About 7 years ago, we sold Smartname.com to Namemedia. At that time we built the company from one of the first domain parking programs to a leader in it’s field. We knew we put the company and it’s clients (our friends) into the good hands. Namemedia took the foundation that we built and continued to add to it and grow.
I want to offer my congratulations to Kelly Conlin, Bob Mountain and the rest of their team on the sale of Smartname to Godaddy.
A week or so before June 1st, I received a call from Namemedia telling me that Smartname Classic, the last system that Ari and I used when we ran Smartname, was being eliminated. I was told that all clients still operating on that system would move to current Smartname system which most of their clients were on anyway.
Over 3 years have come and gone since we sold Smartname. Ari and I have no affiliation with the current company, but seeing that system shut down was a very sad day for me. It brought back memories of what we had built, the friends that we made and how we changed the value of domains. It was great sharing ideas with other domainers on a daily basis. It seems that most parking companies have employees which are not domainers thereby unable to feel the bleeding of revenue in the past few years as we felt it. It’s sort of like me telling my wife, that during labor that I understand what she is going through. No way in hell could that be the case.
Before we started Smartname, there was no such thing as domain parking. When people started to realize how much revenue could be produced from domains, the world caught on that domains were a great investment.
While I still try to speak with many of our old clients and friends, I miss the constant interaction on a daily basis. Who knows, maybe it’s time to come out of retirement.