So, here I am trying to organize and lead a Rick Schwartz and Sahar Sarid like effort to acquire not a domain name, but get this.. A domain forum! I am sure you remember the joint-venture which those guys setup in a matter of days to acquire Cowboys.com... Anyways, lets talk about the DomainState.com auction that is going to be happening later this week. It's important we do this... :)
I've been thinking about it a lot, talking to a few of my good friends and partners, crunching up numbers, doing market analysis, going back and forth in trying to make a decision whether to pursue this one seriously and most importantly with how much cash and resources.
Finally... I've decided that I do not want to go in on this one solo because frankly all alone I do not have the time or energy required to dedicate to running a forum and most importantly taking it to the next level. Making it something special so that it can stand out from the crowd and hopefully make for a good investment by turning in a profit sooner than later, because like all businessman, I do not run blogs or forums for a hobby.
It's all about making money at the end of the day.. Nobody operates a forum to kill time anymore and talk to a bunch of people, exchange valuable info, etc :) Well, some do, but not me... NO!!!! Now, there is already dozens of domain forums out there that do in fact exist that nobody has even heard of or visit. There is mainly 4 or 5 well established and decently popular forums, and DomainState.com is one of the top three. It has that going for itself... Yay!
Partnering up also makes sense so that we can avoid bidding wars, in other words overpaying. The forum does have some value to it, don't get me wrong... But not a lot where it would go for tens of thousands of dollars. If you look at the numbers closely, there is nothing there that would prove otherwise and I've went through each and every detail there is to go through. I simply couldn't justify anything from this one particular number that I got in my head.
This magic number I will only reveal it to serious potential partners... :) I believe that I was actually the first one to put in an offer of $10,000 in writing to the owners immediately when I found out that it was going up for sale. I did it the same day it was announced just to show them that I am serious. I requested more stats / details and a few days later it arrived in my inbox.
So anyways... Lets cut to the chase, if you want to be part-owner and feel that you have a set of skills that would contribute to the operation of the forum, get in touch with me by the end of this week and we'll go from there. Contact me and provide your full name, valid e-mail address and a phone number.
Word has it that a few competitors (existing forum operators, duh!) will try to snatch this one up and of course do the obvious... I would like to prevent this from happening because I believe that having options is extremely important. Also from what I have observed this past week, some existing long time members of the forum would like to keep the forum as-is; low key and even more privatized by organizing a joint-venture of their own for a buyout.
Right now I got my hands full with running DomainMassDevelopment.com, Maxxximize.com and the newly launched DomainStryker.com service. I got close to 1000 paying clients to worry about which are more of a priority than strangers on forums. Already working on my next project as well which is Doughmains.com... To be launched within a month or so. I hate being all over the place, but there is really only so many hours at the end of the day!!!!
Yep... Can't do it all unfortunately. I do believe Domain State can be turned into something cool with a little bit of work, ok... Probably it will need a lot of work... But it can happen. I am a believer. Now, if nobody else comes forward and I am unable to acquire it under a joint-venture agreement then probably in somebody elses hands it will not be what we all hope for it to become after the sale, come February of 2010. At least I did my part... What about you?!??
Observations at WannaDevelop.com
02/23/2010: Dozens of Amazon affiliate stores for sale.. Developed by DomainMassDevelopment.com 01/11/2010: Wanna be part-owner of DomainState.com with myself and a few others? Ok, read this now... 11/02/2009: FS gets it on with WP... It's about time, no??!?! 08/24/2009: If all else fails... Who is gonna pay the bills?!! 08/22/2009: Frank Schilling has the winning formula $$$$$$
