.com Archives - Steve Sammartino

Domain name speculating

Posted on August 2, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

I recently got an email from a domain name provider called hostess.com.au. It was about selling domains names with some recent examples. The title of the email was ‘Your domain name could be worth big dolllars’.

Here’s a screen grab.

It’s easy to think that this type of behaviour is ‘unethical’. But the reality is we live in a capitalist society. Speed and noticing opportunities is a key business skill. So my view is if you’ve savvy enough to find and speculate on domain names and make some cash – good luck to you. There is no shortage of examples of people who’ve made a bundle doing it.

So how to do it? Well, here’s a couple tips on some people have done it:

Spelling mistakes of popular domains. Then sell advertising or back to original (Tiwtter.com)
Buying the .com of popular country specific domains. Eg www.theage.com – they sell advertising.
Moving quick on new words, phrases entering the common vernacular. (eg tweet, roadrage, soccermom)
New brand name launches
register technology advances, and economic terminology. (GFC.com?)
Short words of a made up nature. Popular for startups.

I’m sure you can think of some other ideas, or methods used in such speculating…. be sure to add them in the comments.

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Set up costs

Posted on April 19, 2009 by Steve Sammartino

When starting out in business the first thing we often do is set up the relevant legal structures:

Partnership agreement
Logo design
Business name registration
Operating company
Holding company
Non disclosure agreement
Holding company trust
Member terms & conditions of product / web usage
Specific bank account
Small business book keeping software
insert other legalese business recommendation here

Startup blog advice is this: Don’t waste your time or money. Get revenue first, register later.

With the only possible exception being a .com registration – which if you’re in the on line world may be an actual requirement to simply operate. No doubt this is contrary to all you’ve read in business guides. Sure, keep accurate cash flow books, run things professionally and stick to project deadlines. The reason for the recommendation is pretty simple. Most startups never get to revenue. If you’re like me you have a hard drive full of business ideas, half written business plans, and a spare room full of product prototypes. Until we have revenue (which doesn’t mean a couple of orders, it means thousands of dollars) we have nothing to protect. It also adds a strong reporting and administration burden which startups could well do without.

sand-castle

So why waste time and money building a fence around nothing? Build the castle first, or at least get the foundations in place. If we follow the lawyers advice, they may be the only people who ever make money from the venture.