Facing The Absurd

Although almost anyone has been warned that he or she should pay special attention when they pay the bills whether they are shopping online or make a purchase over certain kind service, there are still a lot of people fall victims to the jugglers here and there. If you are the one that encountered the misfortune, you can follow these instructions I show you here and I hope you do this as soon as possible. Even you just suspect that your personal info or credit card num, take is seriously.

Go directly to the provider of the service, such as a bank, a card company, or any other ISPs, and ask them to investigate your query and give you a detailed login log or account log. Then you can get the idea of your card activities or login IP. Focus on the unauthorized charges which have been made recently to your credit bill, and try to go into the charge and use the search engine to get the highly useful information.

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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.

A lot of people involved in buying and selling names got burnt by buying domains in 2007-08 peak valuations that still to this day cannot be liquidated for the price they were bought for. The interesting thing to me is that most people have a preference to sit on the paper loss until it eventually turns around (they hope) and they will be able to sell without making a loss. I.e selling for under the buying price is taboo for them. I think this is an error that is actually producing more losses for them.

I’ll support my thinking with an example. Say you bought a domain for $100k in 2008. In today’s market the maximum you can get for it is $80k, so you decide to wait. In 2012 you will get to sell the domain for $120k and make 20% on your investment over a course of 4 years. That is a pretty bad ROI. Instead, if you were willing to take a loss and sell the domain in 2009 for $80k, you would initially incur a 20% loss but you could put that $80k you got to work. Say buying and selling more domains, investing in a portfolio etc. From 2009 to 2012 a skilled domain flipper could probably turn that $80k easily into $300k in three years time. So if you would have taked the liquidity route, you could have got a much better ROI on your $100k investment. Pause for thought.

Some things are irrational or absurd, without explanation. One of these things seems to be a complete lack of revenue data about domains on the various aftermarket platforms. Even though a domain’s parking revenue would strongly influence the selling price of a domain, nobody is even bothered with communicating this information to potential buyers who may be interested in bidding and revenue is a key factor for them. For some unknown reason potential buyers are forced to estimate and their accuracy determines their success. Buyers focused on traffic/revenue names on the various dropcatching platforms can strongly support this argument.

Domains that generate a constant stream of parking revenue are the most liquid part of the domain universe because most smart domain investors buy on yield, not on potential development potential, end-user resale value etc since these values are just hypothetical and speculative whereas yield=cashflow. There is always somebody who wants to buy yield. The people who have had the biggest success in this business focused on yield.

Cashflow domains generally sell in bulk portfolios for a given revenue multiple. Say you buy a portfolio o 1000 domains making $10k/month for a 5 year revenue multiple, so you pay $600k for it. You are buying/selling the revenue of the entire portfolio, you are not really looking at the individual domains.

This is where the opportunity in the aftermarket lies – If you would unbundle the portfolio and sell it by individual names, you might get a total of 7 years revenue, for example, for the entire portfolio. The reason being that certain people might see more value in certain names for which they are willing to pay more (because for example they have a better way to monetize the traffic). So somebody may be willing to pay a higher multiple for your travel traffic names, somebody for finance traffic names etc. Somebody may see development potential in the name. Somebody might assess the risk of the domain differently etc.

Somebody smart can quickly carve out this niche in the aftermarket and start focusing on revenue names and include detailed parking stats with every domain for sale. Buyers will then simply be bidding based on what revenue multiple they are willing to pay for the name, ideally in an auction format.

In a previous post about Bido, I said that I think Bido will have to fundamentally change its model to start making money. This is the direction I think it should go, because this is where potentially the money is and it is an unoccupied niche. Instead of focusing on names with predominantly speculative value that usually catch the eye of 1 or 2 bidders (as hard as you try), why not focus on revenue names where you are likely to get interest from tens of different bidders if you can create a liquid marketplace.

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.