We are all self appointed

This post meanders all over the place so indulge me.

I got on the web and the first day back in 1995 I learned I was a "Webmaster." WOW! Now what the hell was a webmaster? Damn, not in the dictionary. It sounded important. Sounded very authoritative. Like the captain of a ship but much more important. So golly gee, first day and there is so much opportunity on the net that I am like an "Admiral" since day one. Whoo Hoo!! Who knew?

 

Now I could write and go down two very different paths right now. I can continue on this trend and that would bring you to "Webmastering.com" that I wrote in 1999 and still stands undisturbed or I can continue on with the title of this piece about us all being self appointed.

 

Ok, we all became self appointed. I became the self appointed "Domain King". Ron Jackson became the self appointed "Historian." Monte Cahn became the self appointed "Web radio host" of Domain Masters. The list goes on and on and on. Point is, we saw a void and need and just filled it. We defined the job, defined the agenda, defined the reason to do it and defined the goal. We came at different points in time and just did whatever. I decided my duties were to spread the word of the power and profitability of domain names and why they would become so valuable and so important to the future of commerce and personal relationships even tho it would hurt my own efforts in buying domains in the future. I decided that raising awareness and values was a more important job. I went to early business forums and shared my vision on domain names. I approached the real estate industry first. Within a relatively short time they would throw my ass out the door, delete my posts and banish me from ever coming back. They even kicked my friend Serge out and deleted his posts. He challenged their minds and they were not up to the challenge.

 

But eventually one group stopped laughing long enough to listen. And when I bought Porno.com for $42k (Something unheard of then) they actually stopped and listened. Mainly they listened because they thought I had lost my mind. The BRUTAL TRUTH was that I PROVED to this elite group of early pioneers that MY TRAFFIC coming from MY DOMAINS via type in traffic was outperforming their traffic by over 100X. You heard me right. Matter of fact, early in the game I actually thought my calculator was broken. While others were earning 1/10 of one penny per visitor, I was earning over 10 cents per click per visitor and more. More than 100x the norm. It was easily verified thru independent sponsors who saw what I saw and could no longer just ignore this startling difference. Something Main Street and Corporate America has yet to figure out and we are over a decade into this grand experiment. A decade later and MOST folks have yet to learn what the adult industry learned in 1997. I can only shake my head when I think about the BILLIONS in business these folks pissed away by not learning the difference between targeted traffic and crappy worthless traffic. Not knowing the difference between a website that could close a sale and one that could not. They pay the same for traffic and development and don't even know the difference!!! Keep putting water in your gas tanks and paying for it and expect your business to take off. LAUGHABLE!!

 

I love economic slowdowns. I love recessions. This event FORCES people to actually work for a living. Look for new answers to old problems. Look for new ways. ASK QUESTIONS! Stop and listen to the answer. They experiment. They work like their jobs are at stake because they are. As domainers with targeted traffic we are right on their path once they figure out where their path is. So pull up a comfortable chair and enjoy the wait. They are on their way.

 

Smart business increases their ad budgets during tough times to keep their numbers as close to level as possible. Dumb businesses pull back and that is the kiss of death. I can prove it. Let's look at Audi. They came out with some super sports car last year and advertised the hell out of it. I saw it in every magazine and every ad they ran. Ok cool. So I call the dealer. I could feel the salesman's chest boast out even on the phone as he told me there is a 3 year wait to get one. He thought he was so cool. Little did he know what a moron he was. He was so happy that he could not make a sale even tho he had a live one on the line. So Audi set him up to look foolish and I took the opportunity to laugh at him for sounding so proud about not having what I wanted to buy and therefore made no money and thus wasted everybody's time. Why advertise when you can't deliver or are at 100% capacity? It's the wrong time. You advertise NOW when things are tough so you can stay afloat. btw, the funny part of the story was a few weeks later they called me back and told me they could get me one. By that time I had bought 2 other cars and my appetite for the Audi was gone. Great job Audi! Almost as good as another time when I asked a salesman there what 0-60 was and was told  "Nobody really cares about 0-60 anymore." I laughed in his face, told him his cars must be slow not to answer that after he knew every other stat and spec and walked out.

 

Told you I would meander on this post. Ok back to the subject.

 

On the other hand, let's stay on this. The question is whether Main Street and Corporate America will pull back on their advertising or are they bold enough to increase it? Stay tuned because you will see before your very eyes which folks GET IT and which folks don't. Their online sales are all increasing. Their brick and mortar sales are flat lining and will soon be in decline. The expenses of running B&M business is going to be devastating. Cost online is much lower with worldwide penetration. When will they finally shift the BULK of their resources online? If not now, it will never be as you will watch some big boys just topple over.

Have a GREAT day!
Rick Schwartz.

Comments

[correction]

Rick..

Great post as usual..They will never get it ..atleast in our life times..that is the sad part..

thanks,
Sai.

[dr00t]

Great post Rick. It definitely will be interesting to see whether or not ad budgets increase or decrease in this recession.

P.S. How does someone contact you directly?

[Jerril]

Rick....

After reading your latest post, I spoke with a Family member who owns a major Television Commercial Company. He stated that his Business has "Doubled" in the past Two Months! Major US Corporations are immediately diverting their budgets to Media Advertising.

Jerril

[Michael Castello]

What we are seeing is the slow decline of old world industry and the emergence of new world profit. They are spending $10 to make $10 and we are making $100 for every $10. Who is going to win? Technology and the internet have given us the tools to make incredible advancement and lots of money. The MBAs and Executive MBAs did learn these same tools from their professors. They stayed with the status quo. Call it arrogance or ignorance; I call it "our opportunity". This should make for a good year.

[Rob Sequin]

Rick,

Your crystal ball continues to impress!

I like your comments about the recession. This could be fantastic for online ventures.

B&Ms think local, local, local and we think global, global, global.

What's it like not just thinking out of the box but LIVING there? :-)

Keep up this great work.

Thank you.

[ColinPape.com]

On the money as usual Rick! The first part of your post makes me wonder if you read my blog yesterday (http://www.colinpape.com/?postid=10000165 )

Nothing like a good recession to separate the wheat from the chaff... It will be interesting to see how many old media companies are left standing in another 5 years...

Few people seem to appreciate the drastic changes that are underway or can see how big an impact they will have on the status quo...

I think those who've invested in domains and learning how to make money online are in the best positions out of anyone... I can't imagine running a legacy business with huge overhead, incredible inefficiencies and outdated business models...

Hopefully (for them) they catch the domain train before it's completely left the station and they are locked out of the markets they used to dominate by internet visionaries like yourself!

[Successclick]

Excellent post, Rick. As usual, you are the voice that Corporate America BETTER be listening to in order to advance their advertising dollar via generic descriptive domain names.

I was talking with an associate yesterday about the fact that if we domainers and domain industry businesses don't start selling to corporate America soon, all of our auctions for domains will be incestuous, which I predicted over a year ago. We need buyers OUTSIDE the domain industry to inflate our domain values. Your post certainly backs that up. If Monte and the other domain auction houses invested some serious capital in reaching the marketing departments of the Fortune 1000 regarding categorized domain names for sale, our industry would get a huge boost in sales and upward values.

I like your story about the Audi salesman. He acted as if he had the world in his pocket, but in reality, he only had a pocket watch ticking away the moments of his perceived "coolness".

My goal is so focused right now, because it's one I believe in, and I believe you have the power to advance... and that is selling to outside business sectors instead of other domainers.

By the way, CONGRATS on the big sale to CNN. That surely opened up some eyes in the major marketing companies.

By the way, has Audi come out with anything you're interested in lately? LOL

Stephen Douglas
Successful Domain Management™
BLOG: http://www.Successclick.com
DomainRelevance.com
"Own Your Competition™"

[Kevin]

Advertising is a $400 Billion industry worldwide. The online spend market share is only 7%. Online spend is expected to double its market share in the next 3 years and pass the $50 Billion per year mark by 2011, with plenty of room to grow even beyond that.

Even in chaotic economic times companies still have to advertise. Often its the best way to grab market share while other companies pull back on their ad budget. So though you'll see some companies lower their ad budgets, there are always others expanding and you usually end up with either a flat year or a slight up tick.

So even if we see a cutback in overall spend I think we'll see a gain still in online spend because of the fact that current online ad spend is only 7% of overall spending and has shown a solid upward trend seemingly immune to economic conditions.

Bottom line the Net is the place to be now if you want to reach a billion eyeballs worldwide. No other medium has the reach and rapid virility of the Net at such economical price points.

Another good judge of the ad market is the Super Bowl. This year it costs $2.7 Million for a 30 second spot. That's a cost per thousand (CPM) of $30. And there is no shortage of media buyers for those spots. You have to keep in mind besides the ad spend a Super Bowl spot can cost an equal amount for production. So these companies are laying out $5 Million per spot in reality. That's a whale of a bet and shows advertising is still solid as a rock.

Now is the time to buy as many domains as you can. Direct navigation domains are the proven way to reach targeted consumers. Their value will only increase as the size and power increases each year.

Whatever you do don't sit on cash right now as tempting as that position is in tough economic times. Money is just a piece of paper that is depreciating and losing its value each day. Park your cash in quality domains. When you need cash just sell a couple. This way your money is invested in the best ROI vehicle out there and can be quickly liquidated should the need arise. Make domains your currency.

We all get so conned by the "marketed aura" almighty dollar and forget its nothing but a sliver of processed wood with absolutely zero inherent value. You have to think like they did in pioneer days. What was valueable then were things people needed. Shovels, tools, crops, silver and gold nuggets, etc. Domains are the new shovels in the digital age. It's smarter to have a million dollars worth of domains than a million dollars of cash sitting in the bank.

[David Wrixon]

Its a no brainer.

Cut your advertising budget at the beginning of the downturn and you might as well just rollover and die!

[Dan Lew]

Hi Rick,

Your posts are always very Inspiring. I just love the way you plan the future with getting domains that are related to popular term phrases people only just start to use.

Smart thinking!

I added your link in one of my blog's.

http://www.danlew.com/domain-names-in-jan-2008/2008/01/31/

Enjoy!

[Lizi Obolensky]

I've seen my advertising shoot up this month - especially the last two weeks so I would wager a bet you're right on - although it could be budgets for the new year are being executed this month - however I see a lot of "new" advertisers come on board this month.

[John]

You keep rehashing the same things over and over like a 1000 times.

OK, they don't get it. They are still spending 3 million for a 30 sec SB ad into Murdoch's toilet drain.

Things will never change.

Now what's new?

[Crystal L. Cox]

Rick, Would you Tell us loyal blog visitors what you think of Microsoft making a Hostile bid for Yahoo.