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The Bottom Line

Thursday, June 24th, 2010
The Bottom Line

I will turn 43 years old in August. I now have the gray hair, receding hairline and sports injuries to prove it.  Along with the bad stuff comes also the good stuff: wisdom, accountability, reputation, and enduring friendships.  Whether you call it Karma, win-win, or what-goes-around-comes-around, I have learned that it pays to be nice.

Ebay is an interesting case study
To an extent, empowering a generation of internet entrepreneurs is what drives me. When I look at how many people make a living selling on eBay, I think to myself “how cool is that!”. This was a company that started as a hobby and blossomed into a massive global enterprise that created an enormous network of entrepreneurs, the vast majority of which are engaging in legitimate transactions.  The company built an entire business model around personal accountability and reputation. If you are a reputable seller, you get more business and with less transactional friction. It pays to be nice.

At Epik, our goal is to empower thousands of entrepreneurs to become financially independent through domain development.  However, beyond helping people to make money, I am intrigued by the idea of creating a community of like-minded individuals who also want to be part of something bigger — something that can actually make the Internet work better.  The folks who I think share this vision of the future are what I call “Friends of Epik” or FOE. When I first started using the term, even I thought it seemed a little corny. However, it fit the spirit of what we are doing. After all, life is too short not to have friends.

friends

The FOE Letter
Part of making the “Friends of Epik” scalable has been a Friends of Epik letter, or FOE Letter.  This letter is in the form of an email update that I write personally. I send it out a few times a week, often at night. In this letter, I share details about what we are working on, what is working, and also what is not working. I also publish the list of domain names that Epik acquired recently and which we make available on buyer-friendly terms.

Beyond communicating transparently, we try to proactively seek the win-win even if it is not “profit-optimizing” in the short term. A few random examples:

  • Earlier today, Friend of Epik, Mike Ray, part of the prolific Albuquerque Epik mafia, bought the domain name stainlesssteeltable.com from Epik. He paid $249 for the domain with a product portal. The Estibot appraisal here is $9,000.  The name was a drop-catch for Epik and so it was easy to find the win-win here.
  • A number of folks have bought names from us that for whatever reason have been sandboxed by Google or otherwise underperform.  In good faith, we  do further work on the site. If we still can’t get it right, we’ll buy the name back for what the client has into it, or offer a comparable name in trade.
  • A lot of folks in this industry are what I call “Long on Domains. Short on cash”.   In these cases, we have accepted domain names in trade for developing their sites.  We have done many of these deals. It is always a win-win and gets folks who were losing money on renewals once again cash-flowing from their developed sites.
  • We pay out on the 20th of the month whereas our affiliates usually pay us at closer to day 60 or later.  Is there a risk that we get some charge-backs from our affiliates? Sure. Does our CFO like this practice? Not really.  We do it because it is the right thing to do. We do it because it rewards our partners’ success in a timely manner.
  • Occasionally we will miss our deadlines for delivering a developed website, e.g. because of a technical issue or because something slips through the cracks.  If we screw up, we’ll take the hit. For example, we will offer to develop an additional domain for free, do some free SEO work,  provide supplemental content, etc.

This may seem a little novel but clearly it is not. If you have shopped at Nordstrom, Costco or LL Bean, you get it.  These companies make an inherent assumption that people are not evil.  In other words, in business, as in life, you can usually turn the other cheek. I find that 9 times out of 10, it will work out in the long run.  This is not a license to be asleep in the switch or to be a sucker. Rather it is a starting point for how I approach any new acquaintance.  Trust but verify.

Being a Friend has been a win-win
What has Epik gained in return for being a Friend? Lots.

  • People are building their entrepreneurial ventures on our platform.
  • People tell us when we are screwing up and give us advice on how we can be more successful.
  • People bring us deal flow and refer new business.
  • People trust us with their money, usually paying in advance for development.
  • People offer to come work for us, with us, or be acquired by us.

I could go on. I think the point is clear. It pays to be a Friend.


So…
Thanks for reading and thanks for being a Friend.

The Bottom Line

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Posted in Domain Development, Epik Corporate, Life, Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

Show me the money

Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Show me the money

When we launched Product Portals,  we did so with a model of a 50/50 revenue share.   However, with sites like IceCreamMaker.com racking up $1,200 in monthly net, and Epik-developer Kenny Hartog now operating more than 500 Epik-powered sites, the monthly revenues quickly become material. It is time for Epik to up the ante.

Introducing increased revenue shares for Product Portals
When we started building portals, the idea of 50/50 revenue share made sense to us. We figured most folks would do as we do and want to re-invest what they earn.  What we discovered is that different network partners have different objectives in terms of allocation of operating cash flow.

Many Epik network partners are very clear in their objective in terms of monthly operating cash flow. For example, a number of independent portfolio managers are looking for $10,000 in monthly cash flow. The sooner they get there, the sooner they quit their day job. Makes sense to me.

With the new revenue-share model, the more your portfolio makes, the more you keep.  It is all out there — 100% transparent.  Here is what it looks like:

Monthly net
($)
 Rev-share
(%)		 Payout
($)
1,000 50% 500
2,500 55% 1,375
5,000 60% 3,000
7,500 65% 4,875
10,000 70% 7,000
15,000 73% 10,950
20,000 77% 15,400
25,000 80% 20,000


Introducing 100% Revenue Share Minisites
In addition to improving payouts on Product Portals, we have also been taking a close look at our Minisite offering.  For sophisticated developers who are doing things like traffic arbitrage, the economics of revenue share can become material in the planning on where and how to build.  Minisites that Epik produces now have the option of using the owner’s own native ad feed or Adsense Publisher ID in order to capture 100% of the advertising revenue.

If you were looking for a good reason to come build with Epik. Here are two more reasons!

Show me the money

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Posted in DevRich, Domain Auctions, Domain Development, Product portals, Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

Domain Greenhousing

Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Domain Greenhousing

In a previous post, I compared domain development to farming.  Even baseball uses the term “farm team” to describe the place where you incubate up and comers. While the idea of “domain farming” is certainly not unique, Epik’s execution of the domain farming metaphor is definitely unique.  A key component of the domain farming process is the initial steps that turn into a viable website — a step I call  Domain Greenhousing.

Planting in June — better late than never
Well, the rain finally stopped in Seattle after record rainfall for the past month.  We live on a small lake and I have never seen the lake level so high in June.  This weekend my daughter, 6 year-old Kamryn, and I planted the garden.  Although my wife, Jill, and I have 5 kids, Kamryn is the only one that actually enjoys puttering around the garden with Dad. For the rest, an invitation from Dad to spend time in the garden is not high on the list of the kids’ favorite things to do.  As a result, it is pretty much Dad that is working the “back 40″.  Fortunately, I really enjoy it and now I finally have an enthusiastic sidekick who enjoys it too.

Planting in June is of course  late. The trouble is that in Seattle the growing season is short which means planting outdoor from seed is not really an option — particularly this year with an extended rainy season. Seedlings are the way to go. Propagating a new seedling from seed, cutting, or tuber, is easy to do if you know how to do it. In college, my Freshman dorm room at Cornell was a total greenhouse.  College roommate, Joe Forkey, was remarkably tolerant of the green thumb. Mid-way through Freshman year, he realized  that (1) I wasn’t growing any cannabis — not that the RA would have had a problem with that, and (2) trading plant cuttings was a pretty effective way to meet girls!

Domain Greenhousing
Those young plants that you get from your local home improvement store or nursery of course from greenhouses.  The greenhouse has a pretty good business model and the margins are high enough to compensate both the greenhouse operator, the retailer, and everyone else in between.  The tomato plant for $4.95 came from a seed that cost less than a penny.  The fruit-bearing strawberry plant for $7.95 came from a runner or root that cost perhaps $0.05. Add the cost of grow lights, soil, water, fertilizer, containers, and physical transport and the field-ready seedling is still under $1.

greenhouse-farming

In other words, greenhousing is a win-win for consumer and greenhouse operator.  The consumer pays more for a viable plant and still gets to reap the harvest.  The greenhouse operator got paid a margin for selecting viable seeds, propagating them, and getting the plants ready for planting in the open field.  The same model can apply to domaining.  A domain greenhouser can select viable domains, bring them to life following something like the following process:

  • Select the seed: Every day, some 60,000 to 80,000 domains are dropped.  Epik acquires 10-50 names per day on the drop.  We even built a free tool for screening for dropping names for a number of criteria.  Try it here: http://domains.epik.com
  • Propagate the seed: Every week, Epik produces 200-250 custom websites. Last week alone we produced 190 custom product portals.  This is a tedious task for which we have developed an elaborate supply chain that extends to 4 continents in order to build beautiful sites at an unbeatable price.
  • Plant the seedling:  When a site is released to production, we are catering to many different audiences, not the least of which is the search engines whose algorithms and human reviewers determine where the site ranks.  There are no sustainable short-cuts.
  • Fertilize and water the seedling: Once the site is live, add content, backlinks, social bookmarks and provide responsive customer service.

The greenhousing metaphor may not work for everyone, but it makes sense to me.  Over time, we bring these young sites to market.  Though still a work in progress, you can see a preview of the site marketplace here: http://stores.epik.com/

Think of DevRich.com as a greenhouser
As blogged previously, Epik recently acquired DevRich.com — not to be confused with DevHub.com, a company that I backed as an angel investor and continue to serve as Director on the board.   DevRich builds out sites on a turn-key basis whereas DevHub gives you a tool so you can build sites yourself.  Both are useful but they serve different needs.  DevRich goes from seed to thriving plant.  The pricing for custom site production is unbeatable:

devrich-pricing

Luke Webster, President of DevRich, is getting the job done.  I have seen first-hand that  DevRich custom sites work. The sites get indexed and ranked. Domain owners keep 100% of operating revenue using their own Adsense accounts. In other words, with DevRich, there is 100% transparent reporting and pay-out of all revenues even though DevRich is operating the sites.

Breathing life into a new domain is a skill. Sure, you can learn it yourself, but the infrastructure for doing it with scale would be expensive to develop and operate.  One of the main reasons for acquiring DevRich was a recognition that many domainer owners would greatly benefit from a managed greenhouse solution. A greenhouse operator like DevRich plugs that development gap very nicely.

seedling
Transplanting the Seedlings
Once a site begins to take root in terms of organic traffic and monetization, it is time to look at the long-term growth strategy for the site.  This is where the rest of Epik’s platform capabilities come into play.  While most domain portfolio owners cannot custom develop their entire portfolio, the DevRich platform is an ideal solution for bulk development of custom sites.  The concept and vision for the grown site is already identified at the seed stage. So, when the site becomes viable, the path for growth is already mapped out as opposed to being an after-thought.

Last but not least, one exciting feature of the DevRich-Epik integration is that Epik will credit 100% of any DevRich-related cost towards further development on Epik.   In other words, the domain owner who spends $19.95 to build a DevRich site and $4.95 in monthly site hosting gets 100% of that development and hosting cost applied to any future custom development even though the domain owner banks 100% of the revenue directly into their own Adsense account.  It makes for a pretty easy decision if you ask me.

Come farm with us.  For more information about building on DevRich, contact Luke Webster — luke – at- devrich.com.

Domain Greenhousing

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Posted in DevRich, Domain Development, Life, Product portals, Publishing, Uncategorized | 19 Comments »

Epik acquires DevRich.com — Luke Webster joins Epik as SVP Operations

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010
Epik acquires DevRich.com — Luke Webster joins Epik as SVP Operations

I am pleased to announce the completed acquisition of DevRich.com — an innovator in the area of mass domain name development.  As part of the transaction, Luke Webster, President of DevRich will also become SVP Operations of Epik.  Luke will continue as President of DevRich, which will operate as a division of Epik.

devrich_banner

Automated website generation is not a sustainable practice
One of the things that we have learned at Epik over the last year is that automated website generation does not work over the long term.  The search engines are simply too smart and ultimately clients get what they paid for — not much. If you, or your vendor, produce a large number of sites without the benefit of human editing or original content, your sites will eventually be banned by the search engines.  In other words, the robo-content model does not scale and inevitably becomes a victim of its own (short-lived) success.

Another major challenge for the traditional providers of low-end content services is that there is usually no “migration path” beyond the “starter site”. If the site starts to get indexed and ranked, then what?  If the content is weak, the bounce rate will be 80+%, and the “online debut” will fail.  When a site starts to get ranked on a term with search volume, the site owner has a finite window — measured in days or weeks — to deliver a more compelling user experience.  To do that, there has to be an integrated plan for moving beyond the starter site once the site gets traction. That is the missing link for anyone operating a network of “farm sites”.

What about Custom sites?  Custom Product Portals, Minisites, and Directory Portals do work — done properly, they often work very well in fact.   However, they are not free. For example, at Epik, there is a $249 setup fee for a custom product portal like IceCreamMaker.com. There is a $999 setup fee for a Directory portal like Dining.com. This is the one-time cost to get a custom site designed, launched and ranked.  The investment is entirely justified but it is not for every domainer or for every domain.

What did Epik accomplish by acquiring DevRich?
First and foremost, we added a talent team, led by Luke Webster.  Epik is well known for responsive customer service. As the Epik business has grown, my personal capacity to be “traffic cop” on new projects will eventually hit a limit.  Luke is a strong candidate to run “air traffic control” for Epik, working closely with other team members like John Lawler who has done a tremendous job producing 100 custom product portals each week. DevRich also brings a call center operation that will play a key role not only in providing expanded inbound customer service for Epik, but also allows us to introduce inbound call processing for sites that are hosted by Epik.

Second, we added competency in the area of building out original sites on WordPress.  This fits with our own growing capability to use and extend WordPress as a content management system for site development.  Chathura Bandara, who leads the offshore team in Sri Lanka, will now report to Luke. For clients, this means onshore account management can be combined with the superior cost structure of a technology-enabled workflow that uses offshore fulfillment where it makes sense.

Third, we added project management capacity for expanded production of custom Minisites.   Sample sites being worked on this week, include Sushi-Menu.com, New-Homes.com, and Rental-cars.com.  In addition to using commercial WordPress modules, these Minisites are being equipped to adopt unifying components from the Epik platform such as Identity.net, Comments.com, Questions.com, as our next-generation Directory framework.


Why this deal made sense
With DevRich, a customer can efficiently take 100 domains out and see what hunts.    The track record for DevRich has been consistent and the customers who have embraced it are pleased with the result. While this is not a substitute for comprehensive development, it is a scalable and cost-effective place to start.   Here are some representative examples of what DevRich produces for its lowest cost solution:

legalaidattorneys.com
appeallawyers.org
dclawyer.net
hydrogencup.com
seejamaica.info
hhoelectricgenerator.com
denverlaborattorneys.com
bl.com
3gPhones.com
wannalead.com

From the above list, the site 3GPhones.com is a good example of one that should be built out since the potential is large due to the high number of related searches.

Getting Started with DevRich.com and Epik
If you have a portfolio of names that you want to develop, the easiest first step is to send us your portfolio. You can send it rob -at- epik.com or luke -at- DevRich.com.   At no cost to you, we’ll review the portfolio and recommend a capital efficient strategy for developing the portfolio.

Epik acquires DevRich.com — Luke Webster joins Epik as SVP Operations

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Posted in DevRich, Domain Development, Domain Names, Minisite, Uncategorized | 8 Comments »

Bob Parsons: Tear Down Your Privacy Wall

Sunday, May 16th, 2010
Bob Parsons: Tear Down Your Privacy Wall

I first began using Domains By Proxy from Godaddy in 2009 after the strong encouragement from Epik’s Account Representative at Godaddy.   In most cases, the product was free, and otherwise near-free at $0.25 per year. For anyone considering Domains By Proxy, I would advise you to steer far clear of it.

Chronology of a raw deal
When I first began using the Domains By Proxy (DBP) product in May 2009, the cost was effectively zero, and the business logic of holding some names via proxy made enough sense that the consequence of trying it was tame enough.  The account representative in Executive Accounts also assured me that it could be removed at any time.

On June 21, 2009 , I asked for privacy to be removed on all of Epik’s domain names.  It never got done.  Multiple reminders later, I was told Domains By Proxy had been completely removed from our domains. Come to find out on March 1, 2010 that only half of the proxies were removed.  We now have a slew of domains  up for renewal which are protected by DBP — and it is no longer free. Moreover, DBP will assess fees for processing written correspondence sent to the DBP mailing address.

Now the only way we can remove Domains by Proxy is to go through a tedious manual process to remove Domains By Proxy. Across thousands of domains, that is just not an option. Godaddy management knows this full well. According to the Godaddy sales representative, the company deliberately removed the feature for bulk removal of the Privacy product. Are you kidding me?

Moreover, if we remove the Privacy, we also reset a 60-day registrar-lock, making it as inconvenient as possible to transfer a name out before the name either expires or has to be renewed. On multiple occasions, names that would have been transferred out to new owners at other registars were renewed due to some combination of registrar lock or wanting to avoid navigating the Domains By Proxy maze.


Pick your poison: Free Crack or Roach Motel
There is not much debate that Godaddy’s marketing practices are brilliant.  They routinely push the envelope for acceptability. The main envelope pushed to date has been one of sexual innuendo.  Domains By Proxy goes too far in making it even more difficult to transfer domains out of Godaddy while racking up additional fees for a service of questionable utility.

Now, I am an avid student of marketing models.  I have two theories on the marketing model that Godaddy was seeking to emulate when they developed the go-to-market strategy for Domains By Proxy.

Free Crack

The Roach Motel:  You can Check in but you can’t Check out!

Godaddy’s unofficial workaround for getting rid of Domains By Proxy
Meanwhile, on this past Friday, the Account Representative in Executive Accounts suggested a work-around.  Here are the steps:

1. Create a new Godaddy account.

2. Push thousands of names into the new account — but be careful to leave the WHOIS details the same as this will reset the registrar lock.

3. Call him back to “Merge the accounts”. It may take a day or two.

I should do these steps because Godaddy deliberately removed a feature that makes it practical to remove Domains by Proxy from thousands of domains without having to manually do this one step at a time ?

Bob Parsons: Are you kidding me? Take down your Privacy Wall!


Bob Parsons: Tear Down Your Privacy Wall

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Posted in Uncategorized | 20 Comments »

Breaking news – Slots.com goes for $5.5 million

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Breaking news – Slots.com goes for $5.5 million

It has been confirmed from two authoritative sources that Moniker sold Slots.com for $5.5 million.  If this does pan out, it will set up a big week for Moniker auctions.  Epik also has WiFi.com, Karate.com, HardDrives.com and Hobbies.com as premium “domains with assets” in this auction.  Congratulations to Buyer, Seller and Broker.

Breaking news – Slots.com goes for $5.5 million

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »

Are we having fun yet?

Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Are we having fun yet?

The volatility in the financial markets today was breathtaking.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average came within a few points of triggering the 1000 point circuit breaker before snapping back.  Within a few minutes of trading, fortunes were made and lost. I expect we’ll eventually find out who was on what side of which trade. Then again, we may not.

Today’s financial market movement hurt people
ZeroHedge covers the day’s events here.

My personal theory is that this was a designed program trade designed to wipe out a bunch of people.  Among the victims was anyone with large short portions on Apple (AAPL) or long positions on Accenture (ACN).   Apple allegedly traded at $100,000 per share today — it closed at $246.

aapl

Accenture allegedly traded at $0.01 — it closed at $41.09.

acn

At one point even P&G’s stock was down more than 30% intra-day. That is ridiculous. P&G is a buy-and-hold, amply liquid, and classically defensive stock. It got roller-coastered today.

In a casino, you at least know the theoretical odds. If there is unrestricted rogue program trading, and you happen to have a stop-loss, you get stopped out at some nonsense price point.  Ironically, today was a day, that it paid NOT to be wearing a seatbelt! Are you kidding me?  This is getting positively surreal.

Personally, I own no equities other than the equity in privately held companies where I know the management team. The public equity exchanges have become a turkey shoot for program traders.  When even quality companies like P&G can be flogged, things have clearly gotten out of hand.

As I posited on April 28,  the VIX volatility index was artificially low.  Here is what happened over the last 10 days:

vix-chart-p10D

Share volume exploded today
And in case you did not notice, the volume of shares traded today was enormous.  Total shares traded on the US exchanges was more than 18 billion shares.  That’s a lot of trading. For calibration, the day Lehman imploded way back in 2008 was around 19 billion shares traded. Here is an interesting chart for NYSE volume: http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3047-nyse_volume.html . The NYSE traded 11.8 billion shares today. The previous RECORD was 11.1 billion shares. A normal day is like 4-6 billion shares.  Go figure.

Own something real — like domain names!
Elsewhere in today’s enormous trading day, gold has been rocketing higher — making all time highs in Euros, and approaching all-time highs in USD.  To be clear, I am not a gold-bug. However, I believe that investors are looking for something real that can be owned and traded as medium of exchange and as a basis for wealth preservation. Physical land is hard to take with you and there are plenty of risk factors that can change the value of physical land — just ask homeowners in Las Vegas, or beachfront property owners on the Gulf coast.

Are we having fun yet?

Posted in Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Seasonal Minisites – The e-File.com case study

Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Seasonal Minisites – The e-File.com case study

Seasonal websites are a tricky thing. They can be lucrative niches if executed well, e.g. Halloween sites, Mothers Day sites, Christmas sites, etc.  Seasonal websites usually correlate to what I call “Episodic purchases” –usually made by first-time customers who are looking for a quick solution to their issue.  E-File.com is one example of a seasonal Minsite that we operate.

The History of e-File.com
Ed Stolarz brought us the domain e-File.com. We originally thought it should be auctioned or sold to someone in the tax preparation business. We still think that. We made a focused effort to sell the site to some of the logical end-buyers but could not get the 6 figure price tag that we thought was entirely warranted.  So, in February we quickly set up a Minisite with which to monetize the site for 2010 while also laying groundwork for building a more significant site.

The site went live right around February 1.  It was authored in DevHub.com — a company with which Epik has close ties.  The DevHub solution offers integrated directory services which was helpful for quickly incorporating a directory of local tax advisors.  Chathura, who leads our Sri Lanka based production center produced the site.  Sri Lanka is where we produce 10-30 Minisites per week, mostly for our own portfolio but increasingly for clients like Ed.


How did it do?
As expected, the traffic spiked around April 14 — the day before the tax day deadline. Here is the report from Google Analytics.

efile

The full Google Analytics file is available here for anyone who wants to study it:  Analytics-EFILE

The revenue sources skewed towards LinkShare which was added shortly after the initial launch. You can see the relative split here for February-April period:

  • Revenue from linkshare = $2,347.04
  • Revenue from Adsense = $1,442.10

Ed was pleased with the 2 month result as this was far better than what he was doing prior to the Minisite development.   It also provided real data with which to justify the 6-figure price tag that we think this site warrants to a strategic buyer.

What’s next for e-File.com?
A formal auction for the e-File.com domain is probably the right next step.  If there is a specialist for selling finance/tax sites, we are interested in having this name shopped to the right buyers.   OilPrices.com is another Epik-powered site that is a good candidate for a similar process.

If we don’t sell the domain by summer time, e-File.com will be ready to go to the next level in time for the October 2010 filing deadline for extension filers. This will be a warmup for the 2011 tax reporting season.

The two main improvements areas are:

  • Improved ranking in search engines: The e-file.com site is competitively ranked in Bing and Yahoo but not Google.  The reason seems pretty clear, and that is the relatively lack of original and fresh content. For starters, that can be fixed with editorial work, article sourcing/syndication, and a relevant news feed.
  • Integrated Directory Services: The directory feed we are using here is one from SuperPages. It does not monetize all that well, and there is no way for a service provider to pay to get listed.  Our forthcoming directory platform — TelephoneBook.com — will remedy this situation. And that is a subject of a future post!



Seasonal Minisites – The e-File.com case study

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Posted in Domain Development, Domain Names, Minisite, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Domain Farming: Three examples of creative domain development deals

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Domain Farming: Three examples of creative domain development deals

In my recent discussions with domainers from around the world, there are a few recurring patterns. One of the patterns is that many domainers are “long on domains and short on cash”.  This creates a challenge for domainers with large portfolios who cannot possibly fund development of all of their development-worthy domains. In times like this, it pays to think like a farmer.

I was supposed to be a farmer
My maternal grandfather — Klaas Kornelius Meijer — was an important person to me growing up.  “Meijer” as they called him in the Northern Dutch town of Kommerzijl was a quality guy by any standard.  Meijer was a farmer. And as you can see below from the family photo archive, I was supposed to carry on the tradition.

klompen
Although I did not end up taking over the family farm, I did learn a lot about farming, spending most summers as a kid working on my grandfather’s farm.  I even studied Agricultural Economics as I tried to reconcile the family expectation to become a farmer, and a personal bias towards entrepreneurship and business.

So what does farming have to do with Domaining?
Farming of cash crops is not all that different than raising young domains. If you think about it, Acquire, Develop, Operate, Sell is a near cousin of the farming equivalent of Prepare, Plant, Fertilize and Harvest.  This is a gross oversimplification of farming but there is a method to growing things with scale, and that includes websites.  As with farming, it can be learned.  However, most domainers are still merchants — they can buy and sell, but most have little interest in cultivating.

Although I have no idea whether farmers are good candidates to become domainers, I do think there are a few traits that make them suitable to the role, particularly now that the technology is no longer the hardest part. Legend has it that one of the industry’s most successful domainers, Scott Day of Digimedia, was a watermelon farmer before becoming a full-time domainer.  Scott assembled a great portfolio, and has methodically gone about adding value to his domains.

As with farming, one can’t be an expert at growing everything.  Yet, domainers will collect all manner of domains that have little to do with one another, and perhaps even less to do with one’s personal core competencies.  Right now, Epik is very good at developing Product Portals.   I believe we will soon be very good at developing video portals, directory portals and geo portals.  We are not good at adult, gambling or music.  We have aspirations to become good at travel portals and biography sites.

Ruilverkaveling
This is a fancy Dutch word for a practice that farmers did to exchange land with each other in order to assemble larger contiguous parcels of land.   This was needed particularly once farming became industrialized. Farmers needed less physical labor because they invested more heavily in equipment. However, in order for the equipment to make economic sense, they needed to work larger contiguous and symmetrical parcels of land.

ruilverkavelingSo farmers would swap land — sometimes with government “encouragement”.   Through this process, landowners got continuous parcels and became more efficient in their ability to work the land with large pieces of equipment that did not need to go onto the public roads in order to get from parcel to parcel.  Aside from the short-term gnashing of teeth by individual farmers, it usually worked out for everyone because productivity went up. And when it came time to sell their land, the farmers usually found that the assembled parcels were worth more.

It worked for farmers — Domainers can do this too
One of the big challenges the Domaining profession faces is that large number of non-contiguous domains are owned by domainers that don’t know each other. This creates a challenge for anyone trying to assemble related portfolios. For example, if Epik can assemble the top 50,000 product categories into an integrated portfolio, the whole portfolio becomes worth more. In the process of assembling the pieces, it is very possible that a portion of the web also ends up working better than it did before. That is an ambitious idea, but not a crazy one.

Ultimately there will be further specialization within each major category.  For example, within the category of Product Portals, Epik has clients who are assembling different portfolios. Kenny Hartog is developing shoe and garment domains. Morgan Schwartz has been developing kitchen appliance and baseball equipment domains. Tony Lam has been developing furniture and medical equipment domains.  Avi Sacajiu has been developing jewelry domains. Etc.

Time to think creatively
Getting the web to work better will require some creative deal-making among domainers who have different objectives. In our own small way, Epik is doing deals.  Here are a few illustrative examples from the last 24 hours of creative deals done with individual domainers who are making the jump to development.

  • John Slaney:  John has way too many names to develop.   We came up with a creative deal that works for him and works for us.  He had a list of 4 names that he wanted to develop Pet-Tracking.com, Foldable-Bike.com, DetoxFootbath.net, and Candy-Bouquets.com. Rather than pay $249 per site to develop them, he offered up a portfolio of 12 names: bridesmaid-dress.com, babyfeedingproducts.net, birthstone-jewelry.com, arteasel.net, dog-jewelry.com, baby-bracelets.com, coppermailbox.net, graphictablets.net, tile-floors.com, gaswashers.com, office-lamps.com and glassdesks.net. All of these met our criteria for exact search volumes.  The net result of this cashless trade is that John will have gone from having 16 names that were costing him an annual reg-fee to maintain, to having 4 developed websites that will be income-producing and can then be sold as developed websites. Win-win.
  • WeiWei Zeng and BeerCoolers.net:  WeiWei wanted to start developing on Epik. He also makes a living buying and selling domains.  WeiWei and I came with a deal that made sense for both of us.  WeiWei sold me a portfolio of 5 domains in exchange for $600 plus the right to develop one of his domains — BeerCoolers.net.  That development would have normally cost him $249. So, for $849 in cash and in-kind, Epik received these: motorbikejacket.net, golfballmarker.net, workoutball.net, dashboardmount.com, and travelshoulderbag.com. We’ll have WeiWei’s new site up in 3 weeks. Win-win.
  • Craig Peterson and Chat-Rooms.com:  Craig already has a few developments being built on Epik. He is also one of the nicer guys I have met since launching Epik.  Last week, he surprised a few folks by buying the domain name Chat-Rooms.com.  That is a big domain that requires a pretty large development to execute on. I estimated a $20K development budget to build and launch a chat network across the Epik ecosystem. Since $20K was a pretty big nut, Craig offered up a domain of his that he did not plan to develop — UltrasoundMachine.com. Win-win.

The net of all these 3 deals is that we now have the following domains available for others to develop:


Domain Appraised
Value		 Ad Competition Avg
Cpc		 Search
Volume
ultrasoundmachine.com 55,000 low 4.40 9,882
motorbikejacket.net 160 high 0.69 49,410
golfballmarker.net 1,300 high 1.18 18,056
workoutball.net 930 high 2.22 4,392
dashboardmount.com 7,400 low 2.08 2,318
travelshoulderbag.com 620 high 1.55 2,318
bridesmaid-dress.com 140 high 0.51 110,410
babyfeedingproducts.net 1,500 low 1.82 22,082
birthstone-jewelry.com 180 high 1.55 18,056
arteasel.net 3,400 high 2.22 14,762
dog-jewelry.com 140 high 1.23 12,078
baby-bracelets.com 100 high 1.19 9,882
coppermailbox.net 3,700 high 3.66 9,882
graphictablets.net 1,800 high 2.61 9,882
tile-floors.com 660 high 2.09 8,052
gaswashers.com 1,800 medium 1.79 475
office-lamps.com 120 high 2.60 5,368
glassdesks.net 890 high 2.63 12,078

Most of the acquisitions are product portal names that will either be developed by Epik, or by others.   UltrasoundMachine.com is a great domain but not in our immediate sweet spot.  The Estibot appraisal is a whopping $55K but it is worth less than that to me which is why I would happily swap it for a solid portfolio of Product Portal names that I know how to develop and monetize.

Want to make a creative deal? Contact me at rob -at- epik.com.

Domain Farming: Three examples of creative domain development deals

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Posted in Domain Development, Domain Names, Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Paying cash for Product Domains

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010
Paying cash for Product Domains

The Epik Product Portal network is ramping nicely.   This week, we’ll release 102 hand-crafted sites, and 104 sites are on deck for next week.   Epik clients are looking for more great product portal names that can be developed and are paying cash for these names. No auction crapshoot required!

cash-paid

What are Epik clients looking for?
The product portals that we are looking for have the following characteristics:

  • The name should map to a product category or niche.  You can use Wishpot.com as a search engine to find products.
  • The exact search volume needs to be 500+ for a name with $1+ CPC. We will consider lower for a $5+ CPC name.
  • The name should not trespass on a registered trademark.

A few other things:

  • We prefer .com or .net.  For an exceptional keyword, we’ll consider another TLD.
  • We will take hyphens that make sense.  So, Water-Bottle.com makes sense but Footbal-l.com does not.

Are we buying? You betcha!
During the last 24 hours, we acquired 45 product portal names from their prior registrants.

Payment is made via PayPal or wire transfer upon delivery of domains.  Closing within 24 hours. Alternatively, you can choose to do what one seller has done which is trading a block of domains for development services on other names. We are pretty creative guys. If a deal makes sense, we’ll do it. If it was a win-win, we’ll do it again. If not, we won’t.

Send your Product Portal names to rob -at – epik.com

Paying cash for Product Domains

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

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