Monte welcomes UK Domainer, Ian Collier
08/02/2006 - Monte Cahn
Monte welcomes Ian Collier. Ian holds a portfolio of maybe 1100 names, in a multitude of extensions. He rarely sells domains and then only to end users. Ian rarely lets names drop, and rarely buys names on a whim despite the exceptional value companies like Moniker offer in registration fees.
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Monte: Hello, folks. Welcome back to Domain Masters. Again, this is Monte Cahn, your host. And another great line up tonight. Basically, I have Ian Collier on who’s a very experienced domainer. He’s been in the domain business since 1990 . . . uh, since the mid-90’s, I should say. Owns about 1,100 domain names. Also helps with the radio show and runs the radio show over at NamePros, which is one of our favorite forums as well. You know, there’s three or four major forums in our industry and that’s one of the key forums that people should go to when they want to learn about domain names and interact and network with other domainers on buying and selling and appraising and knowing about the industry. And Ian lives in the UK and has been in computers and the Internet for quite some time. Ian, welcome to Domain Masters.
Ian: Yeah, hi, Monte; its great to be on. Thanks very much.
Monte: Yeah and again thank you for staying up late, or I guess early in the morning and being part of the show and I believe its going to be pretty valuable for those that are listening. So, before we get started on some of the major domain stuff, why don’t you give me a little bit of a history and background on yourself. What got you into the Internet? And then eventually into domain names and we can go from there.
Ian: Yeah, alright. Well, first and foremost, slight mistake in your first speech. I’m not really involved in NamePros; the guys that run that are kind of a bit complete separate sort of entity and maybe a bit separate from yourself over the next couple of weeks, but that’s something that’s in the mid-flows at the moment.
Monte: Oh, okay.
Ian: Uhm, basically myself, well, as you know, I’ve been in domain names or domaining, I guess, since the mid-nineties. Missed a lot of opportunities, as I guess a few other people did, while a few other people didn’t and I guess, as you said yourself, maybe I’ve been always the bridesmaid and never the bride [laughs] at missing opportunities, I guess, as they came around. Did pretty well from domaining, I guess, but I left school in 1985 but I was always fascinated with the amusement TCRP computers. It was then just emerging. And, went to college university; didn’t really know anything about programming and such, then. Basic programming was the thing that you did on BBC microcomputer over in the UK, which was pretty easy stuff but even then I was not that interested but I thought it was something definitely that you could make from the industry. So, when NetSell took over the .Com name space, I kind of knew then that domain names resolving from IP addresses was probably a nice step; something that was probably going to be something pretty big. So I kind of scratched my head and did a bit of researching and stuff and was probably one of the first, I guess, domainers in the world to make the stereotypical mistake of thinking buying up company names of . . . the .Com of company names was some way of making good money and obviously that was a pretty bad mistake to think along those lines. But, ah, the charges of Net Sell at the time was $100, I think it was, online . . .
Monte: Yeah. Those were the good ol’ days, huh? [laughs]
Ian: [laughs] Yeah . . .
Monte: The good ol’ days is when it was free and then . . .
Ian: Yeah, exactly!
Monte: . . . it was $100 and then it was $70.
Ian: Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. It kind of went up and down all over the place. But, I was a student at the time so that killed off any enthusiasm I had and like I said to you, never at any point did I think it would [inaudible] now but you know, I.com or C.com or you know, AB.com or short generic words were ever going to be any sort of value. And that really continues. We developed a website, when websites really started going, we got free emails to individuals, got a loan from the bank and we bought probably through a university friend of mine, 2,000 .Co.Uk names and they were kind of phrases that were happening at that time or you know, something along those lines. Things like, you know, ChocolateRulestheWorld.co.uk, you know, and then people could then have their first name on the front of that. And then, looking back . . .
Monte: You mean to create vanity email so you could have Ian@ruletheworld.com.
Ian: That’s right, yeah. And we kind of choice the gates – you know, dogs, cats, house, names like that would have offered fantastic value, because it didn’t really make any sense. I remember discussing with my partner at the time and saying, I can’t remember the exact name now, but it was something really blatantly obvious. In fact it came up the other day but it escapes me for the moment. And we were discussing this and said, we needed to have . . . well, it was something like home.co.uk and I said you can have like, you know, John@home and even thought . . . [inaudible] . . . it doesn’t make sense. Let’s stick with what we know. So, again, another missed opportunity. But, then the facts of that kind of dropped away and we dropped a lot of names. But we were starting to get offers on some of the names. You know, we were working away on this website and there’s was quite a few users – it was up to about, I don’t know, I think, 50,000 users at one point . . .
Monte: Oh, wow.
Ian: Yeah, it was pretty cool. It was really early days and again, you know, you’ve got another opportunity missed because it was the day of absence – you could fill your page. You really had to go and try to find your own advertising and being lazy students, you just wanted to go drinking all the time. We kind of let it pass. But then, as I said, we started getting offers on some domain names and we sold one for ₤2,000, which we thought was remarkable at the time, you know, something we paid so little for that we could sell for ₤2,000 and we sold two or three others. My friend left the game all together and went off actually to do full-time web design and I kind of got into the buying and selling of domain names.
Monte: So, that’s how . . . your first purchase was . . .what year was it?
Ian: My first purchase – of a .Com or a .Co.Uk?
Monte: Either. Just like when you entered it. What was the first domain name? What year was it when you first started domaining?
Ian: ’88 or ’89, I guess.
Monte: Oh, you were way before . . . so you got a .Co.Uk back then?
Ian: Yeah. It was when (somebody will have to correct me on this) but it was Nomen[inaudible] was a name space for .Co.Uk. It was in the UK and we had a body that sort of ran the .Co.Uk and then some (I can’t remember the exact facts of the matter) but some doctor guy came along and said, look, you know, it should be a non-profit organization that runs this. It was a huge backlog of trying to register domain names and the company that originally ran it in the UK just wasn’t up for it. So, when Nomen took over and they seemed to streamline the process and we jumped in and bought rakes . . . reams of names, most of which you wouldn’t buy today, I have to say, but when we bought our names virtually everything was available. I mean, I would say it makes me cry to think of what I could have bought. But I’ve done okay out of it. You have to be positive, look forward and look at the future. And to be fair, you know, I’ve done pretty well. I mean, I’ve got to go to work still. I mean, obviously, if I’d bought some of the names that were perhaps available when I thought about buying .Coms and .Co.Uk, I could be in Malibu now and you know, rather than sitting here at 12 o’clock in the evening . . . [inaudible]
Monte: Right. I think that Nomen takeover happened in the late nineties, not in the late eighties, I think.
Ian: Yeah. Yeah, I’m sorry, yeah.
Monte: Yeah, I was like, Wow, 1988, that was like when the military was still using the Internet.
Ian: Yeah. No, no, sorry Monte. I do apologize.
Monte: Oh, no, that’s okay. That’s okay. But the key here is that you got started early, there was a lot of names available and yeah, it was probably about 1996, 1998 and you started, you know, utilizing a limited budget, I guess, and getting what you could and I assume you still own a lot of those premier properties today, correct?
Ian: That’s right. Well, I have some . . . I’ve probably got [inaudible] hundred names, maybe have 10 years, that have got some decent value to them. And, they make money year on year. They get some pretty good traffic. In fact, I have about 30 or 40 names actually on loan or I rent them to people and there’s some pretty big websites, based on some of the domain names that I currently own. And it makes a good net income. It was the kind of fat, I don’t know if you remember yourself, Monte, that when you bought up some of these valuable names a little while ago, I think its pretty much a buy it or sell it same now, but in bygone years, if you like, although its only yesterday, you know, in the great scheme of things. You can just about remember when you could rent the domain name of somebody for like, you know, almost like a lease-purchase type of thing, except you were ever selling it to them. And most years the people that got my domains on rent come back and kind of say, I want to buy it now, you know; how much do you want for it? And, I’m pretty much at the stage where I say, fair is fair; this guy’s paid me this money for it. I mean, its not a fantastic sum but the reason I haven’t sold yet to these people is because I made the deals a bit too early, perhaps, and I don’t want to mention any names because they might be listening but certainly, you know, the money I rent the names to them, would be the generic nature of the names; what you can make those names now into on the Internet, I could make a lot more in Pay Per Click or you know, the type in traffic alone would generate more than what I’m renting them to.
Monte: So, that was a . . . I mean, not that many people did that back then, is rent a domain name and so that was a great strategy in helping you monetize some of the domain names and I guess you’re still doing it now, as you mention. Talk to me a little bit about where you see domaining today compared to where it was and kind of the opportunities that are out there in your mind.
Ian: Yeah, well, I mean, domain states . . . it’s a moving feat. Domain names, year on year, change, you know, the values change. What’s not that valuable last year becomes ultra valuable this year. New extensions hit market all the time. And it really is a . . . I’m a bit of a shaper, if you like, if you’re talking about team rolls, if that means anything to anyone. So, you know, I can get bored with things quite quickly. I want things to move and that’s why I kind of stuck with domaining because it, you know, it changes so much. Every year there’s something different and you know, around the corner there’s some breaking news. I mean, all of its pretty negative, I have to say, with from outside the industry looking in, but certainly from the inside, you know, us guys busy buzzing around, I think its, you know, its pretty exciting. I mean, I personally, I always like to stay ahead of what’s going on. I try to look around the corner, try to look ahead of what’s going to happen next because I mean, because if you’re just getting into domaining, you know, everybody makes the same mistakes; everybody just follows the pack and you get very little value out of, you know, chasing the latest Microsoft product and adding an extra word to it or something, you know.
Monte: Right, right. Plus you run a risk legally of violating trademark and that kind of stuff . . .
Ian: Absolutely, that’s [inaudible] . . .
Monte: So, you’re right, it is a moving target. And a lot of people that are successful with new registrations today see out in the future like you’re mentioning and are able to predict seeing what will be popular tomorrow.
Ian: That’s right.
Monte: One example is I have a couple clients that got on the nano kick, you know, the nano technology kick, back in 2000 and they predicted that nano technology was going to be a huge, you know, a huge technology and its still in its infancy and those domain continue to increase in value and is more and more . . . you know, there’s ten times the number of bids on nano names in our database than there were, you know, just two years ago, so . . .
Ian: Yeah. Right. I mean, the key metaphor for lots of these things is, you know, what’s today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers. I mean it’s a pretty UK generic phrase and it might not mean a lot to people in the U.S. but basically it means if you’re a registration fee buyer of domain names, if you get into the game when everybody’s talking about a certain element or domaining or an emerging tech stock or some new country code extension for some sum the value of that is pretty much gone, you know. That’s, I mean, the successful domainer requires research and that’s really what it comes down to nowadays. You know, everything’s gone in dot com, as far as I’m concerned. You know, people then go about buying up, you know, very strong key words related to [inaudible] unrelated key word and then they stick it up for [inaudible] and you see it virtually everyday on the forums, you know. And, I think as I mentioned to you, I thought post script was, you know, strawberry poker, for instance, you know, people are posting, yeah, I’ve got this great name, strawberrypoker, you know. It’s completely unrelated. There’s no type in potential and you know, its pretty much . . . its worthless, basically, you know.
Monte: Now, Ian, give us a little bit of a . . . just a little bit of a high-profile view of your portfolio, because you have 1,100 names; some of them you’ve had for 10 years. What kind of traffic are they generating as a group? Or what’s your . . . give us some examples of some of your highest performing names, what you’re doing with them, how you’re making money. Are you independently making your living off of domain names right now? Or are you still supplementing or is this still supplementing an income?
Ian: Yeah. I have 1,100 domain names. I’ve got a lot . . . quite a few in sort of some remote country code extensions where the registration fees are a lot higher than somewhere like what you’d get from Moniker for a dot com, for instance. But, I . . . its not a fantastic income. I mean, I don’t ever kind of added it up, ‘cause the checks and stuff like that come in from a multitude of places and half of it’s, you know, you have Paypal and you’ve got Commission Junction checks coming in and AdSense checks coming; you have the rent of the names coming in. I generally develop and park as much as I can. I try to develop as much as I can. I mean, I really love the Internet as its going now with the open source of . . . you know a lot of stuff that you can get to develop is actually free. People have kind of gone full circle and gone back to it being free. If I can develop as much as I possibly can then I will. As far as the actual domain names themselves, I’ve parked quite a few of them on my own website, OnePlus.net, and they do particularly well. But again, its like anything. There’s only so many hours in a day and actually, sometimes, I think, oh, you know, I’ll get a reminder, you know, that this domain’s up for renewal and I’ll think, oh, that’s a pretty cool domain name, I’ve forgotten completely that I had it [laughs], but I’m glad I do, you know. And so, I have some parts I’ve some developed. I play around with a few. Some I just use for personal stuff. Its difficult to manage a big portfolio like that but to answer your second question of whether it bolsters my income or whether I do it full time , no, I should do it fulltime. If I did it fulltime than I could make a lot more money from what I already have. But the [inaudible] I have two or three other businesses that, if you like, are like offline businesses that take up my time and I don’t know. Its kind of one of those things where, you know, when you own businesses offline, you know, you’ve got staff and vehicles and people like that, you know, needing your attention and [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Now, so, so . . .
Ian: [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Out of your portfolio, what is your #1 performing domain name? Would you say . . . let’s say, let’s say, what’s the domain name that makes you the most money and what’s the domain name that actually drives the most traffic?
Ian: Oh, good question. Uhm, the domain name with the traffic . . . I hadn’t . . . I wish I’d . . . I wish I’d been more prepared for this. Uh, domain name with the most traffic. I’ll have to . . . Can I come back to you on that one? Let me think about it while we’re talking.
Monte: Yeah.
Ian: If that’s alright.
Monte: Yeah, I think it would be interesting for everybody that’s listening, you know, so that they can get an idea of the kind of traffic that you’re generating because you do have a lot of different country codes, you have yourself spread in different directions in terms of your strategy. You know, where a lot of people have, you know, all dot com portfolios, you, I noticed from your website, that you have a lot of country codes as you mentioned, so you’re investing not only into the present but also into the future and speculating a bit, so I’m just curious on what you’re findings are so far on those hedge bets and the reasons why you’ve gone after some of those country codes as well.
Ian: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I tend to hit country code extensions when they first release. I think that’s really the only time I get into country . . . I was really into .SC this . . . Seychelles country code extension for awhile. Really leaning onto the back of WhoIs.SC, which has now changed its name, incidentally. But if WhoIS source, I thought, well, what else can go with “source” and you know, I kind of jumped into it and got a few names like house and homes and WiMAX and golf and help and vacation and all these kind of names, you know, pretty strong key words, which I’ve sold a few and I’ve kept a few and I couldn’t really tell you exactly which ones I still have. The key to any country code extension is that, you know, the extension has to be something else. You know, I think the two, house and homes ones, I sold them both to real estate guys who put up a website, I think, in Southern California. So the .SC meant something different for them. And I think that’s the key to it all, is, you know . . . dot TV, for instance, overseas, I love .TV, I really have to say. I think its . . .
Monte: Yeah, a lot of the Brits love the .TV extension and I think we talked about this with my guest I had last week and then a couple weeks ago. It seems like there’s a big push in Great Britain and in Europe on the .TV extension and the extension is picking up on its own without any kind of publicity or advertising or anything there, so . . .
Ian: You do see a lot of advertising on the television that are attached to a .TV extension of the name and whether these companies are doing it so they can see what sort of traffic they get from there, the commercials on television with the way things are going, but certainly .TV is pretty big on the TV in the UK. But, regardless, it wasn’t the reason I got into that. It was I got into the .TV really because of the way the Internet, I believe, is going to go, you know, down the road of WiMAX and WIFI and more streaming television on the Internet. I mean, my personal belief is that the television itself will merge with the Internet very soon and we will be online, if you like, in a multitude of places, not just sat in front of a PC; and this is where I’m really trying to take my domaining into.
Monte: Right. Now, you’re using a diversified approach, not only in terms of the names you’ve registered but you mention that you’re not, you don’t sell typically, but yet on your website you do have a number of names that are for sale.
Ian: Well, absolutely; everything has a price, doesn’t it. I mean, the website OnePlus.net really provides it for other people.
Monte: Right.
Ian: I mean, I only have, you know, half my names there. Probably have three- or four-hundred names there but we have, you know, hundreds of . . . we’ve only been . . . I mean, I started the website, to be honest with you, ‘cause I was kind of pretty sick parking companies. You know, I was fed up with surfing the Internet and getting those little square boxes with, you know, what you need, where you need it and whatever and I don’t even know who’s strap line that is. But, you know, its just a page of links and now with . . . I was kind of sick of catching these pages and as a domainer you don’t tend to click on any of them. And then, obviously keeping abreast of the news and hearing Google and Microsoft saying, well, you know, we’re banning these pages, you know, we don’t want them in any typo or TM violating name that’s past; you know, we’re going to get these lists off the parking companies and you know, we’re going to ban them full stop type thing. So I thought, well, there must be a different way, you know; there’s many of domain names with people like me that haven’t had the time to manage them all, so I thought, well, I want to try to build a site that offers content rich pages and . . . or blog or you know, just part of the name on the side and you change it weekly, if you need to, for your own advertisement and you don’t have to have a house one where they’ll offer you a, you know, a feed of a feed of a feed of a feed. So you know, offering the highest percentages in the industry type thing and people get sort of duped by that thing, well, wow, it’s the highest percentage in the industry. But its almost like, you know, offering the food 80% fat-free; now it’s 20% fat at the end of the day, isn’t it?
Monte: Right, right.
Ian: So, they say it’s the highest percentages in the industry and but a percentage of what, you know? It might come originally from AdSense to domains to somebody else who said it you and given you 60% and then by the time the guy, the domainer, is getting the revenue and somebody gets the click, its, you know, perhaps a key word that was paying originally $1.50 or something and you’re getting 1 cent.
Monte: Hey, Ian, have you found it that, you know, the strategy of using OnePlus.net as an example, have you found it to be more successful and the earning potential is higher when you’re mixing . . . I see you have, like, I guess its AdSense running on the site along with content along with you know, an offering to other customers, that kind of stuff; rather than . . . you made kind of a negative comment about parking pages although a lot of people that listen to the show make a lot of money on their parking pages and there are in fact a lot of people that do click on those ads, ‘cause it makes . . .
Ian: I mean, I was just giving you a personal opinion [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Oh, okay, so its more of your personal opinion and that’s what’s driven you to do some of these developments and these build outs then.
Ian: That’s right. And I wanted to offer it for free as well because, you know, it’s almost like giving something back and certainly the guys at NamePro’s, you‘ve seen how hard they’ve been working on the site and it’s taken up a lot of my time. I’ve got two developers that live in the Ukraine and a web designer processes images of stuff in India and basically the two guys in the Ukraine have been pretty much employed fulltime, so . . . months and months and months now, adding features and things like that to the site but . . .
Monte: Maybe you can talk about that a little bit ‘cause that’s . . . a lot of people are, you know, we talk about this a lot on the show about how you can use a multi-tiered strategy on developing some of your properties, why some of them are earning money, why they’re parked and the quickest ways to do that. There’s all kinds of template aided systems and so on and so forth. How did you go about researching where to get you programmers? How to put a programmer, you know, two programmers from the Ukraine and one, a graphics person or whatever, from India, together and develop successful mini-sites for you?
Ian: Yeah, right, okay. I mean, a lot of it comes through contacts, obviously. I mean, with regards to the guys I currently use . . . let me start from the beginning. I think web design is actually going through a bit of a renaissance at the moment. I think web companies, in particular, are looking for web design all over the world right now. The small companies now, I think, it’s the renaissance time for them to say, look, we need a website and if you speak to just blokes in the street, you hear these guys going, you know, yeah, this guy’s give me the website, you know, in the UK – a thousand pounds, its like a one page website. So, I thought that I would try to do some more developing, because I think that’s what the Internet was designed for. That’s what its there for and that’s what we make money from parking pages, because people are actually looking for real websites, ‘cause otherwise, if the Internet was just full of parking pages, there wouldn’t be anyone on there.
Monte: Yeah. That’s a good point.
Ian: So going forward, for me looking for . . . I’ve had a relationship with one of the guys from Ukraine for a long and certainly this place is like script[inaudible].com; if you want to do some developing, get some . . . they almost work in reverse, so you know, you don’t sort of kind of go out and speak to somebody and say, look, you know, I want to spend $500 for a website. You can go onto a place like script[inaudible] and say, look, you know, this is the website I want, these are the features I want in there and this is what I wanted to do and then programmers and coders and designers from around the world will go, yeah, I’ll do that for $200 and they kind of underbid each other to get your work. And I must have had . . . I must have used, probably, a dozen programmers and writers from script[inaudible] over the last few years and certainly, the guy, my friend in the Ukraine (well, he’s a friend now ‘cause we’re going to go to the TRAFFIC conference together next year), I’ve stuck with him ‘cause he’s really good, so we understand each other very well. And I think that’s what you need to do. You develop a relationship with these guys and find them and keep them and that’s the best way of doing it. Because when you talk in your tin-pot language that they don’t’ understand, these techie guys, you know, I’m sort of saying I want this squiggly thing to do this type stuff . . .
Monte: Right. Now is your relationship based on a pure pay-for-service or do you give them a piece of the site that they’re developing? How have you been able to incentivize somebody that you’ve found a relationship with so that they’re incented to do the best job possible, besides just getting, you know, a paycheck.
Ian: Yeah, right. Well, with regards to my main [inaudible] in the Ukraine, we don’t even talk prices anymore. I just say I need this, I need that and he goes away and does it and you know, I trust him and I hope that he trusts me. And, he basically just says [inaudible] time you pay me some money. Historically, I’ve just paid him flat fees, whatever he’s required for doing the job. I don’t even need a break down of how long he’s taken it because I know he’s an honest guy and I think if you’re happy with what they charge, then you don’t really need to know what the cost is. I mean, I’m in a fortunate position where I can afford to pay, you know, several thousand dollars each time to this guy for doing some pretty wonderful work for me. But that said, there are people willing to work for a lot lesser amounts; you know, people . . . young coders who are just trying to get into the game, type thing, haven’t worked before, who perhaps, haven’t got big families or stuff to feed so I think there’s web development for everybody and certainly you said, the free pages and the free stuff that’s available, which is dead easy to build a website nowadays, so I don’t think there’s any excuse really to just do nothing.
Monte: Yeah, definitely. Now, talk to me a little bit about, you know, one of things that I guess is something that you’re really hot on is the morals and ethics and self-regulation that we have in our industry. Tell me a little bit about where you’re . . . where you see the industry . . . where you think it needs to be regulated more, those types of things.
Ian: Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m a great believer of morals and ethics. I mean, you know, reputation is a . . . it takes a lifetime to build and a second to lose and I really stand by my reputation and I’ve not fleeced or duped anybody. I mean, I’ve been fleeced and duped a few times but its not a big problem for me because it’s not been in great large sums of money. But as regarding the domaining industry as a whole, we do suffer from a belief that we don’t have a great deal of integrities as people and unfortunately, then when registrars create phantom companies to win big in the latest .Eu run, for instance, which is broadcast around the world to regular people; appraisal scams are going on continuously, got the same people cropping up over and over, getting people to pay for an appraisal on the back of a bogus sales inquiry; [inaudible] domains getting hijacked from registrars and parking companies offering high percentage pay outs, which you mentioned and snap companies catching every name that drops. It’s not giving out a great deal of press, good press, in fact. So, I think, really, if we’re ever going to be better standing on our own two feet and well look, we’re a bona fide industry, we do need some sort of regulation. Now, unfortunately, we’re a worldwide business, so there is no way any state can say, okay, I need to set up the domain name law or whatever you need to do, because it wouldn’t be carried over from state to state and you know, people would get around it, the people that wanted to get around it would get around it. So I think we need to be self-governing. Over at NamePros, in particularly, we formed the DNA, which is the Domain Name Owners Association, which is at DONA.org and I think it’s a pretty extremely positive and right move as it looks [inaudible] dress and the balance between the outside looking in and thinking, well, its just a sleazy bunch of guys just kind of buying up, you know, trademark names and going to hold the trademark owner to ransom and even the people that sell you the domain names are going to try to fleece you and steal your name, so any move on that part is a positive thing.
Monte: Alright.
Ian: I think . . . we have DNOA and I think the Domain Name Forum also has their own version of this, so there’ll probably be some kind of period of jostling where in the end there’s one definitive body that really, if you want to buy or sell a domain name, you need to be a member of before you can do it.
Monte: Right. Well, actually, I’m on the board of Waden, which is created by the folks that started the TRAFFIC conference and its really making a movement towards making sure that we have standards set in our community, that there are, you know, people that are of high morals and ethics transacting business together. I can’t tell you how important that is from our standpoint and how much of a hot topic it is for us to provide, you know, the best and most ethical type of business that you can possibly offer in this industry. There’s so much theft and fraud going around on the Internet in general – identity theft, and all kinds of fraudulent transactions – and spilling over into the domain name world. Obviously, it has been going on for quite awhile. There’s all kinds of domain names being stolen. But in order for our industry to survive and be successful, and to create a future for our children and our children’s children, which is kind of why we’re probably all here, is to make sure we all work together and do legitimate business transactions so that we invite people from the outside, outside investment vehicles and companies, to feel like it’s a safe place to put their money. And so, it is really critical that we all work together in that way and not try to screw anybody and its . . . many times its easy to see who’s the bad folk and who’s the good folk to do business with. And . . .
Ian: Yes, absolutely.
Monte: And the forums are a great place to do that, because you’re kind of building relationships with people that you don’t necessarily have met before, but you have worked with them and you’re starting to rank them and you see how many times they’ve posted and all that stuff and then as soon as somebody gets caught red-handed, you know, they’re banned immediately and then they can’t interact with the group anymore, at least in that identity; they come back and try other identities and stuff but it is a tough challenge for all of us to, you know, to manage, not only for the domain world, but the Internet development and the SEO world and everybody combined.
Ian: Hmm, that’s right.
Monte: Yeah.
Ian: Yeah. I couldn’t agree with you with what you said any more. I think that its absolutely essential that there is some sort of self-regulation. And I think its been led correctly, from the likes of you guys, certainly in the registrar community and above, if you like. And, this is where its got to come from. I mean, unfortunately, you’re getting at the central registry and hence, they’ll be looking to, you know, bolster its position as the sort of sole controller of the Internet and there’s very little thought pattern going down to what happens after we’ve sold these names. You know, there’s no sort of after sales support type of thing; they really don’t care what happens to them providing the money goes into the bank, I guess. I mean, this is a personal point of view [inaudible]. So, I mean, if its not going to happen anywhere else, then self-regulation has to be the key. I mean, you just see so much scam and spam; its not even unique, is it? Its not even . . . these guys aren’t even rocket scientists, you know; they’re just sort of regurgitating something that happened maybe a year-and-a-half-ago and then trying to get everyone to jump on board and make the quick buck and disappear again.
Monte: Right. Now, tell us . . . give us a couple hints and a couple key points of all the experience that you’ve been involved with in this business, you know, for the last ten years on how anyone listening can be more successful with their business in there and with their domain names. Now, besides the obvious things. But I mean things that you really learned about, whether it’s a secret type of a development trick that you’ve used with your programmers or some kind of shortcut that you’ve been able to implement that created more revenue or more profit for yourself, whether its just a business strategy. Give us a little bit of love on how to be a really successful businessman and a domainer at the same time.
Ian: Right. Nice question. At one o’clock in the morning, that’s really got my brain thinking. [inaudible] [laughs]
Monte: Oh, have a drink and I know you’ll be okay.
Ian: Right [laughs].
Monte: [laughs]
Ian: The less said about my drinking the better. Uhm, yeah, I think . . . well, with regard to development, what my key factors when I do development on . . . when I make a website is I want it to be the least amount of management required by me to maintain it is the #1 focus I want to do. I want as much automated and fresh content that we can possibly get. I don’t mean by scraping other websites and stuff like. I mean, user-defined content, you know, you get visitors creating content for us. That’s the key part I always look for when I’m developing names.
Monte: So, how do you shortcut that? If it’s the least amount of work that’s possible, but its fresh content, what do you use to get that? Where do you get it at?
Ian: Well, one of my sites, Airport.SC, (which I developed and I did that so I could have NewYork.Airport.SC, so basically it’s a source for New York airport and I have all the U.S. airports and all the UK ones as sub domains to the Airport.SC) and basically, what that does is . . . refining sources from other websites, you know, for the traffic to travel and you know the latest holidays in England and what we do is, we use quite an intricate program of grabbing information that’s all legit and we have arrangements with other companies, but for instance, in the UK what we have is uhm, uhm, for our airport sites, when the user logs onto that site, we’ve written a script to go to all the tour operators of supervised holidays and inquire on their site with our affiliate co-[inaudible] and on their sites, we have what the holiday or vacations leaving in the next 7 days from that airport to anywhere and within a matter of seconds, we’ve done all the tour operators and then we post the information on the page that the user’s looking at. I have a little countdown clock as we’re grabbing the information and I have to say that you know, I haven’t done any maintenance on that site for . . . maybe a year, at least. I’ll be able to look at it and [laughs] see [inaudible] running out, I’m sorry to say. But, yeah, that returns really fantastic revenue, you know, really, really good. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to start spouting numbers just in case the UK tax man is listening but certainly we’re talking in terms of, you know, thousands of dollars a month.
Monte: Oh, that’s great. Okay, so . . . so . . . and, and what other [inaudible] . . .
Ian: [inaudible] if it’s a good idea and nobody else or few people are doing it, and it can be done . . as I said to you previously, you know, my developer and programmer is probably at the top of his game, so he can . . . I come up with these brain waves of what I want to do, I want to put a site up and I want to go and take the affiliate host of all these people but I don’t just to put the image up saying click on this to [inaudible]; I’m going to go and get the product from that affiliate company ourselves. We’ll make the inquiry on their website. We’ll take the information; we’ll put it back with an actual prize and . . . wow . . . you know, give me two weeks to do that. But for what I have to pay him to do that and the idea was mine, the design comes up, if he goes away and does that and then you know, you make money in the end. Okay, its an outlay. But you have to speculate sometimes. With regard to domain names, uhm, there’s lessons to be learned and I think there’s domains that you should buy. I mean, if you’re just talking in general terms. I personally believe there’s only three different types of domains that you should buy: you should buy domains that have got back links already; dropping domain names . . .
Monte: And just in case the people that don’t know how to research that and find those, what tools do you use to find those domain names that have the back links already?
Ian: Well, obviously, you can research it on Google and Yahoo! and there are other tools on the Internet. Iweb Tool, for instance, Alexa, from the top of my head . . . obviously, Yahoo! you can write and [inaudible] hyphen and then the domain name itself and there are free programs that you can go and get as well that will do a multitude of things. All the names escape me for the moment but I’m sure most people listening will know what they are. Or if not, then, certainly, the forums, if you search the forums, certainly, SitePoint and NamePros in particular, these guys in these places are pretty good to help. But, yeah, domains with back links; domains with type in traffic or domains that offer future value are really only the sort of domains you need to be buying at the moment, or at all. That’s the only three . . . they should fall in those three categories. And certainly, whenever I buy domain names, that is the only categories I fall into.
Monte: Right. Right.
Ian: But you see so many people buying just domain names because it’s a .com – well, it’s a .com, you know. My personal belief is that, although .com will always be king, it certainly is power, as people get used to more and more country code extensions, I think it will diminish somewhat. But [inaudible] . . .
Monte: But do you think its really going to diminish. I mean, the facts are that there’s two million new people getting on the Web every two weeks or so, or every two-and-a-half to three weeks, I think is the stat. Which means that there’s . . . well, there’s a couple major factors, right? There’s two million new users every couple weeks; the cost of peripherals and high-speed access has decreased quite a bit; we’re getting to a mobile world and a mobile economy where people are carrying around PDAs and cell phones that touch the Internet every day now, and that’s four times the number of actual desktops that people own, so there’s four to every one desktop; and then we have people getting online early in age compared to years ago, when you were mostly adults getting online – now kids are doing it, in school, learning how to communicate, touching email, playing games on Disney, you know, on kids-related sites and of course, there’s the phenomena of MySpace and Utube and places like that . . .
Ian: Yeah, well, I meant, actually, the .Com extension, in particular. I think that’s where it will diminish, not the Web in . . .
Monte: Oh, oh, okay. I’m sorry.
Ian: Yeah, I mean, certainly, the Internet, I think, basically is still in its infancy. I think if you’re in the domaining industry now, or the Web industry now, then I think your path is certainly enrich than taking perhaps other roots. Because, its just literally taking off. I mean, you think when the Internet really . . . we’re talking 10 years or slightly more of when really it started and what a phenomenon it is now; I mean, everybody, in the first world if you like, is geared to the Internet. Even, you know, my grandmother, for instance, is . . . she can grab her emails and things like that and [inaudible] . . .
Monte: Yeah, it’s a wonderful thing. So, now we’re into the future a little bit. Talk about where you see the future, you know, of the Internet and how people are accessing through different devices and wireless and mobile and the .Mobi extension that’s coming out, those types of things. What’s your take and feeling on all that.
Ian: Yeah; well, this is the area which I’m most fascinated with is what’s going to happen around the corner. I mean, I personally believe that certainly the PC mold as we see it is probably going to be the first victim of change. I don’t think, very shortly, we’ll be sat at PCs with keyboards and etc., etc. I know most of my online friends totally disagree with this statement but I can actually see the end of the keyboard, you know, within a short period of time; and I’m talking months or perhaps even years but certainly the keyboard itself will disappear . . .
Monte: So, so, you’re talking about the success of voice recognition?
Ian: Absolutely, yeah. I think, you know, when the WiMAX platform, which I think is going to be pretty hot, really rolls out across the world in the next year, 18 months, 2 years. Already the other day I saw something about cars being kitted with, you know, being wired up to the Internet through the WiMAX platform, so that people can basically do a lot of functions – not Web surfing or browsing the Internet, but certainly the car can perform functions when its out in the road. And actually the program was talking about reporting problems. You know, you get taken out of the loop. You know, this car is on road, is under warranty and it basically reports back into wherever Ford or wherever and says, you know, I’ve got a problem with this brake type thing and next moment you’re being told to bring the car because it’s told it, its told the mother ship that its not well, you know, so, uhm the applications for the Internet is going, I personally believe, will change. I mean, nobody even knows [inaudible] domain names as they exist today will remain as they are. I mean, I guess it’s a like course that they will stay, that domain names will remain the source for obtaining Web pages but you know, it may sound bizarre to the person listening to this, but this is the kind of thought pattern you really need to sort of examine in your own mind and research, you know. And I’m not talking about whether domain names as they exist today, I’m talking about that as an example how you need to kind of (and I hate [inaudible] bug phrases) but its all about thinking outside of the box. It’s really what you succeed in domain names, getting into domain names now and search forums and some things like Sony’s just bought out the PlayStation so lets have a five or six week discussion about how I just bought SonyBox and I just love SonyBox and think well, God, guys, you’re really wasting your time. Okay, you might be able to spin that name around for a couple of dollars profit to somebody else in the domain name industry, but really, if you want to make some good money, its time to really speculate because the moving feet that is the Internet is moving all the time; its moving very fast.
Monte: Right, right. Now, out of your portfolio, how many are developed versus not developed?
Ian: Oh . . .
Monte: Or, what percentage would you say?
Ian: It’s a very low percentage. I’ve probably got 50 or 60 developed or partially developed website but as you know yourself, you know, unless you have a staffing, you have a lot of guys working on these websites, I’m pretty much tending myself with my partners and my developers, so . . . its . . . its difficult to keep to grips with it when you’ve got other businesses running at the same time. Like I said, from my personal perspective, at some point in the near future, I should sit down and say, am I going to do this properly or I’m not going to bother, you know. Because it’s really been a kind of nice revenue generating hobby for me and I enjoy it. I do enjoy as a hobby.
Monte: Alright. Just curious. What’s you’re offline business that you mentioned earlier? And obviously you’re doing very well with that. But what are some of the offline businesses that are maintaining the majority of your time?
Ian: Well, I’ve got a training company that offers construction training, which is the UKY Construction Training Company, and that’s probably the same in the U.S., you know, the health and safety regulations, if you want or need to do a certain job on a building site and you need to be trained first how to do, so we have a UKY network of instructors that, basically, go to these sites and train these people. And I run another building related business as well; we run an equipment rental company, based in Southern England, which has quite a lot of staff and takes up quite a lot of my time. So those are the two main ones, really, that eat into my time the most. The thing . . . .
Monte: Right. And apparently the Airport.SC, would you say that’s your most successful domain name that you own?
Ian: As far as developed, yeah; I would say so, yeah. I mean that’s pretty successful. But there again, OnePlus just seems to destroy my server capacity. I mean, I never expected it to grow as fast and as successful as it has done. And, we have to keep a close eye on that and we’re just moving that onto a dual processor, or whatever it is (not very technical when it comes to servers [laughs]); you can just flip yourself over to the web hosting tool and ask the guys there what the deal is there. But yeah, it keeps getting up bandwidth, but that I think is probably the most successful site that we have. Unfortunately, it doesn’t actually generate any revenue but its nice to be able to give something back, you know? I mean, I’ve gained a lot, I’ve learned a lot from the industry and I’m happy to pass on any knowledge or anything that can help other people. I do get a great deal of satisfaction doing that . . .
Monte: Right, right.
Ian: ‘cause you meet an awful lot of people all over the world, you know, like yourself and I know registrars, owners of registrar companies and really I’ll probably benefit in the end. I mean, you know, you and I are of a similar age and you know, we’ve got a lot of work yet to do, unfortunately, before we can retire so as the Internet goes as I expect it to, then, you know, having good contacts and these people regard you as an honest guy, regardless of the fact that you’ve been giving something away for free for four or five years, at some point in time, you can probably cash that in by being at the right place at the right time.
Monte: Yeah. Well, I . . . a lot of people are having a lot of fun and keep getting more wealthy and more successful and they want to stay in it and I can say that’s where my hand raises as well. I don’t think I’m looking to cash in anytime soon because we want to . . . I think a lot of people want to help create something that’s going to be long lasting for other people and that’s one of the key focuses of our business, anyway, is that its not about just making money but you know, setting the foundation so its solid for the future and that other companies can learn from the success that companies that started the industry off have created and then it can grow materially, you know, by creating a, you know, open-source, working environment, attending the conferences, speaking, making sure people are learning from other people’s mistakes and learning from successes and that they keep ticking on and keep focused on their ideas and their, you know, collaborative efforts so that they’re all successful and that’s what I think will really be successful and grow the industry.
Ian: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you guys at Moniker must be pretty hot on the heels of GoDaddy, I’d guess.
Monte: Well, we’re not really a competitor to GoDaddy. Uhm, GoDaddy is more of a company that registers single or a couple domain names for each of their clients and then moves them onto web hosting and they’re more of a hosting company. People are not really cognizant of their business model but if anybody reads their S-1, you know, they filed to go public, you can get the big picture really quick. It’s . . . GoDaddy is like the new NSI from the past that focuses on individuals who need identities and then builds a . . . you know, one domain name out. We’re a portfolio asset management company for domains. We focus on people that have, you know, 50 domain names and up; thousands of domain names and up. We have several customers that have hundred thousand domain names. We design our systems, our internal methodologies, our drive and focus is all around increasing the asset value of your portfolio, looking at it as another investment, something that you can get secure, keep safe, increase the value of, monetize in every way that you can, sell and reinvest – that’s where we see the future and that’s the segment that we play in and I think that we lead that segment, or, you know, will lead it very shortly when we open up our new marketplace and have our next live domain auction and keep that live auction format and bring a market into a room and have buyers and sellers create what values really are and you know, create products and services that can guarantee the credibility of sellers and buyers and that the fact that any domain names that are sold are not involved in any legal disputes, that they weren’t stolen, those types of things. Create a safe trading and exchange environment for our, you know, for the community. That’s where our market is.
Ian: Yeah. Right on. I mean, correct in what I believe that you’ve never had a domain hijacked from you guys – is that correct?
Monte: Yep. That is correct. And its because you have to actually use human focus along with a multi-tiered security system in your registrar in order to keep it like Fort Knox. You have to really know and have a relationship with your customers, know what their expectations are, get to know their portfolios and then know if there’s a transfer out that hasn’t been authorized that you can catch it in time. And we’ve seen all kinds of trickery and hijacking emails and moving domain names and pushing them to multiple accounts before they’ve been tagged to go out and that’s when we catch. So, we’re the only registrar of any size that’s every prevented, you know, that has a success rate of never had a domain name stolen. So, you know, it can happen but you know, it happens 20-30 times a month at any other major registrar. With us, you know, that’s not what happens here. Ironically, a lot of domain names come in here from other registrars that look like hijackings but what they really are is people leave domain names on their list that they sold years ago or they forgot to . . . they forgot that the sold a domain name or they forgot that they deleted a domain name that are on the large inventories and so when they submit large inventories to transfer, the other registrars that are still unsecured allow those domain names to come over and then the people that actually own those domain names now actually lost them. So we’re very successful at getting those names back to the people the that own them at the other end. So its kind of ironic twist to our security measures and what happens on the other side.
Ian: Yeah, cool.
Monte: So, anyway, is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up? Or anything else you’d like to ask? And then we’ll close it down and then look forward to next week.
Ian: Yeah, no problem. I’m here with my eyes three-quarters of the way shut and I’m sorry if I’ve come across as a bit of a sleepy head but I’ve done my best to stay up.
Monte: Well, Ian, we really do appreciate your time and its always good to have someone on that’s been in the business for a long time and you’re into a lot of interesting things both online and offline and we look forward to continuing to work with you and also stay in touch and help you out in any way that we can as well.
Ian: Great stuff. Monte, thanks very much indeed.
Monte: Okay, take care, Ian.
Ian: Auf wiedersehen.
Monte: Okay, bye-bye. Well, again, I want to thank Ian Collier for staying up in the UK and telling us about his successes and what he’s learned about being in the industry. Its always good to pick up little tips and points of you know, where people are thriving and surviving. That’s the first . . . besides WhoIS.SC, that’s the first I’ve heard of someone being very successful with a .SC, that’s the first I’ve heard of someone being very successful with a .SC site and so Airport.SC is something that earns him thousands of dollars a month and that means he can actually trade something on another extension that may not have a lot of population in that particular area but you can still brand it that way. The folks at WhoIS.Sc has made that very successful by using SC for the word for “source,” or the abbreviation for source. You know, I had a customer the other day that was really hot on the .MBs and owns all kinds of physician related domain names and medical terms in .MB and he’s really actually making a lot of progress in selling that concept in his community and getting all kinds of doctors to sign on and those types of things do have potential as alternative investment options when the extension has multiple meanings.
Just another reminder for those of you that jumped on a little bit late. We’ll be live at SES next week. We are . . . I’m presenting at . . on a domain panel the first day of the conference. It’ll all be archived, I guess, and available at the Jupiter Media’s site, that’s JupiterEvents.com. If those of you want to attend the SES show next week, send me an email; we do have some discount codes still available that can get 20% off the admission cost to get into the door. Monte@moniker.com. And so we can get you in the door. Also, don’t forget about the Search Bash that we’re having at, in San Jose on the Wednesday night of the conference. It’s going to be a blast. It’s . . we’re running out of the same facility along with the folks at WebMasterRadio and a few of the other companies that we all work together on and work together with and we’re going to have a kick-ass party. And also, for those of you who haven’t heard, we’re also holding a Search Bash in Jamaica and if you go to SearchBash.com you can see the details of the Jamaica getaway in September; we’re looking so forward to that and it’ll be a lot of fun and a great networking event as well. Make sure you do check out the other shows on the network on WebMasterRadio.fm – great content, great shows and a lot of special tips and tricks you can pick up on the network.
With that, I will let you guys go. I will see you next week live on Domain Masters from SES. Be the master of your domain. Take care.
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