A Few Sunday Evening Thoughts After a Busy Day

As a garden center owner this time of year forces me into a 7 day work week.  The nice weather has certainly helped the pocketbook but added to that schedule.  I love plants, love talking about them but within that schedule I’m also working on my domain portfolio.  Buying and selling names, answering emails, and doing my best to get to my computer every few hours to check on things.  It’s tough, but I manage to do a decent job juggling.  Tonight, as I sit here and type, there a few thoughts that have crossed my head. The are neither wrong nor right, only as a see them.

1.  Snapnames is struggling.  I do a list every day and look through every name dropping or for auction and it seems the quality of names coming across Snap is getting worse each month. People are also using them less to “snap” names.  Godaddy and Namejet seem to be doing a better job attracting customers and catching names.

2. Sedo’s daily auctions are also struggling.  It used to be a big deal to push a name to auction as Sedo.  I remember friends trying to get friends to push it to the auction so you could get more money out of it. Sedo no longer gets you more money.  Domainers aren’t checking daily to see what auctions are going on like they used to.   They need to start promotion or the auction platform could become the next Bido.

3.  Paul Nicks and Godaddy are killing it in their auction platform.  It may be the reason for the above.  Their promotion comes from the sheer numbers of domains coming through to bid on.  Due to their size, they have an endless supply of domains coming through the pipeline each day to keep the buyers interested.  Lots and lots of action and it only seems to be growing.

4.  I absolutely love the segments from Jamie and Andrew on what names companies are buying.  Gives all domainers a sense of how and what domains companies are buying.  I wish I had more time to do these types of articles because I find them so interesting.  Keep up the great work guys.

5.  Amazon is going to have a shitty quarter.   I know that Best Buy had one and people are saying its because of Amazon but I don’t agree.  Apple is eating their lunch in hardware sales and Amazon is selling each Kindle Fire at a loss.  The more they sell, the more they lose right now.  They will make it up in book sales but that will take a year or two.  Also, as long as Apple’s devices don’t link to Amazon’s video service, it will never be big.  I am a put buyer here.

6.  I realize they are only tools but some reason Appraiso.com and Valuate.com make me feel more comfortable making a purchase or sale.  I know, I know they are just guesses, but they are educated guesses and do have some sales history to back it up.  I also go to Namebio.com a lot and look up old prices.   Estibot was build on Namebio’s original database but Adam and his team have added a lot more data to the mix.

7.  I’m so happy for Elliot and his new girl.  As a father of a beautiful girl I know first hand all the great things he’s going to get to go through.  Kids make you a smarter, better, more humble, tired, and all around person. Let’s pray she gets her Mom’s looks

8. It’s a great time to be a seller of domains right now.  They are fetching great prices. I am VERY happy with this years’ sales so far.  I am selling the names that are hot and buying a certain category that is still getting overlooked.  I will share what that is at a later date.  As for the hot names, that I can share.  I am getting great prices for my numerics and two and three word generics.  Those I am selling.  Buying?  Again, I’ll tell you some day. PS: Don’t think to look for them under my whois as I use several different companies to buy my names.  I realize people can see everything I do if they know where to look.  I just make sure they have no idea where to look.  You can’t ReverseInternet me.  I am Fusible like.

9.  I am turning into one of THOSE guys.  I have been terrible about responding to all my emails and inquiries through my website.  I feel bad about it, but the blog has gotten pretty popular and I get 10-30 a day.  I am so busy at work that I mean to respond but don’t.  I am going to try and do a better job starting now but in the mean time I want to apologize to all of those that have sent me emails and I left them in limbo. Send them to me again and I promise I’ll get back to you.