Morning Folks!!
Business is looking to the 22nd Century while businessmen are STUCK in 20th Century thinking. Stuck! Their mindset is STUCK!
So when you are stuck, you complain. And so they do. But their complaint just boomerangs on them. They have to stop being "Cheap Bastards" and adjust to this century. Here is my key point and I have written about it since DAY ONE!
If you open a real world brick and mortar business there are EXPENSES. Recurring expenses. Stupid expenses. Un-needed and unwanted expenses. All those expense added together are expensive! So if these folks want to LEAP into this century the FIRST thing they need to do is get a piece of paper and list EVERY single expense they would incur just to OPEN a storefront. But since these guys are STUCK, virtually NONE of them will actually do that. And it was CRAZY RICK that started that comparison in 1996.
The bigger the store, the bigger the prize. One .com can fulfil the work and needs of millions of storefronts. Amazon.com has how many storefronts? I guess SEARS was stuck. How much does it cost to build a big box store and furnish, man and insure it? How long does it take to build? The invisible ghost called Amazon is eating your lunch and soon it will be your dinner too.
And I forgot to mention you will man your stores with a bunch of know nothings that don't have a brain and are probably too busy on the phone helping someone there that can't even buy at the expense of the customer waiting at the register with cash in hand and ignoring you.
See the Internet's biggest bonus is not dealing with idiots. Get out of my way. I will pull it off the shelf, bring it to the checkout, swipe my own card and I am on my way. Why be frustrated with idiots?
But I got off the path. So they build and build and spend and spend and they fight a losing battle. If you sell a shippable product and that is your brick and mortar focus, the way you get unstuck, is by closing down stores. You have already branded yourself. If the Internet is not your #1 hub and source of sales, you are doing something very last century and eventually it is going to cost you your business.
So not to spend some REAL $$$ when making your mark on the Internet and therefore being a cheap bastard, is your #1 mistake. PLEASE consider those startup costs. EVERY single penny. RECURRING BILLS, LIKE RENT AND INSURANCE AND GARBAGE AND EMPLOYEES AND ELECTRIC AND ALL OF IT.
Now go shop for a domain name and you will have an overwhelming choice of quality in the marketplace. Big difference between developing for the sake of it and a business transforming itself for greater sales, greater distribution areas and greater profits.
Let me make it really simple. When I go to a restaurant and the owner is a CHEAP BASTARD, I never go back. Ah...How do you spot a cheap bastard?
Well for a restaurant he serves and off brand ketchup for example. They don't serve real butter they serve some spread crap. The cream comes from a box and you add water. Now if they do this stupid cheap shit in front of you, can you begin to imagine the shortcuts they will take when buying their food?
So a stupid extension may have similar ramifications. A silly .com will do the same. If "to" is in your domain, you MUST own the version that as the number "2" in it as well or you have a gaping leap that lasts forever. The invisible tax you pay and think I am an idiot for even telling you about it. Wake up cheap bastard. You are so damn cheap that it is costing you more money than actually being a sport and doing it right.
Cheap bastards build on sand. They take shortcuts that end up costing more money. They are wired for failure. Like the saying goes, if you don't have the time to do it right the first time, how the hell are you going to make the time when you have to go back and fix it?
Rambling? You bet. This stuff is all connected. Do it right and you get rewarded. Do it on the cheap and it always costs more.
In 2010 we licensed out T.R.A.F.F.I.C.. A new formula was put in place with new shows around the world. Ticket prices were dropped from $1795 to $395 and many were comped trying to get folks to the shows. It was a rotten formula. If you cut your price by 75% you should triple your attendance and more. Did not happen. Instead only 1/3 showed up. Everything was done on the cheap and the product suffered and so did the benefits. The Hong Kong show they planned had to be cancelled. The prices were low and the formula was gone and so was the result. Fixing something that isn't broken can have devastating results and it did.
It drove me crazy watching what we built come tumble-down from the sidelines. But I bit my tongue and knew I had some rebuilding to do in 2011 when the deal expired. Not the way I do things. So I know about this stuff first hand. Doing it right gets rewarded and doing things on the cheap comes back to haunt. Change the formula, change the recipe and change the result. As I told Howard at the time, it was a bridge over troubled waters as 2010 stunk economically.
So until end users see the comparison and take it and actually weigh it seriously, domain values are still very CHEAP! So there is no excuse whatsoever to settle for an inferior domain name. No matter what the extension, inferior has great costs and not so many benefits. The invisible cost of lost sales will put the small guy out of business and cost the big guy MILLIONS and MILLIONS and MILLIONS because THEY were cheap bastards and don't have the ability to see things as they are. They had the dollars, had the budget, did not have the VISION and CHEAP won the day! Cheap Bastards FAIL!
UPDATE: As Michael Berkens has reported today, Jaguar/Land Rover is the latest to have been found GUILTY of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking (RDNH) on the domain name MountainRovers.com. So yesterday they could have been called "Cheap Bastards". Today they can be called "Would be THIEVES!" They tried to abuse the system because this multi-billion dollar company and their lawyers tried to short-circuit capitalism and try to hijack another entities domain name by an abuse of the system. Here is my take on that action! Complainant is Jaguar Land Rover Limited (“Complainant”), represented by Jennifer M. Hetu of Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, Michigan, USA.
Rick Schwartz
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