Facing The Absurd

the absurd side of domaining

Elephant Traffic breaks even!

Aug 21

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 2 Comments

One of the things that is making me pretty happy recently is the fact that our zero-click platform Elephant Traffic has finally broken even for the first time in the month of July. This month we will be actually profitable, doing about $20-30k EBITDA in the month. That isn’t obviously a big sum, but I believe we are on a pretty big growth path ahead of us and we should easily be capable of doing $1 mil+ of EBITDA in 2011 from Elephant Traffic.

I have to say that building up ET, a project we started 18 months ago, has been pretty challenging. We got tonnes of things wrong – hired the wrong manager to run the biz initially, getting the product wrong, not understanding who our clients are, the tech platform wasn’t right etc. Actually in February this year we were contemplating the decision to shut the project down and write off the roughly $600k of investment that we ploughed into it. But we started seeing some traction and kept on fighting, which seems to be paying off.

I believe that ET will now be our fastest growth business within Elephant Orchestra and will start being a significant profit driver in 2011 as well. On top of that it will be a great asset as well and hedge against GOOG/YHOO, which I always wanted. I’d like to congratulate the ET team on a great job! Keep it up…

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The curse of domaining aka domainer disease

Aug 14

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 6 Comments

Over the past few years I’ve come to the realization that domaining has made a lot of my domainer friends very dysfunctional (myself included to a certain extent). They have simply got used to the easy money that they can derive from domains and their dark brain matter slowly starts deteriorating away. They lose their motivation and if they stay long enough in this phase, there is no way out.  From this point of view domaining is a double edged sword – it brings piles of cash but also completely destroys a person’s enthusiasm to do other things – because to make money in other businesses you have to put in so much more effort to make the same amount of cash. Frankly, a lot of domainers ask themselves “why bother and put in the extra effort?”.

That’s why, I believe, the vast majority of domainers tend to be unsuccesful when they try to branch out into other businesses. They simply lose their sense of reality. Even if you look at the big guys, they’ve undergone something similar. Kevin Ham has blown millions on his mythical project of the “semantic web”, only to axe it altogether.  Sahar hasn’t been to fortunate with his Bido or Assista ventures. Even our great idol Frank Schilling hasn’t managed to build a media empire out of his top notch portfolio. Why? Because the sheer amounts earned from domains simply crowd out enthusiasm, drive and skill. Something similar to the resource curse most resource rich countries are plagued with. Enter domainer disease!

So I’ve diagnosed myself with accute domainer disease as well. I always wanted to build a passive income and live off it. But once I’ve done it I’ve noticed all the negative aspects of it. That’s the reason I’ve been so vehemently trying to get into other businesses before it’s too late a drop out of the domain game.

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Mobile type-in traffic

Aug 11

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 3 Comments

With the huge boom of smart phones there has been a huge surge in mobile type-in traffic. The sad part is that no parking company has become inventive in monetizing it.  Mobile traffic is very specific and shouldn’t be monetized in the same way as standard internet traffic, not just only because of the specifics of the devices themselves, but also because of different browsing habbits. The big secret is that mobile traffic is more valuable than standard internet traffic, but no parking company is properly exploiting this to the benefit of domain owners. Pause for thought - my friends at the parking co’s…

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Moniker puts together best auction inventory EVER

Aug 11

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 2 Comments

When Rick Latona & co stormed into the domain auction game with sealing a deal to organize the TRAFFIC conferences, I sort of felt Moniker was losing its drive in the live auction game.  Fast forward a year or so and I think Moniker is back in full strength. Monte just sent me a list of names that will be auctioned off at NYC Domainfest on August 18th. I’m not affraid to claim that it is probably the best domain auction catalogue I have ever seen, take a look for yourself>

Dating names:

Companion.com, Dating.net, Lightning.com, Partner.com, Newlyweds.com,
SeniorCitizens.com, Bridalsets.com, Confession.com,
marriagelicences.net, night.com

Financial and Real-estate:

Stocks.com, Stockquotes.com, Rate.com, Quotes.com, ByOwner.com,
Creditrate.com, Commercialbank.com, CreditCardLoans.com,
FreeCreditReports.us, LoanApplications.com, Grant.com, assurance.com,
authorization.com, investmentplanning.com, inspection.com, ravioli.com

Local/City search names:

Streetmaps.com, LocalNews.com, TheUnitedStates.com, jerseyshores.org,
coneyisland.net, newyorkapartments.com, bigapple.com,

Apparel/Fashion:

TShirts.com, DiscountJeans.com, DancingShoes.com, kidsfashion.com,

Music/Entertainment, Social:

Cable.com, Cabletelevision.com/net, Artist.com, Blogs.net, Message.com,
Disco.com, rockbands.com, reggae.com, partygifts.com, dvdrental.com,
drummers.com, cigarbars.com, voters.com

Food/Health:

veggies.com, supplement.com, ravioli.com, premedical.com,
physicians.com, natural.net, invitro.com, babyadoptions.com,
stromboli.com, alcohol.com, coffeebeans.com, hamburgers.com,

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Forgetting to hit the delete button

Jul 26

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 1 Comment

I heard a pretty funny story today. Back in the days of tasting one company was tasting about 200k domains a day. But once they forgot to delete them in the grace period, so they ended up with 200k rubbish domains. This error cost them a petty $1.4 mil :) .

Obviously tasting has been long gone today since the grace period has been cancelled by ICANN. It is now only possible to delete 10% of new registrations in the 5 day period.

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Fighting upstream feed provider exclusivity

Jul 23

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 3 Comments

Just wanted to bring up an issue that is not often discussed because the current situation is simply taken as for granted – that parking companies are always hostages of one upstream ppc feed provider – that being either Google or Yahoo, which they have to deal with exclusively. Since they know that the relationship is key to their existence, they are very limited in other ways how they can monetize their partners’ domains (the only exception is banned domains for which they can bring in second tier feed providers etc). This prevents innovations in domain monetization.

This arrangement is severealy hurting domain owners and my belief is that certain anti-monopoly style authorities should look into these arrangements. For example I believe that if parking companies would be able to mix both Google and Yahoo together (even on one results page), there would be roughly a 20% uplift of earnings for domain owners. It would also force G/Y to pay out more because they would be competing head-to-head for every click. However both G & Y force exclusivity onto the domain channel with every parking company. There are companies that have both feeds – such as Infospace – but those cannot be used on the domain channel. If Infospace can have both, why not the parking companies?

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Losing the edge

Jul 5

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 19 Comments

One of my few strong capabilities has always been the ability to self reflect in any moment in time – make a clearcut judgement at where I am at any given time and thoroughfully evaluate the situation. What I’ve been thinking about lately is one thing – I think I’m losing the edge when it comes to domaining.

When I started out I had an immense thirst for success. I was willing to bet everything on one card – I didn’t have much, so it wasn’t that difficult. I was immensly focused. I was uber-creative, I basically swooped in, had a plan how to use immense leverage and it worked out. If I look after the last 3 years I’ve been in the biz, no single domainer has seen so much growth as I have, my ROI is in the thousands of per cent per anum.

But times have changed. I sort of have a feeling that I’ve accomplished all I wanted in domains. Like it was a game and I completed it. So it stopped being a challenge anymore. When it comes to the material side of things, back in the beginnings I was maybe living off $1k a month. Today I have 3 bling cars, an amazing apartment, a personal 5* french chef, fly private etc and make more money than I can spend. Since I’ve finally accumulated something I have hence become slightly risk-averse. I mean I’m probably willing to take on more risk than 95% of businessmen when the odds are right, but I simply am not in the absolute vanguard I used to be. However that’s probably enough to tip me off the edge. The crazy motivation is also gone. The focus as well – I’ve been spreading across to multiple other businesses. To be honest domains don’t entertain me much anymore – I have to find other things that do, for example I’m just producing a movie etc. When I was younger I recall learning about the Maslow hierarchy of needs in school – I suddenly feel materially secure and I’m heading towards the top of the Maslow pyramid towards the concept of self-actualization. I suddenly feel that I have enough and and becoming more interested in being more happy, being more nice to people, helping people, being more creative, enjoying simple things, doing some charity etc. I simply came to the point of asking what’s the point of making more if I already think I have more than enough?

It’s not that I will drop out of business completely. But the bottom line is that because of all these aspects I mentioned, I am slowly but surely losing the edge that I once had and that nobody could match. I think that all the well known domainers like Frank Schilling or Kevin Ham must have went through something similar. It’s just too difficult to stay on top forever. That’s also the reason I have been blogging less and less – I just think that I don’t have that much to say anymore. And I don’t want to become completely pathetic, like the grandfather to whom’s advice nobody listens to anymore – I prefer to leave that role to others (with all respect, I just think Rick is passed his time). The good news for everyone that is reading – suddenly there is a big opportunity to fill up the vacuum and take over the vanguard of domaining again…

Happy 4th of July everybody!

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So what’s going on

Jun 10

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 2 Comments

My apologies for not posting lately, have been quite busy and that coupled with my laziness simply equals no posts for a long time. So anyway, what have I been up to lately…

When it comes to domaining I have to say I’m getting a little bit bored of it. It’s just become a completely routine job for me, going through my daily lists, picking domains etc. I’m actually thinking about putting my domaining operation on “autopilot” since I’ve tought all my guys how to handle everything. Recently I hit 1 million uniques a day as I’ve planned. That was a always my goal and since it’s already reached I just don’t have that much motivation to be honest. To keep myself motivated I just need to keep on coming up with new projects etc that keep me entertained for a year or two.

Two weeks ago we had the iGaming Supershow in Prague, which is basically a huge gettogether for people who are in the online gambling business. I have to say that this industry shares a lot with domaining in the sense that it is a pretty tightly knit circle, pretty secretive etc. One thing is certaing though – it is significantly larger than domaining. I’ve been looking into a gaming project of my own, which I plan to launch maybe in 6 months. My idea is basically to teach people to play various casual skill games against each other for money and charge a rake for connecting players together in the same way poker sites operate. So the idea is that people could play chess, checkers, scrabble etc against each other for a dollar or something like that. I think it will make the games more fun to play as well.

Another of my new projects is a wood processing plant that we will start building in Eastern Slovakia soon. We will basically be processing waste wood and manufacturing wooden pellets out it that will be used by powerplants in Austria and Italy. It’s quite a complex project with a lot of inputs etc, but it’s something new to keep me entertained.

Our online insurance broker ePojisteni.cz has been running strong. We will be moving into a bigger office next month to house our growing army of brokers in the callcenter, currently we have 40 there fulltime. We are also planning a large TV campaign for the autumn on national TV since the pools of available traffic online are just getting slimmer and slimmer and we simply need to keep growing.

Our liposuction clinic Slim & GO has been a big hit, we are currently running on full capacity with 5 machines operating 12 hours a day – we are doing 40 clients a day now. We’re just signing a lease for a new location where we plan to open our secong clinic, which should be even bigger than our first one. It might be a stretch to fill it up with clients, but challenge accepted :) .

Our facebook developer Viral Maniacs is hopefully going to launch its new game in the US in about 2 weeks. It’s something similar to the Sims. The first version of the game which we only launched in the Czech Rep has been quite a success, he already have about 80k users and 3k join everyday. Viral Maniacs should hopefully break even in July, which would be nice.

I’m also helping out with our new CPA department, I’ll probably joing them for LeadsCon in July in New York.

And that’s pretty much it now…

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Camroullete.com sale – a pretty absurd story

May 31

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 2 Comments

Check out Michael Berkens post to see why.

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The big push into CPA

May 17

Posted by Sisyphus in Domaining | 1 Comment

What I’ve been working on in the last month or so is building out a standalone CPA department in our company that will focus on monetizing my and my friend’s type-in traffic. The CPA department will be symbiotic with our Elephant Traffic offering because it will be buying traffic for monetization through ET, hence we should be capable of covering more and more verticals soon. We will obviously not be limited only to domain traffic but will also experiment with PPC, display, email etc, mainly acquiring US traffic for our CPA offerings.

The department will be headed by my long time friend Arnost Machytka, who spent the last two years working at Threadneedle, a big fund management firm based in London. Working alongside Arnost will be Martin Glatz, who has worked at Aegis Media recently. You should be seeing us at events such as LeadsCon and Affiliate Summit more often now.

The whole purpose off all these alternative monetization initiatives of mine is simple – by years end I have a goal of generating 20% of my domain income from alternative monetization. Last week Google clawed back $22k from one of my parking accounts for no obvious reason – a stark reminder that I cannot rely on them for monetization.

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