Would Like Your Input on Next DNJournal.com Cover Story on BuyDomains

[Duke]

BuyDomains.com chief Michael Mann has agreed to be the subject of the next Cover Story at Domain Name Journal. I haven't done this before, but since people feel so strongly about BD, I would like to get input from you on questions you would like to see Mike address in this article. You can either post them here, PM or email them to me. No way to tell what will wind up getting used (and I have plenty of questions of my own) but I will consider all suggestions. Thanks!

[actnow]

Duke,

I am sure you are going to ask him about

1. WLS
2. TM and domain infringement ( not trying to be sarcastic)
3. Pool and Snap
4. What percentage of their inventory do they turn yearly.
5. What percentage do they drop.
6. How many employees do they have.
7. How many actually do the buying. And, the selling.
8. Do they buy names at the request of people or companies. What percentage?
9. Do they get annoyed when a smaller reseller gets a name.
10. Do they visit DNF

Duke, I can give you more if you want.

[.com.net.org]

ask them how they can beat us in chasing names.

[Duke]

Originally posted by .com.net.org
ask them how they can beat us in chasing names.

With their resources, I think the question would be more like how do we ever manage to beat them to a name! :-D

Thanks for your list ActNow. I will definitely be asking several of those. I'm sure many of the others will be considered proprietary information, so we probably won't get answers on some of those (I know I wouldn't answer them)!.

I think my primary question will have to be "How would you guys feel about transferring a bunch of those 3-letter domains you beat me out of back to me for, oh....let's say....reg fees?"
I got a feeling I know the answer to that one already too!

[Steen]

Originally posted by .com.net.org
ask them how they can beat us in chasing names.

I think we all know the answer.


What everyone wants to know is how to beet them, that I am working on, and I htink I am getting close ;-).

[Duke]

Originally posted by devildude8989
What everyone wants to know is how to beet them, that I am working on, and I htink I am getting close ;-).

Don't tell me you are the owner of Pool.com! :-D

[Luc]

Originally posted by actnow
Duke,

I am sure you are going to ask him about

1. WLS
2. TM and domain infringement ( not trying to be sarcastic)
3. Pool and Snap
4. What percentage of their inventory do they turn yearly.
5. What percentage do they drop.
6. How many employees do they have.
7. How many actually do the buying. And, the selling.
8. Do they buy names at the request of people or companies. What percentage?
9. Do they get annoyed when a smaller reseller gets a name.
10. Do they visit DNF

Duke, I can give you more if you want.

Great questions. I'd like to see him answer those.

the only other question i think think of is what type of hardware
do they use?

Congratulations Duke. It's a GREAT IDEA!

Now, any chance you can record the phone call so we can listen
to the stream? (I've got no problem hosting it). I'd imagine this
will be done over the phone, and not in a chat room.

Can't wait!

[StockDoctor]

How would they be impacted by wls?

Do they expect to expand their efforts to other extensions?

Who do they sell to mostly, individuals or companies?

Have they considered leasing their names?

Have they ever combined a search ppc with their sales pages?

How many names do they currently own?

How many names to they catch on average per month?

What is their average sales price per extension?

[actnow]

Duke, I know some of the questions are proprietary. But, you will be amazed how much they might be willing to say, if you ask.

As for recording the phone conversation. Since, they are in the Wash.,DC / Maryland area. You have to be careful. Both parties must agree to a phone conversation to be recorded under Maryland laws. Otherwise, it is a felony. (Remember Monica Lewinski)

[Duke]

Originally posted by actnow
Duke, I know some of the questions are proprietary. But, you will be amazed how much they might be willing to say, if you ask.

As for recording the phone conversation. Since, they are in the Wash.,DC / Maryland area. You have to be careful. Both parties must agree to a phone conversation to be recorded under Maryland laws. Otherwise, it is a felony. (Remember Monica Lewinski)

I do not do interviews by phone. They are done in writing. I submit the questions I want the subject to answer. He fills out the quesionnaire and returns it to me. This has many benefits and has yielded much better information than you get in off the cuff phone interviews where the subject doesn't have time to think about all of the details he might otherwise forget to provide. It allows them to take their time and give more thoughtful answers and also gives me a written record which does away with "I was misquoted" complaints.

[NameGuy]

What percentage of your winning bids at NW do you actually pay?

[Steen]

NameGuy, that they wont answer.

Duke, we wrote the exact came thing at the same time, you hit submit first though

Duke, i think it is great, how you tlak to all these guys, this interview, i cant wait for.

Who is next? Yun?

Maybe snpanames owner? Or the Pool owner (you can call me )

[Steen]

btw, the last sentence, it was a joke.


I love the way htey run thier system, but I wouldnt run for hte public.

Thier format enables them to pay the registrars lucradivly, and also make some good $.

I wonder if BD/ULT have made a deal with pool yet..

I monitor pools servers daily, alot of the names they catch go to BD.

Alot also go to ele (FMA).

And they tend to drop some interesting names daily.

[Duke]

Originally posted by devildude8989
Duke, i think it is great, how you tlak to all these guys, this interview, i cant wait for.

Who is next? Yun?

Maybe snpanames owner?

We already did the SnapNames chief, Ray King:

http://www.dnjournal.com/columns/coverstory3.htm


I would love to do Yun. Seems to be a little hard to get ahold of though!

[Duke]

Originally posted by Stocdoctor
How would they be impacted by wls?

Do they expect to expand their efforts to other extensions?

Who do they sell to mostly, individuals or companies?

Have they considered leasing their names?

Have they ever combined a search ppc with their sales pages?

How many names do they currently own?

How many names to they catch on average per month?

What is their average sales price per extension?

Some good ones Doc. I had actually just jotted down on a notepaper to ask whether or not they would have any interest in biz info and us when they start dropping (hopefully the answer will be no - leave us a few crumbs for crying out loud!).

[Duke]

Originally posted by NameGuy
What percentage of your winning bids at NW do you actually pay?

If they were giving him a break, I'm sure any answer other than "100%" would end any discounts right away! :-D

[clemzonguy]

Ask him if it's true that he's going to buy up all the WLS slots on the names once it's launched like people claim.

How much does he pay registrars for their backdoor deals.

Post a picture of him so we can all see what he looks like!!

Why doesn't he participate at DNforum or domainstate communities??

Ask him what his responce is to the fact that people especially myself are pissed off that they are beating us out on names left and right when we have covered all bases everywhere else and have no shot against his private connections. Any tips for beating him at his own game?

Does he have a life? Etc.

[Rocket2Uranus]

I'd be interested in hearing him expound on his business model. How many names do they sell? How much did they make last year? What is the average profit? Turnaround time? Sales & marketing methods? Do they actually stick to that pricing or do they ever make a deal?

I know we think we know some of those answers, and he probably won't answer all of them, but that is the part of the interview that will interest me.

Great subject!

[Duke]

Originally posted by clemzonguy
. Any tips for beating him at his own game?

I'm sure he will want to share that....I know I would! :-D

[izopod]

Google is an excellent resource to find info on prospective interviewee's....Here is previous articles on Buydomains.com & and it's CEO Michael Mann

http://dc.internet.com/news/article.php/409701

July 7, 2000
BuyDomains.com Offers Free Transfer Service
By dc.internet.com Staff

Hoping to tap into dissatisfied customers at Network Solutions, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN) (NSI), BuyDomains.com is offering a free, instant domain name transfer service for NSI registered customers. Any remaining term on a customers existing registration will be retained at no cost while customers receive BuyDomains.com's value added services during the period.

In a company statement, the Bethseda, Md.-based BuyDomains.com accuses NSI of "customer-unfriendly" acts such as NSI's recent announcement that expired domain names will be auctioned off to the highest bidder on NSI's auction site, rather than being released into public domain pool as required by ICANN. The company also cites NSI's registration agreement that says domain owners who register with NSI don't actually own their domain name.

Michael Mann, Chief Executive Officer of BuyDomains.com says his philosophy is different, "We think our customers own their domain names and we think they deserve better treatment. That's why we are offering to transfer any domain registration for free if transferring customers extend their registration by one year for only $17."

To transfer domains an owner needs to do is visit the site at http://www.buydomains.com.

Registrants at BuyDomains.com receive unlimited e-mail address forwarding, URL and frame forwarding, domain parking and DNS, along with toll-free technical support.

In addition the BuyDomains.com Web site offers an assorted collection of over 15,000 premium domain names available for immediate sale.


http://news.com.com/2010-1080-281340.html

NSI accused by rivals of hoarding domain names
By Brian Livingston
July 21, 2000, 4:00 AM PT



Network Solutions, the sole registrar of domain names until 1999, is hoarding for itself at least 1 million expired names, figures from other registrars show.
Competitors of Network Solutions (NSI) are furious over what they say is the Virginia company's refusal to put unpaid names back into the "pool" for others to register.

"This act is completely and utterly illegal," said Sasha Mornell, senior vice president of Register.com, the second-largest registrar. "It's an abuse of their former monopolist power."



Michael Mann, president of BuyDomains.com, said, "There are at least 1 million names that are currently being hoarded by Network Solutions."

Mann's company searches public databases to track how many names should be available, but aren't. He said in the month of May alone, 207,448 ".com" names expired and were kept off the market by NSI.

"Since this doesn't include '.nets' and '.orgs,' we estimate the total number to be approximately 300,000 names per month they're hoarding," Mann said.

NSI used to delete expired names from the central registry database it maintains, making those names available for others. But Mann said NSI hasn't released any expired names to the pool since May 31.

The issue is red-hot because NSI announced in May that it plans to begin auctioning domain names.

Asked how many names NSI itself might auction, senior vice president Roger Cochetti said most business services that accept credit card orders experience a "2 to 5 percent charge-back rate." At that rate, he said, NSI "would generate between 200,000 and 500,000 registrations that were unpaid each year."

Angry competitors, however, are certain that the names NSI is keeping off the market are far more numerous.

They cite NSI's annual report, filed March 30 with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission. The report states that "from September 1995 through December 1999, approximately 36.5 percent of registrations have ultimately been deactivated for nonpayment."

As NSI had registered more than 10 million domain names by December 1999, a 36.5 percent rate of nonpayment would result in more than 3.6 million unpaid names.

Asked how many unpaid names NSI still holds, spokeswoman Cheryl Regan said, "We do not disclose the number of unpaid registrations--only paid registrations--in our quarterly results."

Instead of returning unpaid names to the pool, Mann charges that NSI is unilaterally extending its expiration dates. This would make these names appear unavailable to others.

I was able to confirm that this kind of extension--a sort of life-support for terminal domain names--has occurred.

Keven Graves, general manager of the Nisqually Valley News in Yelm, Wash., said NSI extended the expiration date of his company's domain name, Yelmnews.com, from March 2000 to March 2001, without his company's permission.

Graves said he had so many problems updating his contact information with NSI last winter that he hoped the name would expire so he could register it with someone else. But the involuntary extension means Graves' registration remains with NSI, which charges $199 for an "expedited" transfer.

It's unclear what the Internet's coordinating body, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, will do about NSI's proposed auction of unpaid names.

"Some of the features of the proposed auctions might violate our agreements," said Louis Touton, ICANN's in-house legal counsel.

Touton said ICANN has not made a decision about whether to take any specific action to stop NSI from auctioning names.

NSI has postponed its planned auction by 40 days in response to ICANN's concerns, Cochetti said.

The domain names at stake may not be worth millions, but that doesn't mean someone out there wouldn't like to use them. Such workable names as FineLine.com, MassCommunication.com and AerialServices.com expired months ago but still cannot be registered through any registrar.

Considering how it has been keeping names like these off the market, NSI might consider buying one of those warehoused names for itself--CentralControl.com.



http://www.acscompro.com/press/pr011802.html (insight on what Michael Mann thinks about WLS)

>>>>>Michael Mann, president of the leading secondary domain market, BuyDomains.com, flatly calls VeriSign's anticompetitive efforts "a sham on all domain consumers and VeriSign competitors". BuyDomains.com and dozens of other competitors are urging authorities to put a halt to what they consider to be outrageously anticompetitive behavior. Competitors want all the expired, hoarded domains to be immediately put back into circulation (allowing the free market to flourish) and for VeriSign to rescind its anticompetitive WLS proposal.<<<<<


http://www.bizforward.com/wdc/issues/2000-07/launchpad/

>>>>>Some people make a living recognizing what's in a name. Michael Mann, CEO of the Bethesda, MD-based cyberspace real estate prospecting company BuyDomains.com, says he wishes that he owned mom.com. "It's a great name," says Mann, who values the URL at anywhere between $500,000 and $1.5 million. "It's short, it's to the point and it reminds you of somebody you love." According to Mann, dad.com, which is owned by a person in Marina del Rey, CA who couldn't be reached for comment, would be a bit cheaper. "I'd give dad a 30 percent discount," Mann says. "Mom seems to be more popular than dad - there are more active moms out there than dads, and an extra bonus is that mom.com rhymes." Dad.com, which features politics and finance on its site, is "just not as great," says Mann, adding that dishing out dough for catchy URLs can save companies big bucks on brand development. <<<<<

Now it's getting even more "confuseder" with charges by BuyDomains.com, one of the marketers of new domains, and a leading proponent of a "secondary marketplace" for "pre-owned" domain names, that Verisign is pulling a fast one on its competitors, the public and Congress with its "waiting list" policy for expired domains.

"Versign is now asserting its monopoly power by announcing they want to charge $40 to every competitor who wants to register an expired name for their customer by getting on a VeriSign controlled 'waiting list'. They say this is a way for them to save money on their technical systems yet they already get $180 million a year to run the database, they don't make basic improvements to the current system, and they will still be running the current system in parallel for any domains that aren't purchased via the WLS and expire naturally," says Michael Mann, president of BuyDomains.com.<<<<<<<

http://www.investrend.com/FiXarticle8.html

>>>Mann flatly calls VeriSign's efforts "a sham on all domain consumers and VeriSign competitors." BuyDomains.com and dozens of other competitors are urging authorities to put a halt to what they consider to be "outrageously anticompetitive behavior." Mann lists people and organizations that should be contacted "if you are sick of being abused by NSI/VeriSign's monopoly power. Most are paid with your tax dollars."