Can a domain name be the difference between success and failure in a business? Are domain names the single best investment one can possibly make in one’s business? These are the main questions debated in an ongoing chain of posts, then my comments, and a follow-up post, and another of my comments and yet another post between myself and Andrei over at DomainingTips.
The conventional wisdom among domainers is that without the domain name, you’re nowhere, or, investing in domain names is the single best thing you can do to achieve some kind of “edge” in the competitive marketplace.
My opinion is different. I think the people who care most about domain names, are domainers. I don’t think that a domain name will be the key to success or failure and I can’t even parse the assertion that anything is “the best” investment because I think that statement is more rhetoric than anything else.
Let’s dissect.
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Under a proposed Verisign initiative, all .COM/.NET domains exist at the pleasure of the United States government.
Verisign just released an overview of their proposed “Anti-Abuse Domain Use Policy” Under ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Process. The program’s chief aim is to provide a takedown mechanism of malicious websites distributing malware. In itself, not a bad thing, considering some registrars are unresponsive toward abuse or network stability issues.
However, lumped in with the conditions under which Verisign can invoke their takedown capabilities are some troubling “add ons”, as quoted below:
(read the rest on the easyDNS blog)
This is a repost of a guest editorial I wrote for Domain Name News.
When one looks at the track record of introducing new Top Level Domains it is perplexing to see where all the enthusiasm around unlimited new TLDs comes from. So far every attempt to roll one out owes it’s sustenance to purely defensive registrations (.biz, .info) or else it’s degraded into an utter fracas (.jobs) or just plain flopped (.pro)
The latest TLD that isn’t a country code tarting itself up as a pseudo-generic is probably a good indicator of what to expect going forward: .xxx – reviled by the industry it extorts , err, purports to serve and first new TLD that we are seriously considering making a conscious decision not to “grab our name before somebody else does!”. I’m certain it won’t be the last. I believe one of the first things we will see as all this unfolds is a buyers strike in defensive regs. Once that happens everything will go sideways.
So despite the near frenzied hype around these things, I have already gone on record to predict failure for the vast majority of them.
The forthcoming onslaught of TLDs can be divided into roughly three categories: Read more »
I just read Rick Spence’s “What’s in a name? It could be a fortune on the Internet“, (HT to HybridDomainer), which seemingly dials the needle back to (pick one), 2005 or 2007, or maybe 2010 and drinks the Kool-Aid every domainer has on an IV drip: the notion that fortune and success can be achieved simply by virtue of “owning the right names” (i.e How can we be bankrupt? Don’t we own TenMillionDollars.com?)
Only in this case, he’s talking about the seemingly impending new top-level-domains. “New domain names will rank above the current crop”, he gushes. Really? You mean now I get to defend my trademark in .www, .website, .bank, .toledo, .xxx and .FML ? Great! I think what we will see happen is a buyers’ strike in defensive names. It will become impossible to defend one’s names in all possible TLDs, brand owners will simply stop doing it, defensive registrations in new TLDs collapse, kicking out one of the two legs holding up most new TLDs (the other being speculative registrations). Read more »
/04/01/11 TORONTO/ – easyDNS Technologies Inc., the ultra-cool DNS guys, today announced it is moving forward to secure .SUX under the ICANN new TLD process.
The .SUX domain is not intended to encourage registrations which disparage any company or entity.
“A number of factors have converged to make this possible”, said CEO Mark Jeftovic, “the new rules permitting vertical integration allow us as to function as Registrar, Registry, root DNS provider.”
Under the proposed terms of the new TLD, sunrise claims will be subject to a non-refundable $10,000 application fee. Landrush applications will ring in at $100/year with an initial term minimum of 10-years. Conflicting applications will be automatically entered into an auction process subject to high-pressure sales tactics and shill bidding.
Jeftovic downplayed assertions that everybody on the internet would be held hostage to defend their marks under a TLD with less-than-flattering connotations, “Nonsense”, said Jeftovic, “there are lots of other perfectly legitimate reasons people would want to register names like citibank.sux, bp.sux or maybe gawker.sux” he explained.
Easydns.sux would be reserved under the TLD and unavailable for registration.
(original post)
Cyberplex.com (TSX:CX) is Canada’s largest CPA network with a fairly blue-chip customer base including RBC and Jaguar along with net giants like eHarmony and Netflix. They’ve been pretty aggressively growing revenues and earnings over the past couple years and for awhile I counted myself a shareholder. I sold my position last year when they announced their acquisition of Tsalvo (which was once upon a time Geosign). It was highly dilutive to shareholders (expanding the shares outstanding from roughly 80M to 120M+) and I’m not a fan of traffic arb plays because the earnings (while often explosive) are extremely volatile. Read more »
It was just pointed out to me that Banks.com has entered into a sale/leaseback arrangement with Domain Capital for their flagship domain, banks.com.
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(Background: as you may or may not be aware, earlier in the year the US Department of Homeland Security began seizing domain names of various filesharing websites. Suddenly the agency tasked with protecting the United States from further terrorist attacks was now seizing domain names to combat copyright infringement. Without further adieu, I bring you “First they came for the file-sharing websites….)
First, they came for the file-sharing websites, because they were infringing on copyright. (I didn’t care, because I didn’t share files).
Then, they came for the illegal offshore pharmacies, because they were facilitating the import of dangerous generic pharmaceuticals that massively undercut the name brand companies. (I didn’t care because I didn’t buy generic drugs)
These first choices may have seemed odd, because there were far worse things out there on the internet to go after. However, since nobody cared too much about the file-sharing sites and the illegal generic pharmacies, they figured it was safe to take things up a notch…. Read more »
It has been with interest I’ve watched the discussions about being dropped from Google over the last day. It seems as if the Epik website network has been dropped from the search engine listings. I never really looked at Epik’s offerings, so I don’t have an opinion on it. I think Rob Monster generally has something intelligent to say in his blog. In any case, as one commenter put it:
guess that will send them into bankruptcy. Once google cans you its over.
And I thought, my god, what a horrible position to be in. The reason this topic is so relevant to me is because last week we realized here at the office that easyDNS had gotten delisted from Google for over a month! The amazing thing about it was that we didn’t even notice.
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After having lunch with YummyName’s Bill Sweetman a few months ago, I posted “5 Ways to Increase Your Domain Sales”, and after writing the article I took his program to heart and went out and implemented two key points from his 5-point program:
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