Practicing What I Preach!

Why is it that the lights at an electrician’s house don’t work, taps malfunction at a plumber’s and domainers seem to forget why they bought their domains? At the recent domain conference in Florida I found myself sharing about domains and I thought to myself, “It’s about time that I reviewed my own portfolio!”

Too many of us are so busily acquiring domains, working on projects or just having a good time that we risk forgetting that we’re actually running a business. Unlike a hobby, a business needs to have an outcome that involves some sort of profit….and in many cases it’s really simple to generate but we just don’t seem to bother.

Take me for example. A few days after they poured me off the plane (it’s a 30 hour journey from Fort Lauderdale) I began working through my personal domain portfolio and noted beside each of them what business model I was applying to them. This isn’t really that hard as there are 4 primary business models to think about.

1.      Traffic domains – revenue comes from domain traffic

2.      Stock turn domains – selling the domains for around $X,XXX

3.      High value domains – selling domains for $XX,XXX+

4.      Development

The next thing I did was contact Chris Leggatt at domain holdings and said, “Hey Chris, how’d you guys like to broker gx.com.au?” It’s a two letter com.au that would be great for a forex website as it could stand for “global exchange”. I’ve had the domain for years I thought that it was about time I did something with it or sell it off to someone that will.

I then looked at another portfolio that had about 30 three and four letter .com/net domains in it that once again I’d been happily renewing year after year. I called up Tessa Holcomb at Igloo (like Chris, she’s an awesome broker) and passed these across to her. If you’re interested in these domains then reach out to her at “sales at igloo.com”.

Making sure that my traffic domains were looked after was a breeze….after a review, I handed them all over to ParkLogic. Even though I’m one of the founders of ParkLogic, let me say that I eat my own dog food….!

The developmental domains are already secure in various businesses that are progressing forward quite nicely (whizzbangsblog.com is one of them).

So once the brokers have completed (or not) a series of transactions I will just move through my list. Anything that doesn’t have a business model gets rejected and dropped.

What am I actually doing here? I’ve essentially outsourced all of my domain management to experts in their fields. I’ve been in the industry for way too many years and there’s one thing that I’ve learned….don’t try and do everything yourself! Speak to experts in their fields and get them onboard working for you.

I will unabashedly say that I’m an expert in traffic monetisation….there’s very little I don’t know about how to squeeze every last penny out of domain traffic. Although I also know quite a lot about selling domains I pass the challenge onto experts who do this day-in and day-out. This will maximise my sales and also frees up my time to focus on other opportunities.

I said it at the Florida conference that one of the problems that domainers often have is that they value their time at $0. Don’t fall into this trap…..outsource your different tasks to experts and move on. Whatever you do….don’t be like the electrician and plumber!

Have a great weekend!

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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.

Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.