Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

Fridays are the best days of the week to stretch and ponder about recent events and arguments. They are also probably the worst days to take things seriously; with the weekend ahead of us, domain investors can afford to squeeze some humor into serious matters about domains.

The ‘cybersquatter‘ references in the seemingly light-hearted discussion between the .CO CEO and the LeWeb CEO, reminded me how much I miss Chef Patrick’s couch videos, with buxom Model Mayhem cuties. The domain industry has been taking itself far too seriously and that’s why at some point I started writing for DomainGang.com

Of course, nobody wants to be called a cybersquatter, when they aren’t. But those that do perform the cybersquatting pirouette on a daily basis, have little reason to scream ‘murder‘. In other words, the term ‘cybersquatter’ still applies to those that do just that, whether they admit it or not. That’s why domain investing still carries a stigma in online dictionaries and Wikipedia.

But fret not.

The compound word, after all, contains the beautifully crafted ‘cyber‘ part that author William Gibson brought to millions of his fans through cyberpunk novels.

Domain investors can thus benefit a lot from reading science fiction stories, and that’s yet another reference to Patrick Ruddell.

TGIF!

Recently, I had the pleasure of exchanging a couple of emails with a person who provides quality 3D infographics for financial data, on his .info web site.

After receiving an offer for the matching .com on Sedo and not reaching an agreement on the price, I assumed it came from the .info or the .us – both owned by the same person I mentioned above.

I emailed him, making sure he got praised for his creations displayed on the year old .info, and asked how much he’d pay for the 10 year old .com that I owned.

His response left me speechless, as he stated he had no budget for the .com and that through “Google placement” he’d make the .info have more traction, overshadowing the .com. He also stated that he hadn’t placed the bid on Sedo.

At that point, I had killed two birds with one stone: first, I knew this was not my secret bidder and second, I knew he would not be the one to ever bid on the .com!

So I contacted Sedo, asking them to mediate a sale to the original bidder, offering them a reasonable discount over my initial asking price. The buyer accepted, and the sale closed and was paid in two days.

Moral of the story: eliminate those that won’t be interested in your domain and achieve a sale by seeking alternate buyers.

Many thanks to Sedo and particularly Lisa Allen, for making this sale appear effortless!

While I’m known for engaging in fast domain sales, particularly via Sedo, some buyers just take their time to complete their part of the transaction.

One such example I witnessed yesterday.

I use DomainTools’ alerts to see what goes in and out of Sedo escrow on a daily basis, and a domain I sold in December popped up.

At first I thought the domain was resold by its buyer, but then I looked up its history using DomainTools.

Apparently, the buyer wanted to transfer the domain out to a new registrar, as part of the transaction. Obviously, my part of the deal ended when I pushed it to the Sedo account with Fabulous. Sedo then informed the buyer to transfer the domain out to GoDaddy, and the buyer took their sweet time to do so.

Five months later, the domain is in the hands of the buyer. Judging by the amount of traffic the domain had when it was in my possession, at least $300 in PPC revenue was lost in the meantime.

As the buyer, it’s important to keep track of your transactions and outgoing transfers, or you might end up losing domains this way.

Unlike gold, oil and precious metals, domain names don’t have a unit price associated with them. And yet, domain names are commodities that can be traded freely, can be sold and bought.

When it comes down to tagging a price to a domain name, my evaluation method as a buyer and as the seller follows similar principles.

The idea, is to evaluate domains with the intention to either develop them or to sell them to end-users. Flipping domains to other domain investors is like trading stamps, coins or sports cards; domain investment is not a hobby, it’s a profession.

In the same manner, when evaluating a domain for others, keep in mind that only the end-user potential matters.

Evaluating a domain for a purpose and function other than that of a “final destination” does not make sense to savvy domain investors that usually position themselves long term.

When an offer comes through at Sedo with a comment that wasn’t populated from the drop down menu, that comment is held for review by Sedo staff.

There are two ways to deal with such comments, and my response depends on the offer itself.

In the past, I explained why listing my domains with a fixed price on Sedo or other venues does not work for me.

If an offer with a custom comment is detrimental to the domain negotiation game, I usually call Sedo for them to review and potentially release the comment, in order for me to see what the buyer is attempting to convey.

Usually, Sedo does that within minutes and the process has helped me speed up the negotiation process. The method works in a similar fashion if I wanted one of my own custom responses to be relayed to the buyer without much of a full day’s delay.

Now, if the offer that comes with a pending comment is not of interest, I never wait for the comment to be released, but I simply cancel the negotiation on the spot. I don’t have time to waste and this way the lowballing buyer thinks twice before making an offer again in the future.