Growth of Small Business and Domain Names
Someone asked me about the stats quoted in our “Look Left: AllICanAffordIsThisShittyDomain” video (click here to watch). The stats used were:
Stat #1 – “6.7 Million Small Businesses Started Last Year”
The question was phrased in the manner that this number is much higher than the oft quoted SBA number of 627,200 new employer firms, as reported by DomainSherpa here (and others).
Our stats were from the Kauffman Foundation and the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity (2010). “In 2010, 565,000 new businesses were started per month by new and repeat entrepreneurs, the same rate as in 2009. The 340 out of 100,000 adults who started businesses each month during 2010 represents a 4 percent increase over 2008.”
There is a lot of great information in that data set, including:
Entrepreneurship rates by race show that Latinos experienced the largest entrepreneurial activity increase between 2009 and 2010. The Latino business-creation rate rose from 0.46 percent in 2009 to 0.56 percent in 2010, the highest rate over the 15 years of Index data. The Asian entrepreneurial activity rate increased from 0.31 percent in 2009 to 0.37 percent in 2010, also the highest rate in the past decade and a half. Both African-Americans and non-Latino whites, on the other hand, experienced declines in entrepreneurial activity rates.
Entrepreneurship growth was highest among 35- to 44-year-olds, rising from 0.35 in 2008 to 0.40 in 2009. The oldest age group in the study (55-64 years) also experienced a large increase in business-creation rates from 2008 to 2009, contributing to a two-year upward trend to 0.40.
Stat #2 – “215 Million Website Addresses are Registered Around the World Right Now”
This stat came from the Verisign Domain Name Industry Report from August 2011.
The second quarter of 2011 closed with a base of more than 215 million domain name registrations across all Top Level Domains (TLDs), an increase of 5.2 million domain names, or 2.5 percent over the first quarter. registrations have grown by more than 16.9 million, or 8.6 percent, since the second quarter of 2010.
As with the Kauffman dataset, the Verisign report is full of interesting facts. The one that jumped to me is that one third of all .com or .net domains presently resolve as either a parked page, a 1-page under construction site, or don’t resolve at all. It is no wonder then that small businesses can’t find a domain name around which to build their business.
- Verisign Domain Name Report (Aug 2011)
Look Left for an alternative to domain monetization
Our creative team was hard at work building something a little different explain some of the differences of Marketing Names.
They had a bit of fun with this over here. Check out the video and tell us what you think…
Marketing Names Explained
We’ve been working on a video to better explain our Marketing Names… what do you think?
Marketing Names – by Left Of The Dot from leftofthedot on Vimeo.
Themes.com coming soon!
Normally we don’t like to talk about our projects and sites until they launch, but I had to direct you to our upcoming launch of Themes.com to call attention to the great work done by our lead designer on the “Coming Soon/Splash Page”.
Check it out here before it is gone and is replaced by the “real” site.
Themes.com will be a new marketplace, according to our branding documents “For Designers, By Designers”… so maybe he was just super-excited to play in his playground.
This splash page highlights our manifesto that we created, describing the vision we have for the domain.
When we start on any new Domain Name, we spend the first while truly understanding the space. After all, we are not building mini-sites or mass developed parked pages. Every name we tackle can become a category-defining brand and business unto itself.
Enjoy!
Left of the Dot Media Adds Two Industry Leaders to Board of Directors – Xavier Buck and Slavik Viner
MAPLE RIDGE, BC, CANADA – November 2, 2011 – Left of the Dot Media Inc. announced today the appointment of Xavier Buck and Slavik Viner to the company’s Board of Directors. Both are well known in the Domain Industry and have extremely successful track records.
Xavier Buck is the Founder, Executive Director, and CEO of the DCL Group, which is the umbrella organization of EuroDNS, voipGATE and the Datacenter Luxembourg. His current Directorships also include AsiaDNS, DomainTools, and eBrandServices. In 2008 he co-founded Domain Invest SA, a company which owns over 100,000 premium domains and has the support of several high profile investment firms.
Slavik Viner has been involved in many areas of the Domain industry since the 1990’s and is widely regarded as one of the most successful Domainers of his generation.
Chris Jensen, Co-Founder stated: “Left of the Dot has been incredibly well supported by the Domainer community, and we are thrilled that two such influential and well respected individuals have agreed to become part of our team. The experience and practical advice that Xavier and Slavik bring to the table makes us a better company and this is already helping to shape our strategic objectives for 2012.”
Left of the Dot has recently launched authority sites on the generic domain names Villa.com, Oahu.com, Importers.com, and HomeStaging.com, where each site is a growing, thriving business.
About Left of the Dot Media
Left of the Dot provides an alternative to domain parking and changes the way domains are monetized. The company enables leasing of sub-domains off a premium domain name to substantially increase the traffic, search engine relevance (SEO), and inherent value to the overall site, resulting in sustainable income for its clients.
Not only does the company focus on client satisfaction, the end-results of Left of the Dot’s many projects also benefit the end-consumer. The company creates industry go-to destinations, aggregates quality content, and allows small business owners to get online, get found and conduct business. For more information visit: www.LeftOfTheDot.com
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Left of the Dot Media Launches HomeStaging.com to Consolidate the Lucrative Real Estate Staging Industry
MAPLE RIDGE, BC, CANADA – October 17, 2011 – Left of the Dot Media Inc. announced today the
launch of HomeStaging.com; the latest site to be deployed on the Left of the Dot platform. The new site allows the rapidly growing number of real estate home stagers across North America to successfully take and market their business online. Marketing Names are now available to dominate a geographic region (e.g., Vancouver.HomeStaging.com) or a particular specialty (e.g., Virtual.HomeStaging.com).
The Left of the Dot platform combines the development of an authority website, sub-domain pointing, and sales and marketing tools to support the transformation of a generic domain name into a stand-alone business. The new HomeStaging.com website features the largest directory of professional home stagers in North America and provides these same stagers with access to Left of the Dot’s innovative Marketing Name platform. In addition, value-added services for lead generation as well as a service targeted towards real estate agents have been integrated onto the website. Real Estate Agents now have the ability to order ‘virtual home staging’, whereby photos of vacant rooms are digitally staged by 3D artists.
As described by John Lyotier, CMO & Co-Founder, “Our Marketing Name platform is particularly well suited to the home staging market because many home stagers struggle with their marketing after investing thousands of dollars in their training. The vast majority of home stagers operate 1 or 2 person companies, they are generally not web savvy, and are not familiar with internet marketing—but they realise that they need to find new customers online. When a stagerr leases a name like NewYork.HomeStaging.com it can be pointed at an existing website or to their directory listing on the site itself. As a result, our members get online with a web name that can rank well in search engines and is inherently trusted and remembered by potential customers.”
“Our recent site launches — Importers.com and Oahu.com — were businesses that Left of the Dot developed on behalf of the domain’s owner under a shared revenue model. HomeStaging.com is different in that it is the first web property that is owned by the company. While our focus continues to be on ‘million-dollar domains’, this site illustrates our ability to use a relatively low priced generic domain to consolidate a rapidly growing market where the average sale is worth around $4,000 to the home stager.”
Concurrent to this news, Left of the Dot announced an update and re-launch of www.Villa.com. The new look Villa.com is a villa rental and sales portal targeting over 6 million villa and vacation homes that are presently for rent or sale around the world. Villa.com was one of the first domain names launched on the Left of the Dot platform; it lists more than 13,000 villas and has just opened up the market for agents to showcase villas that are for sale via premium listings or Villa Marketing Names.
About Left of the Dot Media
Left of the Dot provides an alternative to domain parking and changes the way domains are monetized. The company enables leasing of sub-domains off a premium domain name to substantially increase the traffic, search engine relevance (SEO), and inherent value to the overall site, resulting in sustainable income for its clients.
Not only does the company focus on client satisfaction, the end-results of Left of the Dot’s many projects also benefit the end-consumer. The company creates industry go-to destinations, aggregates quality content, and allows small business owners to get online, get found and conduct business. For more information visit: www.LeftOfTheDot.com
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Launch of Oahu.com gives Honolulu Businesses New Marketing Opportunity
Oahu.com set up to help Hawaiian Businesses Obtain $5.5 Billion in Tourist Spend
HONOLULU, HAWAII and MAPLE RIDGE, BC, CANADA – October 11, 2011 – Left of the Dot Media has announced the launch of Oahu.com; a new authority web site and directory focused exclusively on this Hawaiian island. The site features Left of the Dot’s innovative Marketing Name technology that allows small businesses to lease sub-domains from Oahu.com for use in their own marketing and advertising campaigns.
Oahu.com lists more than 35,000 businesses from across Oahu and caters to both locals and tourists alike who are seeking information and deals from Oahu-based businesses. Oahu is the most populated of the Hawaiian Islands with 953,000 residents, 75% of the state’s population, and in 2010 catered to 4.3 million tourists. Visitors spent more than $5.5 billion in 2010 and Oahu.com will help local businesses attract more of the tourist spend, connecting them with the more than 10 million web users who search for Oahu-related search concepts every year.
“We chose Oahu.com to be the first, geo-based name launched on the Left of the Dot platform,” says Chris Jensen, CEO Left of the Dot Media. “For the first time, businesses can use our brand and lease sub-domains direct from the website, examples of which include Hotels.Oahu.com, Golf.Oahu.com, or Tours.Oahu.com.”
Continued Jensen, “When a business uses one of our Marketing Names, they get an instantly memorable website address that can define an entire category. Marketing Names can boost click-through rates for online advertising, contribute to search engine rankings, be used as a landing or splash page for any marketing campaign, and even used to brand an entire web presence for a small business struggling to find the right domain name to use with their business. We are pleased to be able to help Oahu businesses build more awareness and generate more sales.”
Not only can a business be listed within the Oahu.com directory (including a free 7 day trial listing), businesses can purchase a premium membership which highlights their business to all website visitors, attracting more attention and more sales. Premium Marketing Names are available now to qualifying businesses.
For more information, visit Oahu.com or call 1.808.638.4085.
About Left of the Dot Media
Left of the Dot provides an alternative to domain parking and changes the way domains are monetized. The company enables leasing of sub-domains off a premium domain name to substantially increase the traffic, search engine relevance (SEO), and inherent value to the overall site—resulting in sustainable income for its clients.
Not only does the company focus on client satisfaction, the end-results of Left of the Dot’s many projects also benefit the end-consumer. The company creates industry go-to destinations, aggregates quality content, and allows SMBs to get online, get found and conduct business online. For more information visit: www.LeftOfTheDot.com
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Re-post: “The role of ‘Trust’ in the Re-launching of the Importers.com B2B Marketplace”
The following is an excerpt from a Guest Blog post that I wrote for Elliot Silver at Elliot’s Blog. Click here to read the full post.
- John
First off, thank you Elliot for giving Left of the Dot the opportunity to tell you a bit more about our re-branding and our re-launching of Importers.com.
Whenever we take on a brand, we look at several factors before we begin development: what is the natural business model implied by the name, what is happening within the name’s specific vertical, and who are the big players within the domain’s market category.
With Importers.com, we discovered a market that was filled with fraud and uncertainty. Trading partners did not trust trading partners. Scandals were plaguing the incumbent market leaders (See: The Economist “Alibaba and the 2,236 Thieves”). And the brand perception among potential consumers was that they “all look the same and seem sketchy”.
For us, this spelled opportunity, and it was clear that if we were going to differentiate Importers.com in this market (and resurrect what should have been a dominant global brand before being abandoned by its previous owners), we needed to emphasize the concept of ‘Trust’ first and foremost.
Many Domainers already know that a good generic carries with it a certain amount of implied trust. If you have a category-owning concept – be it Importers.com, DogWalker.com, or Villa.com – your name provides you with multiple benefits, each of which stems from this implied trust:
- You get better click thru rates on your paid search advertising. This increases your quality score and lowers your cost of new customer acquisition. And if it costs me less to get a customer on Importers.com than it does for an upstart brand that nobody has ever heard of… I win.
- You get ranked higher in search engines. Initially, this was entirely dependent on keyword match, but with the Panda release, how customers or peers perceive your site has become much more of a factor (think of the +1 as a trust endorsement).
- Customers (and strategic partners) are more willing to listen to you and give you the benefit of the doubt.
With this knowledge in our back pocket, we decided to play to our strength. The name “Importers.com” conveys a trusted brand in a market that is screaming for somebody to trust…
Click here for the full post.
Left of the Dot Gives New Life to Importers.com B2B Marketplace
After a full year of research and development, the once-abandoned Importers.com has been successfully restored into a thriving business community
MAPLE RIDGE, BC, CANADA – August 23, 2011 – Left of the Dot Media Inc. has announced that it has re-launched Importers.com, as an online B2B marketplace for businesses looking to trade with G20 partners. The project was started in 2003 but day-to-day growth and management of the business was ceased by its previous owners in 2007. Despite a lack of leadership and support, the community continued to expand to over 400,000 members. In cooperation with the new owners, Left of the Dot has created an attractive, well-organized and safe new trading environment and the international business community is responding by signing up at the rate of over 800 per week for the import export marketplace. The site is now able to offer a realistic, North American-centric alternative to online B2B behemoths Alibaba.com and TradeKey.com.
International trade is now hugely dependent on web-based services and Importers.com was one of the first sites that allowed Small Medium Businesses (SMBs) to find international partners. Over the past 9 years the internet has changed dramatically and importers and exporters need a modern service that allows them to promote themselves online, find trade partners and know that they can trust the person they are dealing with. After considerable consultation with SMBs the new Importers.com allows businesses to get online via Marketing Names (e.g., HardWood.Importers.com), get found via search engines (hundreds of this domain’s existing Marketing Names rank in the Top 3 results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing), find customers via Trade Leads, and establish credibility via rigorous Trust Certification.
The domain name Importers.com was purchased in 2010 by an investor strictly for the inherent value of the name itself. The original intent was to switch off the business and replace it with a parked page showing advertising. Perceiving the risk of a missed opportunity, Left of the Dot partnered with the new owner and took the initiative to restore and rebuild the business.
“A memorable generic name like “Importers.com” is equivalent to quality real estate, the Park Places and Boardwalks of the domain industry”, says John Lyotier, Co-Founder at Left of the Dot, “Importers.com represented the virtual equivalent of renovating an entire city centre and giving businesses all the tools they need to grow and prosper – it’s good for each business and good for the community. The key for us is enabling importers and exporters to lease their very own sub-domains (Marketing Names) off the Importers.com brand so that they can become a valuable part of the community.”
“With Alibaba.com currently valued at an estimated $10.8B and TradeKey.com at more than $2B, the market opportunity is huge and Left of the Dot will compete by allowing the SMB community to create its own success stories on the Importers.com brand.”
ABOUT LEFT OF THE DOT MEDIA
Left of the Dot provides an alternative to domain parking and changes the way domains are monetized. The company enables leasing of sub-domains off a premium domain name to substantially increase the traffic, search engine relevance (SEO), and inherent value to the overall site—resulting in sustainable income for its clients.
Not only does the company focus on client satisfaction, the end-results of Left of the Dot’s many projects also benefit the end-consumer. The company creates online industry go-to destinations, aggregates quality content, and allows SMEs to get online, get found, and conduct business online.
www.LeftoftheDot.com
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