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

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Clients.

The decision to take on 3rd party domains came as a result of a discussion on RicksBlog.com back in the early fall of last year. I personally thought it would be the right time and having domains even better than my own would help give us credibility and accelerate our vision.

Well instead of accelerating our vision it actually led us off that path just a bit and as you will read further below the delay of the new gTLD's factored in as well.

Business to me is a very solemn obligation. It is even more so when I deal with third parties. And even more paramount when I personally know most of you and even those I have not met, we have had a healthy amount of chat and emails etc so we do know each other.

So your domains became a priority. We have worked diligently for months developing these pitch pages for each and every domain. But the further we got down the road the more overwhelming the task became.

We spent many days and hours with the sales team trying to train them to be effective and professional. Most important to me was "Do no harm". I know some types of marketing will lower the value of a domain so we were very sensitive to that. And while we had 2 or 3 go getters, there was just nothing to get at this moment.

I had hoped at this point to have several successes to point to that we could build on. I can't do that.

I had hoped by December 31st that we would have presented enough evidence and enough successes for you all to swing with us for another year. But I can't do that either.

In fact, I can't even ask you for the next 6 months. We are not out to tie up your property and so I hear-by release each and every one of you and the contracts we have with you effective July 1. I would hope you allow us to pursue any active contacts. There are a few names we have ongoing and active negotiations on and I want to ask those folks to stay on board.

Dispensaries.com & MarijuanaDispensaries.com, SEOConsultant.com, CRMSoftware.com. But these all have multiple parties interested and we have ongoing and active negotiations. Deals are all within reach and we are working to get those deals.

There are a few others like Rings.com, Disrupt.com and Nope.com that we have had some talks but nothing concrete yet and think movement will occur.

So while I would like to keep running with those domains, not up to me. I know we have planted a lot of seeds on many other domains and in time they may sprout.

Our current clients can even forward us future inquiries if you would like me to respond in your behalf. I still see GOLD in them thar hills! But if the timing is wrong, I would rather preserve our relationship until the day when the timing is better. There is NO QUESTION that domain leasing or lease/option is the way of the future. I still see it happening by the end of next year. But it is too far off on the horizon to ask you to tie up your assets any longer.

Bottom line, we were not able to meet our own goals that we set. Bigger is not always better and scaling back to regroup and get more proof of concept on my own domains before doing anything with 3rd parties is the right thing to do at this point.

I am all about timing. I saw the future last fall and jumped on board. As you have seen, Leasing has become the buzzword around over the last 6 months or so. It is still coming. Delayed but not canceled. And that is why I would rather release our obligation now and have the ability to come back when we are ready and the future is a little closer.

I want to thank each and every one of you so much for believing in us and I am sorry we let you down. Truly sorry!! It weighs heavy on me personally as we promised so much and delivered so little.

It was not from lack of will, desire or belief. Many of us have given what we had as we were "All in" and we reached deep looking for a success. I still think a success lays in the future. I will still be trying to blaze that trail a little bit each and every day. But reality trumps what Danny Welsh and I see when we are talking about YOU and your assets and the TIME to accomplish what we set out to do.

So effective immediately the JointVentures site will be pulled down in the coming days and I will be replacing it with something else. I have not abandoned my original idea of Joint Ventures or leasing domains. In fact I am working on a brand new site that will be online in the next few weeks. More streamlined and hopefully more effective. Maybe more geared to PURE Joint Ventures as this is where at least we have the ball rolling and have had some limited success.

It saddens me more than words can say that we let you down. We created as much momentum as we could and it caught on. We took the lead on leasing premium domain names in a new direction and the marketplace was just not ready to buy into our concept. YET!!!!!!! 

 

But I still maintain that day will happen and I still believe that that gTLD's will be the catalyst for that event. We expected them to start rolling out in April-May and planned a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. event in May in Las Vegas to capture that excitement. 

 

We almost lost our shirt on that show in Las Vegas but it came together and we pulled it out and it was a success for the attendees. But as we all see the delays, it won't be until October or beyond before we will see what we expected to see months ago. That was the KEY component in my timing and expectations throughout this. 

 

So it is so long, not good bye. Delayed but not over. Just waiting for the universe to catch up with the future.