Facing The Absurd

I happen to live and run my businesses from a country that most Americans can’t point out on a map or still call Czechoslovakia (which is totally understandable, I couldn’t name the 50 US States either). Although I am obviously a big Czech patriot, I would still like to ventilate my frustrations of operating a business from a country that has a population of 10 million. It makes competing on a global scale much more difficult and me and my team have to go the extra yard to be better.

The most frustrating thing is the size of the market – 10 million people with a GDP per capita of $24k at PPP. Compare that to the U.S. with 300 million people / $46k and you find out that the US is roughly a 60x bigger market than the Czech Rep when it comes to buying power. Because of all the language barriers and unique aspects of every European country, it is very difficult to scale a project/service once you reach a certain level. Being part of the EU has certainly helped, but the EU is certainly not a federation of states like the US. Just to illustrate this frustration with an example – take our lead generation department within Elephant Orchestra. Lead Generation is in many ways a local service – you have to be close to your customers (lead buyers) and you have to understand the local market for acquiring traffic. What is currently frustrating us here is that we are hitting  a major constraint in the amount of traffic we can profitably buy and convert. If we want to grow, we have to expand into other lead gen niches (like health, education) or expand abroad. But expanding abroad is very difficult since you have to build up your knowledge and a team from zero and that costs money. Whereas if we would have a US presence, it would be much more easy to scale our model and maintain margins.

Then there are several frustrations of running a global business from here, again to illustrate, I will use the example of Elephant Traffic. First of all, if we want to sell in the US, we have to understand the language. The HR pool of native speakers is really tied to the expat community. Or we have to “import” the people. Second is the travel barrier, if we want to meet our clients, we have to be constantly travelling, which increases costs.  Then there is the time difference, hence our sales people and account managers have to work the US time zone, which means coming to work at 3 p.m. and finishing at 12 p.m. Again that limits the HR pool, a lot of people don’t want to work those hours. Then there is the issue of knowledge exchange – there are virtually no people that would be in a similar business as us, so you can’t refine your ideas, network etc. Then there is the mindset. Czechs typically have a pretty provincial way of thinking (recommend reading the book Good Soldier Svejk to understand). It is difficult to transplant “global thinking” into them.

Obviously there are certainn advantages of operating from the CZ such as well educated cheaper labour, maybe a more favourable tax climate, it’s easier to become a market leader here etc. But really the dissadvantages are still much bigger. Hence I think it is inevitable for us to open a US presence next year. That will allow us to both exploit some of the favourable aspects of the CZ but also make it easier for us to compete with the global players. Take the best of both.

DOMAINSPONSOR® EXPANDS DOMAINFEST® TO EUROPE
--Early October event in Prague will focus on networking, building European business interest in online real estate--

LOS ANGELES, Calif. and FRANKFURT, Germany. DomainSponsor®, the domain monetization business unit of Oversee.net® and organizer of the DOMAINfest® series of conferences, said today that it will expand the highly regarded franchise into Europe with a conference in Prague, Czech Republic.

The two-day event will be held Wednesday and Thursday, October 6 and 7, 2010 at the landmark Hotel Intercontinental located in the heart of one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Building on the success of last month’s event in Santa Monica, California, the October meeting will continue DOMAINfest’s focus on increasing the value of Internet real estate and will offer a rich setting for extensive networking involving topics relevant not only to domain investors from Europe, but also from around the world.  

Subject-matter experts will be invited to facilitate the networking sessions on Wednesday, October 6th.  The first day will also include a Moniker® Premium Domain Name Auction powered by SnapNames LiveTM technology.  Day 2 will be focused on social activities in and around Prague designed to provide the kind of shared experiences that can contribute to the building of long-term relationships between DOMAINfest Europe attendees.  Conference details, including the agenda and speakers, will be released in June, 2010.  

“DOMAINfest Europe is an excellent opportunity for European publishers, online marketers, and domain-related service providers to meet and discuss ways to increase the value of domain names, which we like to refer to as Internet real estate, “ said Peter Celeste, Senior Vice President of Oversee.net and General Manger, Monetization Services. “The DomainSponsor team looks forward to becoming more engaged with the European domain investor community, and this forum is the perfect venue to exchange ideas and build relationships.  As with all DOMAINfest events, we will be offering affordable registration rates to encourage maximum participation from a wide range of talented professionals from both inside and outside our industry.”

In January, 2010, DomainSponsor hosted a highly successful DOMAINfest Global® conference in Santa Monica, California that attracted more than 600 professionals from a variety of internet-related industries.  The conference included a variety of sessions over a three day period, including a keynote fireside chat with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com. This recent DOMAINfest conference also featured a first-ever PITCHfest contest, structured networking sessions, and moderated general sessions with experts from the world of investment, advertising, and marketing. Videos of each session, including the keynote fireside chat, can be viewed at http://www.domainfest.com.  

In November 2009, DomainSponsor announced the establishment of its European head office in Frankfurt, Germany with Joerg Schnermann as General Manager. 

Moniker® Auction
Moniker will host a live premium domain name auction on Wednesday, October 6 followed by an extended online-only auction from October 7 to October 14.  Specific start and end times for each auction event will be announced June 1, 2010.  The live auction offers real-time online viewing and bidding from anywhere in the world via a free software download.  Details on how to bid in-person or remotely in any Moniker live auction can be found at http://domainauctions.moniker.com
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Registration and Sponsorship Opportunities
Registration for DOMAINfest Europe will be open June 1, 2010. The early bird registration rate will be US$395 until July 1st.  A discounted rate of US$495 will then be available until September 1st, at which point the price increases to US$595. Companies interested in sponsorship opportunities can contact sales@domainfest.com
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About DOMAINfest®
Founded and hosted by DomainSponsor®, the domain monetization division of Oversee.net, the DOMAINfest® conference brings domain industry and Internet professionals together to learn, network, and do business. Attendees include online advertising experts, domain publishers, domain monetization experts, SEO and SEM specialists, website developers, online marketers, ad or affiliate network suppliers, search advertising providers, venture capitalists, bankers and trademark/legal advisors. Visit http://www.domainfest.com for more information.

About Oversee.net
Oversee.net® is the leader in Internet real estate, specializing in monetizing, registering, selling and developing domain names. The company provides an array of managed services to domain investors, corporations, and individuals across more than ten million web sites. Oversee owns one of the largest portfolios of domain names in the world. The company’s unique optimized technology connects consumers and advertisers with highly relevant advertisements. Headquartered in Los Angeles, the company’s core brands include DomainSponsor®, SnapNames®, Moniker® and LowFares.comTM. To learn more, please visit www.oversee.net.

About two months ago we picked up a nice little generic domain domain – leyton.com – on the drop for $1k. Our plan was to do a little development and we didn’t even bother parking it. Few days later we got an offer from a company which had Leyton in it’s name offering us 10k euro for it. We rejected the offer and made a higher counter-offer. The company’s response was to file an UDRP against us. Our lawyer on this, Stevan Liebermann, advised us that it is very likely we will lose the UDRP, so we were ready to take it to court if we lose. Fortunately Stevan wrote an amazing response to the UDRP and against all odds we won it. The story even had a happy end for us – we ended selling the domain for $50k to the company.

This is just a little story to illustrate how important it is to protect your property. It also is a big favour to the domaining community. Since the IP lobby is so strong, we as whole have to try to counterbalance it as much as we can.

Rumour has it that there might be another DomainFest this year in Prague, Czech Republic. Prague happens to be my hometown so it will be very nice potentially welcoming the domainer community in Prague! I’ve had quite a few people from the domain biz over last year, they can all give you a pretty good reference about it.

I’ve been strongly lobbying for a conference in Prague with both Oversee.net and also Rick Latona, who now runs the TRAFFIC franchise, for some time. It seems I have finally been heard out with Oversee making this big push into Europe this year (they already had a private event last year in Munich, which was really nice). If it’s going to happen, it will likely be early October. Let’s wait if it gets confirmed.

In my traditional fashion, I’ll probably run a private party at my new fabulous penthouse with a roof top terrace (jacuzzi baby!) with a view of the Prague castle where I will be inviting good friends. So prepare for a pretty decadent night.

DomainFest in Prague would be a pretty nice boost for the Czech domainer community, which is very numerous. With a few friends we run these one-day domainer conferences that always attract more than 100 attendees.  Although DomainFest may be a bit too pricey for them, I hope to secure some kind of discount for locals with Oversee so it’s more accessible for them.

Ladies and gentleman, welcome to my new blog about domaining and other related industries. In many ways this is a coming out for me (I have quite a few gay employees, so I often find myself using their terminology). Since I started in domaining in mid 2007 (started with cctlds, bought my first .com portfolio in December 2007) I have kept a pretty low profile, so most of you probably have not ever heard of me. In the course of the last 2 and a little years I have built one of the top 10 largest domain portfolios in the world. When I was starting, people would tell me that all the good domains have been long gone. Fortunately I didn’t listen…

Anyway, when I look back I’ve had a pretty phenomenal run in last two years since I finished University. Although I’m still just 24, my businenesses now span across domains, lead generation, affiliate marketing, domain monetization, a car insurance broker, search, arbitrage, facebook apps & games, mobile marketing and even a liposuction clinic altogether employing more than 70 people fulltime.

So why have I started blogging. Well there are multiple reasons. One is that the domaining community is simply great and I think it’s time to give back a little. When I was starting I was pretty much addicted to Frank Schilling’s blog (I finally got to meet the guy last month!), it was probably the most valuable resource for me and I would try to reverse engineer many things that Frank would talk about. Now it’s time for me to share some of my tips & tricks! Second reason, connected to the first one slightly, is that there really aren’t many decent domain blogs out there. Pretty much the only ones I find worthwhile of reading are TheDomains.com, DNW.com, DomainNameNews.com and DNJournal.com for the features and sales charts.. All others just seem to have a lack of insight, are limited to publishing recent sales and worst of all, don’t get the game and some are complete attention whores. So I plan on to bring a new interesting resource via my blog, Facing The Absurd. And thirdly, since I am starting quite a few new ventures, I need new channels of promotion, and a blog is a perfect way how to push the message.

I’ll be posting mostly about domains, monetization, acquistion strategies, financing etc. But I will also touch other related businesses such as lead gen, affiliate stuff, online marketing because in many ways these industries will come much closer to domaining in the future.

And lastly I might as well elaborate a little on why this blog is called Facing The Absurd. It’s a reference to my highschool love of absurdist/existentialist thought coming from authors like Camus, Sartre, Dostoevskij, Kafka etc. In many ways I view my life through the absurdist lens and my life is really about facing the absurd state and finding a meaning in a meaningless world.

So, happy reading, I’m off to write a few first meaningful posts…