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.
webuythe.com
Rick,
I’m sure I speak for many domainers…We’ll miss your inspiring posts.
Best of luck with the sale of widgets.com on ebay!!
Bob
Hi Rick – I’ve truly enjoyed all of the archived posts on your blog. Will they still be here or is the blog going to be shut down?
Thanks for the lessons!
Jamie Parks
Thanks for all the inspiration. This blog may be concluding but I have a feeling that we haven’t heard the last words from the DomainKing!
Steven Emery
This blog will be missed. Let someone else take over in your honor. I came for my domain nourishment constantly. It was my start point. Now Shillings cutting back on his blog where is a Serial Prolific Domainer gonna go to get a fix. I hope I dont starve. Surely will be missed but definitely not forgotten.
Ryan
Rick,
Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to share your insights, and best of luck with your upcoming development projects.
Jarred Cohen
Rick, it’s been grand!
Wish you all the best!
Robert Pearl
I hope you all realize what is going on here. The message should be loud and clear. Rick has been warning everybody all year to help him mount a defense against what is coming. Very few are paying attention, and very few are helping him build the fort to protect against the coming invaders. So, rather than waste is time blogging to people who don’t listen, he is leaving us to fend for ourselves and he will use his new found time to mount his own defense (probably by developing some of his domains and selling others). We have lost our visionary and a big industry voice.
WAKE UP PEOPLE! Rick stops blogging, Frank stops blogging, Yahoo kills arbitrage, Ask/Google, Snowe Bill.
The writing is on the wall.
Fast forward to 2010 and do a”Where are They Now” on the domainers of yesteryear. Some will have cashed out and be wealthy and happily retired. Some will have developed domains into businesses worth millions or maybe even billions. Most, however, will be EMPLOYEES working for a BOSS, wasting their hours thinking about the good old days and wondering what went wrong.
Francois
Rick,
Your name will be associated to domaining for ever.
Thanks again for all you have done to actively promote this industry.
Good luck with your new projects.
Ron James
Your blog has been a source of information and inspiration for myself and many others. Thanks, Rick.
Best wishes for the new Property.com venture!
joe vazquez
Rick, a million thanks for your wonderful advice and the generosity of spirit in which you have offered it.I do hope you will reconsider your decision to ditch the blog as you have a lot of worthwhile things to say and as a brand new and rather ¨green¨ domainer myself, I have got a lot from it.I hope to get the chance to buy you a beer some time at a future TRAFFIC conference as my way of thanking you.
Kind Regards
Joe Vazquez
Madrid
Spain
Kevin
Thank you for all the fantastic blog posts Rick!
Apathy is one of human beings most common traits, especially in business, and always in society in general. Most people are slaves to the systems that rule and control their lives, be it political powers, the company they slave for, powerful special interest groups that lobby laws to benefit only them, governments, the legal system, whatever, there are endless masters out there.
After awhile people just give up inside and become resigned to this unfortunate fact of life. Even when you defeat one system, another one pops up to try and control things in our lives.
In this business, even being the rebel entrepreneurs domainers most of us are, we’ve all become slaves to a variety of regulations, systems, search engines, ppc companies, registrars, and on and on. I truly think this is why so many domainers are apathetic about supporting and forming organized efforts to protect their rights and assets. The forces against us are seen as overwhelming.
Although we are powerful in a certain respect, the reality is the people and companies that have this industry and our assets in their sights, are so enormously powerful, legally and politically connected and funded with billions of dollars, most of us recognize it will be a battle like a militia of mere hundreds fighting with bows and arrows going up against a nuclear equipped and overpowering worldwide military force. Some take the Alamo stance perhaps and say if we’re going to die, let us die fighting, but the majority say screw it and just head for the hills and hope for the best. Even if we assembled a million dollars, would that be enough firepower to battle the forces ahead? That is the sad reality I think most domainers see and become apathetic from.
From personal experience, in the 900 pay per call industry the same exact thing happened. It was a goldmine for many years, and then the legislators came in and made it easy for people to chargeback and not pay for their calls, the phone companies were taking all the profits, politicians wrote laws making it cost prohibitive to do business, publications jacked up rates so it become costly to advertise and then the final nail on the coffin came with the Internet which pretty much closed up the 900 goldmine for good. Like domaining we tried to organize lobbying efforts for 900, but it was futile, and no one in the industry wanted to work in a unified defense nor fund a unified defense. And what was a great business faded into the sunset after a decade.
But, most 900 guys became fantastic marketers from that industry and successfully migrated to the Internet and are amongst some of the most successful Web entrepreneurs today. So when one door closed another opened for everyone.
This explains why apathy is always so common, everyone knows nothing great lasts forever anyway. If you catch a huge wave in business and ride it well you can make a fortune, but every great entrepreneur surfer knows every wave will eventually crash and they’ll have to venture back out into the ocean and look for the next one. This is why 99% of domainers don’t give a damn about organizing nor protecting their future and never will. Sad, but true.
Thanks again for the great blog and lets make Property.com and all the other gems ROCK!!! as this next phase of opportunity for domainers to become multi-millionaire developers begins!
CHARRRRRGE!!!!!
Rudy Hernandez
Rick, you’ve given me more domaining insight from your blog posts than I could ever thank you for. Good luck in your new endeavors and I’ll see you at TRAFFIC soon to thank you in person.
Sincerly,
Rudy
LatPro
yeah baby! change is good, building a website can be a labor of love and with any luck, your new experiences will inspire you to share new insights down the road. godspeed Rick.
David Wrixon
Before you dip out of Blog Land, perhaps you would just give you take on how the Richard L. Brodsky bill will affect direct navigation earnings? It will clearly have an adverse impact on Google and Yahoo, but won’t it make direct navigation traffic so much more valuable that it would otherwise have been?
Well, if not, thanks for all you contributions.
Tommy Butler
Good luck Rick and sorry to see you putting down your Blog.
You here spot on with some of the posts and been intresting reading them.
I agree we all need to fight the battle and not leave it to a few to fight the cause.
Good luck with traffic
Shows.
Ps does that mean your passing your Royal crown back to us Europeans. lol
Kelly Lieberman
I think you should stay on message. Your voice is needed and you owe it to yourself to finish your book.
The final chapter is still playing out and a lot of us are doing what we can to fight this bill.
You have so many people who think very highly of you. Don’t let the ones who ignore your predictions determine your actions.
With the TRAFFIC show in May you can sign up ICA members, ask domain seller’s to pony up a percentage of sales for ICA, sign petitions, get ICA to speak, etc…
Huge publicity potential!
I have pledged 15% of all my sales to ICA from the auction and again challenge everyone to do the same. I also have a few private sales in negotiations that I will also pledge.
Can everyone PLEASE step forward and meet my challenge?
Jeff Schneider
Rick your foresight , and big heart has done so much for so many. In the heat of battle many generals have said things outwardly that are changed later to protect the troops. We are all counting on you to get back on your horse and consider the opportunity in all this, because you have truly been a refreshing catalyst for change. Gratefully , Jeff Schneider
Sergio
Rick, you have been a great voice and leader in our community. You will be missed. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.
Cheers
Derek
Rick:
You are definitely one of the people that has inspired me starting out in this industry. Very few people have the type of passion and enthusiasm you have, and these things tend to have a rub off effect. Thanks for being so open with advice, and showing such a willingness to help. You’re a great guy and I have a lot of respect for you.
Take it easy!
Vic
Rick,
Although you’re discontinuing , you’re certainly leaving behind a legacy by way of this blog that will continue to inform, inspire and educate many new domainers for a long time to come.
My best wishes for whatever it is that you decide to pursue.
NIck Wilsdon
Just doing my weekend reading and I find you’ve stopped blogging Rick!
Well, what can you say, thanks for the all the posts over the years. Please leave this site open, not only is a great resource but maybe, one day you’ll decide to drop a few updates. We need some strong leadership in this industry.
Domisfera
Dear Rick,
first I want to thank you for the time you spent answering that deep and long interview.
With your experience in this industry your point of view articulated through your blog was very interesting, especially when it was different from we usually have thought or believed.
It have been 75 posts, it could have been more, but these have been enough to understand the keys of this industry.
Domisfera wants to rescue one question of your interview by the way of your previous post:
(14) We have seen to seize domains from legitimate owners by using a trademark. Do you think some day we could see the opposite one (to get a trademark using a domain registered before)?
You will see every conceivable shenanigan to get valuable domains without paying market value or from those not even interested in selling.
Jeff Schneider
First off hats off to all leaders that are stepping to the plate and joining the I.C.A. I don’t know about others on this forum ,but I am in this industry for the long run. Maybe someone on this forum has a calculator handy. What is 5 % of the on line advertising Industry? That is the low low end of just the direct navigation industries, slice of the pie that we eat. This slice of the pie is only going to get larger, as the public starts getting wise on how to dial up companies addresses directly. Great Industry to be in right ?
Would you imagine in your wildest dreams someone wanting those kinds of dollars for themselves, and all they have to do is pick off small holders one by one and in so doing setting precedence as they go. Knowing that if the Snowe bill passes the take gets bigger. On top of this the small business owners have no $ coming in 24/7 to protect their interests, because knowone cares to pool assets to fund a passage residual income source used to protect their turf?
Our competition employs professional fund raisers, with a planned systematic approach to change our addresses to theirs. Its been going on now since I’ve been in the business for as long as I can remember.
The ad companies aren’t pushing direct navigation because they don’t control the addresses. They will not quit, without a fight. Please support a fund raising initiative for the I.C.A. “HelpRaiseFunds.com “
Adam Richards
Okay, I came across this site and I have just a few things to say:
YOU ARE RETARDED.
You profit off of empty namespace on the internet. What you do should be considered cybersquatting, and you should be fined, as you exist only to reap a profit off of other people’s great ideas before they even have them. Get a real job and stop inflating the costs of domain space on the internet. Its people like you that cause problems with the U.S. economy.
Response by RS:
Ever hear of the word”Capitalism?” lol.
I posted your response so folks can see that Neanderthals still walk the planet. Do you walk upright or are you still hunched over? And going to Perdue? They should be proud that they taught you such good manners and have a healthy view of the world and how to overcome obstacles. Prepare yourself to be a loser for the rest of your life with an attitude like that. You will always be the poor, helpless”Victim” and you will blame others for your own lack of greatness and achievement.
xited
Wow alot of comments that informed me well XD