The cat below was on Germany.com for years. The owner refused to talk to domainers. Anyway, I’ve secured a management agreement with the owner so it is now my responsibility. The site you see live on www.germany.com now is a site that my team built.

I’m looking for a sales person in Germany to help me sign on hotels and tour operators. If you think you might be that person, fill out my contact form.

This cat has been on the web for 12 years now but for the last 6 months or so I can’t find him. Have any of you seen him?

Anyone who answers the question correctly gets 2 points that are worth absolutely nothing.

A year or so ago I picked up the domain Iran.com. The name gets 2000-5000 unique visitors a day. Revenue can be as low as 50 dollars but often spikes above 250 dollars a day, depending on how much the country is in the news. It’s in the news a lot.

That however, wasn’t my only logic employed. The ancient empire of Persia is a fascanating place. One of the oldest civilizations on earth, it has a tremendous amount of culture.

Three coastlines and two mountain ranges are in this largest of the middle eastern countries. The more than 70 million people there aren’t Arabic at all. They speak Farsi and have a Persian decent. They are an unique and intelligent people.

Let’s not forget the oil! There’s gold in them ‘dar hills.

 (image pulled from Wikipedia)

Sure the government is completely wacked. They want to instal a caliph and kill all the evil-doers, but who doesn’t? I’m joking there so hold back your flaming. If I didn’t love my life so much I’d fly a plane right into a meeting of the Mullahs but that’s not an option.

To the point, I’ve tried many different things with this name. At one point it was a collection of RSS feeds from various news sources but that didn’t work out so well. It’s currently parked. My new thinking is that I’m going to develop it as a full-blown tourist and business destination site like I’d do with any other GEO domain. My thinking is that I’m going to give the country the respect that it deserves. I’m not sure how many advertisers I’ll get but we’ll find out.

I’m soliciting ideas though. I’m willing to try just about anything to make this a big site. I still believe in the name.

This past week I was in the Philippines but that’s no excuse. I’ve also had a terrible case of writer’s block.

When I first started this blog I told myself I wouldn’t write about things that I wasn’t interested in. Up until a week ago that wasn’t a problem. There was always something that would inspire me to put something down.

I guess I was too busy. Oddly, 10 hours a day of meetings gives you less to write about. Partly because my mind was too busy to ponder any deep thoughts but mostly because the subject of those meetings were hush-hush.

I’ve made a few changes in my business life but I can’t tell you guys about it just yet. All in due time, as they say.

So this was a completely meaningless post. Tomorrow I’ll be a bit more rested and hopefully a lot more inspired.

I’m having a hard time thinking of a way to trump my skinning of Name Pros. If anyone has any suggestions, please email them to rick AT ricklatona.com.

I want to “keep the pedal to the metal” as they would say. I have no problem continuing to up my ad budget but I don’t want to be normal about it. I’m a huge fan of creative advertising.

Too bad the entry fees are so high at our trade shows. It would have been a lot of fun to have gotten 500 pretty girls to walk around wearing ricklatona.com t-shirts at the Domain Roundtable conference. Yes, that was in fact a serious option we worked on. The goal was to have 1 girl for every 1 attendee.

“I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly” – R Kelly

Business Travel takes practice. Here are a few tips I’ve learned over the years.

For at least 2 weeks before a long-haul flight, avoid movie rentals and pay-per-view. Otherwise, you’ll you may find yourself actually watching a movie about a water horse not once but twice.

Regarding luggage, my daughters can claim fame to the largest collection of broken dolls from around the world. I prefer hard luggage. I like to be able to bring home mementos without them breaking. This isn’t to say they don’t break anyway. They just break a little less.

When going across this spinning rock, you have a few choices. Wake up early and be awake the whole flight, stay up all night and try to sleep on the plane or stay up all night partying and continue partying on the plane until you pass out 40 minutes before landing. I recommend avoiding the later. These days I work until I pass out. It’s also a bit more profitable.

You don’t have to fly business class to go through the business class line. No matter what country I’m in and what airline I’m flying and what class I’m in, I still go to the business class line when I check in. If I’m ticketed in coach, I simply ask, “Can I upgrade”? If they reply with, “Sure it’s 129,000 dollars” I just tell them, “never mind, just check me in”. It never fails. They print my boarding pass and I’m on my way while the rest of the saps are waiting in the coach line.

Why is it that you have to put your seat up at takeoff and landing? My best guess is that it’s similar to it being safer to sit closer to the steering wheel when driving. The closer you are to the object, the less speed your face will have at impact. That being the case, why not tell everyone to lean their chairs back? That way everyone is still the same distance but we start our mutilation and probable death in comfort.

Babies, overweight people and flatulence can all cause misery if not handled correctly. Here are a few tips. Lotion below the nose helps with smelly neighbors. If you really want to do it right, keep in mind that the lotion only has a shelf life on your nose of about 20 minutes. A true traveling C.B.A. would tell the aggressor that they are aware of their stink and request a warning signal so they could dose up on lotion before the stench hits the nostrils. Always bring an MP3 player in case of babies and lastly if your single-serving-friend weighs more than 350 pounds, you flight is going to suck. I’m digressing.

One time, I was booking a flight for a friend and I chose a Muslim meal for him as a joke. To this day, he still can’t fly without being inspected. Don’t do that to anyone you really like. Do that to anyone you don’t really like.

When possible, bring extra batteries.

No article about plane travel is complete without discussing the bathrooms. Rule #1, always lift the seat with a paper towel and not your bare hand. You never know what is on the bottom of the lid. Rule #2, unless you are starting your journey in Bangalore, don’t eat Indian food before the flight. If you must shit, and you have the luxury, wait until no one else is in line, put the seat down with a tissue in your hand and wipe it off thoroughly. If you are the type that takes your shoes off on long flights, please put them back on before entering the loo.

In case of emergency, white lights lead to red lights. Oxygen is flowing even if the bag isn’t inflated and your seat cushion can be used as a flotation device.

The 1% interest for the first month is now permanent. It’s a promotion that has been running throughout April and due to the positive response we are going to keep it running.

In addition, I’m making an announcement that DigiPawn, Inc will finance up to 70% of any purchase made through the Daily Domains newsletter which you can subscribe to on this site.

I was the first person to start a company which made a business out of loaning money on domains as collateral.  DigiPawn did its first deal in 2004. While that was not ages ago, it was still another time in my life.

What I’d like you folks to know is that when I started the company I didn’t have as much capital as I do now. Being that I have never borrowed from a bank to do the loans, I confess that my rates were too high in the beginning.

It’s now 2008 and I am in a very different position. I want to make these deals as attractive as possible to you. All loans are interest only. If you see a name from the newsletter you like, you can now buy it for only 30% down, knowing that your first payment will be only 1% of the 70% remaining.

Naturally, you are all going to want to know about the ongoing payments. They are 3% to 5% per month which is negotiable. Clearly this is not a good long-term rate but if you sell the name or pay us back with 5-6 months, it should still be quite appealing. Remember these are interest only loans and can be paid back any time without penalties.

If you are in need of longer term financing at a lower rate, I can certainly introduce any of you to Domain Capital if you don’t already know them. I can’t speak for them but historically they will finance 60% of the purchase price.

A lot of people are emailing me about Sedo’s auction of Dollars.com that is going on right now. They ask because they know that I sold the name for 650,000 dollars just this past July.

Right now the auction is at 750,000 Euros with four days left in the auction.

I want it to sell for millions. I have no regrets as I did well when I sold it. Stephane and the folks at Virtual Network SA are also good people and they deserve to profit on the deal.

More importantly, Sedo’s auction of Pizza.com and this auction of Dollars.com are proof that the domain market can survive and thrive during a recession.

I still have tens of thousands of domains left. I’ll make far more money by the market continuing to rise than I ever could have made had I held on to Dollars.com for a bit longer.

Seriously folks, don’t do it. I get asked by people all the time if I want to fund a business “idea” of theirs. It usually turns out that they have a good domain so they’ve developed a business plan to work with that domain. They never wanted to be in that business of course, and they have no particular love for the industry. Yet, they feel obligated to enter the market because of their name.

In 1998 I purchased Spanish.com for 5000 dollars. On or around the year 2000 I decided I would develop it and attack the language learning market. After spending about 100,000 dollars on trying; I finally realized that all the traffic wanted to do was cheat on their Spanish homework. In 2004 I sold it to Kevin Ham for an undisclosed amount and never looked back. I won’t make that mistake again. (developing it being the mistake)

As I said in my blog entry before this one, you don’t actually NEED a great domain to succeed. Don’t fool yourself into thinking it is a necessity. A good name helps but only helps. And it only helps if you have a strong desire to be in that business and do everything else right to succeed in that market.

This isn’t to say that buying a name can’t inspire you and give you an idea. Heck that happens to me too.

Just don’t get into a business you don’t care about simply because you have the name.

You might be surprised to find out that I don’t think a great domain name is important to a business to have a successful web presence.

I completely disagree with people like Rick Shwartz who think that Hershey’s Corporation is stupid for not buying candy.com or Marriott needs to do some soul searching to find out why they didn’t buy hotels.com.

I agree with Madison Avenue when they try to explain to domainers on their panels that marketing executives would rather have a brand like M&Ms than Candy.com.

I myself have owned many successful websites that had lousy domain names. Was ConsumptionJunction.com a good name? Heck, I spent a small fortune on typos. You wouldn’t believe how many ways one could spell that name. That company has been sold and scrapped at this point but we had a good run before youtube.com. In 2000 our Alexa ranking was as low as 300 at one point. I wonder if the founders of youtube.com are wishing they bought videos.com while they are counting their Google cash.

What a good domain name can do is allow you to enter a market and compete with these big guys. They make it a little easier and sometimes a small edge is all you need. Yes, they also generate traffic and revenue if they are really good names but what makes them sell for far more than 20x earnings at times is that edge.

It’s the ability to call hotels in San Juan and tell them you are with sanjuan.com which gives that name so much value.

Just don’t believe the hype that a good name is necessary. They only help.