IT.COM

discuss Morgan Linton doesn't Practice what he Preaches

Spaceship Spaceship
Watch
Impact
4,541
Don't read Morgan Linton at all these days since it is mostly yuppie drivel about start-ups.

However, someone sent me some of his articles recently and was asking about buying a domain on the aftermarket."He doesn't practice what he preaches. He never spent any money acquiring a domain for his company." is what I told him.

You can listen to the story here, skip to 28 minutes into the podcast.

http://www.ozdomainer.com/episode-68-morgan-linton/

His wife hand registered FashionMetric to start a fashion blog. When they wanted a name for the company they decided that was "good enough" and went with it.

It's disingenuous to be writing about how start-ups should spend tons of money domains when Morgan Linton has never done it for his company. I haven't seen this story mentioned anywhere on his website, probably since that's not helpful for selling domains

Reminds me of Andrew Rosener trying to sell Spearfishing on Namejet w/o the site. https://www.namepros.com/threads/an...ing-justification-for-premium-domains.930258/

I understand why @Shane Bellone doesn't trust anyone.
 
3
•••
The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
I'm guessing he is advising startups that can afford a great name, one that could probably never be hand registered. There's nothing wrong with registering your own domain if you manage to find a good one you like..

Most brandable registrations by domainers are pretty parasitic. It's one thing to buy a generic term or phrase that has many obvious end users (where one person is not entitled to it)..or a brand name that would also have very high demand. But to register every possible decent-sounding brand name (and a ton of crappier ones ;)) just to put them up for sale for 4 figures is crazy. For most of those names, it's likely only one or two people will ever want them (if that) and not get to register them just because some domainer wasted his money on it first.. And because it has to stay in their personal BB portfolio...to ensure that they can at least sell 1 out of 100 or 1 out of 1000 of their silly brand names :xf.rolleyes:
You could say domainers are working as "finders" and/or "suggesters" of these brand names, but if I were starting a fashion blog.. I wouldn't want to pay a domainer 500 to 3500 just because they mined the crap out of the .com space.. for a half-decent brandable.
That kind of "work"/gambling/speculating is worth maybe $50 to $150 per name. Turnover would probably be much higher if people actually understood what was valuable in their "portfolio" and priced accordingly instead of trying to get 2500 dollars out of every random person who manages to come up with a cool name only to find that a domainer's sitting on it (when the next person interested probably won't come along for another 5 years..if there is another person. (Not talking about really good brands))
 
3
•••
Don't read Morgan Linton at all these days since it is mostly yuppie drivel about start-ups.

However, someone sent me some of his articles recently and was asking about buying a domain on the aftermarket."He doesn't practice what he preaches. He never spent any money acquiring a domain for his company." is what I told him.

You can listen to the story here, skip to 28 minutes into the podcast.

http://www.ozdomainer.com/episode-68-morgan-linton/

His wife hand registered FashionMetric to start a fashion blog. When they wanted a name for the company they decided that was "good enough" and went with it.

It's disingenuous to be writing about how start-ups should spend tons of money domains when Morgan Linton has never done it for his company. I haven't seen this story mentioned anywhere on his website, probably since that's not helpful for selling domains

Reminds me of Andrew Rosener trying to sell Spearfishing on Namejet w/o the site. https://www.namepros.com/threads/an...ing-justification-for-premium-domains.930258/

I understand why @Shane Bellone doesn't trust anyone.
Its very interesting observation. Great job pointing it out!
 
1
•••
We live in a world where most developers and small businesses just register a so-so domain available for reg fee as they place little value on branding. I once had a client with a seven-figure IT budget which regularly had five-figure invoices as part of certain IT projects. I then came across a Godaddy charge and noticed they had hand-registered several newbie quality handregs. So while they could easily afford to spend five figures on a domain name they were registering crap domains for low $XX.
 
2
•••
Domainers don't practice what they preach.
I am sure that many sellers of new extensions wouldn't use any of their own domains for a real life business.
 
9
•••
0
•••
What ever he advising is all true when you have huge amount of cash came as funding and your growth model is b2c in that case funding will not make you rise but good domain name will boost your brand.
No startup is spending above 5k in their initial starting point of business because they dumping their own money or has very limited budget, all who spending always getting fund, so what ever he has wrote is all true, this forum really need some business experts who guide this community but guess we will never get them here because they will either keep the formula secret or their time is not worth to chat here, what we seeing here is all domain brokers who marketing they flipped names for big bucks but ask them how many name they own and do they telling secrets of any niche and getting them cheaper in public, may be 1% tell but rest keep it secret. Most of the experts do not own any good name , they either talk based on their experience or whatever they see, if they own big portfolio they never advise others, you know why...
 
1
•••
Ever heard what people say about a used cat salesman. Thisn industry is worst then that as the items not tangible. Ever tell someone what you do online and they give you the deer in the headlights look.
 
1
•••
@baseballworld - I never heard of a used cat salesman. But maybe that's your point :)
 
Last edited:
1
•••
His wife hand registered FashionMetric to start a fashion blog. When they wanted a name for the company they decided that was "good enough" and went with it.
I take it that you're not married or in a long term relationship?

Point is, I'm pretty sure his wife was satisfied with the name after she had established a blog to not want to change it. And he was a great husband to support her decision, rather than force his beliefs down her throat.

Jmo on this one though... :guilty:
 
0
•••
I think fashionmetric.com is a pretty good handreg. Not sure how well it fits what they do. I don't see anything wrong with it. It is two words that make sense and describe what they do without sounding too boring or being too hard to remember.

It wouldn't have much value on the reseller market but for them it's not terrible name IMO.

Is it a 5 figure name that gets a lot of attention and that makes your startup seem special just because of the domain? No.
 
Last edited:
1
•••
That kind of "work"/gambling/speculating is worth maybe $50 to $150 per name. Turnover would probably be much higher if people actually understood what was valuable in their "portfolio" and priced accordingly instead of trying to get 2500 dollars out of every random person who manages to come up with a cool name only to find that a domainer's sitting on it (when the next person interested probably won't come along for another 5 years..if there is another person. (Not talking about really good brands))

I think the idea behind this is to keep the turnover rate low so that they never have to replace their inventory, which gets costlier and more difficult with each passing year.

If you have a turnover rate below 1% you can sell domains forever without having to worry too much about replacing your domains.

From that perspective it makes sense. The risk is that they miss out and never sell their goods because they got too greedy and eventually the competiton (nGTLDs) decreases the value of their inventory.

Somehow a free market should take care of mispricings, in theory, not sure how it works in practice in that case.
 
0
•••
I once left a comment mentioning that I had FashionCalculator ,, didn't get a reply though
 
0
•••
I wouldn't call a domainer a domainer if the domainer spent thousands on acquiring a domain name.
 
0
•••
I wouldn't call a domainer a domainer if the domainer spent thousands on acquiring a domain name.
Yes, we need to be honest ..........domainers are tight wads
 
0
•••
Hey all, Morgan here!

Adam - more power to you, I don't know you but the great thing about forums is you can voice your opinion so I have 100% respect for that. You also bring up a good very good point.

If you're a consumer-facing startup I do think spending real money on a domain name makes sense, depending on the stage of the company. If you're bootstrapping and haven't raised any money I definitely do not recommend you spend a bunch of money on a domain name. When we started Fashion Metric, we were bootstrapping so like most startups, we picked a domain that was good enough.

I've said many times before that one of the key reasons to startups should spend money on domain names is when they are a B2C company where getting traffic to their website is their lifeblood. I don't think startups should spend beyond what would make sense given the stage of the company, i.e. if they just raised a small seed round or if they raised a monster series b.

I recently wrote a post about this - http://morganlinton.com/how-much-should-a-startup-spend-on-a-domain-name/ - in it I said:

"First, if your product is B2C, a domain name is likely very important, and it is absolutely critical that when a person hears your name, they remembers it, and can easily get to it online. If you sell a B2B product your domain name is still important, but it might not be as important as a consumer-facing company that relies on their website as the primary way they make money."

There's a reason why a consumer-facing startup going after Amazon went with something like Jet.com, and they had the budget for it given how much money they raised. B2B companies like Keen.io and Intercom.io are killing it without super-expensive names.

Of course there are many ways to slice it but I hope this makes sense! Either way it's a good discussion to have as many startups are trying to figure-out what they should budget for a domain given where they currently are as a company and what kind of business they have.
 
3
•••
Back