My last Blog post

Good Evening Folks,


A year ago I decided to
write a book. 75 posts later, that book is done. It resides right here. 75
posts (Chapters) most of which are aimed at the corporate and investment world
along with the domain industry as well as other trailblazers. Free for the reading. I hope someday it is read by folks on Main
Street to Wall Street who can TRANSFORM their businesses if they can figure out just how EASY
it is to harness the power of the Internet. The posts are aimed at folks at
every level. As I have said for many years, there are countless ways to
climb this mountain, this was my path and this is my vision based on my
path. A 20 year plan. A plan based on timing. That success or failure has
a lot to do with timing. Sometimes timing is everything. So with that in mind,
it is TIME to do other things. Whatever I can say has been said. It is here. It
is on eRealEstate.com and it is on TargetedTraffic.com. Now the time that I
have always shared has to be devoted to other challenges and other projects.
The first of which opens today at Property.com. Widgets.com and others will soon follow. Time
to allocate my time in a new way. The industry is maturing and splintering and
becoming more serious and becoming more desperate. So the dynamics of the
cottage industry that gave birth to what we do is no more. The orbit has gone
to higher levels. Those in other orbits have to work hard to escape the gravity
of whatever orbit they are currently in to move to the next level. The safety
of mediocrity has to be overcome by the challenge of what the future promises.


Have a GREAT spring and
hope to see everyone in Orlando at the next TRAFFIC this May and in New York City in September. For any further thoughts, just read my previous post..


Rick Schwartz.


Sometimes you have to burn an old bridge to build a new bridge.

This is directed at some specific friends from my private chatboard and as a general statement to others following the developments of late. They know who they are. We've all known each other for many years and spent many intimate moments together and have all met face to face. This has appeared privately and I decided to make it public as a way to have it come unfiltered directly from me.

Sometimes you have to burn an old bridge to build a new bridge. A better and stronger bridge. Sometimes you have to clear the land to build a new structure and relationships.

As many of you have heard, we have buried the hatchet with Domain Sponsor. Ron Sheridan and I have kissed and made up. We hugged in public, shook hands and I feel it was genuine all the way around.

Howard and I had two constructive meetings with Lawrence, Josh and Jeff. I want to take a moment to publicly thank Chis Siverten (whose name I never spell right). But I want to thank Chris because I believe he was an important factor in having us come together.

So we move forward in a new spirit and hopefully this new bridge will be stronger and out last the old one. It brings the industry together instead of dividing it. So that brings me to what I would like from folks that if they choose, may come and go freely from my private board again.

This (my private chatboard not my blog) IS my LIVING ROOM. It will REMAIN my living room. That is something that I ABSOLUTELY REFUSE to compromise on. If that is not acceptable. If that rubs you the wrong way. If you are going to hold a grudge against me. If you are going to challenge that in your mind or in your heart, let's just be friends. We don't have to interact with each other HERE. We can all communicate via many methods. Just this is my SANCTUARY. This is my home for invited guests. But please, those ARE my keys. Treat me and conduct yourselves like you were a GUEST in MY HOME. If you can't do that, I can say no more.

So if we can get to a meeting of the minds there, then I can say what I need to say and hopefully good people with good hearts and find a way forward.

In my living room, I do not expect folks to promote competing events. You can do it on an infinite amount of websites and lots of other INDUSTRY boards, but PLEASE, not here. It's just not right. Do it anywhere you like, just not here. Let ME take the lead in that department. If we are all cooperating it may not even be an issue.

It's not a place to take pot shots at me. I don't need that. I don't want that. My TIME becomes wrapped up in "Just curious" stuff. I don't like to ignore things, and feel compelled to respond when I just don't have the TIME or energy to do it. It drains me and I don't want that anymore. I don't need to justify everything I do.

I am a sensitive person. I feel things deeply. I just want to be treated nice HERE. I am a pinnata out there. But this is my HOME and I want to be surrounded by people looking out for each others back as opposed to walking around with a target on MY back. I have just always tried to do my best. Take all sides into account. And believe me folks, there are a lot of folks pulling or tugging me in one direction or another. My JOB is to take it all in. Consider it all. Make the best decision I can.

If T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is just another "Trade show" and anyone is going to run around and saying things that are not positive and have under tones of negativity, then we can still be friends. We can interact. Just not HERE. Don't use my resources to undermine my hard work and that of Howard and our wives.

I don't think I am asking much in return for devoting my TIME to what I believe has benefited everyone in the business. If you don't think I have done good. Have done things that you have such venom in your heart for me, then please, you just don't belong here and those folks are the ones I just want no part of. You see how they behave. That behavior would not be welcome in any of our homes. I don't think that is unreasonable. That is MY TOS.

It's OK if you don't accept the terms. Just don't say you do when you really don't and you are out to undermine me, Howard, TRAFFIC at every turn. If THAT is who you are and SOME of you ARE in that camp, then I ask you to pause a moment and decide how YOU want to move forward. The burden is on you at THIS juncture. I have my heart open. It's a tender heart. If you expect to poke that heart, or worse, let's just agree to disagree and go our own ways. If you want to open your heart, then we can all move forward. It is your decisions and choice. I have only good will. If you fool me, that is on you.

But if we can get thru these TINY hurdles, we can all do great things.

So that is my olive branch. Maybe you like it maybe you don't. The board has been focused on business much more than personalities of late. Like Lawrence told me....we need to take the "DRAMA" out and communicate more. The personality nonsense out for there is no place for that. Can we do that? My hand is extended. My heart is open. I will do my part as well. That is my proposal. I can't do more. I REFUSE to do less. If we can come to common ground, GREAT! If we can't then that is just how it is and I guess we will all deal with it. Either way, I hope we can mend things, If not, it is ok.

Right now I am exhausted and I can't wait to get home and reflect on what we all accomplished this week at T.R.A.F.F.I.C. and where we go from here. I hope we did what we promised at the show. I think we pulled it off. The folks seemed to be happy with things. They were THRILLED that DS and us were able to fix things and agree to work closer and cooperate and still remain competitors without trying to injure us.

And before I sign off, want to thank the folks at Sedo for the pre event. It showed there is a way to have functions that help each other. I hope it is a model we can use in the future that allows more of us to make it EASIER for those coming from Australia and other distant countries from flying back and forth more than necessary.

Oh well better shut up before I get in trouble. I hope the folks reading this know me well enough to know the spirit of what I have written. It is not a sign of weakness and I have never felt stronger. It is just doing my part to fix things and get on the right course. I can do no more than that. Hand extended. Heart opened. But ZERO tolerance from my beliefs and TOS.

Have a GREAT day.
Rick Schwartz

 

How Madison Avenue let down Corporate America and how both failed

Do you remember a few days ago I said I would 'Ruffle some feathers.' Well that is a promise I can keep with this post. Get ready for some flapping and chirping on a grand order.
Hotels_2 Hotels.com is one of my favorite stories because it illustrates the stupidity and failure the majority of Corporate America and Madison Ave have achieved. It is a clear indictment of not only them missing the single biggest opportunity in any of their careers, but 12 years into it and they have yet to figure it out. As I said in point #7 of my April 5th post, the guys that started these companies are rolling in their graves. The people entrusted to run these companies have for the most part failed them.

Now this is not universal. In some cases they did figure it out and I will list a few below. They make my case stronger not weaker. The question is why did some figure it out last century and why are the majority still not figuring it out so far in this century?

Let's start with this undeniable premise. Before you ever plug in a GREAT domain name it is capable of getting type in traffic, it starts gushing from the moment the domain name goes live. Again, may be widely known to domain owners, but possibly not to the folks that would be best served either owning your domain or at least buying the traffic on an exclusive basis. The 'End user.'

How much traffic a domain gets is on a domain by domain basis. A domain like sex.com will likely get somwhere close to 200,000 new visitors every day of the year. A domain like widgets.com gets 500 visitors each day but that is up from 60 last year. Candy.com gets 1000-1500 each day with spikes during holidays. There are many domains that get 1000-25,000 daily visitors and some much more. The reason this natural resource is so important other than the obvious value of a targeted visitor, is the growth factor. If you have zero traffic and you double it you still have zero. Anything other than zero and you will have the wind at your back. Just remember one important point. Word of mouth advertising is still the greatest advertisng medium ever known and online it is even more evident and more valuable.

Hyatt_2 Here is the story. Earlier this year my partner Howard Neu and I met with the GM at the Hyatt Grand Central Station in New York City to book the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain show and live domain auction there for this June. He wanted to understand domain names. So he began to ask some questions.

I used hotels.com as my example. I asked isn't it interesting that with all the hotel chains and all the execs and folks paid to beat the competition that EVERY single person in the hotel business failed and they failed BIG TIME? He was puzzled and looked at me like the old RCA dog on the old lp's. But that was actually a good start cuz it meant he was paying attention.

Imagine if Hyatt had gotten hotels.com. Instead of you being 1 of hundreds of hotels listed including all your competitors and paying for each lead or each booking Hyatt would have received ALL the leads. Would that not increase sales? Would that not increase market share?

Step in Madison Avenue. These folks are sooooo hooked on 'Branding' that they forgot the REASON they brand is to INCREASE SALES. So their REAL job is to increase sales. THAT is ultimate branding. Having your product everywhere. Funny how in time they have LOST SIGHT of that basic core contract. So Madison Avenue failed the hotel industry as well. IMAGINE, of all these high paid execs at all these companies and not a single one could figure it out. Figure that if they own a domain like Hotels.com they would be a leader in their sector. But they are all so hung up on BRANDING that they would rather IGNORE a reservoir of new business. New business snatched directly from the competition.

Even before it was attached to a business plan or went online hotels.com was going to be a million user a day site because it had a substantial traffic base. My guess would be that a domain like that would have gotten somewhere between 25,000 and 50,000 new visitors every day since the moment the domain went live. I guess the corp guys and Madison Avenue saw no value in having their call centers receive 9 to 18 MILLION added calls a YEAR. 9 to 18 MILLION calls that Hyatt would not lose to Marriott or Westin or Hilton or Holiday Inn or Ritz-Carlton or the other way around. They EACH had a chance to lock out the other hotel chains and they ALL missed it. They spend millions on a superbowl ad with results that can't compare and cannot even truly be measured. They let InterActive Corp (operator of Hotels.com) and Barry Diller beat them by disrupting the entire travel industry and for that they will pay dearly for decades to come.

And of course if Hyatt or Hilton or any of the others marketed hotels.com there is no way to even imagine how many tens of millions of leads would have been discovered. Leads that they get FIRST CRACK at getting. First crack at a new customer. First crack at a new reservation. This has no value??

Until folks face the greatest failure of their careers and learn from it they first must see and understand that failure. I don't want to beat these guys up. Really I don't. I am sad to report that 12 years into this and they STILL have no clue just how bad they failed. With 20/20 hindsight you would be hard pressed to find a hotel executive to say they screwed up by not getting hotels .com. What the hell is wrong with you folks??

Johnson and Johnson figured it out. They own baby.com and a LOT more. See how they OWN this sector. How they CONTROL this sector. How that have positioned themselves to lead the next 100 years just like they have lead the past 100 years. THEY GET IT!! Then think what would be the consequences if their competitor got it!

Bank of America owns Loans.com. THEY GET IT!

Barnes and Noble own Books.com. THEY GET IT!

Kraft owns CreamCheese.com. THEY GET IT!

JC Penny owns Gift.com. THEY GET IT!

Calvin Klein owns Underwear.com. THEY GET IT!

So these corporations and their Madison Avenue ad execs deserve recognition. I have a list of about 100 companies that GET IT. I give these folks a tip of the hat. They are probably yelling 'Shut up' at the screen so not everyone figures it out. LOL

Now let's look at a disaster.....and a failure by the same counterparts

Campbells Campbells owns MySoup.com. The competition (Knorr) owns Soup.com. Somebody SCREWED up there! They DON'T get it and by the time they figured it out....TOO LATE! How much do you think it will cost Campbell over the next 50 years not having that domain? I would invest in Knorr. They have SHARP people there and they may unseat the leader just like 1-800-flowers gobbled up FTD. That is one of my favorite stories of not keeping up. Here is a business (FTD) that OWNED the sector for 100 years and here comes 1-800-flowers and the tiny fish gobbled up the GIANT fish. The ONLY way Campbells will get soup.com is buying the other company. But they better do it NOW before it goes the other way! Knorr is owned by Unilever.

Imagine if 1-800-flowers did not own flowers.com?? Would not that have been a MAJOR screw up? Well if you can see it there....it is time to apply it to your own sector and see if you pass or fail. The key to all this was that it WAS a 'Unique opportunity in time' because a domain like hotels.com could have been bought a few years back for LESS than the price of a SuperBowl commercial. Today I bet some chains pay the price that could have run many commercials. And what do you think the price of hotels.com is today?? Do we count in hundreds of millions or billions? I think the latter if you could even get to that point.

So the hotel industry and dozens of other industries and their Madison Avenue agencies DON'T GET IT! They are soooo stuck on branding that they just can't GRASP that in the virtual world you can have more than one door. You can have more than one front door. You can market in generic ways. You can do lots oif things you can't do in the real world.

Regardless of all this. Their #1 jobs is to INCREASE SALES. Branding without increasing sales is not branding at all. Branding without using every tool is not building brands it is destroying brands. Branding is a buzz word that means little. SALES is what pays the bills and the salaries. Here they missed the #1 opportunity to increase sales, take market share, grow their business at the expense of the competition and they just sat there and talked about branding and to this very MOMENT still don't get it.

That my friends is a sad indictment of where we are. They are so busy slapping themselves on the back that they BLEW IT! They failed. They continue to fail. To me, this is the single biggest and clearest illustration of their total incompetence.

At least come to the point where you slap your forehead and say....'Oh my goodness, how the hell did we miss that?' Until you get to THAT POINT, there is really little else to say. Defend yourselves all you want. Somebody go do a spreadsheet and show them what it would have looked like today if they did not miss the biggest opportunity they will EVER have to increase sales.

Barry Diller and IAC (InterActive Corp)  figured it out when they bought hotels.com and you geniuses will be paying THEM for the next 100 years because you guys FAILED! And you will continue to fail until you can see how badly you messed up. Go take a look at THEIR spreadsheet.

Luckily there are other related domain names. Vacations.com. Ooops, owned by Travelocity. Too late! Do they charge commission too? Motels.com, motel.com, hotel.com, travel.com......Are you guys on Madison Ave. and Corp America getting the picture yet??? Instead of having an income producing ASSET on your ledger you have an EXPENSE!!! DUH! A significant expense. You can either 'Get it' or call me names. Go ahead, give it your best shot. Nothing you can call me can cover up failure of this magnitude. NOTHING!

I rest my case!

Now I know you hear the frustration in my words. 5 years ago you would have had to peel me from the ceiling. But it is not as bad as it seems. I do see a light at the end of the tunnel. I do see a dialogue developing. I just really wanted to be on record and 100% clear of how I see it. I hope this filters up, down and sideways throughout the Corporate world and Madison Avenue. Start with Donny Deutsch and let it circulate down to Main Street.

To dismiss any of these first few posts would just be perpetuating a 12 year failure to understand how a GREAT domain name can grow your business, lead to greater market share, and if you fall asleep at the wheel be prepared for someone to come and disrupt your entire industry no matter what industry you are in.

Have a GREAT Day!

Rick Schwartz
Hotels.com, Campbells and Hyatt are registered Trademarks

It’s the TRAFFIC….Stupid!

It's the TRAFFIC...Stupid!

View this photo It's nothing more than the famous shell game and your job is to be trained on what to look for.

There are 3 shells. Shell 'A' contains TARGETED TRAFFIC. Shell 'B' contains UNTARGETED TRAFFIC and Shell 'C' is hocus pocus NO TRAFFIC at all or the quality is so bad it has the same result.

Let's say you buy 1000 visitors and you are willing to pay 10 cents each for a $100 investment. With group 'A' you can close 10 sales and you make $100 per sale. A closing ratio of 1 in 100. You made $1000. With Group 'B' you made 1 sale. A closing ratio of 1 in 1000 so you broke even but you made a customer who hopefully return and that of course has value. Group 'C' of course produced nothing and if you buy it 10 more times you will have nothing 10 more times. Closing ratio is......

So with 'A' your $100 turned into a $1000. RIGHT DIRECTION!

With 'B' you broke even. No direction at all but there could be a CHANCE at some future business.

With 'C' you got the shaft and few even ever know it. So there is ample amounts of 'Shaft' available. Want more? If not....you MUST learn about traffic.

Now this is one side of the equation. The next step is to focus on the website and see if you can increase your closing percentages. If you could tweak it and double the revenue you would create 2 things. Demand for more traffic of equal quality and you would be willing to pay more for it which is why I as a domainer am so interested in this happening. Now be careful. If you buy the traffic under shell 'C' you will be tweaking with no possible way of ever improving it and THAT us why TRAFFIC is the name of the game. Once you truly understand traffic, you can sell virtually anything on the net. So with the widgets.com example yesterday and the traffic illustration today, you shoud be able to clearly see both sides of the equation. If you can see it you can tweak it.

So back to my example....if you double your closing rate and end up with 20 sales and make $2000 for your $100 bill you are likely willing to up that offer and you may up it to the point where you buy as much of that traffic as you can find.

While all that is going on you are still getting the benefit of the customer returning to buy more but you have increased your odds by 20 fold. You are growing your business. You are likely growing your business at the expense of the other guy. And guess what? That is okay!! The bi-product of all this is I have also just given an example of a value of a domain that varies by a HUGE amount when you can match the traffic with the right website. So that is the reason when folks sell a domain based on 'X'....my big question is WHY?
Have a GREAT day!
Rick Schwartz