The domain name industry is so full of it... Really!

[katherine]

domainers were never developers, and probly never will be able to make the transition...the right way anyways...

it is the other way around, developers becoming domainers.. it is much easier

Most domainers have developed websites. I have been developing LONG before I got into domaining.
It is simplistic and inaccurate to claim domainers are just lazy. Parking is a way of monetizing domains until you have time to develop, or receive an offer.
The right time to acquire domains is today or better yet, yesterday. Tomorrow is too late.
If I devote more time to development I miss out on great drops. It's that simple. If you grabbed tons of generics back in 1994 that will keep you busy for life... good for you but I've come later to the game.

Also, what kind of development are we talking about ? I believe in developing compelling websites that are fully-fledged businesses.
Putting up minisites monetized with adsense is just the same as parking to me. Big G will screw you both ways. If you develop, make it big and run your own advertising network.

 

[Theo]

One of the most successful "late comers" is Frank Schilling, having started in 2000 or 2001 I believe.

 

[mike031]

One of the most successful "late comers" is Frank Schilling, having started in 2000 or 2001 I believe.

frank schilling started in 2002...

most of his hand regs have january,feb,march of 2002 dates it seems...


http://www.dnjournal.com/cover/2007/december.htm

 

[Theo]

Yeah. He is extremely successful because he had a mentor who, in these early days of post-dotcom-bubble era helped him see what the domain industry was about to experience. We all have similar stories to share but a lot of success can be achieved by taking risks.

 

[mike031]

Most domainers have developed websites. I have been developing LONG before I got into domaining.
It is simplistic and inaccurate to claim domainers are just lazy. Parking is a way of monetizing domains until you have time to develop, or receive an offer.
The right time to acquire domains is today or better yet, yesterday. Tomorrow is too late.
If I devote more time to development I miss out on great drops. It's that simple. If you grabbed tons of generics back in 1994 that will keep you busy for life... good for you but I've come later to the game.

Also, what kind of development are we talking about ? I believe in developing compelling websites that are fully-fledged businesses.
Putting up minisites monetized with adsense is just the same as parking to me. Big G will screw you both ways. If you develop, make it big and run your own advertising network.

there are many roads to take to get to a certain point

that point we all trying to get is to make a lot of money

im sure many domainers dont hold onto 100s or 1000s of domains just for bragging rights or develop some of them as a hobby


dont worry about how ur websites look, or whether they are favored by domainers, critisized to be worthless or pointless....or how they are perceived to be by other ppl (who are ur competition by the way)

as long as they are profitable... is it all good

that is what matters at the end of the day

not what some random joe schmo thinks of ur operation

not whether u are accepted or not because even kevin ham or frank schilling as mentioned are not accepted by mainstream

they will always be labeled cybersquatters by mainstream , there is no getting away from that

they can call themselfs media companies, technology innovators, investor groups, etc...

domainers have an identity crisis trying to make it "seem ok"

who cares... just get on with ur biz

Yeah. He is extremely successful because he had a mentor who, in these early days of post-dotcom-bubble era helped him see what the domain industry was about to experience. We all have similar stories to share but a lot of success can be achieved by taking risks.

yup, its a really amazing story

gary c.

kevin ham

yun ye

frank schilling

those 4 guys alone probly snapped up over 1 million domains with values in excess of 1 billion dollars over a relatively short period of time

tehy all worked together, they had each others backs.....

not selfish ppl

very classy, individuals with different goals, but all achieved lots of success and according to their visions by cooperating and by learning from eachother

i dont see much of that anymore.......

 

[Dale Hubbard]

My slant on it on a 'daydreaming' basis is to develop something that doesn't give a monkey's about Google. Develop something that Google 'have' to acquire. I'm talking development here, not domaining per se.

 

[mike031]

My slant on it on a 'daydreaming' basis is to develop something that doesn't give a monkey's about Google. Develop something that Google 'have' to acquire. I'm talking development here, not domaining per se.

yea... dont we all ?

truth is, dont try to make things difficult.... google is ur friend. try to take advantge of this... try to make google work for u.

win-win.

google wants information... feed it to them.

they like relevant and unique domains with lots of text and media, in the form of images, videos, etc.

u feed google, u make it happy, they start to like u and send u visitors over time

u feed google even more and they start to really really like u and send even more visitors

there is no need to try to come up with something breakthrough

work with what is already proven

put in the hours... hard work pays off

nothing is done over night

with development, it takes weeks for google to see u... months to get established over at yahoo and msn and from there on u are officially in the "race" and have many other competitors to worry about, so as long as u keep working at it, and improving... it is all good

 

[Dale Hubbard]

Mike, my mindset is that Google is your BUYER. Read back on what I said.

 

[Seraphim]

yea... dont we all ?

truth is, dont try to make things difficult.... google is ur friend. try to take advantge of this... try to make google work for u.

win-win.

google wants information... feed it to them.

they like relevant and unique domains with lots of text and media, in the form of images, videos, etc.

u feed google, u make it happy, they start to like u and send u visitors over time

u feed google even more and they start to really really like u and send even more visitors

there is no need to try to come up with something breakthrough

work with what is already proven

put in the hours... hard work pays off

nothing is done over night

with development, it takes weeks for google to see u... months to get established over at yahoo and msn and from there on u are officially in the "race" and have many other competitors to worry about, so as long as u keep working at it, and improving... it is all good

I agree with a lot of the conclusions you've made here Mike, but Google isn't your friend, their results are not democratic, and what is aggressive on their part today, will seem quite soft tomorrow. With regard to quality content and keyword relevance, both of those factors seem to grab less traffic by the day. With each year that passes, I believe we'll see a higher and higher saturation of search content being provided by a smaller and smaller pool of behemoth content providers, case in point Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, etc. With that of course, any "ground up" business models are going to find themselves increasingly lost in oblivion without traffic, regardless of what they're offering visitors. Marketing outside of free search based traffic is the survival skill set of tomorrow's successful online entrepreneurs. That relatively large point of entry we've all been enjoying for a decade now, I believe is going to get WAY WAY smaller, and require WAY more start up advertising dollars to lead to success.

I still bank on development being the best and only way forward for serious domainers, but "downright brutal" is the traffic game of tomorrow. Keep that in mind.

 

[Dale Hubbard]

I agree with a lot of the conclusions you've made here Mike, but Google isn't your friend, their results are not democratic, and what is aggressive on their part today, will seem quite soft tomorrow. With regard to quality content and keyword relevance, both of those factors seem to grab less traffic by the day. With each year that passes, I believe we'll see a higher and higher saturation of search content being provided by a smaller and smaller pool of behemoth content providers, case in point Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, etc. With that of course, any "ground up" business models are going to find themselves increasingly lost in oblivion without traffic, regardless of what they're offering visitors. Marketing outside of free search based traffic is the survival skill set of tomorrow's successful online entrepreneurs. That relatively large point of entry we've all been enjoying for a decade now, I believe is going to get WAY WAY smaller, and require WAY more start up advertising dollars to lead to success.

I still bank on development being the best and only way forward for serious domainers, but "downright brutal" is the traffic game of tomorrow. Keep that in mind.

Smart thinking. Maybe Google today and Azoogle tomorrow... Actually, when you think about it, Google's position is tenuous at best . No, before you reply, THINK about it. Also think how Google's VERY simple premise made them the number one engine. Ranking. Backlinks. Back in those days. They've worked their business around that. If you think about it, there are other way to weigh sites, ergo more ways to make money.

 

[mike031]

Seraphim, content is king.

Google is mixing in all types of content in their results as of late

"universal search" its all right there for u in the results page

local results from businesses on their map... images... videos... news headlines... shopping results...related results


if u have a site about "xyz" but u just provide info on XYZ and not an image, video, ur rankings and traffic is going to be decreasing, it already has as i am sure many have noticed as more and more of the google real estate gets taken over by their own products


all of the sites setup with regular text.. mostly worthless "mini sites" and nothing more than scrapped / over used content...made for adense sites in other words.... well, they arent going to make the cut obviously this has been coming for years and obvious at that



we could have a development strategies discussion on this stuff all day long, and i'd love to.... there is a lot of factors that come into play but lets do it separately, in another thread

all i will say it that...

if u are selling XYZ at XYZ but dont have an xyz physical business or shopping feed submitted to google... u arent going to see much traffic

if u have an XYZ site with weak content but u never blog or are involved in social media....

u are going to suffer big time

change is coming, without a doubt

"downright brutal" is the traffic game of tomorrow. Keep that in mind."

^--- the battle was never easy.. not last few yrs, the good ol days of 90s or early 2000 where pointing a 100 links to ur site or repeating the same keywords over and over are long gone

its now broken down right down to a science and still many ppl dont know what to make of all of it... search engine optimization is the equivalent of the real world/offline branding and mass exposure

 

[Dale Hubbard]

The 'out of the box' thinking is to forget Google. Invent something they have to have but don't sell it to them. I know of one model but won't say here before patent Think; think, and then think again. A dominant predator always has a weak spot. Go to bed: think. Wake up: think.

 

[mike031]

Mike, my mindset is that Google is your BUYER. Read back on what I said.

google google google... they are everywhere, no getting away from google

i'd rather play nice with em, and make friends, rather then try to rebel

some days i love google.. .some days i hate em

for example, how do i feel about bidding against google, as a search engine marketer ? ?? hmm

im not so comfortable about bidding against the house

imagine if oversee's employees were day in and day out bidding on names at snapnames

or demand media execs at namejet

...u get the point

lots of conflict of interest and big time receipe to fall right into an open trap but what can u do ??

google is bidding up on lots of webmaster keywords and online products/services...... im not cool with that !!

http://spyfu.com/TopList.aspx?listId=1

http://www.semrush.com/info/google.com


either use em or dont... complaining... rather pointless

ill continue to use google but when im not happy, i bring my concerns and issues which i feel have merrit to em, directly to em and have em taken care of.. sometimes ith appens, sometimes it doesnt

 

[Dale Hubbard]

I think the current mindset is that Google are the "be all and end all" of net navigation and commerce. What I'm suggesting is that it could all change in a heartbeat.

 

[mike031]

I think the current mindset is that Google are the "be all and end all" of net navigation and commerce. What I'm suggesting is that it could all change in a heartbeat.

anything and everything in the world can change in a heartbeat.

google has done well for itself, and it is well intergrated into people and society as a whole.

we need google

as people...... we need google

as businesses... we need google


without google ----> sucks

 

[Dale Hubbard]

Remember 'Excite'? Wrong model but immensely popular in it's day. Tell me "Google" in two years and I'll prove to you that there are cleverer Ph.D's than Google can hire and evidence it by a shift - a 'sea change' in how search works. Give me two years. It won't be my company but i know how the tide is changing. I might have a stake in it though.

You see, the mindset is that Google is all. They run their engine on their own algorithm. From a developer/programming perspective, there are many ways to crack a nut.

 

[HomerJ]

Let me shed some light on google for you all. When have they actually done something that was original? Their whole business model, when you really look at it, is taking someone elses ideas and making them better

maps > mapquest
chrome > firefox > explorer
docs > MS office
video > youtube
gphone > iphone
.. so on, and so forth

if i'm not mistaken even yahoo came first with ppc which google then swiped and made into adsense

To give them their credit, they obviously have the knack for innovation, since they've become the major player on the web by achieving more success then their competitors.

at this point I think its bad news that they wield so much wealth and resources that they can continue to consolidate the web by buying up every next big thing. As Azooza said, for many the ultimate goal is to grow a business and sell it off to google for $xx,xxx,xxx.

So they are becoming, or have become a juggernaut.

that said, try this fun experiment. next time you want to search for something on the internet, go to your browser and type www.yahoo.com :lightbulb: I realized for myself recently, google is so dominant because they have most of what is called your 'mindshare'. But, in reality, it is not so hard to let go of google. in fact, its rather liberating!

at any rate, like every other thing in this world, when it gets too big it will eventually collapse under its own dead weight. C'est la vie.

 

[mike031]

Let me shed some light on google for you all. When have they actually done something that was original? Their whole business model, when you really look at it, is taking someone elses ideas and making them better

maps > mapquest
chrome > firefox > explorer
docs > MS office
video > youtube
gphone > iphone
.. so on, and so forth

if i'm not mistaken even yahoo came first with ppc which google then swiped and made into adsense

To give them their credit, they obviously have the knack for innovation, since they've become the major player on the web by achieving more success then their competitors.

at this point I think its bad news that they wield so much wealth and resources that they can continue to consolidate the web by buying up every next big thing. As Azooza said, for many the ultimate goal is to grow a business and sell it off to google for $xx,xxx,xxx.

So they are becoming, or have become a juggernaut.

that said, try this fun experiment. next time you want to search for something on the internet, go to your browser and type www.yahoo.com :lightbulb: I realized for myself recently, google is so dominant because they have most of what is called your 'mindshare'. But, in reality, it is not so hard to let go of google. in fact, its rather liberating!

at any rate, like every other thing in this world, when it gets too big it will eventually collapse under its own dead weight. C'est la vie.

they do have a tight stranglehold on the market

its not good...

but the social scene / movement has helped shake up things quiet a bit on the internet as well

there is a lot going on

exciting times indeed...

internet is the place to be


i dont use google for every little thing besides adwords, adsense and web search, but a lot of users find it the universal search to everything and use all of their products and dont visit too many engines or other services or providers... cant blame em tho, google is the "Sweetheart" of the web... right


microsoft has the best image search by far and has had it for a few yrs now if memory serves me correctly

i use their image search exclusively


the interface is much more user friendly, the results are much more relevant, they crawl content faster and make it available sooner, it is a true winner

...too bad there is no money in image search and no way to monetize it for microsoft!! lol k:

btw, google tried to monetize their image search already... just few weeks ago or so, i saw yellow background and text links on the image search of theirs appear... its not there now, but they were experimenting with it for a good few days... it will come, eventually

 

[HomerJ]

cant blame em tho, google is the "Sweetheart" of the web... right

they may be some kind of darlings in the media but theyre not fooling me

you want to see a fun site, check out scroogle.org and use the scraper .. lots of good comics there

 

[Focus]

google sucks monkey balls k: