The Rick Schwartz Domain Name and Traffic Blog: RicksBlog.com – Home of The Domain King®

Afternoon Folks!!

Just a few weeks ago there was widespread doom and gloom throughout the industry. I really have never seen anything quite like it and wrote about it several times with these posts I have linked to in this opening paragraph. But it does prove Human Nature once again. So many give up just before success shows up and could have rescued them. Are we on the eve of a "Frenzy"? We may be and here is why.

You can thank the gTLD's in part. In large part. Embrace or reject, does not even matter.

Really!

Why?

Because it forced the Fortune 500 companies and those down the chain to discuss their long-term domain name strategy. They most likely never had that discussion before and if they did it was in the last century. Maybe the first time they ever had such high level meetings about the subject of domains. And the outcome will be mixed. But I can tell you that the majority rejected the notion and then the conversation turns to the long-term strategy and online vision and what it will take to compete. And it would be a natural progression of things to discuss the .com domain name they have and the one or ones they want going forward as well as what domains their competition uses.

And since they can't buy any gTLD's right now, the other group that may embrace gTLD's loop around to the same conversation since you can't buy what isn't available.

It's just a phenomenon and one that can be predicted and seen but can't be controlled. It has to happen in a natural way and that is exactly what is happening at this very point in time. Right on schedule. In board rooms everywhere. The dynamics have changed. They have been changing all summer long as I have been stating. I see it as a volcano, you can react after it erupts or you can tune in to see the subtle differences before it blows and position yourself.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

Let's take a few minutes maybe even a few posts to untangle this clusterf*ck of what is coming and what the Myths and Facts really are. And if I don't know, I will make it up. I will come to an assumption. I will use what facts are available and at the minimum use that as the starting point because you need somewhere to start and assumptions are perfect until you can plug-in the actual facts when they unfold. And if you have been paying attention they have been unfolding every day. And if you have some parallels set up, you can already see what is coming and the stages they are coming in. Let's just say "Consolidation" will be the keyword for the first 5-10 years or more and we have already seen that happen. Or die on the vine.

Myth #1 "gTLD's are bad for the Industry."

Well it may be a mess and it may be a clusterf*ck of historical proportions, it will also bring awareness and tens of billions of dollars into our space. Normally I would say sales. But in this case, the #1 expenditure will likely be advertising and other means to bring awareness but does not necessarily result in sales that are strong enough to support. Not to mention employees, customer service, unexpected glitches. A rocky road. It costs money to pave the way and get to a smooth time. Many won't survive that journey and some already gave u before the trip even begins.

Myth #2 "gTLD's will devalue my .com's."

Well nothing could be further from the truth. It will do quite the opposite. Those that are saying that are likely buyers trying to get you to sell beneath market. How gullible. Are you paying attention to the after market? It is exploding! There is a reason for that but I won't argue the point, I will just state what happens before it happens and be on record so we can look back.

Myth #3  I am not sure what to quote here. But just an interesting observation. The gTLD's were open to everyone in the world. All the different languages. But extensions are dominated by English Words. Why?

Myth #4 "Somebody that owns a .com will want the other .whatevers."

As Page Howe articulated on DomainSherpa.com last week and I agree with 100%, he never goes downstream. In other words, if you own something other than .com then you want to grab every other extension and keep going after better and higher level domains until you get to the prize which is .com. But if you have the .com you are really not motivated to get the lower level extensions. Matter of fact, you can't wait for one of them to have a giant success.

Myth #5. "My .whatever extension does not leak traffic to the .com"

Sorry, fact beyond dispute. The evidence is overwhelming.  So overwhelming in fact that it has the potential to sink the ship. Any ship. That's a captain of a ship that believes the ocean has no shallow spots and a few leaks won't hurt anything.

Myth #6 "Google and Amazon and the big boys are in charge"

Not true. The consumer is always in charge. Everyone chases the consumer. There are some that do it really well (Apple) and have a harness on it and there are others that fail like JCPenny and are wobbling out of control. The consumer demands certain things. And when you don't give it to them, they won't give their dollars to them.

Myth #7 "The buyer sets the price and is in control of a transaction."

Come on. The seller is the only one that can press the Red Button and make a decision. The seller has only one thing he controls, his wallet and perhaps lack of funds.

Myth #8 "Reverse Domain Name Hijacking is no big deal"

REALLY?

Myth #9 "Rick and his Need, Want, Desire" does not get it.

Sorry, few have challenged Need, Want, Desire" and "Value" becomes a knockout blow. Down goes Frazier! I am just saying that many of those that are doing this are unprepared for the reality of what they are going to find out. So their only play is selling the extension. And while everyone thinks they make 5X their money with a $1 million sale of a $185k asset,  there are also many other fees and expenses and time and energy that the very people I talk about, don't count. Sorry,  It all counts!! Ignore enough important things, minimize them like a shrinking machine and eventually collapse may be the result.

Myth #10 "We will have hundreds of thousands of registrations"

That's like the Internet guy saying that getting traffic is no problem. Until he finds out it is the 2000lb gorilla in the room and there are 699 other gorillas and some are much bigger.

Myth #11 "The success or failure of those extensions that are released first will have no affect good or bad on any other extension.

I beg to differ and did an entire post on it. It the first 10 are dogs, it won't help #11. If the first 10 are winners, then  it will help #11. If it does not move the needle, it is even worse. That means nobody cares.

Like I said, it would take more than one post to go down the list. So #11 was just a replay bonus. ;-)

There will be many ways for the savvy to make money regardless of the fact that most people will lose their asses.

Rick Schwartz

Afternoon Folks!!

Ocean, River, Lake, Pond, Puddle. Pick which one you want to aim for.

Hint: There is Pigeon Shit in the puddle. So pay attention if you want to avoid. One extra word can be the difference between a 6 figure domain and a worthless domain. I see it all day long.

So verbs and adjectives LIMIT your audience but at the same time TARGETS your audience. Target too much, you have a puddle or maybe just a dried up hole. Here is the recipe for the happy medium.

So here is a real world example of targeting and limiting.

HallofShame.com is universal.

It may not be the ocean of Shame.com for example, but it is a universal domain that is targeted and you know you are going to see some bad behavior when you get there. And in time can become subdomains to include different subjects, industries and companies etc.

What I did not do is use DomainHallofShame.com which would have been much more targeted, but much more limited when we are trying to hit a wider audience. Plus, I already have that ability. Add one more word and you are at worthess.

In each case you must decide who you are aiming for. In this case I am trying to vault over the walls of a POND that would be DomainHallofShame.com. What I am trying to do is jump into the RIVER because the River goes places. It has greater circulation than a pond. It travels. Sometimes you only want to be in that pond. And that is fine. KNOW THE DIFFERENCE! Many do not.

In my case the River may be better than the ocean. That is what targeting is about but you must have a target audience and they don't go to puddles and dried up holes. I could have also had DomainNameHallofShame.com or Domainnameshallofshame.com. Each one gets increasingly further away, harder to remember, less traffic and so on. On the other hand owning those combos can't hurt if you have a business. But that is the extent of it and the value is severely limited.

This is a 3 word domain that just happens to work because it means something. It is a known phrase. It has already been advertised and sold to the public before I ever entered the picture. Something most domains and most new gTLD's won't have the luxury of.

Now I have a running start and all I have to do is BRAND. Yes Brand. Not selling. I have nothing to sell. I have something to brand. Something the startup guys need to learn the difference about. If THEY are busy branding they are busy going out of business because they CAN'T sell. If they COULD sell, they would be busy selling because that way they make money and grow. Branding means you got  a bag of shit and the only way you can make it is trying to be cool. Good luck with that.

Point is, if you approach it from left field you may end up in left field. These are the basic building blocks I and most other successful domainers use and you can reject at your own peril. Most do. I can only put it out there.

AdjectiveKEYWORD.com

VerbKEYWORD.com

NounKEYWORD.com

DescribeKEYWORD.com

LetterKeyword.com (i or e)

NameKeyword.com

LocationKeyword.com

That is the foundation I use.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

As you know the last few auctions I have been focusing on domains with "No Reserve" so that we could have real and exciting auctions. In Las Vegas we sold 70% of the domains let by bouquet.com at $30,000. A real gem and a real bargain that Ron Jackson even did a story on.

As I have been writing about, the worst of the recession is over and business is recovering and things are moving again. They called yesterday "Merger Monday" even tho it was a Tuesday but it was the first business day of the year. Huh? Yes, first BUSINESS DAY of the year. The day after Labor Day is the day the gun goes off and the race each year begins. But this year is much bigger as we rise from yet another set of ashes like we did in 2003 and watch things take off in dramatic fashion. History repeats itself. It comes in waves.

So with that in mind, we are not focusing on "No Reserve" domains. We will be raising the bar this time with higher quality and higher value domain names. BUT....they still must be a bargain in terms of domainers.

Also we will be announcing a silent auction that will run before and after the Live Auction.

Now before we start here are the rules. If you don't follow the rules, I disregard your email.

1. I don't have the time to respond if I dn't chose your domain so don't expect to hear back from me. I am sorry. I am focusing on what I need to do. I apologize in advance.

2. No more than 10 domains on a list and please just send me one list.

3. You are selling to domainers, price accordingly. This is NOT an end-user event. However if you are an end-user you can get an incredible bargain.

4. If it is an alternate extension, it MUST be one word only and it MUST be cheap!

5. I am reviewing domains until Friday at 5PM or before. That's it. Once I get 75 domains that qualify, done deal.

6. If your domain is borderline, we may take for silent auction if you agree.

7. New gTLD's may want to consider an early jump-start and auction off the rights to some of their premiums coming online. 

8. Mail entries to:

domain king

at

Gmail

.com

8. Please don't get insulted or upset if I don't choose your domain. I will get ten thousand submissions and only picking 75 or so. My job is to make sure they are the best offered and priced so that they are attractive to domainers.

9. Your best chance is a meaningful one or two-word domain that is a .com

10. Good Luck!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

My FIRST few days in Domains 1995-1996. It sure looked different back then. First of all NONE of you were there then. Well maybe 5 or 6 of you. Ari Goldberger was one. Chad Folkening to name another. Ted Lebowitz who got some great adult terms just weeks before me. Eli from Montreal. I would be hard pressed to name anyone else tho surely many were around.

I still look back when I got into this and it was a virtual ghost town. See I got into domains AFTER they were free. FREE!! All were free. I MISSED IT DAMN IT!!! And I had yet to meet somebody investing in domains at that point. I had only met techies that thought I was insane to spend $100 EACH after being FREE FREE FREE! And to buy 18 of them!! I had to have my head examined. $1800!! INSANE at that time. But what kept me going was knowing I was not alone even tho I was alone. I had one other person with me, whoever might own the domain I was looking for. Some registered YEARS before. But some registered MINUTES before. MINUTES!!! So I knew I was not alone even tho I was alone and nobody knew what the hell I was talking about.

Then something even more interesting happened. I started to see the same names over and over and over again. I was still alone. But there was a kindred spirit there and I knew it! We DO have a kindred spirit in this industry because there are still relatively few of us. But now we are connected. I saw law firms over and over again and I saw an adult company in New York City that had a shitload of great adult domains. So I knew some folks and names years before we ever met or even talked. But those FEW kept me going. I would guess there were a few dozen at that point.

So when I look up now and see this MAMMOTH of an industry that is here and still so small overall, it is sometimes overwhelming. I mean Godaddy has more employees taking a piss right now then there were domain investors in 1995. So my perspective will ALWAYS be different. My starting point was different. My aim was different. We just happen to intersect a lot! That's the nature of the business. All prospectors for gold go where the gold is. So you will likely stumble on the same people over and over again.

Of course that was during the GOLD RUSH DAYS of domaining. There was a gold rush. Some of you don't even know about this. 1998. Amazing!! Why? Because it just happened to be the 100 year anniversary of the Alaskan Gold Rush!! It coincided perfectly. And make no mistake, 1998 WAS without doubt THE YEAR of the domain gold rush. I had a Front Row Center seat to the event. I happened to be in Alaska at the time and did not even know until I got there. I knew about the domain gold rush, but I had no clue about the Alaskan gold rush.

I was on a cruise and the day before in each port we would hear "Bill Gates was here with Warren Buffet yesterday". That in and of itself was pretty amazing. I was doing EXACTLY what two of the richest men in the world were doing and at almost exactly the same time. in 1998 those two were the dynamic duo and not much has really changed. But that was not the highlight of the trip. That was only a memory.

What I have in front of me right now is the carry away. "The official Gold Rush Centennial Medallion" a silver coin minted by the state of Alaska. 1898-1998. Truly an enlightening trip. One I will never forget and just one of the reasons I am so certain and so focused on that "20 year" germinating process that we are now entering the gravitational pull of this NEW and exciting era.  We are there baby.....and this Labor Day is when the OFFICIAL gun goes off and the REAL RACE BEGINS. BEGINS!!!! Not ends. BEGINS! My mission was to hurdle over 20 years in spite of the laughs and the prods and all the rest that go with something folks don't understand so they just laugh at it and belittle you in the process as being unworthy of consideration.

And in the blurb below it goes on to describe new strikes for up to 8 years later let alone how long they each lasted.

I mean how many people on the planet even knew what a domain  name was in 1998? Or 1995?? Did you? Did your friends or family? I was not a techie. I could barely get online. I saw something bigger than anything I had ever seen in my lifetime and I knew at that time what it would become but it would take 20 years to hit a critical mass in the way other things in our history hit critical mass.

Folks did not even have an "Online strategy" until 10 years into it and still they were filled with doubt because of the "Fad". The doubt is over and it is now the lifeline!! The lifeline! Think about that.

Need, want, desire were words I never even used until a few years back. I simplified it all to that simple equation.

First you must have a NEED. You can't go to the guy that just came from an all you can eat buffet that is ready to explode and give him 50% off if he comes to your buffet RIGHT NOW and think that helps anyone. DUH! NO NEED, NO WANT, NO DESIRE. Compare that to the 350lb guy that is HUNGRY!! BIG DIFFERENCE! That is why "Timing" is the other element of the equation. Then of course we get to value.

Has the net changed me?

You bet.

While I am still the smiling guy you see in the photos, I also had to find that darker side that had to have thick skin, fight for what he believed and fight even harder to protect himself and many others in the process. There was no other protection. Law enforcement did not know what a domain name was let alone help you recover or it or go after the thief. It was not the FBI's radar screen. There truly was no enforcement other than your own preventative measures. I think half the people at Network Solutions did not know what a domain was nor the importance. So calling them for help is like calling help in the middle of the woods. I had so many cease and desist letters that I probably registered the first 3 word domain. lol, CeaseandDesist.com smack dab in the middle of that Gold Rush. July 1, 1998. I still have the file with HUNDREDS of these letters. EACH ONE trying to intimidate me and threaten me to STEAL or HIJACK what I rightfully owned. So did that make me a bit hardened? Yeah it did. When I find out the person or entity I am working with is a predator, I may as well be a can of raid to a cockroach.

And the choice was that or WHAT?? Let me help you. There was no choice. Wolves vs the hen-house. What more do you need to know? So we can Fast Forward to today and see we still have a very long way to go, but oh my, how far we have come. I have the benefit of a longer view and I always pay homage to the past while always focusing on the future. If you don't do that you can't check your navigation to make sure you are still on the right path. Yes, I know YOU have a GPS, but as an early explorer, I had to rely on the things like Christopher Columbus would have to rely on things or I would not and could not stay on the proper trail and land on the intended beach. London or Africa? Keeping that historic line in sight is the path to the future. That is why I talk about the history of domains as well as the history of business and society and civilization and buying power. And before some jerk-off has to be a jerk-off, No, I am not comparing myself to Christopher Columbus.  Just trying to illustrate that todays tools were not available back then and you would rely on different things to prove something one way or another.

What frustrates me the most to this very day is one thing leads to another and another and another and I am never done with the example. So let me explain it like this. Imagine a jig saw puzzle with 3000 pieces. They each fit somewhere perfectly to fit with the next That is how I see the evolution of the Internet and domains are a first tier beneficiary. And while I started with only a few pieces, just like the box it comes in, I always had a CRYSTAL CLEAR picture of what it would look like when each piece was filled in. So that puzzle is not done. It takes 20 years to finish. But it is taking shape and a picture is appearing and it gets a bit clearer every single day as one or more pieces get placed. And every once in a while a part of it will be all filled in and it can clearly be seen by all. It ain't easy to hold this steady for so long and not be deterred from what the completed puzzle looks like. And in that picture Domain Names would be a KEY piece of that puzzle. Smack dab in the middle of that puzzle and guess what, that is EXACTLY what is happening and the gTLD's PROVE the fact before it is a fact.

The day the bulb went off in 1996 was the day I KNEW that everything I had done prior to that point in life was simply an apprenticeship for this. Truly. A unique opportunity in time that dovetailed perfectly with everything I had learned and absorbed and became good at until that point. There was never a doubt. Never a second thought. Never. I just had to manage to survive for 20 years and all the answers that needed to be answered would be answered.

And I started writing that stuff down back then so I could leave a trail for others and be able to point to time stamped evidence of beliefs like a religion to me. I had to reach back to my days of writing either creatively or for a sales piece and that was perhaps what I was most rusty at. In 1996 people did not write like they do today. Of course much of that is morphing into dictation.

But as I look back, the greatest time stamp for me is the time and date on each domain name registered. They are only semi-accurate. Back in 1999 when I started moving my portfolio to Moniker, all of those domains show a 1999 date even tho I registered most of them in 1996-1997.

So a post like this just tries to put things in a historical perspective from my view. From where I sat. I can't speak for others. I can just share my story, warts and all. Life is great. Each day we get to wake up and start all over again!

Just a ramblin' Sunday Morning type post. I really feel bad for the folks that don't think the best is to come. When that puzzle is completely filled, the domain investors that are still domain investors are going to be very happy campers and there will be a sea of folks with deep regrets. Some may even take their regrets out on me or you. Why? Who knows, who cares, we have a future to harness and why allow distractions? Tuesday to me is the gun that starts the race. The DAY we truly enter the gravitational pull of that 20 year puzzle.

By the time the next President of the USA gets sworn in, we will have completed the journey. We will have arrived at the destination intended. And for the FIRST TIME many will finally see EXACTLY what it is that I have been seeing all these years. Let's face it, they already are. Maybe this ship will land on those shores just a tad early.

Rick Schwartz

Afternoon folks!!

An entire registry went down this week and Google Palestine was hacked. We saw first hand ujst how fragile some of the DNS infrastructure is and if you have a gTLD, this WILL directly affect you and your futures.

"Widely used domains such as .com and .net are operated by registrars such as VeriSign and NeuStar, which have security features that cost as little as $50 a year to prevent tampering with Web-address records. But many regional domains are managed by local companies that don't offer the same protections, said Paco Hope, a principal consultant with Cigital Inc., a cybersecurity consultancy.

In some places, only one company may be in charge of managing a country's domain, leaving customers such as Google vulnerable should employees at the local company get hacked, Hope said."

The entire article is here. And my story last week is here.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

So my post yesterday morning is inadequate. It touches what I see, but it is oh so much bigger. It is the collective energy that is coming and WE are the BIG winners! 1000 NEW Divisions if not separate companies. They are going to make a LOT of NOISE!!

They are going to make noise in many ways. Some of it will be just that, noise. But thru that noise there will be some that have something or their something may benefit your .com as I have described here.

There is a TIDAL WAVE coming and it is going to make a direct hit on the domain industry. If it does not keep getting delayed. Each day of delay makes a company weaker not stronger. It costs money not to sell anything. But at some point that dam is gonna BURST and when it does, the landscape will never look the same again.

Bringing in Adam Dicker to help with T.R.A.F.F.I.C. is by design. We are preparing for what is to come. We have 2 venues capable of holding THOUSANDS of attendees. Besides the current domain investors an entire new generation of domain investors are all heading this way. The competition is going to be very interesting and it will be fierce and it will heat up from there. A lot of elbows in a small industry as this "Experiment" progresses.

So you are seeing the calm before the storm. And the only reason there is calm is because of the clusterf*ck that is delaying everything. In a perfect world you certainly would want to roll things out very soon. But looks like the delay will extend into 2014. I really do enjoy watching incompetence up close. Somethings are not well thought out and when that happens it blows up in their face. How could you not see this clusterf*ck 2 years away? I think I have been writing about it for 2 years and am glad others now see that there is no other word in the English language to describe it.

But after the clusterf*ck, IF we EVER  get to that point, then things are going to move very fast and the $$$ are going to fly! It will look like 2005 on steroids. This IS the calm before the storm and to be honest, the calm has a lot of things bubbling and brewing below the surface.

All I want to make perfectly clear is anyone reading this scared that their .com values are going to go down are not paying attention and are already reacting to noise that means nothing. Now WHY am I spending so much energy writing about this NOW? Because when the flood gates open, my voice will be drowned out by THOUSANDS of others. I need to be CLEARLY on record. If I stay true to what I see, I am also likely to have an entire new generation of people who don't like me. Sorry if my thoughts and vision does not match their agenda. REALITY trumps everything. Let the chips fall where they may and I am rooting for soe successes out there. The NOISE won't make them a success. END USERS, CONTENT and DOMAIN INVESTORS will decide their fate. MANY of those extensions may actually SNUB the domain industry thinking they can make their mark solely with end users. Good luck with that strategy.

I think the biggest unknown is how many extensions will collapse or be acquired before they collapse?

That said....I wish every new gTLD the greatest of successes. Your success is our success. Even if only 1 in 1000 works, the folks reading this blog will be on it. I won't hide which, if any, I think have a chance. The birdie in the mine for me is .web. I like .web but it could easily prove to be another .net. Should that happen, many others will simply collpase. And anyone that gets a .whatever and has a success and you own the .com version, you too have a success. It's coming!

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

You can see this coming a year away and you best be prepared for what is coming.

With close to 1000 new gTLD's to be sold and marketed they are all going to have to man their ships and that means collectively hiring THOUSANDS of people. Going to be very interesting how this all plays out . But make no mistake about it, within a year we are going to see a massive change in our small community. For starters, it is no longer going to be small. And it will be VERY different.

Some of you reading this will end up working for some of these companies. But please take a moment to imagine  what this will all look like and how that will change the industry we are in.Much will be good and much will not. You will have a full-time job just sorting out all that is coming.

Whether  you believe the gTLD's are going to fly or not there is going to be HUGE opportunity. It may or may not come in the way of investing in domains. The opportunities may look different. I invite ever new extension owner to come here and tell us what they see. What their vision is and why. I am more likely to buy into an extension that is well thought out and supported than one that is not. Just sayin'.

A crowded field is coming and some folks will be desperate. The delays are VERY costly. Each day that passes costs money. Weeks that pass cost more. But now we are talking months and I would not be surprised if it turned into a year or more or something very unexpected happens that plunges this entire thing into turmoil. Like a complete Clusterf*ck. Even Clusterf*cks can make you money or present great opportunity.

Rick Schwartz

Morning Folks!!

I remember the days when selling a 6 figure domain name was just a blue sky theory. Then it became reality and then fairly common place.

I remember the days when selling a 7 figure domain name was just a blue sky theory. Then it became reality and then fairly common place.

I remember the days when selling an 8 figure domain was just a blue sky theory. Then it became reality and eventually it will become fairly common place.

I remember the days when selling an 9 figure domain was just a blue sky theory. And that may or may not still be the case. Most likely any 9 figure deal came with a confidentiality clause. And for 9 figures, I wouldn't be talkin' either.

What it is about is the "Headline" and "Sensationalism".

Today, if you want to be noticed, your headline must be attention grabbing. Just like a domain name. Attention grabbing. That's why folks want them in the first place.

This post is really not about a 9 figure domain sale. But please give me a little leeway on this one and I will explain the headline and the reality of a 9 figure domain sale. Just bear with me as I tie these two things together with Hotels.com and LasVegas.com below and maybe you will see what I see. These things are ABSOLUTELY related and it will take me a few more paragraphs to put this picture in perspective.

Look at the lengths businesses go to get noticed. Locally they have folks dressed up in costumes and twirling a sign pimping one retail tax guy or a Dry Cleaners or whoever. Each doing different gyrations to stand out and be noticed. Some of it is even desperate. They may be hours away from the landlord closing down their business. They have to go to great lengths to survive.

In blogging or publishing or even the Evening News, sensational headlines is what brings eyeballs. Now how far you go determines if that comes back to bite you. If you do it too often or are overly misleading folks will get angry. Human nature. You may be angry right now. But I am trying to make a larger point and hope you will allow me a little extra room on this one to drive it home and connect it. Because it is domain related. A domain is the ultimate headline.  Your name in lights! Bigger and brighter than anything Times Square could even offer.

I came to the net when there was 6 billion people and only a few million eyeballs and even fewer soapboxes. Today 7 billion and so many of us are on soapboxes for this product or that or this cause or another. The competition is so fierce. Soapboxes getting set up faster than your eyes can even count. Each day many tens of thousands of new faces get on their soap box for the very first time. Nobody is there. They talk to the wind. There is no REASON to be there and if they don't create one it is over before it starts.

Chances are we won't see a  PURE 9 digit domain name sale for many years if ever in our lifetimes. Not that there are not some that are worth it.

Looking back, what is the value of a Hotels.com for example? Strip back the entire company. How much is the Hotels.com domain worth? LasVegas.com, what is the domain worth? Domains like these are the benchmark. If there was an auction for these domains today and with what we know or SHOULD know, what is the value of the PURE domain today? Hopefully there will be no arguments by domain investors that they are each worth in excess of $10 Million today without a website. But what would an auction look like given the new-found info? Given the annual costs? Given the competition? Given the size of the market?

The auction will of course never happen, but would Marriott, Hyatt, Westin, Holiday Inn, Hilton, etc finally understand what was TRULY at stake? Would folks that spent millions going after an unprooven gTLD's take a turn and go for the real prize instead?

Knowing what you know now could you not make a case that domains such as these would approach a pure 9 figure domain deal? Maybe you have others that you might substitute. Stamps.com comes to mind. Just generic domains with HUGE and immediate markets.

It's worthy of a discussion. How would the opening bid not be over $10 million and then where does the bidding end?

Food for thought. We can argue and it is all meaningless. But it is what you believe in your heart or what you don't believe.

Rick Schwartz

Afternoon Folks!!

Seems the .PS registry has been hacked.

Looks like someone hacked the .PS registry so they can direct names anywhere. Like if someone hacked the .COM registry we would all be at the mercy of that person. A check of Google.PS illustrates what may be happening.

This can open up new concerns as new gTLD's are slated for market.

UPDATE: Tech Crunch reports it to be a "Domain Registry Attack"

Rick Schwartz