In this audio clip from ‘Jason’s Shark Tank’, Jason tells caller/developer Kevin, of pikk.com what he likes about what Kevin’s created so far.

Signals of Quality

Jason Calacanis: Everyone should follow you on Twitter obviously, Pikk. You have that up and running, and you have a four letter domain name. These are, again, signals of quality for me. You have a decent domain name decent web design. I’m  not crazy about your web design, to be totally honest with you I think it’s a 7 or 8 out of 10 but, listen, Mahalo was a 6 out of 10 at one point, now it’s a 10 out of 10, so, it’s progress you know, and I can appreciate that. Smart enough to pick a four letter domain, great – how did you get the domain was that available or you bought it.
Kevin: I bought it.
Jason: Yeah, how much did that cost you?
Kevin: Ah, I’ve been told I got the bargain of the century, this cost me about twenty-five hundred dollars.
Jason: That’s a great deal.
Kamran Pourzanjani: Yeah.
Jason: For a four letter domain…

Jason on ‘Dot Com’

The context is a domain/brand a caller mentioned in a previous ‘Ask Jason’ segment.

Jason Calacanis: Isn’t it amazing though Tyler? The people with the naming.
Tyler Crowley: I just found out… I think lean.ly is available. With the dot L-Y which seems to be the hot new…
Jim Lanzone: Hmm!
Jason: Oh…
Tyler: Don’t get you started with that?
Jason: gov.ly? (refers to earlier in the conversation)
Tyler: gov.ly?
Jason: gov.ly
Tyler: lov.ly gov.ly
Jason: lov.ly gov.ly… I hate that nonsense.
Tyler: Yeah.. L-Y’s catchin’ on, so is dot F-M
Jason: (Sighs)
Tyler: But it gives people more of an option to come up with names… You use Bit.ly all day long!
Jason: You know what, De.licio.us did this as well, and then when they were successful they wound up buying Delicious dot com.
You’re going to wind up with a dot com anyway, You might as well make the effort and spend the money to get it early. So you don’t have to re-brand it!

TechCrunch reported today that Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, has launched a mobile payment service called Square. While the actual product/service looks pretty cool, I am surprised that someone with the capital resources such as Dorsey would launch a new brand on a domain name that is different from the actual brand.The big problem for Square is that they are using the domain name SquareUp.com for their website. This really defies logic to me for a couple of big reasons…

Exactly! Can’t afford it? Not worth it? It’s just a domain name? But it is difficult to supply the facts that support our side of the argument. The best evidence I’ve come across that supports, with data, the efficacy of a great (generic) domain name comes from Edwin Hayward at MemorableDomains.co.uk with a report entitled Improving PPC Search Engine Campaign Results Using Generic Domain Names (check out Ed Keay-Smith’s OzDomainer podcast interview with Edwin where he explains the report!) Still, that makes sense for PPC and generic domain names. But is branding any different? How? I’ll leave that for the comments and for another post. In the meantime I’d like to focus on this aspect alone: Why call your company one thing, Square, but have a different URL? If you can’t afford the domain name, at least call the company after the domain you do own!

Here’s another case. I may come back to this over time. When I first heard about ‘Fever’ it sounded interesting (I’m into feeds and feed readers). But I couldn’t find it! I’d heard about it on a podcast. It literally took minutes to find. Fever.com is a parked page with illness related ads popping up. Hmm, just curious, how expensive would Fever.com be? But maybe a lot. Because a domainer could be holding out for a play from a big pharmaceutical. So ‘Fever’ uses the domain feedafever.com. Not bad. Reasonably memorable. So why not call the product that? As/if Fever continues to gain momentum, I’ll update the Compete pics. but check it out. Don’t the numbers seem to be indicating, that as momentum for Fever grows, more traffic is being sent to the parked Fever.com page?

November 2, 2009

A month later.

Doesn’t it look like for whatever reason, Fever.com is getting more traffic?
What do you think? Is that extra traffic likely to be people looking for ‘Fever’?
What makes me nervous about all this is thinking about what will happen to the price of the domain over time if/when Fever becomes very popular.
Like I mention in a previous post, $75,000 for Poken.com?!!!
Acquire your startup domain names early!
If you’re starting a company I’m happy to help brainstorm an available domain name or help you connect with a great domain at a fair price.

But last night (111409 @ 8:30PDT) I had about 20 minutes to kill so for fun I ran my collection of previously unavailable domain names through the GoDaddy Bulk Checker. Whenever I check for a name I add it to my list of unavailables and then about once a month check them. Occasionally something will become available. Usually by that time I can’t even remember why I was checking the name to begin with, but last night I hit pay dirt and for about 40 minutes I was domaining like it was 1999! Fascinating how you can rationalize… I knew it was an anomaly to be finding these sorts of names available but I found  myself thinking, “Well you’ve certainly let a lot of stuff drop lately, maybe these weren’t measuring up and got dropped.” Or even… “Maybe some major domainer died and his domains just dropped! And I just happened to be on GoDaddy the day they fell.” Funny! I mean, they weren’t THAT great, and of the 5000 I checked, only about a dozen were available.

Here’s what I bought, the numbers are the number of Google search results, in quotes is for exact match:
NEGATIVESCANNER.COM 105,000 for “negative scanner”
NEGATIVESCANNERS.COM    234,000 for “negative scanners”
SKIRTSFORMEN.COM  438,000 for “skirts for men”
SOLARCAMPINGLIGHTS.COM 1,190,000 for “solar camping lights”
SOLARCLOTHES.COM    12,100 for “solar clothes” -dryer 16,500 for “solar clothing”
COMPUTERRECOVERY.COM 82,100,000 for computer recovery. 66,300 for “computer recovery”
TINKERER.COM
TABLETTE.COM 2,900,000 for “tablette”
TABLETTES.COM 2,430,000 for “tablettes”
ATTITUDETSHIRTS.COM 88,700 for “attitude shirt”
SHOETOSS.COM
CATSCANNERS.COM 80,100 for “cat scanners”

Here’s what the receipt looks like.

Sure enough, about an hour after I received the order confirmation email I got the bad news (x12).

Dear John Humphrey,

The following domain name has failed to be registered:

TINKERER.COM

Error: TINKERER.COM:  cannot register – already registered

We will evaluate this error and retry the registration if appropriate.

If we are unable to successfully register the domain name, your account will be credited accordingly. Please allow one business day for the refund to be processed.

It was a real rush to register those names. Not for the feint of heart though. All in all I probably spent a couple of hours crunching names in the GoDaddy bulk checker. It wasn’t a complete waste of time because there were actually a few on my list that WERE available. FOLDABLEELECTRICSCOOTER.COM & FOLDABLEELECTRICSCOOTERS.COM and I’m happy about that.

It would be nice if GoDaddy would acknowledge their responsibility for the error with at least a token gesture – a free domain name or two for example, but I won’t keep my fingers crossed.

If you want to know what it was actually like to be domaining in 1999, check out my Eric Borgos interview.

.

Listen to the clip

Jason Calacanis –   … Number one, the name is terrible… If the name of the company is Aardvark you should own Aardvark dot com. They only own Vark dot com. I mean this is like 101 entrepreneurship stuff like name your company the same as your domain name.  I don’t know, what’s the domain name of Challenge Post?
Brandon Kessler -  It’s ChanllengePost.
Jason Calacanis – (sarcastic) Oh is it? Really? Do you wanna know the domain name of Mahalo, by chance? It’s Mahalo.com. Do you know where to find This Week In Startups?  That dot com. You know where to find Aardvark? Drop the a-a-r and the d,  and then put a dot com.
Aaron Vohen – What if they were thinking people don’t know how to spell Aardvark? They would try A-r-d-v-a-r-k.
Jason Calacanis – It wasn’t available obviously, but I mean if you’re…

[Follow-up from TWIST 31]
Listen: Vark ll

Walking the walk.

Calacanis then laid out $11,000 for the domain name Mahalo.com, which, at one point, had been a nude-celebrity site.

Of course there are exceptions (when you’re a seed investor and on the board perhaps?).
TWiST #17 with Ryan Block and Peter Rojas 32:30

Listen to the clip

Jason Calacanis -  I love the logo to g-d-g-t… and you can call it gadget
Ryan Block / Peter Rojas – You can call it gadget,  yeah.
Jason – People can just call it gadget.
Peter Rojas – I say g-d-t-g just so people know how to spell the url.
Ryan Block – I’ve been saying gadget a little bit more lately, but…
Jason – Yeah, people will get it. Anyway… Great to get a four, was that four letter domain available?
Ryan Block / Peter Rojas – We had to buy it but we didn’t have to spend very much. We had to buy it but… surprisingly affordable.
Jason – Under a G?
Ryan – Yeah.
Jason – Oh perfect. I mean, it’s not even a rounding error.
Ryan – So what it actually was was they had like a catalog of just letters. You know, so like g-d-g-t, g-d-g-s, g-d-g-r…
Jason – Oh there just waiting for people to buy them. They’re like, (as in company receptionist), Hello, Domain Squatting Scumbags, how can we help you?  Which domain did we take of yours… bastards… that’s quite a business idea… I think I  ought to do that. Let’s do it with five letters. Probably didn’t get to five letters yet.

Little bit of a disconnect here considering Jason’s comments in TWIST 16. But certainly understandable considering what Gadget.com or Gadgets.com might cost (guessing $400k). Looks like Gadget.com is a real site, but Gadgets.com is parked. Perhaps Gadgets.com owners Domain Capital would consider some sort of equity/lease-to-own deal.
Jason is obviously kidding when he refers to the previous owners of GDGT.com as “Domain squatting scumbags”, but he’s been around the interwebs for a long time. A lot of people do see domain investors as squatters. But only be because someone else has registered a domain name they want. At least a domain investor (or ‘domainer’) is looking to sell the domain! Better a domainer than a competitor who has bought up all the keywords in your niche for the sole purpose of keeping them out of your hands!

FRANK: Well, the sellers aren’t going around now and saying the metrics don’t work, I’ll just lower my price. That’s just not happening. We’ve gone from 10X to 100X on the sell side. There are no big buyers anymore. But it really doesn’t matter. The good names are being renewed and the bad names will always be the bad names, and they will cycle in a boulevard of broken dreams to come.

That really hit home last night. I had to take care of my September and October renewals and it’s finally dawning on me how much crap I own. I guess because I have one of those runaway imaginations, it’s easy for me to get caught up in the possibilities of a domain. I also seem to become attached to domains I’ve owned for a few years. Even though the parking / WhyPark  stats barely dip into double digits a month, there’s something about owning a domain name that leads me to become fond of it!  But no more. Many will drop. I need to get leaner. These ideas didn’t ‘work’. Here’s the list of what’s going and in some cases, what I was thinking when I picked them up in the first place.

First off, my ‘click-alikes’. These are domains who because of clever letter configuration, appear to be other than what they are actually. Like an l/L representing a capital i/I or the one I was fond of, the letter m/M representing rn/RN. I guess this is similar to what Typosquatters do, but I was targeting generic keywords. I’m still convinced they could be very useful to someone, especially someone who already had a bunch of traffic but just wanted to move it around. I also think they might do well in a Google Adwords campaign, because they would appear to be authoritative keyword domains. If you built out around these names they might also be very effective. But developing click-alikes to compete with multi-million dollar companies, was more than I was up for. I think in the back of my mind somewhere was a get-rich-quick scheme that never materialized.  I want to state that I do not think there is anything ‘shady’ about these names! Words convey meaning. These click-alikes represent words whose meanings are worth millions of dollars – same meaning!

dornainnames.com    10/28/09 0:27
websltes.com    10/28/09 0:32
webslte.com    10/28/09 0:35
internetrnarketing.com    10/28/09 0:39
affiliaternarketing.com    10/28/09 0:43
rnassage.com    10/28/09 0:47
glfts.com    10/28/09 0:51
plurnbing.com    10/28/09 1:06
rnovlng.com    10/28/09 1:06
carnping.com    10/28/09 1:06
savlngs.com    10/28/09 1:06
freernusic.com    10/28/09 1:06
rnp3players.com    10/28/09 1:06
dornainname.com    10/28/09 4:16
hornevalue.com    10/28/09 4:16
apartrnent.com    10/28/09 4:16
horneforsale.com    10/28/09 4:16
rnoving.com    10/28/09 4:16
asianpom.com    10/31/09 3:25
bdsrn.com    10/31/09 3:25
bigtlt.com    10/31/09 3:25
freepommovie.com    10/31/09 3:25
freepommovies.com    10/31/09 3:25
freepomvideo.com    10/31/09 3:25
freepomvideos.com    10/31/09 3:25
latinapom.com    10/31/09 3:25
lesbianpom.com    10/31/09 3:25
shernale.com    10/31/09 3:25
shernales.com    10/31/09 3:25
amateurpom.com    10/31/09 3:25
hardcorepom.com    10/31/09 3:25
teenpom.com    10/31/09 3:25
attomeys.com    10/31/09 4:14
casinogarnes.com    10/31/09 4:14
rnusicvideo.com    10/31/09 4:14
rnutualfunds.com    10/31/09 4:14
freernp3.com    10/31/09 4:14
intemetdating.com    10/31/09 4:14
televislons.com    10/31/09 4:14
casinogarne.com    10/31/09 4:14
freegarnes.com    10/31/09 4:14
rnusicvideos.com    10/31/09 4:14
rnutualfund.com    10/31/09 4:14
unlverslty.com    10/31/09 4:14
homeirnprovement.com    10/31/09 4:14
rnaps.com    10/31/09 4:14
shopplngcart.com    10/31/09 4:14
covvboys.com    10/31/09 16:03 Remember?
covvboy.com    10/31/09 16:03
businesslnsurance.com    10/31/09 16:03
cheapautolnsurance.com    10/31/09 16:03
automobilelnsurance.com    10/31/09 16:03

Then there was the iTeachMusic directory business idea. Only iTeachMusic.com is taken, and he wasn’t selling for the few $k I could scrape together to offer him. Somehow I convinced myself to go ahead and purchase a network of iTeach domains anyway. “Yeah, they’ll all funnel into the main site!” Because music and teaching music is my background, I could do this, I do know the business.
ITEACHCLASSICALGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:45
ITEACHPERCUSSION.COM    9/19/09 17:45
ITEACHVOCALS.COM    9/19/09 17:45
ITEACHACOUSTICGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHBASS.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHJAZZGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHKEYBOARDS.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHBLUESGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHROCKGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHSHREDGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHSLIDEGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHVOICE.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHCOUNTRYGUITAR.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHSONGWRITING.COM    9/19/09 17:46
ITEACHMUSIC.ORG    9/19/09 22:46

And related keyword domains that would be easy to build mini-sites on to funnel traffic back to the hub. (Now which podcast did I get that from?)
BLUESSTANDARDS.COM    10/6/09 1:30
JAZZSOLOING.COM    10/6/09 1:30
BLUESSOLOING.COM    10/6/09 1:30
ROCKSOLOING.COM    10/6/09 1:30
BASSSOLOING.COM    10/6/09 1:31
CHORDTONESOLOING.COM    10/6/09 1:31
Not a bad idea right? Except that because I’ve been involved with it for so long I have absolutely no passion left for it whatsoever!

Then there were the ‘clever business idea domain names’ (and to be honest I have kept quite a few of these). Some of these were the result of trying my hand at PickyDomains.com where clients are looking for a domain name to match a business idea and you get a finder’s fee if they like yours (in theory).
MALALATETE.NET    9/17/09 21:07 Nice ring to it for a French health-related site, only they’d probably want to use .fr
MATCHSET.NET    9/17/09 21:59 Still think this is a great domain for a tennis site.
SICKPET.NET    9/17/09 21:59 This one actually gets enough traffic at WhyPark to pay for itself.
CCMASHUP.COM    9/21/09 18:29 CC as in Creative Commons, and mashup. The .com would allow you to publish commercially.
CCMASHUP.ORG    9/21/09 23:29 The .org would be for the not-for-profit version.
NORTHPOLEREPORT.COM    9/21/09 22:20  A Christmas site that would follow Santa on his travels.
FAMILYVIDEOTREE.COM    10/2/09 16:0 A video business my wife and I thought about getting into.
COMPAREPORT.COM    10/5/09 1:29 Compare/Report/Port nice ring to it for a shopping comparison engine.
TODOLOOP.COM    10/8/09 15:25  Collaborative ToDo lists.
TODOLOOPS.COM    10/8/09 15:26

A couple of Geo/Keyword domains.
NEWYORKCITYUSEDBOOKS.COM    9/20/09 3:36
NEWYORKDANCEINSTRUCTION.COM    9/20/09 3:36

A couple of high search result keywords that didn’t get any type-ins.
HISTORYOFVIDEO.COM    10/11/09 13:38 Google: 205,000 for “history of video”
HISTORYOFINFORMATION.COM    10/11/09 22:49 Google: 124,000,000 for “history of information”

And a few leftovers from my flipping on Ebay experiment.
6-49.NET    9/10/09 18:25 Thought this might make a great 6/49 lottery info page. But very few type-ins.
1YJ.NET    9/4/09 19:24
5JD.NET    9/4/09 19:24

There you have it. That’s a little over $700 I’ll save in renewals by letting these drop. I kept another $400 worth. Hopefully I’ve learned enough in the last few years to know that the ones I’m keeping have more re-sale or development potential. But I also kept a couple of crazy names I just like.
As I mentioned, these are all going for $59, what you’d pay to backorder them. Or wait around and I’m sure a lot of them will make it back in to the pool–will, as Frank put it, “cycle in a boulevard of broken dreams to come”.

.

Here’s a list of names I tried to sell on Ebay and the results.

DIDN”T SELL

1yj.net One Yankee Juliet NLL 3 Character Domain Name $9.99
5jd.net Five Juliet Delta NLL 3 Character Domain Name $9.99
These aren’t something I’d normally be attracted to, but when I found a handful of these in The Drop one day I decided to try to flip them. A couple did, these didn’t. Typically, I did more research later on and found that these NLL.nets are considered worth Reg fee only.
From 3character.com
LLN com $220 net $10
LNL com $220 net $reg fee
NLL com $220 net $reg fee
NNL com $220 net $reg fee
NLN com $220 net $10

ENGILBERT.COM First Name Domain Name Baby Boy? $24.99
I see these name domains available in The Drop and I think End User! I’m sure there’s an Engilbert out there somewhere who would love to have his first name domain name. I didn’t find him on Ebay though.
LUBARS.COM Domain Name $9.99
NEVESS.COM Domain Name $9.99
A couple of surname domain names. “nevess” scores 175,000 in a Google search and is also Hungarian for ‘renowned’. “lubars” scores 434,000 in a Google search. I’d have to assume there weren’t any Lubars or Nevess family members in the market for domains on Ebay that week.

[Updated 030809]
RFUK.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
BMBY.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
COKX.NET Pronouncable Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
GUCS.NET Pronouncable Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
GEWL.NET Pronouncable Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $1.25
JLOC.NET Pronouncable Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
JROE.NET Common Initial/Last Name Combo LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
EXLA.NET Pronouncable LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $1.25
TKUN.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
OMBJ.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
RIUV.NET Pronouncable LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
BFWM.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
UTTP.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $.99
MOAU.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $1.29
ROWG.NET Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99 sold $1.25
Oh boy. This was clearly a mistake. Inspired by what I’d been reading on DropDude.com, I picked these up in The Drop thinking they’d filp for at least a few dollars profit. Kind of silly to discover, after the fact, they weren’t the sort of .nets domainers are buying, i.e. Premium.
From 4letternoob (soon to be LLLL.com)
In general, the best performing letters are: A, S, E, M, D, I, T, O. Other strong letters include F, G, H.
The letters J,K,Q,U,V,W,X,Y,Z are referred as non-premium letters. The presence of one of these letters considerably devalues a 4 letter .com under most circumstances. Of these, Q, X, Z are the weakest.
premium letters A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, L, M, N, O, P, R, S, T
medium: J, K, U, V, W
most hated: QXYZ

ShaggyDogBlog.com Domain Name – Great For Joke Site $24.99
This was one of mine that was up for renewal. Probably I’ve had it long enough that I’ve just become attached to it but I could say that for a lot of domains and so I decided to let it go. But not for less than $24.95. Like I said, I like this one anyway.

AmateurPom.com Click-Alike Domain Name $24.99
AutolnsuranceOnline.com Click-Alike Domain Name $24.99
AffordableHealthlnsurance.com Click-Alike Domain Name $24.99
Part of my Click-Alike collection. I fell for these types of names about a year ago after reading a blog post on DomainTools I imagined a network of Click-Alike sites full of high dollar Affiliate products. When the renewals came up recently I decided I’d see if anyone else thought they were valuable. Hmm.

DID SELL

StormTrooperEffect.com $.99
StormTrooperSyndrome.com $.99
Before I was even a Noob I was getting excited about names like these. Rather than let them expire I put them on Ebay. The other thing about a sale, even a $.99 sale, is that you end up with positive feedback. You need 20 sales to open an Ebay store, which was something I was considering.

BUNX.NET Pronouncable LLLL.Net $9.99
GOYZ.NET Pronouncable LLLL.Net $9.99
PULV.NET Pronouncable Semi-Premium LLLL.Net $9.99
A couple of the ‘Semi-Premiums’ sold!
4cq.net Four Charlie Quebec NLL 3 Character Domain Name $9.99
4ql.net Four Quebec Lima NLL 3 Character Domain Name $9.99

OddioBook.com Brandable Domain Name – Odd Audio Books! $0.99
RikiTikiWiki..com Domain Name Att. Mongoose Lovers $0.99
A couple more of my pre-Noob acquisitions. Sold them rather than let them expire.

Dalores.com First Name Domain Name Baby Girl? $24.99
This was a name I found in The Drop. Buyer got a great deal IMO.

Looking at only the domains I purchased off The Drop for the purpose of flipping…
Acquired for Ebay flipping: 25 @ $7.69 = $192.25
Ebay selling costs: $27.34
Total cost: $219.59
Total sales: $80.93
Cost of experiment: $138.66

I suppose that could change. I still have the domains for sale.
Another thing I should mention was that in the process of looking for flipable domains I found a couple I think were keepers that are now parked and for sale at Sedo. I could be wrong, but they seem to me worth at least a couple of hundred each, and I wouldn’t have found them if I hadn’t been in Drop-Flip acquisition mode. (But what do you think?)
Pussied.com
and
Hobbying.com

What’s my take-away?
I think people shopping for domains on Ebay are looking for steals.
I think that at these prices, the Ebay charges really do impact your profits.
I think that unless you just love to do it, (or get really lucky) the number of hours spent scanning the drop lists, acquiring names, listing names for sale, and following up on the sale (getting the domain transferred) makes the whole process a big time-waster! Even if you got good at it, it’s not going to scale. It’s got ‘Don’t quit your day job’ written all over it.
Sour grapes?

P.S. Great post from Joshua Hunt-Smith on the How-To nitty gritty details of  putting a domain up for sale on Ebay at LLLL.com.

.

Perhaps in the telling of some stories I’ll help a few people just starting out. Perhaps I’ll attract a mentor or at least some sage advice. Or maybe in the writing thereof, it will become apparent to me that I have no business trying to be a domainer- that I’m just not cut out for it.

Are you also in the newbie phase of your domaining career? I invite guest posts from anyone with a story to tell. If you see a post that inspires a comment, please consider writing a post instead. I promise minimal (but some) editorial oversight.