Seven Mile

Why There's No Panic to Develop

This little story has been around the net for years and nicely illustrates one more reason (aside from my Larry Flynt Story)  why I go slow on development.  Everyone should read it if they don't already know it:

An American investment banker was walking by the pier of a coastal Mexican village when a fisherman docked his small boat nearby and tossed several large yellow fin tuna onto the dock.

The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked, "How long does it take to catch them?"

The Mexican replied: "Not very long -- maybe a couple of hours, senor."

The American then asked why the fisherman didn't stay out longer and catch more fish.

The Mexican said he had enough to support his family's immediate needs and was happy with that.

The American then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full and busy life which I enjoy very much."

The American rolled his eys and said, "I'm a Harvard MBA and could help you. Here's what you should do: Spend more time fishing. You get more money, and with that, you buy a bigger boat. Then you can catch more fish, and buy an even bigger boat. If you work hard, then soon you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor. If that works out, then you open your own cannery. At that point you would control the product, the processing and the distribution. And, you could leave this little town and move to Mexico City, or LA and or even New York City. From there you could run the whole thing by phone, Fedex and the Internet.

The Mexican fisherman thinks this over for a minute and then asks, "Interesting. How long will this all take?"

The American thought for a little bit, took out his calculator and punched in some numbers, and then announced "I think you do this in only 15-20 years."

"But what then?"

The American laughed and said, "Here's the beauty of the whole thing. When the time is right you announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions!"

The Mexican thought this over for a little longer, staring out to sea and thinking about what millions would buy. He asked, "Okay. Millions.. then what?"

The American said, "This is the best part -- you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends."

Clearly we all need enough to avoid living hand to mouth,  but life is truly short...  enjoy your time with family, friends and those you love.  :)

And They Came With Stars in Their Eyes...

http://virtualcashflow.blogspot.com/2007/03/domain-name-investing-theres-not-much.html

Stumbled onto this blog..  the author writes about the domain space..  You can hear the enthusiasm shine through as he tries to lead folks to a domain newsletter..  the first of many such newsletter marketers building a downline I'm sure :)

While this particular gent is not building a downline; the difference between this newsletter and most marketing newsletters out there is that in the domain business,  you will actually make money.  Yes, I know newsletters like these are 'typically' marketing traps designed to enrich those writing the letter (not the reader). The irony of the domain name industry in 2007 is that there is still so much untapped opportunity out there. Even now, folks have a great chance to turn $10 into $6,000 and change their lives if they study the industry, work smart and focus on traffic. My .02

Domain Names Relevant to SEO?

http://www.hatethegrind.com/2007/03/31/do-domain-name-extensions-matter-for-seo/

.... interesting data points.  I have always liked CC Tlds of the country you live in after .com and .net

Interesting additional color on Google and synonyms of names here:

http://www.morningblog.com/index.php/2007/03/31/synonyms_domainnames

Registerfly Gets Another 30 Days to Torture Registrants?

Josh Writes:

Hi Frank,

I just posted this (below) to a Tucows/Opensrs discuss list i'm on. I have one domain name stuck at regfly.  not a critical one, but one with traffic.  I really feel for those who have vital domains stuck at regfly.

I am appalled, but not surprised that Icann did not put in measures to prevent this kind of fiasco, that is occurring now.

Be good to verify if the following is true:

1) Mr Levins (Icann) posted that Registerfly will see mediation on its RAA revocation. This adds 30 days to their current accredited status, to accomodate that process.

josh

============

I just read this post at http://Registerflies.com

http://www.registerflies.com/admins-updates/icann-file-lawsuit-against-registerfly-2.html

=========

1) Mr Levins (Icann) posted that Registerfly will see mediation on its RAA revocation. This adds 30 days to their current accredited status, toaccomodate that process.

e.g. decreditation date is now In May 2007, April 1 will come and go with no fanfare, no diabolical twist and no event horizon.

ICANN: The ALAC is Wack!

http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org/2007q1/000431.html

This is the single worst piece of paper I have seen come from an ICANN advisory committee in years.  You would think it was written in 1995 not 2007.  They appear to bundle domain-tasting and all forms of domain monetization as mutual-ills.

Among other things, this paper unwittingly suggests that Google, Yahoo and scores of others devalue their public company stock up to 30%, by ceasing monetization of names without content. Who exactly would police for "content" (what passes for content) is unclear of course. If the wishes expressed in this paper were 'magically granted'.. go-daddy, tucows, verisign and all Internet companies, would be worth much much less -- tens of thousands unemployed through the trickle down.

I should have taken my cue how lost this group was when they wrote about domain tasting:  "At this point of time, we feel there still needs [to be] more concrete information to prove these problems actually exist".  As if millions of domain names registered and deleted themselves on their own.

Oh, and apparently domain names are not owned by the registrant..  they are "public goods" in the eyes of these wonks.. so if you are a registrant ..  you best not get too married to your domain name, lest "the public" repossess it.  Which member of the public would be entitled to unseat a registrant paying potential millions for the rights in a domain name is unclear as well.

I agree that Domain Tasting has evolved in an unholy way from its earliest days and needs to be fixed (stopped) at this late stage, but placing all forms of domain monetization into the same blender is a classic example of a bunch of policy philosophizers, that do not fully grasp the machinations going on within the world about which they write.. Here's one of the faces behind this paper http://icannwiki.org/Izumi_Aizu. 

Hey Izumi;  Are you ALAC folks nuts? Call the owner of www.Loans.com. It has no content whatsoever (the name is a blind refresh). Tell that name's owner they are abusing 'public goods' by monetizing eyeballs. When the laughter dies down, do the same with www.Love.com (who's owner is an ICANN accredited registrar). Then go down the roster, pissing-off the rest of corporate America (public and private) from there.

Every member of this ALAC needs to step out of their insular world and give their head a shake..  it is 2007 not 1995.  The fortunes of millions rest on the shoulders of the Internet and many of your recommendations are so completely out of touch with the reality in which we live...  It's a shame this is the best the ALAC has to offer. It gains the organization little respect or credit from anyone I know.

A Wiki For Every Domain Name

The Webhealth.com story.

My Dad was a family-doctor in Canada for nearly 20 years and he still managed to run into financial tight-passages. The best doctors are always looking after their patients, so caring for their own finances often takes a back-seat to upholding the Hippocratic Oath. I love my Dad dearly and am grateful for his selflessness raising my sister, brother and I, so it brought me great pleasure to help him financially. Now he could keep the family home, spend more time with my Mom and work on his long-time pet project: the health book.

For years I would call the house and my Mom would tell me that "Dad is working on his book".  It would never end of-course, because medicine is constantly changing.  The basics are always the same but treatments change (ie. Merck stops selling Vioxx and the book has to get updated to reflect that history/data point). 

After diligently writing, tweaking and cataloging 20+ years of medical knowlege, Dad awoke to the reality that getting this health book published would be difficult. He turned over the keys to his son,  granting me a free license. Then I had a very bright programmer (thanks Ying) stuff the content of the book into a Wiki.  Then I added related paid search advertising for each topic and lastly, in order to get traffic, I took my health vertical (several thousand generic domain names) and plumbed the names to the most relevant category or topic within the web site.

Result?   If you type depressed.com , eatingdisorder.com, headcolds.com (or several thousand other health related names), you now come to real content written by a medical doctor; that other professionals can update and anyone can share their experiences on. The parent site instantly gets over 600,000 unique health visits a month from thousands of generic health related domains that point to different facets of the site; and the whole affair is self monetized through paid-search.

This is the kind of thing that illustrates the power of generic domain names. Watch what happens as our users improve the content and as we begin to buy thousands of visits a day from Google Adwords to these new content-rich pages.

That's the dream anyway. If every domain portfolio owner created a wiki for each name complete with relevant content and surrounded by paid search listings for monetization, it would dramatically alter the balance of power on the web between empty domain names and search engines; and it would change the face and perception of domain parking as the name becomes the content

I am starting to think Jimmy Wales was onto something much bigger than even he imagined with this open-source Wiki stuff.

.XXX Down Again!

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/03/dot-xxx-is-voted-down-dot-xxx-fires-back

Jay Westerdal proves to the world that hanging around a bar in Lisbon can lead to overhearing interesting things.

The vote was in favour by 9 votes to 5 with one abstention of the resolution ie rejecting dot xxx. There was minority dissent from Board members Crawford, Dengate-Thrush, Wodelet, Ito, and Ramaraj with abstention from Twomey.

Jay's Blog .. Excellent Questions for your Domain Registrar

http://blog.domaintools.com/2007/03/how-to-pick-a-registrar-by-elliot-noss/

Jay references Tucows CEO Elliot Noss writing on the Tucows blog and neatly summarizes 10 questions that every domain owner should ask of their registrar.

Snapshot Industry Info

www.DomainNameWire.com has some interesting data on DN sales .. 

I think www.DomainNameWire.com and www.dailydomainer.com are two excellent outlets for info relating to names. Daily domainer consistently surprises me with it's arcticulate well thought through pieces and excellent graphics. My favorite public forum is presently www.domainstate.com (Paul C..  you're the best) and Ron jackson does such a good job touching on all aspects of the industry at www.DNJournal.com  that it hurts.  I don't know how he finds the time to do it all (special props to Mrs. J. Ron)

Jay Westerdal always has some very nice info at http://blog.domaintools.com/ (presently covering timely icann topics) Vint Cerf and Elliot Noss. Actually Ell's points are so good I'll reference it in a seperate post.

More Browser Intent Hijack Schemes

Thanks Drew!  :

http://news.com.com/New+antiphishing+shield+serves+up+ads/2100-7355_3-6171015.html?tag=cd.top

Ads served under the auspices of a "phishing shield" ... Nice... Proving once again that you can come late to the party and still profit in Paid-Search, a Denver Software Co has come up with a way for ISP's to hijack browser type-ins.  This type of thing is bad for domain-holders because it encroaches on a user's intent,  however it can only go so far as users have proven time and time again that they only stand for so much before switching:  browsers, isp's, search appliances.. etc.  Never underestimate the human desire for freedom.  If a user feels trapped he will flee.

I am waiting for this software maker's next coup ..  a piece of software to over-ride this piece of software and let users navigate to whatever site they want.