Archive for the ‘Development’ Category:
Md.com goes live this week. What had been a top generic domain sitting as a parked page, has been transformed into a business that previews at the HIMSS trade show in New Orleans today. Over 60,000 medical professionals with get there first look at a valuable new tool.
MD.com is an expansive network of 500,000+ MD websites designed to help patients find the right doctor. Patients can learn about each doctor’s background and specialties, find offices and associates, schedule appointments and more.
Good Luck to Ari Goldberger and the team for their hard work.
Ok. how would you like to be part of a World Class Accelerator, working on businesses developed around key generic domains. Well now is your chance. Gary Millin, who is both a venture capitalist and a serial entrepreneur can make this happen. Gary is part of World.com. They own some of the most prime real estate on the web. His firm has built up businesses on such generic names as Doctor.com, Lawyer.com, India.com, USA.com, Popstar.com, London.com, Paris.com, and Madrid.com.
Now here is your chance. Go to http://www.worldaccelerator.com/ to see what needs to be done.
Congrats to Gary and Gerry.
Here is the full press release:
Domain-Driven Business Accelerator Unveiled
World Media Group has introduced into the ever-expanding accelerator marketplace, a first-of-its-kind accelerator that combines the inherent, powerful benefits of a premium domain name with winning development teams from all over the world.
New York, NY, November 14, 2012 (PRWeb) – Business incubators and accelerators have captured the imaginations of entrepreneurs worldwide, and these institutions have given birth to some of the most transformative Internet and technology businesses today. World Media Group, a company that specializes in bringing recognizable domain names to life in meaningful ways for online consumers, has announced the launch of World Accelerator (www.worldaccelerator.com)–a new business accelerator that utilizes a concept not yet seen in the burgeoning startup development marketplace.
In addition to offering traditional accelerator elements, such as seed capital and mentorship, World Accelerator offers teams the unique opportunity to build a thriving business on the foundation of a prominent and highly brandable domain name with access to a readily identifiable constituency of customers. Names such as alumni.com, comic.com, diploma.com, fight.com, fact.com, FAQ.com, Japan.com are just a few examples of the brands available via the accelerator. In real estate, billions are paid for premium locations. Online, your location is your domain name and a premier address can make the difference in giving you the credibility you need to open doors, improve conversions, improve retention and accelerate your business.
Led by Gary Millin as CEO, an industry maven responsible for turning World Media Group’s development of premium domain names into growing businesses, World Accelerator’s innovation is in providing startup companies with a valuable brand around which to build their businesses as a crucial starting point.
“Over the last ten years, the cost and time needed to bring exciting and disruptive businesses to market has dramatically compressed. However building credibility with customers, partners and your brand still takes time.” said Millin. “World Accelerator changes this paradigm, turning it upside down as companies can now start with a powerful existing brand on day one. With this business accelerator model we can empower the right teams – those with sound business plans, leadership and poised for action – to successfully develop these fertile domains into lucrative businesses.”
Since 2007, World Media Group has successfully developed numerous domain names into businesses, proving the model which is the foundation of the new accelerator. Millin, in his work with World Media Group and in collaboration with top management teams around the world, has achieved success with domain names such as Doctor.com, Lawyer.com, India.com, USA.com, Popstar.com, London.com, Paris.com, and Madrid.com. These, along with other World Media Group properties, have seen an average of 45% per annum revenue expansion and, today, generate over 20 million visitors a month.
Having outfitted his new business accelerator venture with a similar recipe for success, Millin is excited to start working now with even more top teams and entrepreneurs – stating that he has “extremely high hopes” for all of the businesses and people who will be seeking the services of World Accelerator – which is currently launching a beta site in order to generate interest and identify prospective participants for developing some of the most promising of its 1,000-plus internet domains.
“With our beta launch, World Accelerator will be seeking entrepreneurs and teams who have an interest and the capacity to develop these brands into successful sites. The criteria for acceptance into the program are pure and simple – a great idea that can leverage the brand, a solid leadership team, and an executable strategy,” said Millin. “Entrepreneur teams accepted into the World Accelerator program will have access to capital and mentoring, and of course a high visibility domain name – the key differentiator between World Accelerator’s services and those of other business accelerators.”
Millin has also drawn on his career, both as a venture capitalist and as a serial entrepreneur including founding and running a public company (Mail.com), to ensure that World Accelerator has a terrific team of mentors right out of the gate. The accelerator is headquartered in New York City and already has mentors from across the US, Europe and Asia.
Most of the domain community has been looking for additional ways to monetize there names. Marc Ostrofsky is certainly one that has found numerous ways. He will be Keynoting the Affiliate Summit East 2011 this Sunday.
The Affiliate Summit is “the show” to attend to learn alternative revenue sources for your domains. I will be attending. Please LMK if anyone reading this will also be there.
How many times have you click on an adwords ad link thinking you were going to a certain website, only to be taken somewhere else? Obviously it has been happening to too many people. Google today announced that it will display the landing page’s domain name as part of the headlines on top placement ads.
The change should increase click thru to adsense ads that have strong generic domains. This is another reason to own prime generic domains for your business.
Before:
After:
Read all about it here.
As I was writing this post, i noticed Elliot mentioned in Elliots blog that CarInsurance.TV just sold for $13,000 and CarInsuranceQuotes.TV is asking 13 million. I decided to see whats still available in the major Insurance lead gen category domains. In the last few months Insurance lead gen names domain names have done extremely well in the aftermarket. For example, Homeownersinsurance.com sold for $570,000 this past November. All the major domains with .com, .net or .org now have sites on them, with the exception of Insurance.net. FYI – I emailed the owner of Insurance.net, he offered me the domain name for 3 million USD. As for the latest Insurance build out,It seems that Insurance.org, was turned into an insurance lead site for insurance quotes just the other day.
Just recently another major insurance .com domain was sold with an NDA attached for millions. It seems that these names have become printing presses for their owners. There seems to be no letup in that market.
What will Demand Media stock be at six months following their IPO date? That is a very important question that many employees and early investors are asking. That date is when they have their first opportunity to sell their shares.
In the past, many technology employees have become overnight millionaires once their firm went public but had worthless paper once they were able to sell their shares. Of course you have companies such as Google and Apple, where many employees did very well when their time came.
Let’s get back to Demand Media. The stock was one of the first high flying tech firms to go out this year. I can tell you that they threw an incredible party at Domainfest celebrating their IPO. Whats not to celebrate. They priced at $17 per share and hit a high over $27. Unfortunately what goes up, must come down. When Google made changes to their algorithm, some Demand sites suffered large traffic decreases. It must have put a scare into investors as the stock has been trading down each day. Today it hit an all time low of 13.99 during the trading day.
What will it be in 3 more months. My personal guess is under $10, which is a lot higher than I think it will be in 1-2 years.
A few months back, a good friend, Hugh, sent me a very nice email. Hugh had been one of our earliest Smartname clients. He had written to me that he had registered a number of great generic .co’s, one of which was Larry.co. He asked if I would like the name which I indeed accepted.
I have been thinking the last few months what would be the best use. Its an amazing vanity domain. I had been thinking of using it for email but I did not know if there would be a number of people that would accidentally send my mail to Larry.com instead of Larry.co.
Another idea would be to use it for my blog.
I am open to suggestions andw ould look forward to comments.
A few months back, I went to see a play on Broadway. I was in line to pay for parking, when the person in front of me handed a coupon to the agent. The coupon reduced their $50 parking charge down to $15. It seemed that most of the other people on the line also had coupons. After inquiring, I had discovered they had all received the coupons online from the parking lots owners site. The next day I googled parking in NYC and found that most of the major lot owners offered discount parking coupons online. In addition I discovered a site called BestParking.com.
What BestParking.com does is aggregate information from all of the other parking companies and presents an easy to read overview of all parking lots, rates and coupons for a specific area. The site also handles parking in most major cities and airports in the US. I also use their Iphone App every time I need to go into NYC.
I think BestParking.com is truly the perfect name if you need to find the best parking solutions.
A few days ago it came to light that Verizon had been secretly buying domain names with the term iphone in it. Today, according to Bloomberg “Verizon said to start offering iPhone in January. Verizon Wireless, the largest U.S. mobile-phone company, will start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone this year, ending AT&T’s exclusive hold on the smartphone in the U.S.”
This once again shows the importance of domains to successfully planing a product launch. Also, watching domain name purchases is a great way to learn about things before they happen. Does anyone know how Verizon stock is doing?
In the last few years, following the sale of Smartname, I have been involved in more 6 figure and 7 figure deals than most people. My role has been either as a buyer, seller or broker. The one common thing that almost all of these deals insist on is a NDA. Many Domainers and non public companies like to keep things private. There are 2 ways of thought on this. One thought is that the publicity will help give a bump to the name. The other is that your competitors will see what you are doing and jump on the band wagon. Most believe in the second.
Here is one deal that I am able to mention as it is no longer under NDA. This was a personal domain that I sold. This deal actually occurred in late 2009 but is an example of many transactions that are significant but never mentioned to the world.
Congratulation to the buyers of LotteryResults.com for $300,000 USD.
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