Morning Folks!!
I am going to tell you a story of a Dumb Domainer. A nice guy, with a great domain but he is dumb. But wait!! He is not alone! There are a LOAD of Dumb Dominers. So let's see if YOU are a Dumb Domainer. You can close the blog now if you are a chicken shit. :-) Of course that would automatically make you a Dumb Domainer! A Dumb Domainer with no balls! LOL!
My brother always said the worst thing you can do is call somebody dumb or stupid. He is right. But I don't always listen. Sometimes I like to see the reaction. So are you ready to find out if you are a Dumb Domainer? This is a true story btw.
So, I get an email from a guy with a really nice domain name. He uses his domain as his email address. He has been sending me emails for MONTHS! I return his emails, but every single one has bounced. EVERY ONE! And that is why I NEVER EVER use one of my domains as an email addy. Sorry, not reliable. You never even know the emails you don't get.
I can't tell you how many times this has happened to me before. Countless.
So, I got another email yesterday wishing me a happy new years. I responded and of course it bounced again! Could have been a life changing email for him. He will never see it! Maybe he will see this blog post and put 2 and 2 together. I have no other way to reach him as you will soon see!
So I decided to go to whois. But the domain is registered with Godaddy and there is no contact info. Just a place to make an offer. Worthless and useless. If you don't have your domain visible via whois, you are a DUMB DOMAINER!!
If your registrar does not give you an option to make your whois public, you are a DUMB DOMAINER for not demanding it or for staying there. The whois will bring you more inquires and buyers than all other platforms combined.
If your domain is listed on every platform, you are a DUMB DOMAINER! And if your domains are listed everywhere and your whois is private, then you are a REALLY DUMB DOMAINER!!
And as long as we are passing by the subject......If your domain is listed everywhere......You look desperate and weak. That makes you a Dumb Domainer! And when there are different prices on those different platforms, you look BAD and it means you are a REALLY REALLY Dumb Domainer.
The story is not over. I finally go to his site today. Asks for my info. I fill it out. Tell him all his emails are bouncing for months. But he has "Captcha" and after matching 22 sets of pictures in an endless loop, I gave up. Another mark of a DUMB DOMAINER!
So, my New Year's resolution is to make sure I move those scattered domains I won at auction from 10 registrars to only 1 that has whois available. Why? I don't want to be a DUMB DOMAINER!!
And lastly, if you are actively trying to sell your names and use privacy, WTF??? How dumb can you be? Dumb Domainer!
And if you read this far and you are angry, don't blame ME for being a Dumb Domainer! It's YOUR fault not mine! I just pointed it out! Now DEAL WITH IT! I am in the same boat. I realized I too am a Dumb Domainer. But I won't ignore that, I will fix that! That takes me from dumb to smart with just one action. Do that a few times a day and your life will change! Being and staying DUMB is a choice!
Rick Schwartz
Robin
Thanks for your blogpost. Now there should be less dumb and dumber. Rick, how come there is a Ricksblog.biz appearing when I typed Ricks Blog?
Vito
Hey Rick,
Another thought provoking post you wrote here.
Couple thoughts/replies…
First off, I commend you and thank you for not posting the actual domainer’s name/site. You got your point across loud and clear and did not have to shame a person who sounds like a nice guy. He must be, especially if you actually take your valuable time out to reply back to him. Very cool.
I always hate seeing people blast others domains and portfolios that have different levels of income, skill sets, time management, etc. That isn’t just not cool, It is downright slimy and very egotistical and does not help anyone. It only makes the writer look like a condescending, holier than thou, absolute douchebag egoF-ing maniac. I have seen that happen and it really pisses me off for the person getting attacked if they are trying hard and just need a little coaching. Just cool as hell of you. I hope your guy is reading your post today.
I disagree about a couple things though. I really think that having your email on one of your own domains, (your main domain) is the best possible scenario. Those are the emails I open. The gmail/yahoo/aol emails look ridiculous, especially coming from a domainer whose job it is to sell domains. One of the points of value in owning a great domain is having an email at that address. Yes, of course you have to maintain that email address by keeping up with your NameServers, making sure that domain is on auto-renew, making sure if you change registries that you get your email back up online immediately or you could lose a life changing email for sure. I changed registries once on an email and forgot to get it back online immediately before and it sucks.
Another point I disagree with here. Well, I guess I am not sure if I disagree 100% but I am open minded to a bit of a debate here. I may be wrong but here is my belief now about locating domains at many different marketplaces. I believe it is a good thing. And along with that line of thought is of course your prices will be different if listing at different MarketPlaces.
If you list at Efty, GoDaddy, Sedo, Uni, Epik, etc. your BIN and Make Offer Pages, Brokerage help, etc all have different fees. If we want 5k net for a domain name, you have to incorporate all the different fees into account and they are all over the place. Fees can be from 3% to 30%. That fee for a 5k domain can be $150 to $1500. That is a big difference across multiple platforms so your prices have to reflect that.
Now about looking desperate, I disagree. I feel like if a domainer sees my prices all over the board, I give a rats ass. Most of my domains I ultimately dont want to sell to a domainer anyways. Do I, of course I do sometimes but my ultimate goal is to actually sell to End Users if possible. I assume End Users do not see all domain marketplaces at all. If that are that savvy to search all domain marketplaces to find a domain they want from me, then they are savvy enough to find me on whois. Yes, the whois is a huge deal so you can be found for sure.
Now what I write and do are different sometimes. I have purchased a lot this year and my domains are not going everywhere I want them to be listed at. I was working on that yesterday since I want to be a smarter domainer. Takes time and I have some now so I hope to have my entire portfolio listed everywhere this week.
The thing about domaining is no matter what you do, you can always do better.
Sorry for the long ramble here.
Thanks as usual for another post. Keep it up Rick. I try to always read your blog. You always have real good stuff here.
Have a great New Year and here’s to an ass kicking 2019!
Rick Schwartz
And that’s the way to disagree without being disagreeable!
We can debate, we can argue, but it has to be done with class and dignity and the object always has to be to find a better answer.
Well done!
Vito
I appreciate the supportive comment back from you Rick.
Wish I could disagree and debate like this 100% of the time, and in my real non-online everyday life too!
Thank you sir!
Michael Anthony Castello
I agree with Vito here. I’ve been using my domain name email since 1996. Why would I want to use Gmail or Yahoo emails when they have access to your email content? I control my own email addresses and who sees what’s in them.
The second point is if you own a domain name, why not create a splash page for it? Put your email on it for someone to contact you and post the whois yourself. Take a look at Smoothie.com, It’s a static page. You don’t need to rely on others. Do it yourself.
Rick Schwartz
But you can only use one domain. Right?
How about the thousands of other domains in our portfolios?
A nightmare to try and have an email addy for every domain name.
Mark Thorpe
You should use your @domainking.com email address for your domain portfolio.
Steve
I was a smarter domainer (namely with more cash flow) prior to having to pay for the tuitions of my daughters at Princeton and RIDA and son at Stanford. (200 k collectively per year). They’ve gotten smarter and I’ve gotten dumber and dumber and poorer. I’ve always been a supreme negotiator when I didn’t give a shite about making the sale. Recently ive had problems closing sales when even end users approach me eager to buy the names. Had an offer out of the box for a domain last week for 10 k and I countered with 15 k. The buyer said too high, bye bye.in the past I would have countered with 100 K and would have closed the deal.
John
LOL, no wonder you enforce those broken agreements.
Steve
Yes, john it’s out of necessity not for sport and pasttime. I begged my daughters to go abroad to Trinity in Ireland or Cambridge in the UK. Would have saved me 100 K per year.
Alex Verdea
Steve- Back 6-7 years ago it seems like closing deals was much easier. What I mean by that it took maybe five six emails back and forth to get a deal done. I rarely had to follow up.
Fast forward to DEC 2018, it took me 30+ contacts (emails/calls/txts) to close 1 deal. My last $XXXX deal that closed a week ago was SilverleafL/a/n/d/s/c/a/p/i/n/g.com and of course the initial offer is always 200-$300. It took a lot of creativity and perseverance to deal with this prospect that had a short temper over a 30 day period.
Another previous deal from DEC also took about 30 days and over 25 contacts(calls/emails/txts) to complete and ended up being one of my biggest .ORG deals to date.
So if you had a solid 10k offer and your prospect balked at your 15k counter, I would follow up that guy until the deal was closed.
John
> “So, my New Year’s resolution is to make sure I move those scattered domains I won at auction from 10 registrars to only 1 that has whois available.”
That would be Epik. They do whois great, along with a lot of other things.
Agree 100% or not, another enjoyable and valuable post.
I use privacy for domains I keep and use with little or no intention to make available. As plans change that sometimes changes too.
For ones I’d be happy to sell or lease out, I better check to make sure I didn’t leave any privacy on, but they tend to have public whois.
As far as listing on the famous platforms goes, I go back and forth. Sometimes I hate it and delete them, and sometimes I list. I had read the opposite advice on one of the other blogs a while back. A broker was recommending people list so that when brokers are out shopping for names to buy for clients they will easily see yours. I almost never give a BIN.
I also use both the main Epik platform and have a personal branded platform on a really pretty good .com considering how late it was regged for that purpose. Inquiries definitely sometimes come in, and one inquiry resulted in a $xx,xxx sale for Bitcoin within the last few years, my first and only domain sale for crypto. The buyer (an end user) wanted to do that, I was all for it, and he was happy to pay me in full up front, no escrow. We got everything done in about 90 minutes give or take. The one deal consisted of $xx,xxx for one three word .com, and less for a second three word .com, all five figures total. My main regret was cashing out the Bitcoin before the big run up because it was dipping a bit and who knew.
As far as email goes, I normally use the main .com email which corresponds to my company name, with few exceptions. Ironically, my company name which I invented (though not the first to invent it I’m pretty sure) keeps getting more and more valuable as part of a big worldwide phenomenon that is steadily changing the world in a big way, along with every other thing out there doing that too. It’s rather cool and fortunate I must say. So far a bunch of really big players in different countries are using either longer versions or ccTLD versions, but there has been an inquiry and I’ve noticed traffic has been picking up from a country that is probably more into the phenomenon right now than we are, though probably not for long.
Yes, if you just use registrar-provided email forwarding, for instance, I don’t recommend that. But if you use reputable hosting then using one or a few business domains is something I support and have found to be fine. But if you want to use Google, Yahoo, etc., I guess that works too, but most of the time it makes me uncomfortable in terms of image and such, at least as a seller and in certain types of dealings.
The only time I had an email issue was when I simply did not know that if you have a email address created, then using cPanel “Default Address” for the domain will not forward email sent to that address. You have to also check the address you specifically created. Otherwise fine.
John
Come to think of it, that broker advice may have been on one of Andrew’s podcasts at DNW, not written down.
steve fox
I have the dns pointed to uniregistry just to have them broker um. But I am sure I am a dumb domainer.
LLOL
And lastly, if you are actively trying to sell your names and use privacy, WTF???
Miss Nahdi
I am bookmarking this post and will be completing each checked task one by one to uncheck my dumb, dumber, dumbest tags.
Thanks for putting up a notice for this. It will help close a lot of deals in the coming year around the world :)
Eric Jenkins
Thanks……
Jose
I do not have domains in privacy, three years ago.
Nor doer Whois need to search in Google a domain name and see the result many websites with all the content of the domain name (.com) and others that notify by email of their expiration when a year to expire?
In this business there are few Dumb Domains, because when they receive in their emails that a domain (.com) expiration go to important domain registrators and get before expiring I have gone through this in my beginnings, the rage takes control of oneself to see later by the whois of before who buy my domain that interest having to do harm to another.
Six months later in Dnjournal.com see the result of this business largely dirty, full of thugs, who then greet you warmly in the conferences and events of domains etc.,
Happy New Year. Jose.
Alex Verdea
Rick,
“The whois will bring you more inquires and buyers than all other platforms combined.”
-Out of 200+ inquires/leads just 1 came via whois, so I don’t agree that whois info brings you more leads then other platforms. Also with the new privacy laws etc most European residents whois info is no longer available.
“If your domain is listed on every platform, you are a DUMB DOMAINER!”
-I strongly agree with you on this one, and there’s a lot of points to be made. It’s time consuming to keep up with pricing as every platform is different. I do think it’s also a sign of being desperate to sell. I also think it’s stupid to pay 3rd party commissions on deals etc.
After testing all platforms over the years, I decided to stick with EFTY. The platform is easy to use and commission free.
The “Captcha” feature actually works on all landing pages.You can take it a step further to get “confirmed inquiries” as the prospect has to click a link to verify their email addy once they submit the inquiry.