Believe it or not, there are many people who struggle with the thought of selling one of their domain gems because of the difficulty in reinvesting in an equivalent or better name for the sales price. When the owner of a $1 million+ domain name receives an offer, he must evaluate the loss of revenue from the name, other potential offers he would miss out on by selling the name, and the tax implications of selling the name.

Additionally, he must evaluate the current market conditions to determine whether he will be able to smartly reinvest the proceeds from the sale into another domain name that will yield the same or better returns. More often than not, Read More »

According to Red Herring, Landmark Communications, the owner of The Weather Channel and all of its associated properties, is putting its Weather Channel assets on the auction block. The article referenced a $5 billion price tag that was suggested to Landmark Vice Chairman, Richard Barry.

I believe one of the best assets of The Weather Channel is their domain name, Weather.com. People don’t necessarily navigate to Weather.com to specifically visit The Weather Channel. They navigate to that domain name to get a weather forecast, and as long as its accurate, the provider of the forecast isn’t important. This is a category killer domain name, and it draws tremendous traffic.

According to Nielson/NetRatings reported in Financial Post, Weather.com received almost 33 million unique page views last November, which is more traffic than Facebook or CNN received that month. Additionally, millions of people look at Weather Channel widgets found on independent websites every month.

This is all positive for Landmark, and I would think several global companies would be interested in acquiring The Weather Channel portfolio.

The owner of SanJuan.com is looking to sell this fantastic geographic domain name.

San Juan is the capital of Puerto Rico and has close to 450,000 citizens. It is a popular tourist destination, with hundreds of hotels and attractions. Many of the largest Caribbean cruise lines have a port of call in San Juan. In 2004, San Juan played host to 4.9 million tourists, a number which has certainly grown since then. The capital city boasts the most luxurious hotels in Puerto Rico, and some of the nicest resorts in the Caribbean.

As I said in an earlier post today, there may be only one time you are able to acquire a premium domain name like this one. Once the new owner begins developing this gem, the price will increase exponentially, if it’s ever on the market again. I’ve worked with the owner before, and he is known to be a reasonable seller. If you are interested, drop me a note and I will put you in touch.

PS: Speak with your accountant for confirmation but I would imagine all “research” done in San Juan would be tax deductible!

When selling domain names, I believe most people either rely on end users contacting them or rely on selling to other domain investors. I think there is a market for a domain brokerage that is paid to contact potential buyers of domain names on behalf of domain owners.

The brokerage would collect stats and information about a domain name and present it to potential buyers. This is similar to my post in July, but instead of running an auction, the company would set a BIN price for a particular name or group of names that would be of interest to a company.

Currently, I believe most domain brokers work the opposite way. They receive information about a domain name and blast an email out to a random group of domain buyers. If a more personalized email was sent, the potential buyer could be enticed to make a purchase. It’s the heart of direct marketing (where I have my Master’s Degree), and it would be a great win/win/win for all parties.

An acquaintance of mine is the owner of Rabbi.com. In one of the nicest online gestures I’ve seen, my acquaintance allows our mutual friend, Rabbi Levi Baumgarten to operate and use Rabbi.com. Rabbi Levi (as I call him), is one of the nicest people you would ever want to meet anywhere. He is the type of person I could call right now, and if I needed something that he could provide, I would have it by the end of the day.

Rabbi Levi is the man behind the Mitzvah Tank in New York City. If you’ve been to New York, you may have seen him in his RV trying to recruit Jews to do a mitzvah by putting on tefillin and saying a prayer. He isn’t pushy and doesn’t really preach. His goal is to give every Jewish person an opportunity to take a few minutes of their day and reconnect with their religion. Rabbi Levi is always willing to teach and answer any questions. If he doesn’t have an answer, he will do the research and get back to you. On the rare occasion when I can’t get home for a holiday, I know I have a place at his family’s dinner table.

I was thinking of Rabbi Levi this morning while making plans to try and see him in the Tank today, and I was thinking about the similarity between his mission and the mission of domain investors. Whenever we have an opportunity, we do our best to teach others about the importance and value of domain names. We don’t want to sound like preachers, but we want everyone to realize how valuable domain names are. His mission is much more holy, but we both want others to see our vision.

If only Rabbi Levi would add a Paypal link to his donation page, but I digress…

How does a domain investor grow his business? The biggest challenge facing many domain investors is branching out once success is found in the business of buying a selling names for a profit. This is especially difficult if the person has a good business acumen but lacks the technical know how to develop his domain names.

I have had the good fortune of being involved with some nice domain sales. I also have the good fortune of owning some top quality domain names (such as Devices.com, FlightDiscounts.com, and a recent acquisition that will be published next week). The biggest challenge I am facing right now is growing this from a hobby into a business.

In my opinion, there is still time left to buy good domain names at reasonable prices and make money selling them for a profit. Eventually, this market will dry up, and it will be difficult to be successful with this as the primary business plan.

I believe that the best way to grow my company is by developing some of the gems I own. Building an actual business is the key to development (as Darren Cleveland posted on Sahar’s Blog). Instead of using our domain names as parking lots, we are going to have to start building apartment buildings, stores, houses…etc

The challenge will be finding the right partners (web architects, if you will) to help me build some of my parking lots into beautiful virtual businesses. I have my eye on a couple of domain names that I want to buy. I have the business plan in place if I can reach an agreement with the owner. Now, I just need to find the right team.

Stephen Spencer gives us “11 steps to buying a domain name that doesn’t suck” on the Cnet News blog yesterday. I agree that these are all important factors to consider when purchasing a domain name, and I would like to add a few additional factors that people should consider:

- Potential to Confuse Users - If you buy a domain name that has a number, some people might type in the actual number while others spell it out. Tickets4Less.com is an example. I bet some people type in TicketsForLess.com as a habit, so if you buy one you should buy the other.

Your Company Name - Although this is similar to one of the factors in Spencer’s article, the most relevant domain name to your business is the .com of your company’s name. If your business is Nashua Web Designers, you should first try to buy NashuaWebDesigners.com. Oftentimes generic domain names like this are already taken, but there is a good chance the name of your business is available, and that’s what your customers will want.

Shorter Version of your Company’s Name - With a company like Linen & Shade Bin, customers often refer to it as Linen & Shade. The owner of this store was smart and owns both LinenAndShadeBin.com and LinenAndShade.com, with the later forwarded to the former.