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atlas
18-04-12, 03:30 PM
Apparently Mike Mann hand registered 11,000 new .com domain names yesterday:

http://www.thedomains.com/2012/04/18/mike-mann-registers-11000-new-domain-names-yesterday/


I’ve been following Mike Mann’s Facebook page where yesterday he said he wound up registering almost 11,000 domain names.

Not that I don't think there are valuable unregistered domains out there, but I'm struggling to figure out how this could be done profitably on such a large scale. What do you make of this?

crabfoot
19-04-12, 12:02 AM
I wrote a long post, then split off the bit about ICANN domains getting harder to catch (http://www.ukdomainforum.co.uk/showthread.php?714-ICANN-droppers-seem-to-be-harder-to-catch) - but that seems to be happening.

There's a US company which builds link wheel sites and flogs them on, very quietly. I know about them because their people have asked me for links in the past - I've done it a couple of times, just to look at what happens.

When they first approached me a few years ago, their sites were all glow-in-the-dark autoblogs with PR 3/4/5 and domain names relevant to the subject. Nowadays, the sites look a lot more like something vaguely useful and the domain names often have no association to the subject.

My thought is that Mr Mann has decided to create his own links network. Or several, which may at a later date be sold very quietly for large sums of money.

Those people I've encountered are still in the stone age, trying to put sites together on anything that they can catch with traffic and good backlinks. The obvious conclusion is that they don't keep anything they build up.

If Mr Mann's already got some substantial sites, he doesn't need to use "second-hand" domains, he doesn't have to find droppers with links, juice and traffic. He can create his own niches, and use his already existing sites to pump juice into any new sites he decides to kick into action.

The way the panda is working, keyword domains are losing a lot of relevance - content is king in a bigger way than ever. Links need more relevance than previously seen. But links are the only constant factor in this changing web-world ...

aZooZa
19-04-12, 08:25 AM
Some of the domains are now listed in the comments:

http://www.thedomains.com/2012/04/18/mike-mann-registers-11000-new-domain-names-yesterday/#comments

atlas
19-04-12, 01:06 PM
You can see the entire list here:
http://fusible.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/mike-mann-domain-domains.txt
Looks like a lot of crap in there...

I agree with crabfoot that he's probably got some larger plan with all of these domains.

crabfoot
19-04-12, 08:17 PM
I'm still picking at this -

A lot of the domains have been listed for sale on DomainMarket.

The interesting thing is that if you try to go to any domain, it brings up a page which shows another site in a frame, which has the "domain is for sale" message on it. The sites shown in the frame are vaguely relevant - anything with a "service bias" goes to modernservices .com, webBiz stuff goes to Mike Mann . com (buy my book!), there are others, and they're all Mike Mann sites with ads and Adsense.

Methinks the truth of the matter is that Mr Mann's parking system is avoiding the woes inflicted on other parking systems over the last couple of years - he's had it devised and designed in-house, and all it has to do is recover the reg fee for each site and the whole thing becomes a viable exercise - buying domains and parking them, like in days of yore.

I'd say that he's run a test, found his parking system is "a goer", and jumped right in, getting some age on those domains.

Whatever, even the really tacky ones are $350 ...

aZooZa
19-04-12, 11:07 PM
Looks almost as if he's run his two-word keyword list through a registrar 'alternative' suggestion tool, and it's come back with some 'webby' adjectives to stick in front. It's just a numbers game I guess. I can't help thinking that I could have done more with the $100k he's just plonked down.

Mind you, it's a well-diversified investment in a way and could turn out to be quite canny.

crabfoot
20-04-12, 12:12 AM
Aw, cmon Dale - $100k if he registers them with other people - he's major league, if it costs him $10 a name using his own service he's doing it wrong. He could easily get discount from GoDaddy to get the price down to $70k on that sort of bulk - you only have to pay up front to get into the discount club.

It is vaguely interesting that he decided to publicise the event, and do the work personally. Anyone sane would have farmed out the list to a load of Philipinos and let them get on with it - registering domains is hardly rocket science. I am reminded of the famous "Gymcrack" speech that was written by Sheikh Muhammed, who had it read out by a proxy and has never actually uttered the words in public. While it is often referred to as Sheikh Muhammed's "Gymcrack" speech - typical idle arab b'stard, he wasn't even there, never said a word.

I actually encountered Sheikh Muhammed at Longchamps once. Me and the wife were taking a short cut down this corridor at the back of the kitchens behind the stand, which had a notice saying " no public access" in French. Not being French, I chose to be unable to understand it. At the end of the corridor, I paused to wait for my wife, who really needs most of her perambulation body parts replacing. Her hips and knees are totally creamed, as they say in Essex, so she was a long way behind me, and the corridor was full of tables so there was only room for single file traffic.

So there I am waiting for my wife to get along the corridor, a door opens, and Sheikh Mohammed and another of those Makhtoums come out (I think it was either Hamdan or Makhtoum al Makhtoum, but they all look the same to me). So I give them the nod, politely, and Sheikh Mohammed nods back, politely - the Makhtoum acts like I'm invisible. In retrospect, I would have loved to be in possession of a gun at this point ...

Then they set off down the corridor, which is still full of my lovely Patricia. Evidently Arabs are also unable to understand French.

She had to prostrate herself across one of those tables to let them pass.

When she got to the end of the corridor, I said "You might have been a bit more respectful - they are royalty".
She said "I let them get past, didn't I?".

What I find more interesting about Mr Mann's activities is why he needs the publicity, why it has to be personal. Does that show a downturn in the market that he is hoping to get past? Am I right about his method of parking?

It's showboating about something - but nobody is exactly sure about what.

aZooZa
20-04-12, 12:34 AM
Well, I make it 15,289 domains. $100k for that amount would seem a reasonable ball park figure I think - circa $6.50 per domain. No doubt he has an arrangement with Tucows for default DNS, and a script to make them all live wherever he chooses.

Pred
20-04-12, 05:51 AM
i think he's found a way to get back off parking and also will get a few sales
on that number he will get some
prob noone has ever sold more domains than him

still think nuts in many ways as he could have accumalated 1000 goers from the forums and had more fun and had far better investments

another factor is he did it day before tax day in U.S ,or couple days

they are VERY strict over there, returns have to be in bang on time
not like here, thank God

bottomline Mike Mann always comes up smelling of roses in business, he always seems to win
so I would have been far more critical if anyone else but I doubt he will lose money

aZooZa
21-04-12, 04:25 AM
That's it Pred: "another factor is he did it day before tax day in U.S ,or couple days" - we've all missed the obvious I think.

crabfoot
22-04-12, 12:09 AM
That's it Pred: "another factor is he did it day before tax day in U.S ,or couple days" - we've all missed the obvious I think.
Er, yes - but no. If you go through the comments in the great elsewhere, you will notice that somebody pointed out that MM recently sold a house, and might be trying to put some of the proceeds where the taxman can't get his hands on it.
To me, the "tax timing" was a possibility, but I didn't mention it because I thought it was a day or two late, rather than just in time. Whatever -

The salient questions are why he is so confident that he will make money from what we are mostly agreed is a bag of mediochre domains, and why he "showboated" the registration of that mixed bag into an event in which he was the main performer, instead of delegating the tasks like anyone sane would have done.

So far, he appears to have entered those domains into his stock. To me, that says he's confident that he'll get his money back from a combination of sales and parking revenue (and I have to say I find his parking system novel). Not wonderfully innovative, though. Maybe he's picked out a handful for some rudimentary development.

Perhaps the "showboat" was just something to Twitter about.

atlas
04-09-12, 01:42 AM
Some more info from Frager Factor:
http://fragerfactor.blogspot.ca/2012/09/is-godfather-mike-mann-in-florida-to.html

I still don't see how this is profitable! From the statistical information given it looks like a few good sales are being used to subsidise a lot of crappy sales.

I.e. average selling price of the bottom 95% of domains was $618.67. His sell through rate is 341 domains / month * 12 months out of about 300,000 domains or about 1.3%. So each sale needs to cover renewals for 98.7 domains. Wholesale cost of .com domains is $7.85. So, the holding cost of unsold domains for each sold domain is $774.29. That's a loss of $618.67 - $774.29 or $155.62 per domain sold - plus you need to add in the acquisition cost, so the loss is really higher.

Once you add in the top 5% of domains, he is making a small amount of money per domain (about $126 per domain sold), but even then, he's got offices and staff, so there is significant overhead. And it seems like a lot of work to earn a paltry $126.

It also seems clear to me that profits would increase dramatically if he dropped the bottom 95% or so of his portfolio. So he doesn't seem to be chasing profits. It all seems like smoke and mirrors to me to gain press and perhaps sucker in some VCs.

aZooZa
04-09-12, 04:32 AM
It all seems like smoke and mirrors to me to gain press and perhaps sucker in some VCs.
That's been my impression of his operation from the get-go.