So I was minding my own business yesterday and getting ready for namescon, working on the auction, packing, answering emails, pretty much what you would expect when I got this email:
“”It’s Mark Bradford, hope you’re doing well.
I’m emailing to see if you’d be interested in buying:
DOMAINBLOG.CO
www.DomainBlog.co
The cool thing is that whoever develops this domain will be the first
one to “own” the brand DOMAIN BLOG, and they may own it for quite a
while, because…
DomainNameSales wants $150,000 for DOMAINBLOG.COM and there are NO
other sites using the name DOMAIN BLOG.
I wanted to develop it myself, but I need the cash, so I’m just
starting to email domain investors to sell it for $995.
It’s with GoDaddy, and I’m willing to transfer it before payment, as
long as you can pay the same day I transfer it.
Just le’me know if you want it.
Thanks,
Mark Bradford
Ok So I responded as follows, no more, no less:
“There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year”
That’s all I said
No more, no less
About 10 minutes after I got an email from a fellow blogger who got the same email but now at the end of the email Mr, Bradford added on the bottom of the email the following:
“”P.S. Michael Berkens just responded saying he’ll be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG (that’s .BLOG) later this year, but the brand DOMAIN BLOG s still wide open.”
Obviously as you can see from my response I said nothing like what Mark was telling third parties, in an attempt to sell his domain.
So I wrote to Mr. Bradford the following, word for word:
“Mark
First of all don’t tell anyone, anything I tell you
Don’t quote me or represent me without my permission to anyone
Its not proper
Bad business
Actually don’t tell anyone else what anyone tells you in a private email
Its not proper
Bad business
and is this case you got it totally wrong
All I said is that there will be a domain this year of:
Domain.blog
.Blog is still in contention among 10 applicants I think.
No one knows who will even get .blog, not even the applicants
So I did not say I was getting the domain or even wanted the domain or anything other than there will be a domain.blog sometime this year.
To go and tell others what I “said” is a horrible business practice especially in a small business and then you got it wrong on top of that.
“”P.S. Michael Berkens just responded saying he’ll be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG (that’s .BLOG) later this year, but the brand DOMAIN BLOG is still wide open.”
I didn’t say anything about your domain at all to you.
So what you’re doing
STOP IT
Don’t do it
and thank god or just the fates that you didn’t do it to Rick Schwartz because your life would be a living hell if you did.
Be glad I’m pretty nice and very busy getting ready for namescon.
If I hear from more people the same thing then expect me to blog about it
Michael”
So here is the response I received from Bradford:
“””Please trust me when I tell you the only reason I included that ‘caveat’ at the end of my email (after saying in my message to you that I’d “change the message” — meaning I’d ‘correct’ my email) was so my message would not be dishonest.
I didn’t WANT to include that ‘caveat’ in my email to people. That note certainly wouldn’t me sell the domain at all 🙂 I only included it so that what I was saying above it would not sound like a lie — telling people that the ‘brand’ DOMAIN BLOG was wide open. I took your message to mean, “No, that space isn’t wide open, or at least it won’t be for long.”
And honestly, I (mis-) interpreted your message to mean that you were the one who’d be setting up that site. I didn’t realize .blog was still up in the air…
So my mistake was in error, believe me, and I had no idea you intended that piece of info to be kept secret. Like I said, I actually thought you were setting up that site, since your message sounded pretty definitive. I was trying not to be dishonest, since I had been made aware of what I thought was another site coming this year that would ‘share’ that ‘brand space.’
I checked my messages, and I did send that message with the P.S. to Rick Schwartz. I know his position on .pigeonshit 🙂 but he’s a cantankerous old man, who appears to have gone into hiding anyway 🙂
So my mistake was unintentional, but I won’t hold your tirade against you 🙂
Take care,
Mark””
Well here is my response:
Mark
Are you kidding me??
You’re only response should have been
I’m sorry you’re right, won’t do it again to you or anyone else
That’s it and that would have been the end of it.
instead your trying to explain it.
Wow you now fucked it.
It wasn’t a Caveat
I’m a lawyer I know what that word means
It was a sale tool using my name to sell your fucking domain
Your Caveat made your email dishonest
I understand you mis-interpreted my message which is one of the many reasons you don’t go around telling other people what you think they tell you.
“”Rick Schwartz. but he’s a cantankerous old man, who appears to have gone into hiding anyway :)”””
WOW Really
I’m an pretty old cantankerous guy as well but Rick FYI he didn’t go into hiding, he retired, to live his life
He doesn’t need to do this crap or deal with idiots like you
Also a VERY good friend of mine
“I won’t hold your tirade against you”
You are amazing
Really mind blowing
and now you have not heard the last of this.””
Here is was Mr. Bradford’s response to the above email
“You sound insane.
If you post anything, post your complete tirade, or I will.
That caveat would not me sell DOMAINBLOG.CO when the biggest selling feature is that there is NO .com and no other sites using the brand.
If I was looking to setup DOMAINBLOG.CO, and I knew Michael Berkens was setting up DOMAIN.BLOG, I would find that disheartening, since YOU would be competing AGAINST MY BRAND.
So whether you believe it or not, I included that caveat BECAUSE it CONTRADICTED my selling point, which was that there was NO ONE using that brand — and the .com was in DEEP FREEZE.
I GET IT that when people say things in private by email or otherwise, those things should not be repeated.
You said: “there will be a domain.blog though sometime this year”
And you didn’t say anything about that being private information. You also didn’t say this:
“.blog MAY be available soon, and someone will probably get it in the next year.”
You said THERE WILL BE, so I assumed you bothered to tell me that BECAUSE it contradicted what I was saying about NO ONE USING THAT BRAND.
So my mistake was unintentional.
If someone emails me and says, ‘THIS SITE WILL BE GOING UP THIS YEAR.”
And they don’t say, “But keep that private.” And there’s NO REASON ON EARTH for me to ASSUME you want it kept private, then it would not occur to me to keep it private.
You and I hardly know each other, so I’d ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to assume you’d tell me ANYTHING that you wouldn’t tell your garbage man or anyone else. If you were my close friend and told me something in confidence, I would KNOW to keep it private. In this situation, I had NO REASON to think this was private information.
AND AS I SAID, BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I ADDED THAT NOTE TO BE HONEST, SINCE IT CONTRADICTED WHAT I WAS SAYING IN THE MESSAGE — WHICH IS WHY I BELIEVED YOU BOTHERED TO TELL ME IN THE FIRST PLACE!
MOST DOMAIN INVESTORS WOULD NOT WANT TO COMPETE WITH YOU USING THE SAME BRAND, AND ONCE YOU TOLD ME — THINKING YOU WERE SETTING UP THAT SITE — I FELT I HAD TO DISCLOSE IT, SINCE IT CONTRADICTED WHAT WAS MY MAIN SELLING POINT.””
Here was my final email to Mr. Bradford:
“Mark
Don’t worry I will publish it all
Or maybe I can drag that old fuck Rick out of hiding even”
So there is it
The whole series of emails, as requested by Mark, each word of mine and each word of his.
The last thing I ever intended to do was to get into an argument with someone trying to sell a domain I had no interest in and then to sit and blog about it when I had tons of other stuff to do, but if you are going to use my name to sell your domain and then completely misrepresenting what I wrote to you, well expect there will be repercussions.
Especially when you dare me to do it.
I will let everyone judge the email conversation and draw their own conclusions and decide who they want to or not to do business with.
Meantime I wrote about this as a general rule for how not to do business, IMHO.
Also probably its a good idea not to fuck with me or anyone else
Life lesson : There are idiots in the world. Ignore ’em or make money from them. 🙂
Michael, You have more important things to waste your time on , like packing. Cya tomorrow.
Too many people “make money from them” as a general policy.
His your[dot]do stuff is also incredibly annoying. He “registers” the domain names, doesn’t pay, and then “registers” them again after month, and so on, meaning people can’t buy the domains without of going via him..
Wouldn’t be so annoying if he actually paid for them!
Mr. Bradford does a lot of screaming.
Had received the same message few times too. The guy hacked the whois records and used them to send mass emails…
Well at least Mr. Bradford is now indexed in Google
dontpissmeoff.blog is coming soon I bet
Hi, It’s Mark Bradford. I stand by what I wrote, and I think Michael Berkens sounds like an unglued lunatic in all of his emails to me. In fact, I’m pretty sure that’s undeniable. The emails speak for themselves, so I’ll leave it at that.
One commenter said I hacked the whois record and sent mass emails, offering that domain for sale. In reality, I sent a total of around 75 emails (just counted the sent items in my gmail) to prominent domain investors and domains sites. No hacking of anything, and no mass mailing. I did look up the owner’s email addresses for some of the sites I sent emails to by simply going to the whois record — which is pretty standard practice for domain investors trying to sell (or buy) a domain name.
I believe this series of emails shows that Michael Berkens is an egomaniacal bully, whose status as a domain god, and whose ability to hit ‘publish’ and reach a large audience has gone to his head.
Before I posted the above comment, I didn’t bother to read through his post. I just read through the first part and realized Michael conveniently left out the reply I sent him three minutes after receiving his first message.
At 8:53 am my time (yesterday), he said: “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year”
At 8:56 am, I sent this reply:
okay – I’ll change that message :)
Sounds like a cool name 🙂
So I told him three minutes after his original email that I was interpreting his message to mean that what I was saying in my email would NOT be true in the near future (that NO ONE was using the name DOMAIN BLOG). That’s why I added this P.S. at the bottom of the remaining emails I sent:
P.S. Michael Berkens just responded saying he’ll be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG (that’s .BLOG) later this year, but the brand DOMAIN BLOG is still wide open.”
I misunderstood his message to me, believing he was the one who would be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG. So I added the P.S. so I wouldn’t get a later message from him saying, “Why are you still telling people no one is using that name when I already told you I will be using it?”
What a tool (and I am NOT referring to MB)
Michael-you sound pissed-as well you should be. Everyone knows that an email between two parties should be exceptionally discreet. Catch your breath and enjoy Vegas next week.
London
I’m very chill.
I waited a day to even publish this mess and only did it after someone else told me the crap emails were still going out.
Michael, That’s absolutely NOT true. I just checked my sent mails, and the last email I sent with that P.S. was 20 minutes before your first attack email. In fact, after that, the only emails I sent at all related to this domain were 1-2 sentence responses to a few people who said they weren’t interested in the domain (and those responses had nothing to do with you or the P.S.); and then I sent one more outgoing email WITHOUT THE P.S. about an hour later to one contact that I’d tried to email earlier, but that came back because of a typo in the email address.
You emailed your first attack email at this time (on my computer – mountain time):
“On Fri, Jan 9, 2015 at 12:54 PM, Michael Berkens wrote:”
(copied from the top of your first attack message to me)
And not one more email went out with that P.S. or any mention of you or DOMAIN.BLOG after that time. And as mentioned only one more outgoing mail went out at all after that — because I had already covered the blogs and domain sites I intended to email by this time — and that last email did NOT have the P.S.
if you want to dispute this, post the exact email I sent after your first attack email — with the time stamp and who it was to.
Any sane person reading this knows your over-reaction in this case if off the charts — like ‘get your head examined’ off the charts.
When you first flew off the handle, I assumed you must be having a really bad day — maybe extra stress in your life or who knows what. But you just kept get digging in deeper, making it worse.
Have a few psychiatrists read this post, and you’ll see that NONE of this is normal. And it’s not like there was any bad blood between us before this. You and I have never done a deal together, and never had a run-in before this. In fact, I’ve never had a run-in with any domain investor that I’m aware of.
Going back to 2004, I’ve sold domains to a few investors on DNForum, including Adam Dicker, and a few others on DN Forum (having started reselling in 1999), and I’ve had casual contact with different investors over the years, with, as I said, not one run-in or ‘deal gone bad’ that I can remember.
So your absurd response to what any normal person can see was a simple MISUNDERSTANDING says a lot more about YOU and your state of mind than anything else.
Wow Mark, do you need a bigger shovel to dig a deeper hole for yourself?
Here’s what your exchange with Mr. Berkens really shows about the psychological profiles of those involved. You asked, so prepare yourself…
First off, you hand register a .co domain and then immediately (within 72hrs) turn around and start spamming (yes, you are spamming) domain professionals with a completely bullshit story. Why bullshit? You were not holding this name “for development” and then changed your mind later due to financial reasons, you registered it thinking you were smarter than everybody else and could make 100x return on your reg cost. Then, you are even arrogant enough to spam some of the shrewdest players in the game and you actually think they will fall all over themselves and throw money at your feet. There’s the first indicator that there’s something not quite “right” with you.
Then there’s the fact that you registered a domain in a third rate extension and then try to immediately pass it off as a Brand? Seriously, when did it become a “brand”? A domain is not a “brand”, especially one that isn’t even dry yet from being so freshly registered. A Brand is created from actual use, it gains recognition, becomes known as the “name” for something. A brand is not created by some magical mental masturbation that you had over your breakfast cereal the day after registering it. No, a Brand takes actual action to build. Sending out unsolicited solicitations claiming such does not make a crappy third rate domain a band in any vector of reality, other than in Mark-ville Colorado apparently.
Mike was actually considerate and sent you a simple response, informing you that the exact match of your imaginary “brand” was going to happen in a matching extension – .blog. Obviously, being the professional that he is, he saw no value to your self imagined “brand” in a third rate extension anyway. But he did take the time to send you a response.
What do you do? You spin that into something else to use as some sort of endorsement of how powerful your illusion is and proceed to spam more people – this time creating the false narrative that by paying you for this domain someone would be getting the jump on a known top domain professional, i.e. Mike Berkens. Mistaken understanding of Mike’s original missive to you or not, that’s not acceptable practice in any sense of the word. Mike, quite understandably, took issue with this and sent you a pointed (yet polite) email to put a stop to this.
Now, any sane person, any normal thinking individual, any competent businessman, would immediately stop and say to themselves “gee, I misread this situation. I fucked up” apologize and move on. But not you. No, you immediately escalate and turn nasty, defending the indefensible and resorting to personal attacks on yet more high end professionals. Still believing that you are smarter than anyone else on the planet, you belligerently double down and attack. Berkens did not attack you, you most certainly attacked him and others.
He tells you to just stop. You had several opportunities to just learn your lesson and move on, like most any rational thinking person would. But again, not Mark – the ever omnipotent legend in his own mind – no, you then proceed to bait Mike Berkens and still attempt to “school” him on what he will or will not do.
By this time it is obvious what’s going to happen. You are so stuck in your own illusion that there was no other way for this to end, it all got brought out into the light of day for all to see. Yet, even now, you continue to argue and defend a position that is insanely myopic and amateurish. You’re right about one thing, NONE of this is “normal” – on YOUR part.
You’re a narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur suffering from an inferiority complex. That’s what your own words and actions present as. Aren’t you glad you asked? 😉
Cartoonz,
I am still responding here, because what is posted on the Internet stays online forever. Mike chose to take this fight public. I didn’t. I simply decided I wasn’t going to be steamrolled by him — or any of his cronies, fanboys, or sockpuppets.
I’m going through your post, and I’ll address your arguments.
First, I didn’t say I was ‘holding the domain’ for anything — as if I had it a long time. I realize there’s not a domain investor out there who wouldn’t research the domain before buying it, and would easily see I just registered it — though the domain had been registered previously and dropped more than once. When I said, “I wanted to develop in myself, but I need the cash.” That’s the truth. I still want to develop it, and I may do exactly that if it doesn’t sell.
I was putting feeds on my partially developed site, DomainCheese.com, when I started searching — as domain investors often do — to see if there were any good ‘domain blog’ domains available. I was surprised to find that DOMAINBLOG.CO was available, and got it. If it doesn’t sell, I’ll be doing something with it. I do need the cash more than I need the domain, so that’s why I offered it for sale.
You accused me of “spamming the shrewdest players,” offering the domain for 100x what I paid for it. Obviously, I wasn’t going to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes — and I wasn’t trying to. If I had been trying to deceive anyone, I certainly wouldn’t have sent that email to seasoned domain investors.
Even the most respected domain investors and domain brokers — I could add a long list here — hand-register domains and then email potential buyers to sell them. That’s how this game is played. You can find advice on how to do this well on every domain blog out there.
Take this post from Elliot Silver — posted yesterday — as an example:
http://www.domaininvesting.com/timing-sales-email-important/
Any experienced domain investor can tell you stories of hand-registering domains (or buying them cheap) and selling them for exponentially more than they paid for them. Buying and selling is why we’re all in this business, after all. I’ve hand-registered domains and sold them for $1,500 or more the same day, several times — for domains in a variety of different industries. Most people reading this could probably share similar stories. It’s not that uncommon.
As far as branding, you CAN build a brand with a .CO, especially if no one else is using the .com for a site with the same name (in the same industry). Look at VINE. It’s a .CO, and it’s now a major brand. VINE.COM is a grocery site, so VINE.CO was easily able to establish a brand with VINE.CO. ANGEL.CO is also a pretty established brand (for AngelList). So I absolutely believe that DOMAINBLOG.CO could be a recognizable brand in the domain industry, especially with the .com currently priced out of the market.
Top domain blogs make $3,000 to $5,000 or more per month. A few probably make $5,000 to $10,000 per month. So I believe spending $995 for DOMAINBLOG.CO would make sense, knowing the .com could stay unused for many years to come, unless the price is substantially reduced.
Next, going down your arguments, you said I tried to spin Mike’s response: “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year,” into an endorsement, or as Mike put it, “It was a sale tool using my name to sell your fucking domain.”
But three minutes after Mike sent that original message, I replied, saying this:
”okay – I’ll change that message :)
Sounds like a cool name :)”
I posted that above in the comments, and it stands undisputed, because there is an email record of it — even though Mike conveniently left it out of his supposed ‘every word’ record of this discussion.
I took his response as a correction of what I was saying in my email. But I decided not to change my message because DOMAIN.BLOG is not the same as DOMAINBLOG.(whatever). So I added a P.S. instead, thinking that would suffice.
The P.S. I added was this:
P.S. Michael Berkens just responded saying he’ll be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG (that’s .BLOG) later this year, but the brand DOMAIN BLOG is still wide open.”
Mike already has an established domain blog — the one we’re writing on — so I took it as a given when he sent that first email, that he was telling me HE was planning to set up that new site. I was disclosing that at the end of my message, as a disclaimer, as in, “I still believe DOMAINBLOG.CO can be turned into a brand (in this small industry, at least), but I have been informed by a top dog that he will be creating a similarly-named site this year.
I added, the “BUT” as a counter to my caveat, as in, A top dog is setting up a similarly named site [which will be a competing brand in that space], BUT “the brand DOMAIN BLOG is still wide open.” Which is true, because .BLOG is still an extension, and ‘what I believed was Mike’s soon-to-come site’ would NOT be DOMAINBLOG.anything. It would be DOMAIN.something. So it was similar, but not exact. Hence, “the brand DOMAIN BLOG is still wide open.”
Again, there is no deception going on here. I emailed seasoned professionals. And I still believe what I said is true. If I knew Mike was setting up DOMAIN.BLOG, and I wanted to buy and setup DOMAINBLOG.CO, I’d still do it, but I’d be a little disheartened, as I said, because the two would be similar.
As I said up above, I didn’t want to get another email from Mike — knowing he knows all or most of the people I was emailing — saying, “Why are you still telling people no one is using that name when I already told you I will be using it?”
That would have looked deceptive, so I added the P.S. as full disclosure.
NO ENDORSEMENT from anyone was or is needed for the brand DOMAIN BLOG. Anyone in the industry knows that’s a generic name for DOMAIN BLOGS, like the one we’re on. It’s stands on its own. Period. That’s why DomainNameSales is asking $150,000 for it. All I got was a price from them, but if they were pitching it, they’d probably call it a ‘category killer’ or a ‘category-defining domain.’ Because it is, even though the numbers probably don’t make sense for someone to pay 150K for it, unless they also have the cash to turn it into a powerhouse site quickly.
If I had tried to say something to the effect that “Mike Berkens thinks this is an awesome domain,” that would have been a lie, and it would have been an attempt to use his name for an endorsement of the domain I was selling. But I did no such thing.
To elaborate further and make this crystal clear… If I was selling DOMAINBLOG.CO, saying the brand was wide open, and then a domain investor emailed me and said, “Just FYI… I’m developing DOMAINBLOG.NET,” if I didn’t disclose that fact — and I continued saying the brand was wide open — I would be deceptive. In that case, I would have had to change the entire email, instead of only adding a P.S. (again, since DOMAIN.BLOG is not the same as DOMAINBLOG.NET — similar, but not exactly the same).
Continuing through your post, you said, “…you immediately escalate and turn nasty, defending the indefensible and resorting to personal attacks on yet more high end professionals.” You’re apparently referring to this statement: “I checked my messages, and I did send that message with the P.S. to Rick Schwartz. I know his position on .pigeonshit 🙂 but he’s a cantankerous old man, who appears to have gone into hiding anyway :)”
That statement wouldn’t have been fit to publish, but people talk privately like this all the time. And just so we’re clear, BEFORE I SAID THAT, MIKE SAID THIS ABOUT THE SAME MAN – HIS FRIEND:
“and thank god or just the fates that you didn’t do it to Rick Schwartz because your life would be a living hell if you did. Be glad I’m pretty nice and very busy getting ready for namescon.”
So Mike said he was nice, but that I should be glad I didn’t do the same thing to Rick or my “life would be a living hell.” That’s sounds a lot like this: “If you had done the same thing to a giant asshole I know, he would have ripped you a new. So be thankful I’m nice.”
TO THAT, I SAID: “I know his [Rick’s] position on .pigeonshit 🙂 but he’s a cantankerous old man, who appears to have gone into hiding anyway :)”
The reality is that Rick Schwartz attacked the hell out of all the new domain extensions for quite some time. Then he sort of went away, or as Mike put it, “I’m an pretty old cantankerous guy as well but Rick FYI he didn’t go into hiding, he retired, to live his life. He doesn’t need to do this crap or deal with idiots like you. Also a VERY good friend of mine.”
But Mike was the first one (in our previously private conversation) to paint Rick as an asshole who would have made my life a living hell.
In your last few paragraphs, you used a number of phrases to attack me: “Still believing that you are smarter than anyone else on the planet,” “the ever omnipotent legend in his own mind,” “narcissistic sociopath with delusions of grandeur suffering from an inferiority complex.”
I believe Mike seriously over-reacted. I didn’t apologize because I knew he was way out of his tree. I made an honest mistake in believing he was the one setting up DOMAIN.BLOG, and I disclosed that because I had been aware of it. As I said in my original comments above [though I accidentally left out the word ‘help’ in two places], adding that caveat WOULD NOT help me sell that domain. Mike’s words were NOT an endorsement. I did NOT present them that way. Mike’s words SOUNDED LIKE a correction to what I was saying about the DOMAIN BLOG ‘brand space’ being wide open. THAT’S WHY I ADDED THE P.S. Period.
Nothing I’ve said indicates that I think I’m a legend of any kind or have delusions of grandeur, or that I’m a narcissistic sociopath, for that matter. You’re making that stuff up out of thin air. DEFENDING ONESELF IS NOT NARCISSISTIC. This all started with me emailing domain investors to sell a domain, saying I needed the cash. No one trying to pretend they are anything says they need cash. You’re angry and you’re attacking me now because I didn’t cower to an asshole’s diatribe.
I challenge anyone to re-read Mike’s original post, and reverse the roles. Imagine Mike was me, and someone like Donald Trump sent those attack messages. Anyone who ‘loved Mike’ (as people defending him here apparently do, unless they’re just kiss-ups) would realize ‘Donald Trump’ sounded like a crazy asshole, over-reacting in a major way — or as I said above, acting like an egomaniacal bully.
So unless we see it your way, we’re all wrong and kiss ups to boot, huh?
I’m laughing ’cause you totally proved every point I made without you even realizing it.
domain.blog has just increased in value.
seems like we are already in the silly season.
Cartoonz, You sound like a sixth grader quoting PeeWee Herman, “I know you are, but what am I.”
Your bias was clear from the start of your post, and a lot of what you said makes you sound like you know almost nothing about how domain investing works.
My “bias”, as perceived by you, was an objective conclusion based upon your own behavior and words. Obviously, you just don’t have the ability to understand all the ways you went wrong in this debacle, let alone take any responsibility. Hence, your further childish attacks… and you did prove my points yourself completely by the way you responded. That’s not Pee Wee, that’s reality.
Tell me, oh great guru of “domain investing”…. please illustrate the specific things I’ve written that lead you to believe I know next to nothing about the domain business?
I’m not a guru. But you criticized fundamental domain sales tactics, like an outsider would.
You lambasted selling domains by email as “spamming” and “unsolicited solicitations,” when email is how most domain investors offer their domains to potential buyers. Some make phone calls, but cold calls are often more unwanted by potential buyers than email.
You seemed to attack the notion of buying a domain for $10 and selling it immediately for $995 — or offering it at that price. Most domain investors would celebrate this as good business, and they’d be glad they found a domain with good potential ROI. .CO is becoming increasingly accepted, so it’s not like we’re talking about a bad extension.
And I think most active domain investors have had the experience of buying domains for $10 and cashing in quickly with sale of $1,000 or more. Again, that kind of return is why people get into this business. Why would you attack it. I didn’t get any emails from anyone I emailed saying, “You’re crazy to ask that much for the domain,” or anything discouraging at all. If I had asked 5 or 10K for it, I would have gotten some of those I’m sure. When the .com is for sale at a ridiculous price (and is totally out of reach), the lesser extensions can become more appealing and more valuable — ’cause those are the only ones left in the sandbox.
Then you attacked the whole branding thing, when branding is often created by owning great generic domain names. That’s how most domain investors position their best domains: “You create a brand by the domain you choose.” That’s domaining 101.
DOMAIN BLOG is a category-defining keyword phrase. The .com would be considered THE category-defining domain name for this category. But the .COM is ‘locked up,’ probably for a long time — just like many one-word generic .com’s have been locked up and unused (except for parking) since the before the 90’s…
So if DOMAINBLOG.COM will most likely be stuck in limbo for a number of years (unless the sellers fall on hard times and discount it, or a domainer with seriously deep pockets buys it for six figures), then there is ROOM for someone to create a DOMAIN BLOG brand with a non .com domain. The same way ANGEL.CO did and VINE.CO, and the way many others have with .co, .net, .org, and other extensions.
Brand building is what picking a good domain is all about.
So when you attacked everything I said about all of the above, you sounded uninformed. But maybe it was just bias, who knows?
Cartoonz, Will you answer directly:
Are you Alan Hack, and did Michael Berkens ask you to post here?
Whether there will be an answer or not to my last question above, I don’t know. I asked if he’s Alan Hack because his username links to banco.com, which links to Alan’s email at Names Plus Marketing, and there are lots of industry connections, like speaking at TRAFFIC in 2013, etc. And his post attacking me seems like the work of a lackey.
But I have a serious problem with BS accusations, which is why I’m still here. This is extremely frustrating, but I’ll have to keep responding as long as necessary…
So now, Cartoonz, I’m addressing this in your latest post: “Obviously, you just don’t have the ability to understand all the ways you went wrong in this debacle, let alone take any responsibility.”
There is no responsibility for me to take. I could have said: I’m sorry Michael Berkens, for repeating in my email what you said to me, when there was no indication confidentiality was needed — websites are PUBLIC after all; and I’m sorry you sent me a message that read EXACTLY the way I interpreted it: “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year” UNLESS OTHERWISE EXPLAINED, THAT TELLS THE READER THE GUY SAYING IT IS THE GUY MAKING IT.
And If you don’t want to be quoted at all about something with ZERO reason or indication of need for confidentiality, then ASK for confidentially if you want it. DON’T ASSUME IT’S REQUIRED. IT’S NOT. UNLESS YOU THINK YOU’RE SO IMPORTANT THAT PEOPLE OWE YOU SPECIAL DEFERENCE OR OBEISANCE — WHICH IS EXACTLY HOW BOTH OF YOUR EMAILS READ.
KING MICHAEL IS SPECIAL. BOW DOWN MOTHERFUCKER.
THAT’S WHAT YOUR EMAILS SAID AS PLAIN AS DAY.
And when Michael said: “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year” and you bother to ADD A “THOUGH” (and even bother to email me to tell me this!) that would certainly seem to indicate that you’re OBJECTING to what I was saying, that the ‘BRAND’ DOMAIN BLOG is wide open.
Your sentence came across as: NO, IT’S NOT EXACTLY WIDE OPEN, because THERE WILL BE (how definitive is that) a DOMAIN.BLOG sometime this year.
Who cares if a DOMAIN.BLOG exists on the planet as a domain name — if it’s not USED?!!!
THERE HAS BEEN FOR MANY YEARS: DOMAINBLOG.COM and DOMAINBLOG.everythingelse. But they are IRRELEVANT IF UNDEVELOPED AND/OR OVER-PRICED!
THERE WILL ONLY “BE” A DOMAIN.BLOG OR A DOMAIN.ANYTHING ELSE if someone develops a site on it!
ON TOP OF ALL THIS, I responded three minutes after Michael said: “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year” with this:
“okay – I’ll change that message :)
Sounds like a cool name :)”
WHY DO YOU THINK HE LEFT THAT OUT OF HIS ‘EVERY WORD’ RECORD OF THIS CONVERSATION?
BECAUSE IT SHOWS EXACTLY HOW I INTERPRETED HIS MESSAGE, AND I CLEARLY TOLD HIM I’D:
“CHANGE THE MESSAGE”
(which obviously meant my email message)
MEANING I UNDERSTOOD HE WAS TELLING ME THAT SITE WAS GOING UP THIS YEAR — NOT THAT SOME FRICKIN’ DOMAIN WOULD BE BROUGHT INTO EXISTENCE!
AND I HAD ABSOLUTELY NO REASON TO BELIEVE ANYONE ELSE WAS PUTTING THAT SITE UP, OR HE PROBABLY WOULD HAVE SAID SO!
SO I DID WHAT I THOUGHT HE EXPECTED ME TO DO, WHICH WAS TO CHANGE THE EMAIL MESSAGE TO REFLECT THE NEW INFORMATION THAT HAD BEEN GIVEN TO ME.
So what was I supposed to say, “The brand DOMAIN BLOG is wide open, except I heard it through the grapevine that “There will be a domain.blog though sometime this year”
THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN PRETTY STRANGE.
AND ANYONE READING IT WOULD HAVE INTERPRETED IT EXACTLY AS I INTERPRETED IT — NOT THAT SOME DOMAIN WILL EXIST — BUT THAT A SITE WAS GOING UP!
HOW AM I TO BLAME IN ANY OF THIS? I STATED EXACTLY WHAT I UNDERSTOOD TO BE TRUE, AND I QUOTED THE SOURCE — WITH NO REQUEST FOR CONFIDENTIALITY AND NOT THE SLIGHTEST HINT THAT IT WAS REQUIRED.
I TOOK HIS MESSAGE AS A ‘CORRECTION’ OF WHAT I SAID IN MY MESSAGE, AND THEN I USED MY UNDERSTANDING OF THAT MESSAGE — WHICH WAS ITS OBVIOUS MEANING — TO ‘CORRECT’ THE REMAINING EMAILS I SENT.
IF, LIKE ANY NORMAL HUMAN BEING, MICHAEL HAD SAID SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
“Mark, I just heard from a domain investor that you put this P.S. at the end of your email:
‘P.S. Michael Berkens just responded saying he’ll be setting up DOMAIN.BLOG (that’s .BLOG) later this year, but the brand DOMAIN BLOG s still wide open.’
I’m sorry, you must have misunderstood me. I was simply saying that DOMAIN.BLOG would probably exist as a domain name sometime this year, since it’s one of the new domain extensions coming online soon.”
IF MICHAEL HAD SENT SOMETHING LIKE THAT, WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN APPROPRIATE, then I could have said, “Sorry about that, I’ll take that P.S. off” and left it at that.
BUT EVEN AFTER I CLEARLY TOLD HIM:
“okay – I’ll change that message :)
Sounds like a cool name :)”
HE DECIDED TO VOMIT ON ME WITH BS BLAME, LIKE I VIOLATED HIM IN SOME WAY.
WHEN IN REALITY HE SENT ME A MESSAGE THAT DID NOT COMMUNICATE WHAT HE INTENDED.
THAT’S HIS FAULT, AND HE ADDED NOTHING TO IT!
SO I TOOK IT AT FACE VALUE, AND ADDED A P.S. TO MY MESSAGE TO REFLECT WHAT HE TOLD ME.
YOU READ HIS EMAILS UP TOP, AND YOU HAVE TO ASK YOURSELF, WHO THE FUCK DOES MICHAEL BERKENS THINK HE IS?
Moral of the story is: Mr Berkens is not interested. If you ever wanted to do business with him or anyone like him in the future, this is NOT how you should approach it or start of a pitch.
domainblog.biz is available is someone wants to mess with someone’s head.