"It's not about the technology, it's about teaming up with the right partners and bringing on technology and management experts as equity partners incentivized to produce. It's about partners cross promoting each other's efforts. As a result of this strategy, everyone prospers from his geo business, including family members like Skips' wife Cathy, his sister, his nieces, and his mother, whom Skip calls the smartest 84-year old geo domainer on the planet."~~ Skip Hoagland
Part One of Three
From newbies to veteran domainers, everyone involved in domaining has heard of Skip Hoagland. The owner of more than 2,000 prime generic domains like fishing.com, shooting.com and outdoorfurniture.com, Skip's also an Atlanta native with a knack for southern domains like Atlanta.com, HiltonHead.com, Charleston.com, and MyrtleBeach.com, which alone earns him over a million dollars a year for him and his partners. He also owns many sites worldwide such as BuenosAires.com, Edinburgh.com, even Geneva.com and is pursuing opportunities in China. His domain Cuba.com is considered one of the most valuable geo domains in the world for potential earnings.
Jeff: How have things changed? It sounds like for you, as a veteran domainer, you sort of laid the path, sort of the Lewis & Clark, the early pioneers who headed west, for those behind you. Are there challenges that remain for someone like you or for newer, more green domainers coming in behind you after all that ground work has been laid?
Skip: No, I think that it's all clear now. I think there's been a lot of lawsuits, a lot of cases on many fronts, both trademarks and otherwise and I think that it's all pretty well clear now. There was another domain fellow at that time who was also very helpful to get these laws defined for us and that was the owner of Barcelona.com. Interesting enough, the city of Barcelona sued him. He had the name and ownership in the US. A judge in this particular court case actually awarded the city of Barcelona that case. We all supported the owner of Barcelona the best we could. It went into an appeal. He won that appeal in a US court and was able to get his name back. Between those two, I'd say those two cases pretty much took care of it.
Jeff: Think back to your first domain. Do you remember what your first domain was?
Skip: You know, it's a tossup. I think that probably the first ones that I actually bought were fishing.com and flyfishing.com. I actually bought 33% of the company and thought I paid way too much at that time. Then we bought a few like HiltonHead.com, MyrtleBeach.com, Charleston, Savannah, and I think that is kind of where it all started. The reason we started there is that is where I had my existing media companies, my tourist magazine products and that's where we kind of began. Once we saw that this thing could turn out being a wonderful thing, then we started getting very aggressive and started buying more and expanding.
Jeff: What about your most recent acquisition or registration, what was that?
Skip: The most recent acquisition, I don't know. We've done a lot of things in a lot of different categories. I guess probably the highest I've paid, Baltimore.com I think was one of the highest prices I've paid for a name, and that was back in I think 1999, something like that. We paid $500,000 for that and that was a big deal back then. Everybody thought I was crazy, but that turned out to be pretty good. And then we bought some other smaller names. What we are mainly doing now is we are trying to get creative, and I'll talk more about this in this interview for how you can operate in the economic climate we're in right now. I want to offer some help to everybody in how they can get creative and how they can go out and buy some of these brand names without having bank financing and maybe having to come out of pocket. So we can talk a little bit more about that later.
Jeff: Yeah. The reason I was asking about your first and your most recent is, how are they different? How are they alike? How is the market different from way back when versus now? I mean, six figures back in the '90s is seemingly pretty expensive. But you hear about that now and you hear about maybe seven and eight figures. So I guess . . .
Skip: Oh, yeah. I got you, absolutely. Of course, back in '96 and '97, we were buying names for $200 to register a name instead of $8, and then we've paid as much as $10,000 back then. That was a crazy high price, and a lot of people didn't even want to talk to me about investing with me at those kinds of levels for just buying a name. And then, of course today, they've gone way up for the pure geographical domain names, whether it be the pure city or country or state name, like a Hawaii.com or Cuba.com or Atlanta.com. These names are going anywhere from . . . if you can even buy them. A lot of these names cannot even be bought. You could offer the owners $10 million and they probably wouldn't even take it. I mean there is names now that we bought for $200 you can perhaps buy now today for anywhere from a $100,000 to $2 million. It's just all across the board. The brand names, specific names, category names that people can build successful business models on are getting very expensive.
Jeff: Right. You were eluding to it a few moments ago. There is so much fear about the economy, but people are still bullish about getting involved in domaining. How does the current situation both with the domain side as well as the economy, how does that bode for people who want to get into or expand their domaining sphere, assuming they're not a Skip Hoagland? They are sort of newer, maybe don't have the library, maybe don't have the ad income coming in that is able to self-fund what they have going on. How does that bode for people in the domaining space?
Skip: Well, I think that necessity is the mother of great inventions. You start getting creative, and I think there is a lot opportunities in this market right now. In fact, I think it could be a great time because the people that own these great names might be more willing to talk to you than ever before and might be open for these creative ideas. Bank financing is not an option, so you can ask the owner if he would finance a deal and take back the paper. Just like you buy a piece of property from somebody and they become the bank. Some people are very interested in this. You can of course seek investors. You can lease names from owners with options to buy later on. You can perhaps even do a long-term lease with a low payment up front and then offer a percentage of the gross to the owner.
You can offer to develop names for the owners for a 50% stake, and you agree to put up all the capital, fully manage and put up all monies ongoing. This would be attractive to some owners of names to turn over 50% of their assets to somebody who is willing to put up all the work and the management. In fact, we are doing that sort of thing. We are offering owners of names . . . we recently did a deal with Cairo.com. We are talking to many other owners out there of all these prime city and state.com and country.com names that, "Hey, we can take this asset. We are set up." We've moved our operations, a lot of our operations to Buenos Aires because we can operate for a lot less cost down there. Senior programmers in Argentina are perhaps $12,000, where in this country maybe they are $40,000 or $50,000. Junior programmers are less and of course, they are less in this country as well.
Because of our abilities for different languages and all of the options that we have, we can offer these owners now a flat percentage of gross -- a 35% gross payment. We can make sure they are completely protected for their assets. They own a 100% of their asset until perhaps we pay them off and have the rights to buy in at 50% later on. So if we do a $100,000, we send them $35,000 a year and this is a great option for an owner who just doesn't have the ability, the motivation to go to work and make it happen. You have to develop a name. If you don't start building a building on your name and you just try to do a PPC deal, well, you are just going to destroy your brand, and you are just going to send people to Google to do searches and go to other websites. It's kind of like going to a restaurant and getting a bad meal. Once somebody comes there and gets a bad meal, you know, they probably aren't going to come back to your restaurant.
Jeff: It's interesting you opened that door of PPC revenue. I mean, Google and Yahoo have been the kings of online ad revenue and PPC and domainers are now feeling the heat. And if they are not feeling the heat, they might not even realize it or they will in time. You've used domain development to avoid that issue and remain profitable. How have you done so? How have you kept it growing that way?
Skip: Well, we absolutely and we've believed that for a long, long time. Unfortunately, we are like everybody else. We've been the Google girls on the street corner like everybody else, and we want to get out of that. We don't want to be the prostitutes here for any of these people. We want to be in our own business, and we want to run our own show. The only way to do that is to run a real company and sell advertising and advertisers directly. So we are doing that. We've got a long way to go, but we've been successful in a number of markets by making these direct advertising sales. That's worked out real well for us, especially in the markets where we have tourist magazines.
In fact, if you notice, a lot of the biggest money making sites, at least in the geo space, which is what I'm more focused on than anything else, are owned by large media companies that have other media assets in that local market. They are able to use those strengths to maximize their assets.
From newbies to veteran domainers, everyone involved in domaining has heard of Skip Hoagland. The owner of more than 2,000 prime generic domains like fishing.com, shooting.com and outdoorfurniture.com, Skip's also an Atlanta native with a knack for southern domains like Atlanta.com, HiltonHead.com, Charleston.com, and MyrtleBeach.com, which alone earns him over a million dollars a year for him and his partners. He also owns many sites worldwide such as BuenosAires.com, Edinburgh.com, even Geneva.com and is pursuing opportunities in China. His domain Cuba.com is considered one of the most valuable geo domains in the world for potential earnings.
Although Skip's had some changes since including the million dollar sale of MyrtleBeach.com which is discussed a lot here, this transcript of his DomanSuccess.com appearance was cast, most of the thoughts and ideas still apply. Maybe even m ore applicable in these recessive times when everyone is looking to do more with less. Jeff Zbar reports:
Jeff: How have things changed? It sounds like for you, as a veteran domainer, you sort of laid the path, sort of the Lewis & Clark, the early pioneers who headed west, for those behind you. Are there challenges that remain for someone like you or for newer, more green domainers coming in behind you after all that ground work has been laid?
Skip: No, I think that it's all clear now. I think there's been a lot of lawsuits, a lot of cases on many fronts, both trademarks and otherwise and I think that it's all pretty well clear now. There was another domain fellow at that time who was also very helpful to get these laws defined for us and that was the owner of Barcelona.com. Interesting enough, the city of Barcelona sued him. He had the name and ownership in the US. A judge in this particular court case actually awarded the city of Barcelona that case. We all supported the owner of Barcelona the best we could. It went into an appeal. He won that appeal in a US court and was able to get his name back. Between those two, I'd say those two cases pretty much took care of it.
Jeff: Think back to your first domain. Do you remember what your first domain was?
Skip: You know, it's a tossup. I think that probably the first ones that I actually bought were fishing.com and flyfishing.com. I actually bought 33% of the company and thought I paid way too much at that time. Then we bought a few like HiltonHead.com, MyrtleBeach.com, Charleston, Savannah, and I think that is kind of where it all started. The reason we started there is that is where I had my existing media companies, my tourist magazine products and that's where we kind of began. Once we saw that this thing could turn out being a wonderful thing, then we started getting very aggressive and started buying more and expanding.
Jeff: What about your most recent acquisition or registration, what was that?
Skip: The most recent acquisition, I don't know. We've done a lot of things in a lot of different categories. I guess probably the highest I've paid, Baltimore.com I think was one of the highest prices I've paid for a name, and that was back in I think 1999, something like that. We paid $500,000 for that and that was a big deal back then. Everybody thought I was crazy, but that turned out to be pretty good. And then we bought some other smaller names. What we are mainly doing now is we are trying to get creative, and I'll talk more about this in this interview for how you can operate in the economic climate we're in right now. I want to offer some help to everybody in how they can get creative and how they can go out and buy some of these brand names without having bank financing and maybe having to come out of pocket. So we can talk a little bit more about that later.
Jeff: Yeah. The reason I was asking about your first and your most recent is, how are they different? How are they alike? How is the market different from way back when versus now? I mean, six figures back in the '90s is seemingly pretty expensive. But you hear about that now and you hear about maybe seven and eight figures. So I guess . . .
Skip: Oh, yeah. I got you, absolutely. Of course, back in '96 and '97, we were buying names for $200 to register a name instead of $8, and then we've paid as much as $10,000 back then. That was a crazy high price, and a lot of people didn't even want to talk to me about investing with me at those kinds of levels for just buying a name. And then, of course today, they've gone way up for the pure geographical domain names, whether it be the pure city or country or state name, like a Hawaii.com or Cuba.com or Atlanta.com. These names are going anywhere from . . . if you can even buy them. A lot of these names cannot even be bought. You could offer the owners $10 million and they probably wouldn't even take it. I mean there is names now that we bought for $200 you can perhaps buy now today for anywhere from a $100,000 to $2 million. It's just all across the board. The brand names, specific names, category names that people can build successful business models on are getting very expensive.
Jeff: Right. You were eluding to it a few moments ago. There is so much fear about the economy, but people are still bullish about getting involved in domaining. How does the current situation both with the domain side as well as the economy, how does that bode for people who want to get into or expand their domaining sphere, assuming they're not a Skip Hoagland? They are sort of newer, maybe don't have the library, maybe don't have the ad income coming in that is able to self-fund what they have going on. How does that bode for people in the domaining space?
Skip: Well, I think that necessity is the mother of great inventions. You start getting creative, and I think there is a lot opportunities in this market right now. In fact, I think it could be a great time because the people that own these great names might be more willing to talk to you than ever before and might be open for these creative ideas. Bank financing is not an option, so you can ask the owner if he would finance a deal and take back the paper. Just like you buy a piece of property from somebody and they become the bank. Some people are very interested in this. You can of course seek investors. You can lease names from owners with options to buy later on. You can perhaps even do a long-term lease with a low payment up front and then offer a percentage of the gross to the owner.
You can offer to develop names for the owners for a 50% stake, and you agree to put up all the capital, fully manage and put up all monies ongoing. This would be attractive to some owners of names to turn over 50% of their assets to somebody who is willing to put up all the work and the management. In fact, we are doing that sort of thing. We are offering owners of names . . . we recently did a deal with Cairo.com. We are talking to many other owners out there of all these prime city and state.com and country.com names that, "Hey, we can take this asset. We are set up." We've moved our operations, a lot of our operations to Buenos Aires because we can operate for a lot less cost down there. Senior programmers in Argentina are perhaps $12,000, where in this country maybe they are $40,000 or $50,000. Junior programmers are less and of course, they are less in this country as well.
Because of our abilities for different languages and all of the options that we have, we can offer these owners now a flat percentage of gross -- a 35% gross payment. We can make sure they are completely protected for their assets. They own a 100% of their asset until perhaps we pay them off and have the rights to buy in at 50% later on. So if we do a $100,000, we send them $35,000 a year and this is a great option for an owner who just doesn't have the ability, the motivation to go to work and make it happen. You have to develop a name. If you don't start building a building on your name and you just try to do a PPC deal, well, you are just going to destroy your brand, and you are just going to send people to Google to do searches and go to other websites. It's kind of like going to a restaurant and getting a bad meal. Once somebody comes there and gets a bad meal, you know, they probably aren't going to come back to your restaurant.
Jeff: It's interesting you opened that door of PPC revenue. I mean, Google and Yahoo have been the kings of online ad revenue and PPC and domainers are now feeling the heat. And if they are not feeling the heat, they might not even realize it or they will in time. You've used domain development to avoid that issue and remain profitable. How have you done so? How have you kept it growing that way?
Skip: Well, we absolutely and we've believed that for a long, long time. Unfortunately, we are like everybody else. We've been the Google girls on the street corner like everybody else, and we want to get out of that. We don't want to be the prostitutes here for any of these people. We want to be in our own business, and we want to run our own show. The only way to do that is to run a real company and sell advertising and advertisers directly. So we are doing that. We've got a long way to go, but we've been successful in a number of markets by making these direct advertising sales. That's worked out real well for us, especially in the markets where we have tourist magazines.
In fact, if you notice, a lot of the biggest money making sites, at least in the geo space, which is what I'm more focused on than anything else, are owned by large media companies that have other media assets in that local market. They are able to use those strengths to maximize their assets.
About: Skip Hoagland: Powerful Brands = Profitable Results
Print travel guide publisher Skip Hoagland had a vision when he spent $10,000 onMyrtleBeach.com back in the 1990s: To put his magazines out of business. Today, Hoagland is an Internet geo kingpin who follows four simple rules: Work hard, stick to .com, partner with and reward the best designers, developers and business managers out there, and forget PPC and only sell ads direct. Gunning for Google and luring classified ads from newspapers with salemen’s feet on the street in every geo market he owns, listen as Skip tells the tale of turning MyrtleBeach.com into a million dollar-a-year ad powerhouse – and growing his geo business into a global behemoth of over 2000 developed Internet brands.Hoagland’s path to profitability rises on such properties as Fishing.com, Shooting.com, OutdoorFurniture.com, Atlanta.com, HiltonHead.com and Charleston.com. As well as worldwide sites such as Buenosaires.com, Cuba.com, Edinburgh.com and Geneva.com.
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