Maneuvering the Tsunami
Great post by Elliot and great follow-up from Owen on this subject here (http://www.elliotsblog.com/index.php/2008/03/21/domain-industry-tsunami/#comment-3774)
The paradigm shift is finally happening, and we are now forced to re-think the true potential of a domain name. What we have come to realize is that providing legitimate value is really the only key to sustainability.
This is what has broken the parking industry. Domain investors and parking companies were provided with monetary value, but two very key parts of the equation felt they were left out: 1) those that provided means to monetization (advertisers) and 2) the users that landed on parked pages.
1) result: GOOG and YHOO tightening up on parking practices
2) result: Snowe Bill tightening up on domain name use
A little over a year ago, we saw the tide receding (using Elliot’s analogy). Rather than head to higher ground, we put in a lot of time and effort building out a platform that can maneuver the coming ‘tsunami’ - EVO Landing (www.evolanding.com).
The EVO platform was built with an understanding of the need to provide legitimate value to all parts of the equation - monetary value to domain investors, qualified leads to monetization partners, and quality content and features for users who happen upon one of the sites in our network (as seen by our average return rate of 10%).
If you have a great domain name for jobs, it should be a place where people can lookup local jobs, compare salaries, and apply. If you have a great domain name for travel, it should be a place for people to read about a destination and book travel/accommodations. etc.
To develop them out one by one would be ideal - but to acquire relevant content and figure out a means to monetization one by one across a portfolio of varied domains is not always feasible - cost and time prohibits.
If you are in such a situation and have great domains, feel free to take a look at what EVO has to offer. We are here to help build sustainability.
(we will be speaking on this subject at the next Domain Round Table coming soon!)