Cover Story
April 2008
The Domain Giant You Didn't Know: Rob Grant's Roundabout Route to Real Estate Riches (Online and Off!)
There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar.
Rob Grant may not be as widely known as some of his pioneering peers, but few in the industry can match the foresight, financial commitment and unwavering faith in the future of domains that Grant has shown over the past 12 years. During that time the personable real estate broker from upstate New York assembled the world's best collection of real estate related domain names (as well as some gems in other categories).
click here for entire article
Friday, December 24, 2010
Domaining's Most Fascinating 2010- Rob Grant "Forever Young" "Forever Innovating"
'If you know upstate New York or if you've visited a geosite for the region, then you probably have hit one of Rob's properties. Rob's WebMediaProperties.com owns about 8,000 domains and has helped define successful real estate domaining. His WebMediaProperties.com has turned upstate New York's AdirondackRealEstate.com and other real estate domains into a successful business with one of the first refined marketing strategies for geodomaining. This former New York ad man and onetime custom furniture maker who relocated to New York's upper Saranac region also owns a host of compelling verticals including RealEstateDirectory.com, Marathons.com, TropicalFish.com, PreFabHomes.com, and such geo targeted properties as MississippiRiver.com"
click here for entire article
January 2011
Rob Grant Rings Up Nice Geo-Targeted Real Estate Domain Sale, Sedo Super Broker Jeff Gabriel Resigns and DOMAINfest Issues Final Call for PITCHfest EntriesRob Grant owns the world's largest collection of geo-targeted .com real estate domains and it is a rare occasion when he parts with one of them. However, this evening Grant, the CEO of RealEstateDirectory.com announced that he has sold ParkCityRealEstate.com to EW Partners of Park City, Utah for $60,000 in a deal brokered by GoDaddy.com.
Avid fisherman Rob Grant reeled in a nice
.com real estate domain sale this week.Grant said, ""We rarely sell any of our valuable geo-targeted real estate domains unless the offers are significant and reflect the true value of these names. ParkCityRealEstate.com was a domain that I originally hand registered back in the November 1996. This is a great example of how valuable these real estate .com domains have become over the years as a unique asset class - despite ongoing recessions and our current global financial crisis. Frankly, there's no better investment out there."
Recently, Grant partnered with Sothebys Select Real Estate to leverage his domain names in test markets throughout New York, building custom sites around geo-targeted domains like www.LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com. These partnerships are based on generating targeted real estate leads that can convert to actual sales and commissions.
"If you're fortunate enough to own a specific real-estate.com domain in a given city or region, and you take the time to really develop that name into a major real estate portal, you'll invariably own that market on the internet," Grant said. "We've proven that repeatedly with our own real estate firm here in the Adirondacks. AdirondackRealEstate.com is now responsible for 95% of all our real estate and vacation rental leads. We rarely use print any more for any of our real estate advertising."
Congrats to Rob, whose sale will undoubtedly give him a spot on this week's Top 20 sales chart that will be out Wednesday.
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Rob Grant Partners With Epik to Launch Major White Label Brand On The Cheap
"And I think a lot of us are still in denial because things have been so comfortable for so long... And we somehow hope that things will get back to 'normal'. But the truth is, they won't -We're seeing catastrophic declines of 50% or more in ppc revenue...and that's the new paradigm. Its a lot like the newspaper industry hanging on to the very end as their ship sinks around them".
You’ve read about veteran domain innovator Rob Grant on DNJournal and also heard his story told on DomainSuccess.What you haven’t heard is that he has inked a white-label partnership with Epik to breathe new life into his prized portfolio of category defining “cheap.com” domains - Names that have been lying in wait for over 10 years until the right combination of time and technology offered an opportunity to exploit their potential. The time is now, in our currently troubled and deal driven economy, and the technology is Epik’s portal and eCommerce platforms that are perfectly suited to it.
By cheap domains, I mean CheapCurtains.com, CheapPillows.com, CheapFlooring.com, CheapBlankets.com and 100’s more. “Cheap” is a word frequently clicked on by savvy comparison shoppers who are actively looking for bargains. These visitors convert well to clicks and sales...And when they find something they like, they spread the word fast creating a multiplier effect. (Photo: Rob Grant and Epik's Rob Monster by Barbara Dillman Neu)Starting two months ago with an initial launch of 50 portal names and a signature Epik solution that can be leveraged to other owners of “cheap” ecommerce domains, Rob has already seen significant 300% improvements (week over week) for domains operating on the new Epik platform. If this pilot program performs well, Rob has plans to launch over 100 Cheap portals over the next 12 months rolling out an ambitious Cheap Shopping Network in hundreds of product categories.
An Evolution With Epik
Rob Grant is one of the earliest domain pioneers, having acquired about 8,000 domains since starting in 1996. From BeverelyHillsRealEstate.com to upscale-upstate New York’s AdirondackRealEstate.com, he’s helped define successful real estate domaining, most recently signing partnerships with offline real estate leaders such as Sotheby’s, who understand that Rob’s online brands are as powerful and valuable as their carefully crafted corporate brands.Rob realized it was time to tap into another segment of his diversified portfolio. But how?
“There is never any clear choice or simple road map to follow when you are starting down a new path ” Rob says. “But it feels good to move forward and to be on the offensive, especially in such a difficult economy when so many businesses are failing.”
So Rob chose Epik, and although its still quite early in the game, he's glad he did.
“Epik has devoted a team of very bright people to help us,” he says. “We are learning on the fly and making adjustments to stay on course. Our goal is to grow in stages. Our first stage is the current product portals that have just been launched. Second stage will be drop shipping with select vendors and manufacturers. The third and final stage will be full blown e-commerce for those sites that qualify. Obviously, this third stage is extremely complicated and involves buying and warehousing product from overseas for each of the niches defined by our domains. At this point, we’re a long way off from tackling any of these issues. Our goal right now is to get the first 50 sites launched successfully and then see which domains turn into real winners.
click here for the entire story
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Rob Grant: "It's interesting. I just deleted hundreds and hundreds of hyphens."
If you know upstate New York or if you've visited a geosite for the region, then you probably have hit one of Rob's properties. Rob's WebMediaProperties.com owns about 8,000 domains and has helped define successful real estate domaining. His WebMediaProperties.com has turned upstate New York's AdirondackRealEstate.com and other real estate domains into a successful business with one of the first refined marketing strategies for geodomaining. This former New York ad man and onetime custom furniture maker who relocated to New York's upper Saranac region also owns a host of compelling verticals including RealEstateDirectory.com, Marathons.com, PreFabHomes.com, TropicalFish.com, and such geo targeted properties as MississippiRiver.com.
On DomainSuccess.com, host Jeff Zbar asked Rob how he got started in domaining?Yeah, that was back in 1998, when we listed a remarkable property located in the Catskills in upstate New York. It was a private estate located on a mountaintop called Glen Tonche, and it was owned by the Pitcairn family out of Philadelphia. And typically most mid-size real estate agencies can only service listings within say a 50 to maybe 100 mile radius. Basically, it comes down to how far a real estate agent is willing to drive to show a property. So your boundaries are pretty limited. Glen Tonche in the Catskills was located over three and a half hours away from my agency up here in the Adirondacks. So that was a huge distance by traditional standards.
So when we listed this property, the first thing I tried to do was enlist the cooperation of local real estate firms down in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. But they felt strongly that we were invading their territory and they gave us no cooperation. So we were forced to find alternative marketing, and we created a showcase website for Glen Tonche on CatskillsRealEstate.com. We began to market the property online and through select magazines. And in July of 1998, we successfully sold Glen Tonche in-house using the Catskills website. The price was $1.7 million, generating a commission of over $150,000 to our firm. This proved to me that the Internet and domain names were incredibly powerful tools and they were going to change the way traditional business was done especially in the real estate space.
Today our websites are responsible for some of the biggest sales we've had. Properties like Camp Cobblestone, which we sold recently for $2.5 million and Camp Konocti, which we sold for $3.3 million. So the Internet has become by far and away the most important resource we have as an active agency.
Well, it was a logical expansion of the concept that I saw with Catskills Real Estate and Adirondack Real Estate. And actually, when my web designer back in 1996 first came to me and said, "You know, you should really own Rob Grant Real Estate." And I thought to myself, "Well, really who the hell cares about Rob Grant? No one knows him and no one's going to search for him. But what they do care about are the Adirondacks and Adirondack real estate." So for me, the light really went off when I put myself in the shoes of the searcher or the consumer. And as soon as I realized the significance of owning a powerful geo-targeted domain, I began to expand out of New York. We created a huge vertical in New York -- AlbanyRealEstate, SyracuseRealEstate.com, so on and so forth. But then quickly moved beyond New York out across the country, and then ultimately we jumped from the US to Canada and then onto all of the international markets.
Well, obviously the biggest change is going back to1996, there were just a few people out there acquiring these names because there really was absolutely no reason to buy a domain. There was no way to monetize it. Very few people even understood what it was. There were no search engines. This was long before Yahoo or Google or any of that. Hard for a lot of folks today to believe. So you bought these names purely on a hunch. It was really gut instinct and nothing more and there were very few of us out there doing it. But the guys who were out there doing it were very smart, and they had the same conviction and belief that I did. I had the advantage of having worked on Madison Avenue, so for me I felt that a generic domain defining an industry represented a future brand. So I was convinced that if you could own these category defining domains that someday, maybe in five, ten years as the Internet matured, these domains would take on huge value. But back then, they were essentially worthless and in fact they cost you money because you had to register. The only register back then was Network Solutions and you were paying 100 bucks a pop. So you had to think long and hard about acquiring any kind of significant portfolio.
It's interesting. I just deleted hundreds and hundreds of hyphens. I know over in the UK they like hyphens. And I know from an SEO perspective hyphens can be very important. I do keep the hyphenated real estate domains, again just as a defensive play. But I have let many hundreds of hyphenated domains go just in the last six months.
September 2010
Hitting Home Runs With Domain Development: The Castello Brothers and Rob Grant Show How It's Done
Website development has been a hot topic among domain owners this year. While much of the conversation has centered on developing a large number of domains at once - some of the most successful developers in our business continue to do it the old fashioned way. That involves carefully building full blown online businesses - brick by brick - on category defining domain names, or adding powerful new features to existing online businesses to make them even stronger and more profitable.
Rob Grant (left) and John Burke in front of the Select Sotheby's International Realty office in Saratoga Springs, New York. A couple of examples of what I'm talking about crossed my desk this week. One came in a note from David Castello of Castello Brothers fame, telling me about a great looking new music section on their Nashville.com website that is starting to explode. David and brother Michael brought in Jerry Holthouse to be Nashville.com's Music Editor and Holthouse has commissioned articles that are making waves in the national press. The latest is an item written by David Scarlett that featured country music superstar Trace Adkins's view on the Ground Zero Mosque controversy in New York City. Mainstream media outlets like USA Today, CBS News and Arizona Central jumped on the story, crediting Nashville.com for originating it. That's what you call "publicity money can't buy" and it is helping make the site synonymous with Nashville news and information.Another example of developing real online businesses came in from Rob Grant. A few weeks ago I told you about a domain development deal that Rob's company - RealEstateDirectory.com - cut with Select Sotheby's International Realty involving some of Grant's New York real estate domains. This week the partners proceeded with stage two of their agreement - the launch of www.SaratogaSpringsRealty.com and www.CatskillsRealEstate.com.
Grant, who owns the largest network of geo-targeted real estate domains in the world, said, "Our strategy is to create a powerful New York based real estate and referral network linking the largest regional markets throughout upstate New York. Our goal is to combine our unique real estate domain brands with Sotheby's extensive agent network. If this model works the way we hope, it will pave the way for additional referral partnerships throughout New York State."John Burke of Select Sotheby's Realty added, "The real estate industry is going through a metamorphosis with regards to the prevalence of technology based lead generation, and with the large scale industry wide consolidations that are projected, we feel it is important to have a multi-pronged technology strategy that will help us proactively ride in front of the market movement. Rob Grant is an Internet pioneer and his resources fit into out overall technology marketing strategy."
While I believe new platforms that are making it possible to develop a lot of domains at once hold a lot of promise for domain owners who are seeking better ways to monetize their assets, I also think the longest home runs will continue to be hit by those who take one or more of their best properties and build them into full fledged businesses as the Castello Brothers and Rob Grant have done and continue to do.
(Posted Sept. 10, 2010) To refer others to the post above only you can use this URL:
http://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2010/dailyposts/20100910.htm
New York City-based intellectual property lawyer Brett Lewis (better known by many as a domain lawyer), from the law firm of Lewis & Hand, has launched a new website on the generic domain name TrademarkAttorneys.com.
The website has started out as a blog, and it will eventually grow into a full-fledged trademark law website. The recently launched website is currently ranked No.2 on Bing and Yahoo, and it is on the second page of Google for the competitive keywords. It’s an advantage of owning a keyword domain name that would have been much more difficult had Lewis tried to rank highly using his law firm’s corporate domain name.
The domain name was purchased for an undisclosed sum a few months ago from well-known domain investor, Rob Grant. This was a name that had been previously up for auction, and I thought it would be a great buy for someone in that field.
When asked about his motivations for building the site, Lewis replied, “we’re excited to own the name and to be developing a blog. The TrademarkAttorneys.com blog will have a heavy focus on domains, and hopefully can be a resource for the domaining community.”
Once Lewis’ site ranks in the top of Google for his key terms, he will save significant money on pay per click advertising. As with any domain investment, it’s a significant short term expense, but will certainly pay off over time.
"We are very excited to partner with Select Sotheby's International Realty on this unique project and to be working with John Burke," Grant (who is based in Lake Placid, New York) told us. "If this first site performs the way we think it will, it may represent the future template for a major build out of our powerful New York real estate network in select markets."
The RealEstateDirectory.com was founded in 1996 by Grant who owns the largest network of geo-targeted real estate domains in the world, including LondonRealEstate.com, JapanRealEstate.com, TokyoRealEstate.com, AustraliaRealEstate.com and GermanyRealEstate.com, as well as hundreds of other countries and cities around the globe.
"Our current strategy is to partner with companies like Sothebys here in Upstate New York which offer excellent inventory and a large network of experienced agents," Grant said. "It's critical that we have internet savvy agents who can handle these real estate leads and convert them to actual sales."
Throughout New York State, RealEstateDirectory.com owns domains representing the most important markets throughout New York State, including
NewYorkRealEstate.com, BuffaloRealEstate.com, AlbanyRealEstate.com and SyracuseRealEstate.com to name just a few. The majority of these domains are still utilizing a traditional parking based platform generating PPC revenue, but Grant has his sites set on forming more development deals like the arrangement with Sotheby's to unlock the full potential of these domains.
"As the traditional PPC revenue model slowly dies, large domain portfolio owners are now finally moving into the next development phase," Grant noted. "For real estate domains, the highest and best use has clearly always been as fully developed real estate portals. The commissions which can be generated from the sale of physical real estate dwarf any other revenue model we know of."
"The way we've structured the LakeGeorgeRealEstate.com deal with Sotheby's is that RealEstateDirectory.com owns the actual web site and Select Sotheby's International Realty provides all the unique inventory and listings. Its a very simple and straight forward arrangement. If we can generate the leads, Select Sotheby's International Realty agents can convert these leads into sales," Grant said.
October 2009
Advice From the Most Successful Domain Owners of All Time –This is part five of a series of five with one piece of advice from some of the most successful domain investors, domain developers, domain monetizers, and others involved in the domain industry. I asked them for one piece of advice they would give to a part-time domain investor looking to build his business. I believe there are quite a few people who are part time domain investors, and I also believe just about anyone involved in the industry can apply some of this advice to their own business models.
I really appreciate all of the contributions from the industry leaders who contributed, and I hope the advice contained within is helpful to you now – or will be helpful to the growth of your business in the future.
Rob Grant, WebMediaProperties.com & RealEstateDirectory.com:
All it takes is one good domain.
The rest will follow.
Today, our domain space has become increasingly cluttered with domain litter…useless extensions and obscure country codes that blow around in the wind like trash in a vacant lot… followed by domain investors running wildly around chasing all this garbage.
click here for Elliots Blog with Rob Grant Interview
click here for Elliots Blog
Madison Avenue and Domain Legend Rob Grant Live 2/18/09
Join us for a Webinar on February 18, 2009 featuring Rob Grant .
About Rob Grant
Rob Grant walked away from a dream job on Madison Avenue so he could move to New York’s Adirondack Mountains, even though there was no job waiting for him there. “We happened to get lucky because we hit that market just as the Adirondacks were starting to be rediscovered,” Grant said. “People were starting to come up from New York, New Jersey and Boston and I found I was able to sell the residential properties for two and three times what I paid for them.” That kind of ushered in my real estate era. As the economy started growing again, Grant’s business boomed. At this same time, in 1995-96, Grant became aware of the Internet and domains. “That was a remarkable awakening for me because I had the Madison Avenue marketing background and I had the real estate background and suddenly these two powerful thing merged. I looked at a domain and thought My God, not only is this a brand as the Internet develops, but it also has all of the properties of real estate,” Grant said.
Title: Gratitude Presents Domain and Advertising Icon Rob Grant
Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Time: 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM EST
January 2007
Get a Great Domain Name. Looking for a memorable Web site address?
Don't think for a moment that all the good ones are gone.
BY MICHAEL RUSSER
Lease it.
You don’t have to buy a domain name to benefit from its use. Domain leasing is based on the principle that many people simply type in the domain name for the type of product or service they’re interested in. Then, they’re redirected to your site, giving you extra traffic.
For example, if you specialize in Hollywood real estate, you may find that hollywoodrealestate.com is available for lease (which it actually was until someone leased it). If you leased it, whenever prospects type in www.hollywoodrealestate.com, they would be sent to your site.
You typically pay a fixed monthly fee based on the anticipated traffic. Think of this as a sophisticated form of pay-per-click, except that you pay a flat fee rather than a per-click cost. One domain leasing site that specializes in real estate domains, LeaseThis.com, also offers to wrap an appropriately designed branded version of the leased domain name location around your site. To see an example, go to www.hollywoodrealestate.com at the top you’ll see the branded domain name being leased, underneath is the site of the company that leased it.
Leasing is smart for several reasons. Since you don’t own the name, this approach creates a clear separation between your brand and that of the domain name. So when you’re ready to terminate your lease, it doesn’t affect the branding of your own site. (Tip: Never brand your site using a leased domain name, but always with one you own.) Also, you can use it as a listing tool; Imagine going on a listing appointment for a property in Hollywood and having the prospective seller type in “www.hollywoodrealestate.com” and see your site come up this way. Their perception is likely that you “own” that space.
click here for article with Rob Grant
click here for link to article at Realtor Magazine
Monte talks to Rob Grant and Rob Barbour 12/21/2005 -
Monte Cahn Monte talks to Rob Grant and Rob Barbour. Rob Grant spent many years on Madison Ave. with Grey Advertising working on major accounts like Proctor and Gamble, Northwest Airlines, Playtex, etc. He moved to Lake Placid in the early 80s and started a number of businesses including a real estate brokerage firm and rustic furniture company! He created www.RealEstateDirectory.com which controls one of the largest online real-estate networks in the world. Rob Barbour, 39, is President and CEO of Digit Software, Inc, which provides software development services worldwide, cell phone services in Africa, and maintains a domain portfolio of 4000 names. Digit Software is also the parent company of Pokerliving.net, which teaches people how to make a living playing poker
click here to listen
January 2008
Rob Grant, the President of RealEstateDirectory.com, a company that owns a massive portfolio of highly targeted real estate domains - "I wanted to help create a new revenue channel," Grant said. "I did not want to remain dependent on Google and Yahoo (the main providers of PPC revenue) and this looked like a very smart alternative. For a vertical portfolio like mine is is especially good because it is possible to forge a direct advertiser relationship for thousands of domains at once."
click here for entire story
October 19, 2006 09:00 AM Eastern Time
LeaseThis.com Ushers in a New Era of Internet Advertising
New Platform Brings the World’s Premier Internet Real Estate to the MassesLOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LeaseThis, LLC announced today the introduction of LeaseThis.com, a radically-new, cutting-edge Internet advertising platform that seeks to revolutionize the business of online advertising. Research has shown that while the number of global Internet users is growing exponentially, the availability of premium, targeted domain names is rapidly decreasing. The result is an increasingly difficult task for businesses to establish an online presence, or even reach out and attract new customers, through a meaningful domain name.
LeaseThis.com’s proprietary, patent-pending technology is designed to address this issue by better aligning the interests of online advertisers with those that control the Internet’s premium real estate. “We are the first company to offer domain leasing on a scalable, global platform, thereby releasing the incredible value of premium domain names to businesses and individuals around the world,” said Jonathan Boswell, CEO and Co-Founder of LeaseThis.com.
The value of a premium domain name is easily illustrated in the “real” (as opposed to “virtual”) world of real estate. According to the 2005 NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 82 percent of first-time homebuyers and 78 percent of repeat homebuyers used the Internet to search for homes, and 24 percent of buyers actually first found their home on the Internet. For many Internet users, that search starts with real estate domains. For example, a prospective buyer looking for a home in Atlanta often types “AtlantaRealEstate.com” (www.AtlantaRealEstate.com) or “AtlantaHomes.com” (www.AtlantaHomes.com) into their web browser. With a median home price in Atlanta of $265,000, it is easy to see the intrinsic value of this type of highly-targeted traffic.
Furthermore, a recent study conducted by WebSideStory, Inc. (www.WebSideStory.com) shows that this type of “direct navigation” has a conversion rate more than 80% higher than that of traditional PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising on Yahoo! and Google.
Ammar Kubba, COO and Co-Founder of LeaseThis.com, acknowledges that the early response has been tremendous. “Businesses desperately want access to this premium traffic, yet the current PPC model often fails to capitalize on the true power and value of premium domain names, to the detriment of both advertisers and domain owners alike. With LeaseThis.com, we now have the ability to deliver this highest-quality traffic directly to the businesses that need it most, in the most efficient and compelling manner possible. We see it as the next logical step in the evolution of search marketing.”
To develop its comprehensive and unrivaled inventory of premium domains, LeaseThis.com has been working closely with prominent domain owners such as Rob Grant, CEO of the RealEstateDirectory.com, which controls one of the world’s largest and most sought-after portfolios of Real Estate domain names. According to Grant, the advantages to controlling a valuable domain on an exclusive lease basis are significant. “By leasing a strategic industry domain, companies can now effectively leap frog over their competition. Instead of merely being listed with dozens of other advertisers on a traditional PPC template, one company alone will have the exclusive use of these extremely valuable domain properties.”
The initial release of the LeaseThis.com platform is currently available exclusively to select beta partners, in preparation for a full-scale global launch in early 2007 .
Cover Story
January 2009
The State of the Industry January 2009: 15 Leading Experts ... Predict What Will Happen in 2009
To make sense of what happened in 2008 and where we are headed in 2009 we called on 15 of the most successful people in the domain industry for our 5th annual State of the Industry report. Our panel of experts includes key company founders, CEOs, developers, investors and attorneys. The all-star roster includes (alphabetically by last name): Monte Cahn, the Castello Brothers (Michael and David), Phil Corwin, Michael Gilmour, Ari Goldberger, Rob Grant, Dr. Kevin Ham, Dr. Chris Hartnett, Michael Mann, Andrew Miller, Howard Neu, Rick Schwartz, Tim Schumacher and Divyank Turakhia. With so many top minds gathered in one place this is a report you can't afford to miss!
click here for Full Story
click here for Rob Grant Interview
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