You have to love the Internet. Anyone can set up a wordpress site. You can put whatever you want on your site for the world to see. It really doesn’t matter if it’s true. You can write any title regardless if it’s based on fact or not. This is why I wrote this article entitled “You Can’t Believe All the Quotes You Read on the Internet -Abraham Lincoln” a few months ago. It was my way of saying. Read, enjoy, then due your due diligence and find out if it’s true because much of what you read has no merit. Adam Dicker isn’t as easy going as I am about all the domain blogs and the information they spew. Something had him a little upset and he posted this little ditty over an DnForum that obviously drew some attention.
I am getting tired of people registering a domain name and setting up a simple wordpress blog and claiming to be a domain expert.
So many wanna bees popping up each month that have no business giving out advice to anyone…..
Domainsherpa, Chef Patrick and Morgan Linton to name a few but there are many more, nothing against these three. I just don’t feel they should be selling themselves as domain experts, good marketers — yes.
If you don’t make a good living in domaining you have no business giving out domain advice or pretending to be someone important in this industry.
The only ones I follow are dnjournal and domainnamewire.com
What blogs to do you follow?
I won’t go into the details, you can read the thread, but my question is this. Is there not room for all kinds of sites in our industry? Other than DomainSherpa calling themselves/himself the “Domain Name Experts” and Morgan selling books on how to “Domain Invest”, is there anyone else that is claiming to be experts? Most of the blogs I read are simply presenting sales information, press releases, or opinion. Many of them are providing information on how to do this or do that which either you know how to do, want to learn, or really just don’t care. Are the readers a bunch of children that are so impressionable that they fall victim to false information? Do they now write poorly and constantly screw up they’re and their because my site is a grammatical crackhouse? I don’t think so.
I am an adult and will continue to read what I choose to read and I appreciate the differing opinions and information that blogs in our industry are presenting. If I don’t like something I simply don’t do it again. If a flavor of gum taste like shit I don’t continue to chew it. I may go back a second time to see if the flavor got screwed up because I had a glass of orange juice beforehand but not a third time. I may not be a lot of people’s flavor of gum and I’m cool with that. Adam is going to release a list of blogs from best to worst that should be very interesting. I imagine Berkens, Elliot, and Andrew will be at the top as they deserve to be but it’s still opinion and not fact. Just like much of the information that is being put out there by the domain investing blogs.
Edit: I wrote this last evening and this morning I noticed Hybrid Domainer had a similar article. Feel free to keep the conversation over there I didn’t mean to break it up.
With some bloggers is does get a little… obnoxious. Not that I would think they have no right to blog, they all do. Even Frager has a right to copy other blog content as long as he get permission from the original writer.
Domain Sherpa has great interviews as long as you don’t listen to the whole thing. His summaries are like gold. Chef Patrick is a moot point right now since he is not actively blogging anymore and Morgan Linton… well, he is the funniest in the group. He jumps on each new bandwagon then falls off a month later but he sure is excited while he is on it. He builds new websites each week but then seems to lose interest in them and you never hear anything more. He claims to be on record to a six figure year but I would love to see where the breakdown is and how he is actually making that money.
In the end though, Morgan is such a workaholic that I find it difficult finding anything really bad to say about him. He is like the kid that is so excited about doing something that no matter what others say to him, and whether he does it right or not, he is just gonna keep on going at high speed and eventually something will work out. Not the kind of guy that has the cool, collected personality of an expert, but he certainly has a right to say what he wants and sometimes is worth listening to.
I think it is foolish for others to hold any blogger as an expert, especially the newer ones, but that is the readers fault, not the writers.
Your blog is a lot of fun. Great writing style and regularly updated. It wouldn’t be worth it to me but I am glad it is to you.
Troy,
That was worthy of it’s own post. Well said
Hello Shane, thank you for the mention and I am not sure if you got my email I sent you last week about a name available for hand registration. I thought you could maybe use.
RH,
I did get it and many thanks. You deserved the mention
There are different levels of expertise.
If you’re a beginning guitar player, you might be interested in reading blogs of other beginning guitar players who are undergoing the same process that you are… Learning those scales and chords, learning how to read music.
If you’re an intermediate level guitar player, you’ll probably start reading some more advanced blogs- guys who are better players than you are, learning from their steps and missteps, phrasing, modes- stuff that didn’t register when you were “new”.
Once you’re an advanced player, you usually have little interest in what others have to say, as far as how to play the guitar. You’re doing your own thing. At this point, you have more to teach than you do to learn.
The “problem”, obviously, is that the internet offers a soapbox to a certain sort of undesirable personality type that’s apt to sell themselves as something they aren’t. This is a phenomenon in any industry with non-existent professional barriers to entry.
Register a few domains, you’re now a “domainer”.
Sell one? You’re now a “professional domainer”.
Got to P1P1 for “Lowest Cost Lawyer in Denver, CO” by making it the title in your barenaked WP install? Congrats! You’re now a “developer” and a “SEO expert”!
Sure, you may know more about the topic than a random person off the street who knows NOTHING about it, but you’re definitely not knowledgeable enough to be teaching others with a declarative tone.
Reading and commenting in tech blogs can be fun, but it all boils down to credibility. If it’s a new guy chronicling his journey and he’s open about it, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Sharing notes can be helpful, when you’re just starting out in something. If it’s a new guy pretending to be an experienced, high level operator because the layer of anonymity provided by the internet lets him exaggerate his ‘image’, that’s something else entirely. There are also a few ‘old timers’ who’ve deluded themselves into believing that they’re now experts on any internet related topic, by sole virtue of registering some generic domain names in the 1990’s.
As far as the ego cases who just like to use blogs to market themselves, whatever. They are what they are.
Everyone has the right to follow who they want to. We’re all (presumably) adults here.
If someone wants to take shitty advice from another, that’s their call and problem.
@LSMorgan – I like the guitar playing analogy.
Part of it, in my opinion, is that the Internet is friggin’ lonely. If you make a full-time living online and don’t have a voice in a community, well, it’s just you and your dog (or cat) everyday during the work day. This is the office chatter.
And if you do make a full-time living online, well, then the advice you’re giving is probably worth something.
You guys must be bored. Teach me how to make some money already. 🙂
I hope someone will remind me if/when I’m being this big of a douchebag.
You guys really have no clue what journalism is, do you? Writing a blog post or starting a thread bashing someone else only shows how classless you are. If something has value, it will last forever. If it doesn’t, eventually they will stop because no one will read it.
Decide: which one are you by posting this?
What would your kids say about Adam Dicker’s post 10 years from now? Hero or Hosebag?
Shane (love the name by the way)
Yet ironically this same post gave you the ability to voice your opinion in an open forum. There is also a large spread between hero and hosebag and Adam is neither. Adam is entitled to his opinion and I actually agree with him on the expert thing. Just pointing out I’m smart enough to figure that out on my own. Thanks for the “classless” comment but I am no journalist. You must have me confused with Mr. Murphy.
Oh sorry Shane. I didn’t see you you wanted me to pick one for myself. Man, this one’s tough. I’ll go with hosebag. More gardening oriented.
Shane, for what it’s worth, I enjoy reading your blog and I agree, people take away whatever they want to, which is why I blog as well, not as frequently as most people but then that’s just my modus operandi.