The Domain King's® thoughts on domain names, web traffic, increasing web sales, success, life, and plain-old Business & Marketing 101. Nothing happens until a sale is made!
Don't think I ever made 5 posts in one day as I am likely not done. But this one marks #1000 in just a bit under 6 years and over $15,000 comments. That averages just one post every other day and 15-16 comments per post. Not that many when compared to most bloggers. But I think I have had some pretty good mileage and impact for those posts.
No, this was not my first 1000 posts. I made several thousand before blogs even came to be. I have had this daily routine since 1996. Thru Ynot.com, Netpond.com, Oprano.com and then to Ricks Board and finally here.
When you do something, longevity is the key. With time many things can become successful. I hope I have added some ideas and value to your lives. I hope the next 1000 posts culminate with me seeing the finish line of a 20 year plan. When attention spans are generally 20 minutes......I hope I have shown a vivid difference.
So I just want to take a moment to thank my readers and hope to add end users to my audience during the next 1000 posts. I already know you folks are out there. I know it is not in your best interest to speak out. But I assure you I know you are here and I will say to your face what I would say to anyone. That's called transparency. If my domain is not worth $1MM now, please come back when it is. Just don't expect me to talk to you in terms of past valuations. At that point we will be on the road to $2MM.
Those end users that understand sales understand the value of domain names. Those that don't will just carry on as usual and may or may not make their mark.
See you at the 20 year mark!! December 26th 2015 in case you would like to mark that baby on your calendar.
Why I’ll likely never
pay one single cent to Google as an entrepreneur or a consumer (though I’m
happy to as a business owner)
By Danny Welsh
JointVentures.com
I love Google as a
search engine. I use it just about every damn day multiple times per day. It’s
been designed to give the searcher (that’s me) an ability to find the searchee
(that’s whatever I’m looking for). And so far for years of my life it’s been
pretty damn good at providing me something RELEVANT and as a consumer I think
it’s got great value.
But you see, when I
click on a PPC ad and make Google money I’m happy I found a result if it was
relevant, but you’ll never find me (or any other consumer) paying for that
click myself.
The model is too evolved that the advertiser pays, so when
the advertiser offers something of value and pays for that click, if I become a
customer that was a good ROI for them and it worked out just fine for me as a
consumer too.
If I don’t
become a customer, too bad for that advertiser for spending that money on a
click. I’m out the time as a consumer in checking out Google’s “recommendation”
for filling my needs as a searcher, and I’m not mad at Google for it. I just
start over or try to find another way than Google to find what I’m looking for.
Maybe I type in www.whateverIwant.com
and see what’s there. Maybe I phone a friend. Maybe I “search” in the back of
my closet for the YellowPages that is propping up the broken aquarium off the
floor I just haven’t gotten around to taking to the dump yet.
Google Adwords is a
simple, straight forward and a good (but not great) way to get prospects that you can turn into customers.
One of my own long-time business mentors is among the world’s authorities on
Google Adwords advertising with a column in Entrepreneur magazine from time to
time and sold out seminars where folks pay thousands of dollars to learn his
secrets on how to tame the Adwords beast and wring money from it with targeted
clicks.
He kicks ass and I am well aware of how powerful the marketing
medium of Adwords PPC can be, having thoroughly been through a couple of his
courses that sell for thousands of dollars and tested some of his ideas.
The funny part is that as a consultant and copywriter, it’s
unclear whether I’ve paid him more as a customer than he’s paid me for my help
in his businesses.
But I digress, and we’ve wandered off from what is RELEVANT
and sorry for that.
Where was I?
Oh yeah, as a consumer I don’t pay
Google money. You probably don’t either.
Google search, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Voice. All
free, and all useful. Not one of which has Google put a price tag on to use
(nor will they ever in all likelihood).
What about my other “identities”? Do they pay Google money?
I also love a number of Google’s other intangible online
products and services, especially the suite of custom branded cloud
applications for use in businesses.
Gmail for one totally ROCKS. I’m grateful they let me try it
before I had to buy it. Now all of my companies have and will operate on
Gmail. Simple, clean, elegant, perfectly
functional and ever-improving. I am Danny at TheDannyWelsh.com. I am Danny at
JointVentures.com. I am Danny at FreeVacation.com. I am…yaddadyadda…you get the
idea.
Gmail custom branding email accounts makes that easy and
simple…
GoogleDocs is also a fantastic organization and
collaboration tool.
Google Checkout is a great companion for accepting credit
cards and Paypal. You wouldn’t have it as the only way to accept payments
online for your ecommerce store, but having it does give a bump in sales in
many cases I’ve seen for me and my past clients.
But you see, it’s the “business owner” identity of Danny
Welsh that pays a little money each year to Google to use those very useful
services. Just as that same guy tried a number of other paid services of
Google like Google Pages, Google Sites, and others that just weren’t any good.
The business owner pays Google, not the consumer.
It’s almost like I’m a different person in the same skin.
And frankly, Google has EXCELLED at creating a few must-use
products for small business, just like Gmail and GoogleDocs and
Google-Checkout.
Maybe you even use a few of them in YOUR small business?
You Go Google!
Now we come to the big question of whether it makes business
sense to pay Google for advertising.
Rick Schwartz says
no, and people say “he has an agenda”.
What does Danny Welsh
say?
My answer is YES and
NO.
For me…it depends.
The entrepreneur in me says I don’t need Google (and for years I’ve
done plenty of e-commerce for myself and my clients that had nothing to do with
Google as lead generation…paid OR organic).
FYI if you don’t know the difference between the
entrepreneur that starts the business and CREATES SALES and the business owner
that maintains a system and grows it…go read a book about it!
Cuz they ain’t usually the same type person, though some
GREAT businesses are lucky enough to have leaders that can do BOTH well…most do
NOT, and are better served with a two-headed captain at the helm depending on
the biggest current need for steering the ship.
The entrepreneur in me says I can develop and attract prospects dozens
to hundreds of cheaper ways than Google PPC Advertising and dozens to hundreds
of more certain ways than organically SEO-gaming Google…and use a
superior business, products, and services, as well as how me and my employees
who work for me the business owner treat people…and turn enough of those
prospects into customers to do just fine.
So why bother sticking my business AMEX in Google’s mouth
every month to pay for clicks that put food on their employee’s tables and may
or may not put food on mine?
The entrepreneur in me increasingly says if you can do what
the entrepreneur says he can do (and I can, have, and will continue to do so
for any and all of my business projects)…then why not develop prospects and
bring them in using primarily low cost and no cost marketing initiatives and
use the brand recall alone of the category NICHE.com to bring those customers
back to buy “NICHE” whenever in the future they want to make another purchase?
If so, Google is useful for me as a business owner.
It’s awesome for me as a consumer.
But it’s unnecessary for me as an entrepreneur, the guy who
has to MAKE SALES HAPPEN.
And as a domainer or entrepreneur, either one…well, you
either “see it or you don’t”.
Like Rick Schwartz
says, there are masters and there are slaves.
I choose to be a master.
You can too.
Or just give your money to the golden god and trust your
destiny to Google.
The headline says it all. Probably everyone reading this would be fired from Yahoo! if we were working there. Gee, ya mean when I get up at 5:30AM and do 3 hours of my most productive work, I can't do it any more? You want me less productive? Does my bathrobe threaten you?
I have not even read the reason why and frankly, I don't give a damn my dear. Stupid is stupid and I think this ban will last as long as it takes you to read this crap. I guess she did not work from home during her pregnancy? I guess checking email after 5PM is now a NO-NO!
If you own Yahoo! stock...dump it. I thought this new CEO, Marissa Mayer, would get this company and Brand back on track. I was wrong and this sort of misguided nonsense proves it.
I'm probably going to use terms or say a few things in this post that are wrong.
That's because I personally don't believe it's worth the while for me to invest in foreign language .com domains (whatever domainers call those) or country code extension domains.
Because in MY lifetime there is more opportunity to profit with dot com as an INVESTOR, even though as a speculator there is money to be made down the road with those, and great money to be made TODAY with businesses using those in certain DEFINED instances.
Just nowhere near what's coming with dot com as a quaint 20 year hobby of a few thousand people you may just be learning about TODAY...called 'Domaining'...is transforming by the DAY into a new industry and asset class called eRealEstate.
And so I haven't researched those foreign language dot com or country code domain name topics in the depth I've researched the brand of dot com, which I personally believe is probably the most mind-branded concept in the history of mankind (that doesn't have a theology attached to it anyway).
That's right folks, the history of big ideas that WON over other ideas in the evolution of our species goes like this:
Of course I left out a few steps and I'm sure if one of my HS history teachers or college history professors would be quite upset at my incomplete essay and the fact that some might be in the wrong order...but fact is I ain't writing a meticulously researched treatise on the history of history to get an 'A'...I'm letting you know I've seen the future and its because a guy named Rick Schwartz saw it first and pointed it out to me.
Just as he's been pointing it out to people selflessly (and selfishly too...yes he has an agenda, and that agenda is becoming richer each time he helps someone else become richer too).
Tirelessly pointing it out for close to 20 years, and getting A after A with just a few Bs and Cs...for a guy that I don't think ever really cared too much about formal education, college etc its almost amazing how prescient many of his predictions have turned out to be about eRealEstate.
And I am starting to understand how he's so puzzled when so many other people choose to disagree with him and keep getting an F why they wouldn't just ask for his help and look at his cheat sheet of notes he's been maintaining for decades in journals just like this one here on RicksBlog.com.
I'm not saying there isn't opportunity in other places of the domain name universe for investors. There is...I'm just puzzled why anyone as educated as the long-time readers of this entire blog would bother, especially viewed in light of the fact that the newest viewers of this blog are entrepreneurs and business leaders first and domainers second....they each have ONE 'big idea' they want to turn into a business (startup) or to use to propel a business further (established company).
There is so much opportunity in .com, why bother with anything smaller that has been proven less valuable and will increasingly be proven so?
The future dollars of dot com is eRealEstate, not Domaining.
It's just not yet proven.
Give it 3 years and you'll kick yourself if you don't stop complaining today that all the good .com domains are taken...and start realizing ALL the great .coms available then WERE TAKEN 20 years ago.
Some others evolved with changes in culture, technology, human nature, products etc...
They were taken for a reason folks.
They ain't coming back.
And no equal alternative is possible in this lifetime, though THOUSANDS of www.domain.craps die will be cast hoping for Daddy's Lucky #7.
As Sergeant Bilko said it best when asked 'Sir, is there anything else we can do for you?' by the hotel concierge after he threw several winning Craps tosses in the row:
'Yes, go down to your vault and tell the rest of your money to be patient...we'll be together soon.'
Dot com is the new global eRealEstate, and almost anything a man or company or business can do to make money with physical real estate, he can do BETTER with eRealEstate.
Rick Schwartz predicted it on the day he registered eRealEstate.com on November 4th 1996 and all these years later people still look him up, chase him down, follow the yellow-brick road from a property he owns that they wanted to buy (so they could build on), and knock on his virtual VAULT front door at RicksBlog.com and say 'Rick, you're wrong!'
And he steps out from around stacks of cash and gold bars and virtually looks at them and says-- a little brusquely maybe at times-- when they step back off his front porch and he can get a good look at them:
'Who are you? What do you want?'
And when they say 'I want to buy your land you're not building on.'
He laughs and tells them he's been expecting them, asks them what they want to do with the land and closes the door.
They read that brusque email from this guy they find out calls himself the 'Domain King' and sometimes they think he wants to steal their 'idea' (never realizing in many cases HE had their big idea...or one close to it...17-20 years before when he registered the idea's best possible name on the Internet), many times going away to work harder and not smarter because of their irrational fear.
And when they reply to the email and come back and knock again with their reason why they can only pay $$$ couched as an objection that they don't believe what they're trying UNSOLICITED to buy ain't worth what he says it is, he laughs again.
Then replies to their challenges, questions and counters all in English words, and they do the same...even when a growing percentage of them are from dozens of other countries than US, UK or Australia...(hint), and maybe he says something like this:
'My WORD.com land isn't for sale at any cash only price you'll want to pay, but you can use it and buy it down the road when your business can afford to pay an amount that's fair out of the increased profits I'm confident you'll make for the same reason I knew you'd show up here knocking, knocking at my virtual vault door.'
And for 17 years most of these would-be land buyers would shake their head at the IDEA to build something on land they didn't yet own, and walk away to work harder and not smarter.
Today it's changed.
We get it Rick.
The lessee can own the shop and sell to all the foot traffic while you own the retail space.
The lessee can build, own and operate the office skyscraper starting with one floor at a time going up...while you own the land underneath.
The lessee can build the business of their dreams and own it...and you simply provide the foundation you'll give up as soon as they're ready to be their own eLandlord and buy you out so in time the successful ones own both the land AND always from day one own what's built ON it, with never a worry that it would be 'stolen'...no more than a landowner can or would steal a shopping mall or a skyscraper so long as the business owner leasing the land pays as agreed to use it.
99 year land lease?
It's happened before. And anyone can look it up. Maybe they should read about who owns the land underneath Irvine, CA or many other cities where one family was smart enough to buy up all the land and make great deals for anyone to build.
One parallels another, history will repeat itself...only this one will happen faster.
And one day the currently offered 30 year domain lease deals and the 5 year lease to own deals offered to the fast movers in the next couple years as this new market gains worldwide acceptance will simply be GONE.
And your only options at THAT time to get the dot com domain name you want and need will be a 99 year lease or a piece of your company. It's dot com and its eRealEstate.
And it's here to stay.
And you can get your piece of the Internet Dream for your start-up company for nothing more than $3000 as a set up deposit and start paying monthly on the lease deal.
Or your more established company can put 12 payments down on a non-refundable purchase option deposit plus $3000 security deposit and start paying monthly on the lease purchase deal to FULLY CONTROL your eRealEstate land and build as you wish to sell more of your products to a global marketplace of customers...starting with those knocking on your door every day.
Hell, you can even rent eRealEstate on a month to month basis with a fair and much higher security deposit (so the owner knows you won't ruin his/her property) and no long-term commitment...simply because you agree with us that a vanity domain name will convert prospects to leads BETTER from direct response advertising such as TV commercials, magazine ads, and billboards. Don't believe us? Rent and test...you'll convince yourself to buy or lease with an option to purchase that GREAT domain name you are/were looking at before knocking much better than we could ever do it.
Just ask yourself how you found yourself here reading this?
You followed the Yellow Brick Road of powerful attraction. In most cases, no one marketed to you to come here, did they?
That's how your customers will find YOUR great domain name once you grab it from your competition.
And then that's how they'll find YOUR great business...in ways they aren't yet now.
It's YOUR job to turn them into customers, though.
If you can. If you can't, and of you hesitate to lease the property you've been eyeing, we're happy to wait til your competitor makes us a better offer.
Happy to wait all DECADE doing what you feel is 'nothing' (but that makes us effortless income) on 80% of the properties, if the 20% include doing deals with companies that have vision and money both (or one or the other is often fine too).
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