namewise. blog.

The frequent reader of this blog may have already noticed that we are into experiments. Since we are domain investors we rarely sell domains. So it is time a again for an experiment and expetion to the rule. Why 2009.org? We bought this name with some goal, that we achived on different ways.

2009.org will be auctioned at the TRAFFIC Premium Live Auction next week in New York. We decided to put it to the Market for an attractive price of USD 1.000 even if we see the value way above that.

We see a huge potential for this domain for someone that has the right plans and ideas for this domain.

2009.org has both, the short time possibility to simply put up a website. The domains PR4 and more than 60 Typeins a day will push the project. Think of selling calenders for 2009 or other gadgets related to the year. On the long rund the domain also provides value. We do net yet know what 2009 happens, but thinkof years like 1969 or 2001. Also on the long run people search for events associated with years.

Happy bidding!

Namewise

Just a simple question. Why do you buy domains? Some may simply answer, because i see the values of domains rising, some may answer, because i want to develop a project under this domain.

Domain names are a great investment, but i doubt they are a great speculation object! How come? I blogged about a smart kid that made a lot of money flipping domains. There are stories all around, that one can have great success flipping names. All this is definitly true. What i want to offer you is the other view. The portfolio view. How long does it take to find a great name? How often can you sell? How long have you been in the industry and built your portfolio? How much legal risk do you have?

Domain speculation works for some. Most do not take into account that we still live in a very unliquid market and ignore the cost of oportunities, like domain research and domain sales. The values of prime generic .com’s and ccTLDs have been rising for the last decade. Investing worked for domainers that played the domaingame early on. And here i stress the definition of investing: to buy undervalued assets!

So if you are a domain buyer, ask yourself carefully: Will domain values rise for the next decades? How long do i want to hold my investment? How fast can i liquidate? What are my opportunities if i want to liquidate now?

Happy domaining and have a great day,

Namewise

One of my former ventures was an IT Security consultancy boutique. We helped German and international companies to protect their it infrastructure from all sorts of cyberthreats. What i saw there was mind blowing and really scary!

Now as i have shifted my focus since years to my ventures in the domain industry, security is still something i really care about. Most of our systems are within my reach and i can take care of theses security systems. But some lie in the hands of registrars and registries and i cannot take care of them.

Now to the point: I am really concerned about the security system of Germans Registry DENIC! They cannot provide a registrar the possibility to lock a domain. An average skilled 15 year old script kiddy would need the user name, which is the so called handle of a registrar, and the according password. Thats it. With these two pieces of information he can delete all domains of the registrar. Maybe re-register them for himself. You can imagine what happens when domains like google.de, ebay.de or yahoo.de disappear for days and other generic domains can never be restored!

Now you could say, that a password and a user name is hard to figure out. Just call the tech department of provider xyz, pretend to be from DENIC and ask for it. Administrators have high technical, but often low social firwalls. Social engineering can be unbelievable powerful. Professional IT Security consultants will confirm that.

Some Domain sales in the .de Zone are reported in the that are over one million euros. I estimate the managed domain values of companies like Strato AG, 1&1AG or InternetX way above one billion! For even my paypal account or my bank account, there are higher security standards than for such values.

Transfers of google.de and ebay.de to third partys the last years just have been the tip of the iceberg. I know of many more huge gems that have been highjacked but never been reported.

To all of you that have premium domains, ask your registrar which security standards they provide and carefully read your contracts! To all of of you that are DENIC member, ask for a solution!

Take care,

namewise

Nächste Woche ist ja die OMD und auf der inoffiziellen, aber viel besseren, Party gibts ein Iphone zu gewinnen. Derjenige der unter dem neu kreeirten Begriffe ‘Befreiphone’ bei Google um 20:00 Uhr auf Platz 1 ist, darf sich stolzer neuer Besitzer des Iphone nennen.

Die Kontrahenten kämpfen nun mit recht unterschiedlichen Mitteln. Manche machen Videos, manche haben starkes Linkinventar. Wir haben uns für einen anderen Weg entschieden: Den Domain Way!

Falls wir mit unserer Domain http://www.befreiphone.org gewinnen werden wir diese Domain unter allen die uns mit einem Backlink oder Blogkommentar unterstützt haben verlosen. Das mag insofern sehr lohnenswert sein, da schon angekündigt wurde diesen Wettbewerb in einen langfristigen Wettbewerb umzuwandeln.

Viel Spass beim optimieren wünscht der namewise

one of the most influential books in my life was the book “rich dad, poor dad”. i read this book last year in my summer holidays in italy. while reading the book i figured out that most of the wisdom that robert kyosaki wrote down in his book was already in one or the other form familiar to me. his great genius is, to put that wisdom in a really interesting story and make it easy and fun to learn what investing is all about. motivated through the book i started to play the cash flow game with friends and there learning for me really started. putting the concepts into practise in this game showed me some great insights. i learned new possibilities and changed the some aspects of my investment strategies.

meanwhile in every major city, people meet to play the cash flow game together.

have fun,

namewise

the dfv was a huge success! again christopher grüneberg and thomas müller of domainvermarkter united the german domainer community and organized with sedo a really great domain auction. thumbs up! 378k euro in a little more than one hour. suchmachinenoptimierung.de made it to 84k eur. i really loved that auction: 72 out of 100 sold, which shows the great job they did.

overall the dvf was a huge success for us. we invested five figure in some nice .de gems, had great talks with large portfolio owner that are interested in our domain parking and of course had fun meeting you all again at the numerous gatherings around dvf!

more than that, i always enjoy the special berlin vibration - berlin is an amazing metropole - and this time especially i enjoyed berlin together with my girlfriend and celebrated her birthday there.

cheers,

namewise

In the Silent Domain auction for the SES conference, which originally was supposed to end yesterday, the domain “iq.net” was re-listed accidentally, even though it had originally been reported as sold at the Internext for $17,000.00.

i wanted to buy iq.net together with good friend adblogger, due to errors besides snapnames/moniker the auction failed. thanks to frank michlick this issue becomes public coverage.

cheers,

namewise

endlich steckt die berühmte katze den kopf aus dem sack. unser neuer service, namewise parking, hilft domainern mehr aus ihrem portfolio zu machen. ok. hör ich euch schon fragen. aber parking ist doch nicht mehr sexy! parking steht vor dem aus! warum parking?

während es für die einen vielleicht schon aus ist, fängt es für uns erst richtig an. unsere perspektive und unser anpruch ist dabei ein anderer als ihn die klassischen parking companys haben. wir verstehen uns als parking boutique und als ergänzung zu den schwergewichten am markt. uns liegt daran im dialog lösungen zu finden und kreativ mehrwert für den user zu schaffen.

der rest der katze kommt auch bald. stay tuned …

grüsse vom namewise