Sweetmantra: Domain Name Strategy

Why I Paid $1,500 to Rescue Oliver Stone's Domain Name

I make my living as a domain name buyer broker helping entrepreneurs acquire their dream domain names, but in my spare time I like to help people solve their domain name problems, even if they aren't aware of the problem in the first place.

One way I help is by rescuing expired domains from a treacherous fate. For instance, over the last decade I've rescued domain names for artists, musicians, actors and other people and causes I admire, including Freddie Mercury, Phil Collins, and 'Darth Vader'.

Most of my pro bono domain rescue projects I do in a low-key manner and don't discuss publicly. I have decided to share the details of my recent rescue of OliverStone.com, however, because there's a valuable lesson in this about the perils of letting others own your personal domain name.

Oliver Stone's “Natural Born Killers”

 
In January 2012, according to a report in Domain Name Journal, filmmaker Oliver Stone (or someone representing him) purchased OliverStone.com from a domain speculator for $6,000 USD. Later that same year, The Oliver Stone Experience, a Website devoted to the filmmaker's life and work, was launched on the domain.

Mr. Stone's domain name was registered to, and managed (badly, as it turns out) by media conglomerate Universal City Studios. Someone at Universal dropped the ball and let the OliverStone.com domain expire on October 16, 2016. This took Oliver Stone's Website offline for over a month. Had I not intervened, this valuable domain name, and its accompanying Website, could have ended up being lost in cyberspace.

Regardless of whether you’re an Oscar-winning film director or a member of the general public, having your important domain names registered in the name of a third party instead of your name is inherently risky. If that third party fails to renew your domain name, as was the case here, it can be difficult or impossible for you to retrieve the domain name since, legally and technically, you are not the owner and never were.

The expired domain OliverStone.com eventually ended up in auction at a domain marketplace where, thanks to a tip from domain name investor and blogger Elliot Silver, I purchased it for about $1,500 USD on November 24, 2016, which coincidentally happened to be Thanksgiving Day in the United States. A few hours later, the domain was safely in my possession and I reinstated the original domain name servers, thereby bringing Mr. Stone’s Website back online.

I then contacted Oliver Stone directly to make arrangements to transfer ownership of the domain name back to him. The domain is now in Mr. Stone’s possession, and he reimbursed me for my $1,508 hard cost.

By now you may be wondering why I spent $1,500 to buy this domain name and return it to Oliver Stone.

Here’s the thing. I'm a lifelong film fanatic, a former film critic, and I worked as a producer and director in the film industry for many years. I've long admired Oliver Stone's work, especially his fearlessness at tackling controversial subjects. I didn't want this 19 year-old domain to fall into the wrong hands because Universal City Studios had failed to properly safeguard Mr. Stone’s domain. At best, Oliver Stone (or Universal) would have been forced to buy the domain name – yet again – off another domain speculator. At worst, the domain could have been held hostage for years and never returned to its rightful owner.

I also wanted to make sure Oliver Stone's Website was reinstated as quickly as possible so that his bold voice could continue to be heard the world over.

Happy Thanksgiving, Oliver.

P.S. Some of my favourite Oliver Stone films are Wall Street, Platoon, Natural Born Killers, JFK, and Born on the Fourth of July. His most recent film is Snowden, which I was privileged to see recently here in Canada. Snowden is arguably Stone's most important film because it bravely explores the controversial and timely story of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Sadly, this film was not picked up for US distribution by any of the major Hollywood studios, so I encourage you to seek it out. It deserves to reach a wider audience, especially in the United States.

I’m Heading to Collision to Discuss Startup Domain Name Challenges

I will be attending the Collision startup conference in Las Vegas May 4-7. According to conference organizers, over 10,000 people from around the world are expected to attend this downtown Las Vegas event devoted to the fusion of entrepreneurialism and technology.

To stimulate dialog about the many domain name challenges facing startups, my domain name consulting firm Name Ninja analyzed the domain names of 491 startups attending the upcoming conference.

Our analysis revealed that 79% of the startups at the Collision conference may be using a “risky” domain name that could play havoc with their marketing efforts. Choosing a hard-to-spell name that fails the “Radio Test” was the number one problem we uncovered, followed by not having the exact match .com domain.

Here’s a link to the official press release about the results of our analysis. We also published a handy infographic that summarizes the results and includes some startup domain name best practices, common mistakes to avoid, and other useful information.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I sympathize with the challenges that startup founders and other entrepreneurs face when it comes to acquiring the optimal domain name. For those on a tight budget, free tools like LeanDomainSearch.com and NameBot.com can help an entrepreneur come up with a name and matching .com domain name for their new venture.

Since I will be in Vegas attending the Collision conference, I am going to make myself available to any startup founder that wishes to discuss their domain name challenges. Startup founders that would like to book a complimentary in-person meeting with me can do so by emailing collision [at] nameninja.com.

See you in Vegas.

 

Believe It or Not, This is What I Do for a Living!

While attending the NamesCon domain name conference last month, I had the opportunity to sit down for one-on-one meetings with a variety of industry colleagues. Quite a few of them asked me what I was up to these days, and I realized that if my domain industry buddies don’t know what I am doing for a living, then folks outside of the industry definitely wouldn’t know.

So, with that in mind, here’s a brief summary of what I am doing work-wise. My main focus is running Name Ninja, and what we (yes, there’s a team of us) primarily do is help clients acquire a specific domain name they want that is already owned by another party. Technically, the term for the role that we play is Domain Buyer Broker, meaning we represent the buyer in the transaction. Our clients range from serial entrepreneurs to early-stage startups to marketing executives at larger companies. Acquisition budgets for the domains we get asked to acquire are all over the map, and sometimes have no logical correlation with the size of the company wanting to buy the domain – or fair market value! I will probably do another blog post about the harsh realities of startup and corporate domain acquisition budgets, but let’s just say that not every company wants to, or can afford to, spend five, six, or even seven figures on a domain name. Even some Fortune 500 companies balk at paying more than $1,000 to acquire a domain name, as crazy as that may sound. Naturally, I provide a lot of ‘reality checks’ to clients who are under the impression they can buy a one-word .com domain for a few thousand dollars. Sadly, it’s not 1995 anymore.

Although Name Ninja is based in Canada, the vast majority of our clients are in the US and Europe, although we are delighted to work with Canadian clients when the opportunity presents itself. Most of the domains we help clients acquire are one and two-word .com domains, but we’re TLD agnostic and will help clients acquire any domain in any extension they desire. In addition to lots of .com domains, we’ve helped clients acquire .net, .org, .TV, .co, .biz, .ca, .fr, plus a smattering of new TLD domains. Interestingly, it’s been a year since hundreds of new TLD domains have publicly launched and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times a client has expressed an interest in one of the new TLD domains. For them, and for now at least, .com is still king.

A common reaction I get from people when I tell them what I do for a living is that they are surprised to hear that someone, let alone a team of people, can make a viable living just focused on acquiring domain names for others. “Surely that’s not your full-time job,” they ask with a puzzled look on their face. Yup, it certainly is, and here’s why: There are thousands of startups, new businesses, and new products being launched every single day by entrepreneurs around the world, and most of these new companies are going to need a domain name at some point. Not surprisingly, in many cases these entrepreneurs’ first choice of domain name is owned by someone else. Some of these entrepreneurs realize they need help acquiring their ideal domain name, and that’s when they seek out the help of a domain name buyer brokerage like Name Ninja.

I love what I do, and nothing gives me more pleasure than seeing one of our clients get a domain name they’ve been wanting for months or even years. I should add here that not every domain acquisition we do for clients is a purchase from a third party. Sometimes we’re able to scoop up domains for clients during the expiry stage (here’s a great case study of one such project) and other times we’ve been even able to get domains donated to our clients.

One of the things I love about my job, even though most of the time it doesn’t feel like a “job”, is that every domain project is different and comes with its own set of challenges. No two projects are identical, and each is like a new puzzle waiting to be solved.

People often think that the hardest part of domain acquisition projects is the negotiation, but in my experience the hardest part of what we do is identifying and contacting the domain owner. We love it when we discover the domain is owned by a domainer, because most domainers want to be found and are interested in selling their domains. I wish the same could be said for some members of the general public, and don’t get me started about large corporations that are just sitting on some killer domains. Sometimes it’s really obvious who the owner is and it’s relatively easy to reach them, but other times it can take weeks or months of detective work to track down the real owner of a domain name and convince them to talk to us. We’ll go to just about any length – as long as it is legal and ethical – to find a domain name owner and get their attention, even if that has meant doing some pretty crazy things. Without wishing to give away any trade secrets, I can say that some of our projects have involved helium balloons, mint tea, and an undercover agent who speaks five languages.

I’ve also done a number of pro-bono assignments for individuals and companies whose domain names have been lost or stolen, and these projects are the most rewarding assignments of all.

So that’s what I do for a living, and I feel blessed that it’s something I really enjoy. Life is far too short to be doing work that you don’t find interesting or fulfilling. I am also deeply thankful to my Name Ninja team and amazing clients and industry partners for making my unusual “job” a wonderful reality.

Happy Birthday to Name Ninja!

It's been exactly one year since I launched Name Ninja. To celebrate this major milestone, we created the following infographic that reveals some of the data behind the company's first year of lethal domain name consulting. Check it out! (You can click on the graphic for a larger version.)

Thank you to our many clients, partners, and friends for an amazing 12 months.

Quitting My Dream Job Wasn't Such a Crazy Idea After All...

It's been nearly two months since I announced I was resigning from Tucows to launch my own boutique domain name consulting firm. A lot of my friends and colleagues have been asking me how it's going so I figured that was a good topic for a blog post.

First of all, I was overwhelmed by the support and encouragement I received from so many people. I was particularly touched by one business associate who told me that if I ever needed office space there would always be a desk for me at his downtown agency. Thank you to everyone who took the time to reach out.

I was also surprised to get calls and emails from people who said that my decision to head out on my own, and my reasons for doing so, was a real inspiration to them. To think that my personal decision would have a positive impact and ripple effect on other people really moves me.

From a business perspective, things have gotten off to a flying start. Within hours of announcing my decision to launch my own company I received several inquiries from potential clients (many of whom are now active clients) and I am still catching up on the various leads I've gotten since then. It was very gratifying to see that there was pent up demand for the kind of services I'm offering. My hunch was right.

One thing I wasn't expecting was the flood of people wanting me to help them sell their domain names. I had not planned to offer any services in this regard but based on the volume of requests I have been getting for that I am working on a few solutions. This was a key topic of conversation I had with my domain industry colleagues at the TRAFFIC conference in Vegas earlier this month. Between us I believe we've come up with some good ideas.

I will say that the first week after leaving Tucows was surreal. After five and a half years of intense focus on the business unit I ran – the longest consecutive period I have ever worked anywhere – it took some time adjusting to not having all that activity and a team around me. On the other hand I love the fact I can really focus on a few key things now instead of juggling hundreds.

Another surprising thing, to me at least, is that I'm not stressed. I am by nature a bit of a worrywart yet I've been generally calm and collected this whole time period. Everything seems to be falling into place nicely and I'm leaving room for new opportunities to present themselves, and they have.  I think there's a lesson here about trusting your gut.

I've really been enjoying the projects I've been working on. So far most of the work has been helping startups and entrepreneurs acquire their dream domain name, although I've also been doing some consulting around the secondary market and domain sales. It's very tangible, meaningful work and I'm relishing every second of it. I am blessed to have a great bunch of clients.

The startup community has really embraced my service offering and I'm having a ball attending various startup events and networking with these passionate entrepreneurs and the VCs that are funding them. Luckily for me Toronto, where I am based, is going through another startup boom. I find the energy and unpretentiousness of this crowd really invigorating.

So, in a nutshell, everything's going well and I have no regrets. I do miss my Tucows posse but we are staying in touch and I stopped by the old office last week to say hi.

Speaking of staying in touch, I quietly launched an email newsletter a month ago. If you'd like to receive the occasional update from me, you can subscribe to my email newsletter here.

Onwards and upwards!

My New Domain Name Consulting Firm, Name Ninja, Launches Today

I'm excited to announce that today I unveiled Name Ninja, my "lethal" new domain name consulting firm. This is the first domain name venture I have launched since leaving my dream job at Tucows last month.

I'm the firm's President & Lead Ninja, and our tagline is "lethal domain name consulting."

Name Ninja is a boutique domain name consulting firm that helps companies acquire, manage, protect, and profit from their domain names.

Name Ninja offers a suite of domain name consulting services to three types of clients: startups, entrepreneurs and marketers; individual and corporate domain name owners; and new gTLD registries and operators. Based in Toronto but serving clients around the world, the firm will focus on domain name acquisition (buyer broker), domain name rescue, domain name protection, corporate domain name strategy, and domain name portfolio management. Name Ninja will also assist new gTLD registries and operators with distribution, marketing, and secondary market services.

With the massive expansion of the Internet namespace due to the upcoming rollout of hundreds of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs), the global demand for expert domain name advice and strategy is going to explode. Name Ninja intends to help meet that demand.

I'm looking forward to collaborating with my global network of domain industry colleagues and partners to service the domain name needs of Name Ninja’s clients. I hope to see many of you at next week’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domain name conference in Las Vegas.

For more information about Name Ninja, head on over to nameninja.com.

I'd like to thank everyone that has helped make today's launch a reality, especially my amazing and supportive wife, my business advisors and mentors, my close friends, and my creative collaborators (Renald and Andrew).

Get lethal. Go Ninja.

My Cannes Moment: Why I’m Leaving My Dream Job at Tucows

It’s official. Next Friday, April 26, is my last day at Tucows.

That’s the what, and it’s pretty straightforward. Perhaps you already knew.

The why? Well, that is more complicated. It relates to something I experienced over two decades ago…

The year is 1989, and I'm a twenty-something film school graduate working in the independent film scene in Toronto. I'm privileged to be working as the Production Coordinator on up-and-coming director Atom Egoyan’s first 35mm feature film, Speaking Parts. As the project nears completion, we receive some fantastic news: Atom’s film has been invited to have its world premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

 

 

This is a huge deal if you are a filmmaker since the “Festival de Cannes” is the most important film festival and film launching pad in the world. To have your film invited to Cannes means the film and its cast and crew will literally be on the world stage.

My colleagues invite me to tag along with them to the festival, and I give the idea some serious consideration. After all, how often does one get such an opportunity? But because I'm unsure of whether it will lead to work for me, and because I am nervous about spending money on a flight and hotel without having a guaranteed outcome, I decide to turn down the invitation.

I have regretted that decision ever since.

Although I'm not one of those people that live in the past, I sometimes remind myself of my Cannes decision. Rather than beat myself up about it, I use it constructively to remind me that when life presents unique opportunities to you, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, you should recognize and seize those opportunities even if there is some risk or uncertainty.

I have told my nieces and nephews my Cannes story because I want them to understand that life is short and you should try to recognize those magical opportunities and “go for it” while you still can.

Twenty-four years later, I'm working as Vice President of the Tucows Domain Portfolio and loving every minute of it. It's my dream job: I’m at an innovative company doing cool new things, business is great, and I'm working with some of the brightest and nicest people I have ever known.

But there are some big changes coming to the Internet.

Starting this fall, the first of hundreds of new gTLDs (new domain extensions beyond .com like .web, .shop, and .film) will become available. This is the single largest expansion of the domain name space in the history of the Internet. Because of this, hundreds of millions of dollars are being poured into the domain name industry and new domain companies and opportunities are emerging every day. Over the next five years you are going to be hearing a lot more about domain names, especially when the marketing blitz for these new gTLDs begins. (Here’s a tip for my friends in marketing: start brushing up on your domain name knowledge right away, a lot of these new gTLD companies are going to need your help!)

On top of this is the reality that over the next decade hundreds of millions of people from Africa and Asia will be going online for the very first time. The global online population is set to explode, and along with it the need for domain names – and expertise about domain names.

I’ve had a ball working at Tucows the last five-and-a-half years, and I'm enormously grateful to the company (especially Ken Schafer, Elliot Noss, and my amazing Canadian and US teams) for giving me the opportunity. I’ve never worked at any place this long, and if I could clone myself I’d stick around Tucows forever. It’s that great a place.

But as I look at the changes coming to the domain name space, an area I have been oddly obsessed with since registering my first domain name in 1994, I realize the time has come for me to perform another “career reboot”.

Over the last few years I've discovered that what I really love doing, more than anything else, is helping people and companies with their domain name challenges. More specifically, I love domain name consulting, especially working with startups, entrepreneurs, and marketers to find and buy their ideal domain name. So, after much reflection and soul-searching, I’ve decided to leave Tucows to do domain consulting and domain buyer broker work full-time under my own new brand.

Yup, I’m going to be launching a boutique domain name consulting firm later this quarter.

At this point in my life and career, this change feels like the right thing to do, even if it is scary at times and even if there are no guarantees of success. This is my dream, and I'm going to pursue it wherever it takes me.

Unlike my Cannes decision, I don't want to regret not having given this opportunity a shot. I don't want to be sitting somewhere in a few years, all bitter and resentful because I didn’t at least try to make my domain name dream a reality.

Let the adventure begin…

 

P.S. Stay tuned for future announcements and details about my new domain consulting firm, including its name. Until then, you can phone me at 416-203-7033, connect with me on LinkedIn, or follow me on Twitter. And if you’re planning to attend the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Las Vegas in late May, let me know. It would be great to connect in person.

The Symmetry of the Force: The Personal Story Behind the Donation of DarthVader.com to Lucasfilm

Today’s a special day for me because it represents an important aspect of my life coming full circle.

In May of 1977, as a young boy, I went to the local cinema and saw a film that changed my life.

That film was Star Wars.

Star Wars changed my life because it was the first film that got me really hooked on the behind-the-scenes art and science of filmmaking. I was captivated by the sights and sounds of this unique story, and I wanted to understand how George Lucas and his team of talented craftspeople brought his vision to the silver screen. I sought out and read everything I could on the subject. I became so fascinated by filmmaking, in fact, that after graduating from high school I enrolled in a four-year filmmaking degree program at university. I subsequently spent the first ten years of my professional life working in the film and television industry.

But along came “interactive multimedia” and I got hooked on the “new media” of interactive Laserdiscs, CD-ROMs, Bulletin Board Systems, and a new-fangled thing known as the Internet.

Fast forward to 2012, and it’s been two decades that I’ve been working in the interactive and online space, with a major emphasis the last five years on domain names.

A few months ago I was browsing a list of expired domain names from the Tucows domain name expiry stream when one name leaped out at me:

    darthvader.com

At first I thought it must be a typo or something. Surely, I thought, there’s no way the valuable domain name DarthVader.com could have expired? But, sure enough, upon further investigation, I was able to confirm that the owner of this domain name had indeed abandoned it. So, in my role as the Vice President of the Tucows Domain Portfolio, I let the domain go through the standard expiration period. Then I renewed it and held it for the entire redemption period, giving the former owner every chance to renew and reinstate the domain name.

When it became obvious that the former owner had officially abandoned the domain name, I reached out to the interactive media folks at Lucasfilm and offered to donate the DarthVader.com domain name to them. You can read the rest of the story in the official (albeit slightly wacky) Tucows press release about the donation of DarthVader.com to Lucasfilm.

For me, this is not only a fantastic “good news” story, since a charitable effort that is near and dear to my heart will now get some much needed support, but this also represents perfect symmetry for me. After 35 years, I was able to finally connect my current passion for domain names with my age-old passion for filmmaking and the one film that got me hooked in the first place.

Thank you to George Lucas for creating Star Wars, and thank you to Tucows for agreeing to this donation.

May the force be with you.

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.

I Have Some Explaining to Do.

Wow.

It's been a long time since I posted something on my blog, especially given the fact that for a couple of years I had gotten into the habit of blogging weekly. The truth of the matter is that my absence wasn't because I forgot about my blog, or had no interest in blogging. Blogging, as much as it pains me to admit this, got de-prioritized in my personal and professional life during the last eight months. Every week I'd want to post something, but I had trouble finding (or making) the time, and I didn't want to push myself too hard or stress myself about it because that wouldn't be healthy. Yet, every week, there'd be the same nagging voice in my head giving me grief for not blogging, again.

Looking back on the last eight months, now that life has settled down a bit, I am starting to see that it was a "perfect storm" of too many things, bad and good, that consumed the energy I would have normally had for blogging. The good news is that this storm (especially the bad stuff) has passed.

It may sound like I am making excuses, and maybe I am, but life is about making choices, and for a while I chose to focus on other things. What were those other things? On the personal front, there were three deaths in my inner circle (all people my age), which were three too many in my book, but there were also three weddings, a new niece, and some amazing trips. On the professional front, the business I run has grown by leaps and bounds, but it was crazy busy for a while. I've now put systems and people in place to make things less pressurized. Don't get me wrong; I love my job, I have a great team, and I am excited about all the new things we are working on.

I've decided to stop nagging myself about blogging, to stop pressuring myself to stick to a specific (and arbitrary) schedule, and just post when and if I feel like it. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm also not going to be so rigid about writing solely about Internet marketing or domain names. On some occasions, and starting with my next post, I may share professional and even personal observations and experiences that are of significance to me and, with any luck, of value to you.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. It's good to be back.