the moon and stars.
ToysRus could care less who or what FS represented.
As far as forums, are forums falling victim to new channels of communication and people with like interests meeting up on line?
Perhaps.
Social media is hot right now.
Very hot.
I have one site that I heavily promote as being a free service.
I only belong to and conduct business on one of these channels.
I was not sure it would work for business purposes but it does.
I started out the first week by getting 12 followers, basically return followers from the numerous I started following.
The second week I had 33.
The third week (today) I have 74.
The bulk of these are institutions, not individuals.
There are new ways of marketing and reaching that end user.
The results speak for themselves as the site is being very heavily used and Adsense Revenue is up.
I offer a service, found a hole, and filled a void in a niche market.
The next phase will soon kick into gear of selling direct advertising.
What I find is domainers think there is only one domain extension worth having, they are lazy, would rather park than learn how to develop, and by doing all of this the traffic and people will come to them.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I keep harping to step outside your shell and be the consumer and look at things from a consumers's perspective.
It is an entirely different approach to domaining.
For me, it is working.
And there are a few other less vocal members whom I have noticed this working as well.
Domainers have to keep up with new technology, new techniques, and new channels of marketing and domaining.
Lets face it - this is not 1995.
If it was, I would still be on AOL dial-up.
And that really sucked.
