Sweetmantra: Internet Marketing Advice

Expert Tips for Finding a Domain Name for Your Startup

One of my favourite things to do is help entrepreneurs find the perfect domain name for their new business startup. Over the last 15 years, I've had the privilege of helping hundreds of companies with this, and I take a certain amount of pride in knowing that I helped play a role - no matter how small - in giving birth to a new business or product.

If you're planning to launch a new business or product, or are in the early stages of a startup, here are five expert tips to help you find the perfect domain name.

1. Give yourself ample time to hunt for a domain name.
The more time you have, the more options you will have, and this will also mean you probably won't have to spend as much. I usually recommend that you allocate at least four weeks to do a thorough search of what domains are available, to gather the prices of domains, and to complete the negotiation, purchase, and transfer of ownership of your chosen domain. In a perfect world, give yourself several months because this will give you the greatest amount of choice and puts you in the best negotiating position.

2. Set a realistic budget.
I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but you are not going to be able to buy a fantastic, one-word .com domain like pizza.com for only $500. (It sold for $2.6 million.) The likelihood of you getting a quality .com domain name - one that is suitable to build a new business or product around - for less than $500 is pretty slim, especially if you are in a hurry. If you are willing to spend $500-$1,000, there's a lot of pretty good inventory available for immediate purchase. Move into the $1,000-$10,000 range - which is a modest sum when amortized over the life a business - and you should be able to find some very good inventory. And if you can justify spending $10,000 or more, you will open yourself up to a world of fantastic inventory. Sure, you can spend five figures or more (sometimes much more) on a killer, one-word .com domain, but there is a plethora of good quality inventory out there in all price ranges if you know where to look. Speaking of which...

3. Look for "buy it now" inventory in the leading domain name marketplaces.
If you have given yourself a decent amount of time for your hunt (see point #1) and have a realistic budget (point #2), you will be pleasantly surprised by the quality and quantity of domain names that are available for immediate purchase in the more popular domain name marketplaces. Most of these marketplaces will allow you to do very specific advanced searches of their inventory, e.g., .com domains that are 10 characters or less and begin with the word "scuba". The domains that you find in these marketplaces can typically be purchased right then and there for the listed price using your credit card. This removes the vagueness of the domain's availability for sale and its purchase price. Here are the domain name marketplaces I recommend you check first when looking to obtain a premium domain name:

• BuyDomains - millions of domain names starting at $100, with lots of fantastic inventory in the $1,000-$5,000 range
• Sedo - millions of domain names starting at $10
• Go Daddy Auctions - hundreds of thousands of domains starting as low as $5 (plus registration fee); a great source of bargain domain names if you are patient

Since I am the General Manager of YummyNames, I would be remiss if I didn't invite you to search our domain name inventory as well! We have tens of thousands of premium domain names for sale starting at only $477. Be sure to ask for the "Sweetmantra discount."

Some other marketplaces you could also look at, if you wanted to be really thorough, are:

• Aftermarket.com
• BrandBucket
• Fabulous.com
• NameDrive
• NameJet
• Pool.com
• SnapNames

There are lots of other smaller marketplaces where premium domains are listed for sale - heck, you can even buy domain names on eBay - however a search on BuyDomains, Sedo and Go Daddy Auctions will probably capture 80% of the inventory that is available for immediate purchase at a fixed price.

4. Use a domain name broker.
If you want to pursue a domain name that is not listed for sale in one of the marketplaces but is owned by someone else, get help from a domain professional. A good domain name broker will typically have better success in tracking down the owner of a domain name, can usually get you a better deal than you could get on your own, and should offer you valuable advice along the way. BuyDomains, Sedo, SnapNames and - of course - YummyNames (the business I run) all offer domain brokerage services.

5. Protect yourself and the transaction through an escrow service.
When it comes time to purchase the domain name, use a domain escrow service (or reputable marketplace or broker) to safeguard the transaction. Chances are you will be buying the domain name from an individual or company in another city or even country that you've never even met. When you are spending thousands of dollars to obtain a domain name, you want to make sure that you don't get ripped off. I recommend using Escrow.com to facilitate the transaction. Reputable domain name escrow services can also be obtained from BuyDomains, Sedo, and SnapNames.

In summary, if you give yourself a decent amount of time, set a realistic budget, and know where to look, you should be able to find a great domain name for your startup, new product, or marketing campaign.

Good luck, and happy hunting!

Weasels.com - A Typical Premium Domain Name Inquiry

Hello again.

I recently saw a funny little video created using Xtranormal, and I was quite intrigued by the video creation platform. Since I learn best by doing, I decided to play around with the platform and see what sort of video I could make.

Not surprisingly I found myself doing a short video about domain names. The result of my first stab at this is below. You can also link directly to the video here. 

When you own a large portfolio of premium domain names for sale, like we do at YummyNames, you get a lot of purchase inquiries. This is a typical one. While it is not based on an actual inquiry (tempting though that may have been), this video captures the spirit of many of the inquiries we get from people who are shocked we won't sell a premium domain name to them for $50.

Thankfully, we also get lots of inquiries from people who do appreciate the value of premium domain names, and we sell hundreds of thousands of dollars of domains to people like that every month.

And yes, YummyNames does own weasels.com.

Enjoy!

 

Six Amazing Experiences I am Grateful For

For my first post after my unofficial 'sabbatical' from blogging, I thought I'd share some photos and observations from some of the more memorable positive experiences I have had over the last eight months. I am truly lucky that I get the opportunity to travel for work and pleasure.
 

Had dinner by the beach in beautiful and eclectic Key West, Florida with some fellow domainers (domain investors) who had gathered from around the world. The people I was dining with at this table manage portfolios of several million domains. I was there attending a business event hosted by Sedo, but it was the networking and informal social interactions that proved to be the most valuable.

Took my wife for a surprise helicopter ride over New York City at sunset. (Interestingly, it was one of the domainers at the Key West dinner that gave me the idea for this.) I never even realized you could charter a helicopter and do this, and I highly recommend it.

Scuba dived a Soviet warship off the coast of Cuba. I had visited this wreck 10 years earlier but had run into some complications and had to cut short my dive. This time around I was better prepared and brought along my camera.

Drove through Death Valley with one of my team members (who took this photo) and visited Zabriskie Point, which I have wanted to visit ever since seeing the Antonioni film of the same name. Despite its name, Death Valley is teeming with life, and my colleague and I had a great time exploring this amazing landscape en route to another domain conference.

Learned the fine art of "The Throw" on a balcony overlooking Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras. You learn a lot about marketing and negotiating doing this. Seriously. This was another domain conference, yet despite its more informal nature provided a great opportunity to really bond with new and existing business partners.

Explored The Crystal Caves in Bermuda, which I first visited as a child. They were first discovered by two teenage boys who were looking for their lost cricket ball. Thanks to the curiosity of kids, we can now all experience this natural wonder of the world.

It was amazing experiences like these, which I am very grateful to have had, that counterbalanced the negative energy of the deaths in my inner circle during the same time period. Here's to more of the former and less of the latter in the coming years.

Why It's a Wrap for my Movie Domain Name Website

Like many of the ventures I have launched over the years, the idea for Hollywoozy, my site where I would review movie domain names, came to me out of the blue.

At the time, I thought it would be both fun and educational to use movie domain names (the good and the bad) as a springboard to discuss what makes a good marketing domain name.

I also wanted to create an outlet to share my amusement and frustration with the idiotic domain names chosen by the marketers of movies.

I feel that I accomplished both those objectives, and the reaction to Hollywoozy has been very positive.

Since launching the site, I have had the opportunity to discuss movie domain names with studio executives, filmmakers, marketing folks, and intellectual property lawyers. In doing so, I gained a deeper understanding of why most Hollywood movies end up with less-than-ideal domain names. It was an eye-opening experience.

Here are some of the reasons why movie domains are the way they are (and won't likely change anytime soon):

1. Since the bulk of a typical Hollywood movie's marketing dollars are spent on traditional, offline media (mainly television and print), the online marketing component is given low priority, little attention, and relatively tiny budgets. Finding and obtaining the best domain name is not seen as a priority, and any money spent on purchasing the domain name(s) will come out of the already squeezed budget for the movie's Website.

2. Many movie marketers refuse to deal with domain investors who might already own the ideal domain name. It's become almost a matter of principle that Hollywood would rather pay $10 and register a brand new but inferior movie domain name than pay someone else $500 for a much better domain name. Hollywood feels it has been 'burned' too often by cybersquatters (or what Hollywood perceives as cybersquatters) and wants nothing to do with even the legitimate domain resale market.

3. Because the online marketing of a movie is treated as a low priority, there is little to no measurement done, which means there are few opportunities for the powers to be to learn how having a better domain name would impact their overall success.

4. Since the main focus of Hollywood movie marketing is to generate buzz and put bums in seats for the movie's opening weekend, most of the marketing activities are geared towards that tiny window of time. Having a better domain name is not seen as having much of an impact on this either.

5. The studios don't really care that they don't have the perfect domain name. They figure that because they will be spending millions to market whatever domain name they do have, they will still get tons of traffic to the movie's Website. And they also figure that the search engines and popular movie portals like Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb will also drive organic traffic as well.

Having learned all of this, I have decided it is pointless of me to keep making fun of Hollywood and its often silly choice of movie domain names. If anything, I've become very forgiving of Hollywood and its domain name foibles. I know the domain names are lame. You know the domain names are lame. And, yes, Hollywood knows the domain names are lame as well.

Since this situation isn't likely to ever change, and since I have a long list of ideas for other ventures I want to turn into reality, there will be no more updates to Hollywoozy.

I've had a ball creating and updating Hollywoozy, I've loved the discussions and learning and relationships that have flowed out of it, and I hope its visitors enjoyed reading it.

Cut.

Print.

That's a wrap.

My Five Most Popular Blog Articles

I'm on holiday the next little while so I thought I'd share some links to five of the all-time most popular articles I have ever written for my blog:

• 10 Twitter Tips for Professionals

• 10 Facebook Tips for Professionals

• Does Someone Want to Buy Your Domain Name?

• 12 Questions You Must Ask Before Doing SEO

• Ten Must-Have iPhone Apps for Marketers

Apparently blog posts with numbers in the title do very well. ;+)

I hope you enjoy these, and I look forward to resuming writing again later this Summer.

Want to Learn About Domain Name Investing?

You probably already know that I am fanatical about domain names.

How would you like to learn about the world of buying, selling, and monetizing premium domain names? From me. This summer.

In my role as the General Manager of YummyNames, a service of Tucows Inc., I am hiring a Domain Portfolio Assistant for an 8-week contract. This is a rare, entry-level opportunity to work with me and my team as we manage one of the largest domain name portfolios in the world.

You will learn a ton, work on some important projects, and make some great connections. And you'll do it from our bright and funky Liberty Village office in Toronto. This is an awesome opportunity for someone who wants to get some hands-on experience in the rapidly-evolving world of 'Internet Real Estate'.

To find out more about this contract position and how to apply for it, visit the following link:

http://snipurl.com/kvr4h

Thanks, and good luck!

Domain Name Disputes: Honey or Vinegar?

One of the more unusual aspects of my job as General Manager of a large portfolio of premium domain names is that I see all the "poison pen" letters from lawyers representing clients who believe (usually incorrectly, I should add) they are legally entitled to a domain name that we own. Since we own over 100,000 domain names, we get quite a few of these letters every week!

I make sure that we respond to each and every one of these inquiries, and now that I've seen and dealt with hundreds of these letters I wanted to make a suggestion to the marketing community at large:

"You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

Admittedly, I didn't come up with this age-old concept, but I'd like to remind people that you will have better luck resolving a dispute - any dispute - by playing nice than by being hostile.

For instance, the next time you think that someone owns a domain name that you think you are legally entitled to, don't make your first move a "nasty lawyer's letter."

Instead, just reach out to the current owner with a courteous phone call or email (which you can get from checking the public WHOIS records) and let them know you have some questions or concerns. You might discover that the current owner is a lot nicer than you think, is not a hardened criminal, and is more than willing to negotiate in good faith. You might even learn that the original basis for your complaint is flawed and that - surprise, surprise - you aren't legally entitled to the domain name after all.

Not only will you save yourself the time, hassle, and significant expense of going the legal route (fighting a domain name dispute can cost many thousands of dollars), but you will begin the dialogue on a positive and constructive basis, not an adversarial one.

I go out of my way to help the small minority of folks who approach me nicely and are willing to listen to and consider our side of the story. Between us, we can usually resolve the situation within a few days. Unfortunately, I can count these "honey" folks on the fingers of one hand.

I'm not so sympathetic towards the "vinegar" folks - those who courier me six-inch thick stacks of legal documents that make all sorts of false accusations, ridiculous demands, and set unrealistic timelines for a response. (One law firm did this to me, quite deliberately, on Christmas Eve, two years in a row.) Sadly, these "poison pen" letters make up the vast majority of inquiries I receive. Sure, we respond to them as well, but I'm not going to cut them any slack or do them any favours. Why should I?

In the end, this boils down to one simple suggestion: be nice. ;+)

(A version of this post originally appeared on the Canadian Marketing Blog.)

Discover "Minivertising" at 2009 CMA National Convention

Forget about thinking big. You need to think small!

That's the rallying cry for a presentation I am giving at the Canadian Marketing Association's National Convention in Toronto on April 28, 2009.

The Canadian Marketing Association (CMA) has invited me to present my newest talk, "Minivertising", at Canada's largest marketing conference. This national convention is held each spring in a different city and welcomes thousands of attendees.

Here are the details:

"Minivertising" – The Big Future in Targeting a Tiny Niche
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
10:30 - 11:30 AM
Register for the conference

Forget about thinking big. You need to think small! Until recently, it was expensive if not impossible to market to a highly segmented target audience. Not any longer. Discover how marketers and entrepreneurs can use social media and emerging Web tools for affordable and effective mini-targeting. No matter what the size of your company is, you can learn how to become a dominant player in a profitable niche.

If you’re a marketer, you will learn how to use the principles of minivertising to generate interest for your client’s products and services, no matter how constrained their budgets are. If you are an entrepreneur or business executive, you’ll discover affordable and measurable ways to attract highly motivated customers to you, almost overnight.

For more information and to register, visit the CMA National Convention Website.

I hope to see you there.

P.S. Here is a link to the list of Minivertising Resources.

Twitter IDs are the New Domain Names

It's 2009, so I would hope by now that any marketer reading this article online understands the importance of securing your company's brands as domain names. In other words, Acme Furniture should own and control the domain name acmefurniture.com (and, if it's a Canadian company, acmefurniture.ca as well) even if you don't yet have a Web site.

My question for you today is, "Have you done the same for Twitter?"

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that is growing in popularity at an astonishing rate. The purpose of this article is not to explain or promote the benefits of Twitter; that topic has been covered by others.

What I want you to understand today is that Twitter IDs (or "user names" or "handles") are the equivalent of domain names.

For instance, the Twitter ID for my personal brand, Bill Sweetman, is @billsweetman (which corresponds to the URL http://www.twitter.com/billsweetman) and for my corporate brand, YummyNames, it is @yummynames.

Even if you don't understand Twitter or don't think it has a role to play in your company's marketing efforts today, I strongly urge you to still secure your Twitter ID now.

In my case, I do all my Tweeting (as its called) as @billsweetman but I made sure that I registered all my other professional brands as Twitter IDs so that when and if I want to use Twitter for those other brands I already have the most intuitive Twitter ID.

I predict that over the next few years, millions of dollars will be spent by companies buying, selling, and fighting over Twitter IDs. I have already seen a number of nasty legal spats develop, and I have personally brokered the sale of several Twitter IDs already. And this is only the very beginning...

If you are Acme Furniture, you should make sure you get your hands on @acmefurniture right away. Since there is no fee to register a Twitter ID, you have no excuse not to do this. Simply head on over to http://www.twitter.com and sign up for a free account.

Don't be the person who in a year or two is having to explain to their company President why you didn't secure the company name as a Twitter ID. Take two minutes and do it today.

One final tip: Twitter will eventually suspend an account if it has not been used for six months, so make sure you post something once a month just to keep your account active and not risk losing your valuable Twitter ID.

Domain Name Resources from "The Secret World of Domain Names"

This past weekend I gave a talk at PodCamp Toronto entitled "The Secret World of Domain Names," which was a marketer's guide to domain names.

My session was Webcast live, and it was also archived on video. You can view a low-resolution video recording of my presentation here:

The Secret World of Domain Names (QuickTime)

Meanwhile, I thought it would be helpful if I provided links to the various resources and sites that I talked about during my talk.

So, without much further ado, here they are:

The Secret World of Domain Names: Domain Name Resources

Resources for researching domain names and coming up with a new domain name:

• CIRA
• NameBoy Radio Test
• RhymeZone
• Thesaurus.com
• Who.is

Where to register a new domain name:

• Hover (save 25% with this special discount link)
• MyHosting.com
• Name.com

Where to shop for premium domain names:

• Afternic
• BuyDomains.com
• FabulousDomains
• Sedo
• YummyNames (this is the business I run)

Where to shop for expired domain names:

• Afternic
• Go Daddy Auctions
• NameJet
• Pool.com
• SnapNames

Where to learn about the domain investing industry:

• DN Journal
• Domain Name News
• Domain Name Wire

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of resources for this topic, but it's enough to get you started...

For more information about PodCamp Toronto, visit the PodCamp Toronto Wiki.