We Are All Different

One thing everyone who reads domain blogs, forums, and other informational domain industry websites should keep in mind is that we all are in different financial situations, come from different backgrounds, have different expectations, and have different financial interests. Yes, this is obvious, but it’s important to keep in mind when reading advice or suggestions anywhere.

I regularly see people soliciting advice regarding a particular situation. This is often related to an inquiry or offer on a particular domain name. The advice that is shared is usually diverse, but some would certainly lead to bad outcomes. While it may be good to get outside opinions, I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful when it comes from people who are likely in vastly different financial situations and have different backgrounds. The right move may be to accept an offer, but listening to advice that recommends spurning the offer can kill a deal that may be critical to the domain owner.

In addition to this type of situational advice, everyone has their own vested interests. There are domain investors, registrar and registry representatives, parking company account managers, industry lawyers, domain brokers, and a variety of other industry-connected individuals who contribute to the commentary in the domain space. Each of these people has a unique take on the industry, and their backgrounds would lead them to give very different advice. This advice, while good in a vacuum, may not be helpful to the person seeking it. That person may heed this advice due to successful background of the person giving it. However, the person giving the advice is likely in a very different position.

Finally, we all have different business models and there are many ways to successfully operate a business in the domain space. You and I might have completely opposite strategies, but we are both successful. Just because you are successful with your business, does not mean my method is bad. Likewise, just because I do something a different way doesn’t mean my strategy is bad.

Making things a bit more complicated is the fact that there are contributors who don’t have much experience in the domain space. I think people want to be helpful by giving unfounded advice based on their intuition, but sometimes that advice is not really good.

I don’t believe people intentionally give bad advice. I also believe that great advice may be helpful to some people but harmful to others. Not knowing whether this advice is helpful or harmful is part of the problem, and blindly following advice can lead to a bad outcome. Keep in mind everyone comes from a different background, has different business interests, and has different levels of experience in the domain space. We are all different and should keep this in mind when reading advice anywhere.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn
  1. Hmmmm . . I don’t know if it’s your spam filters, your assistant or otherwise but I posted a comment in the Citronella domain article and it’s not showing. Might be that I embedded a link to a CNN article about citronella and that triggered a filter. I dunno. I don’t post often but this is the second time it’s happened, leaving me to not feel the Bern . . err . . love. To borrow a line from a song “Should I stay or should I go . . . ”

    Be well and feel free to delete this attempt to message you.

  2. Yes, we are all different, the problem is not about free speech, it’s about to allow people to post anonymously, it’s giving a “carte blanche” to bashing, trolls, … This has no interest except scare victims who will no longer comment for a (very) long time.

    Francois Carrillo
    Domaining.com

    • How do you recommend preventing people from posting anonymously without chilling free speech?

      For one, anyone can easily create a pseudonym backed by a fake information. Do you expect the owner of the website to verify identities of everyone, and if so, how? It would need to not take up too much time, since I can’t afford to spend time ensuring all commenters are real. If someone goes to the trouble of creating a real-looking (but still fake) Facebook account, do you expect me to investigate this? What if they are contributing positive but need to remain anonymous for business or legal reasons.

      A secondary issue is that if an outside plugin or tool is used for comments (ie Facebook), it would almost certainly cause the loss of all prior comments that were made before implementation.

      Finally, I am fortunate that the vast majority of comments here are respectful and/or helpful.

    • I don’t think anonymity is a precursor to free speech.

      I also believe that it would be best if everyone used their real names. It is tiring to deal with keyboard warriors. Though, I’m sure you know that. I do recognize that it is impossible to successfully verify the identity of every member, commenter, or whatever but I do think such a system would be ideal.

      As always, just my 2 cents.

    • My feeling is very few will do this effort to create fake accounts to remain anonymous.

      Also, technically it’s possible to show old comments and new ones posted by Facebook for example, you just have to compare the posting date.

      Ok forget haters, trolls, … The thing Elliot, is how can you fully appreciate a comment if you have no idea who posted it? As you said, we are all different, and this is why a message has a different meaning when expressed by this person or that one.

    • “how can you fully appreciate a comment if you have no idea who posted it?”

      That is a great question and I don’t have a great answer.

      I guess I am fortunate to have the experience to tell me whether the advice/comment is good or not.

    • We agree with you on anonymous digital bullies. We have already adopted a full disclosure stance, and plainly identify our real identity. How anybody can take ghosts advice seriously is a head scratcher.

      Time stamped identity over at RicksBlog holds us completely accountable for our track record. Want to be truly informed? Trust the time stamped Documentation, that Rick Schwartz has supplied for all who are doing their homework. There are truths out there for those interested.
      This comment was made earlier but we found it helpful to you previous statements. Thanks Francois

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist) (Domain Master ) https://www.UseBiz.com

    • Aren’t you the guy who created the encrypted anonymous email service discretion.com, give me a break, look up hypocrite…if someone has something meaningful to disclose, and you don’t like it, well to bad, suck it up princess.

    • >”Ok forget haters, trolls, … The thing Elliot, is how can you fully appreciate a comment if you have no idea who posted it? As you said, we are all different, and this is why a message has a different meaning when expressed by this person or that one.”

      I’m surprised to see the publisher of the famous “Domaining.com” posting these kinds of statements. This is something I’ve had an opinion on for years.

      A small number of people can’t stand it when someone else is posting anonymously. Really, one well known “domain investor” in particular is first in mind. So in order to try to get their way and make themselves look right, they accuse you of being a “troll” when it is clear from your posts that you are anything but, or insinuate it, or give speeches about how having a known profile and being known is so important and matters so much to what you have said.

      That is nonsense, and a very big cop out. It is also masking one’s own personal pet peeve or problem in the guise of “righteousness” and dogmatic assertion about the way things should be when it is nothing more than one’s own personal hang up.

      Not allowing people to post anonymously most certainly does create a negative, counterproductive and chilling effect upon free speech, and the answer to Elliot’s question is that there is no way around that. It is a no-brainer the size of Texas.

      Requiring that everyone be known not only chills free speech, but guarantees that issues will be colored by popularity, status, fear and influence.

      Guaranteeing that people can post anonymously, when they do not truly behave like trolls, guarantees what is most important – that people feel more free to say things that ought to be said, and that the SUBSTANCE of what someone posts can be addressed WITHOUT REGARD TO PERSONALITIES and issues of fame, status, fear, popularity and influence. Without that, all you will ever have is a convention of stifled environments, fear, and failure to address a matter as well and fully and truthfully as it should be.

      Now in my own case, for any who might be interested (and certainly at least one has sometimes been very interested), by now I would actually be a little bit surprised if someone hasn’t figured out who I am, or at least what company I’m with, although it may take something unethical to do that, as in “cheating.” But it doesn’t even matter if they have. Accept it or not, nobody knows me in the industry. Knowing who I am would make no difference whatsoever to anything. And in keeping with that, no I have never been involved in any domain dispute, UDRP, or anything of the sort either, for those who want to be able to point to someone and simply be able to dismiss anything they don’t like about what they ever say as the words of a “cybersquatter” and the like in an “ad hominem” way. For all intents and purposes I am an unknown nobody among the people who know each other in the blogs, the forums, and at the conferences. But I am a nobody with things to say sometimes and a keen interest in the industry. For my own very normal reasons I prefer to stay anonymous. Sometimes my “form” gets a little feisty, such as lately about the big IANA “transition” issue which in my view is just as big and potentially perilous as Net neutrality was if no more so, but my “substance” without regard to the “person” in what I post is what matters the most.

      It’s all about substance and content over form and personality, and that’s what matters.

    • Francois – you sound as you only got access to the internet yesterday!

      It would be impossible to verify people’s true identities unless you asked for people’s ID CARDS which would not be practical and in fact would be ludicrous.

      Furthermore, with the internet having been around for many years now, what I’m really puzzled about, is why some people cannot just ignore the comments that they think is of no use to them instead of getting so uptight about it.

      And there could be other reasons as why some people would like to use Aliases as opposed to using their real names – this should just be too obvious without needing further elaborations.

  3. Just as cherry, plum, peach and damson blossoms all possess their own unique qualities, each person is unique. We cannot become someone else. The important thing is that we live true to ourselves and cause the great flower of our lives to blossom.

  4. We should know what we are doing. It may not be wrong to take advice from experienced people but one should gradually evolve to take his own calls.

    It is waste to blame others.

  5. Great post El! And exactly right on!

    Tooooooooooooooooo many people now have a global microphone to spew advice.

    That’s the one down side to the Internet. A lot of unfounded information being broadcast and majority of people just accept it to be factual because “it’s on the Internet”.

    As to haters, trolls and other puffers who have nothing better to do than attack and knock people down, that is out of control now especially on the political sites.

  6. Interesting article, which makes many valid points. Sadly, if a seeker of advice doesn’t have the industry knowledge them self to accomplish a task and resort to asking for others opinions, it would equally be logical to assume they don’t have the industry knowledge to screen individuals giving them advice.

    This alone creates a dead end conundrum. As far as solutions to resolve such a problem goes, I don’t think there is an easy answer. The humor in the best probable solution is that it would resemble a dating site application that matches the advice seeker with the advice giver. To add an even more twisted sense of humor, we have to realize that even with such a match making application process, that the result may still be the same due to the same reasons dating sites have such a high failure rate. People tend to lie on the application to make them self more desirable.

    So now we have to toss vetting into the mix for all applications (Background checks, past employment verification, portfolio verification, banking confirmation, verifiable past sales history, monthly investment capital, etc.). While those and many more things to verify seem a bit “Over the top” they would all be required to achieve an accurate match between a seeker and a giver.

    In short, I don’t think there’s an easy solution to matching seekers and givers. At the end of the day, taking someones advice is just as much a gamble as playing black-jack at the casino or investing in a domain you know little to nothing about. However, I’m fairly certain that rejecting advice without research based on the thought process that once can’t trust any advice they are given because there is a possibility that the givers experience differs from the receivers is the wrong direction to go.

    • Hello Eric,

      Here’s a head banger, suppose Someone creates an Online Search Engine that does not scrape traffic and does not steel traffic and reroute it for their profit?
      Do you think this service could match up givers with takers?

      Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger) (Former Rockefeller IBEC Marketing Analyst/Strategist) (Licensed CBOE Commodity Hedge Strategist) (Domain Master ) https://www.UseBiz.com

  7. Hmm, well if I can say so myself, what I just posted at “June 8th, 2016 at 11:53 pm” perhaps really should have been a whole separate post down here, so do please scroll up and read it if you will. Important issue raised here if you ask me…

  8. You know what’s great about the internet? Like science, the truth eventually comes out. It doesn’t matter if an idea comes from an unknown Swiss Patent clerk, a Nobel Prize winner, a Canadian domainer that wins Developer of the year or even one of the most successful domainers ever. The idea should be analyzed on it’s own merits and not on who wrote it. Intellectual skepticism is the fuel that drives both and it is healthy and needed. Anonymity is not an issue unless it’s a personal attack and Elliot does a fine job of deleting those.

    • >”The idea should be analyzed on it’s own merits and not on who wrote it. […] Anonymity is not an issue unless it’s a personal attack and Elliot does a fine job of deleting those.”

      Exactly.

      But try telling that to the few who have a pet peeve about it. You’ve just done that well, though.

    • From Elliot, great points !
      “The advice that is shared is usually diverse,
      everyone has their own vested interests.
      Each of these people has a unique take on the industry, and their backgrounds would lead them to give very different advice.
      We all have different business models and there are many ways to successfully operate a business in the domain space.”
      From John, great points !
      “It’s all about substance and content over form and personality, and that’s what matters.
      Guaranteeing that people can post anonymously, when they do not truly behave like trolls, guarantees what is most important – that people feel more free to say things that ought to be said, and that the SUBSTANCE of what someone posts can be addressed WITHOUT REGARD TO PERSONALITIES and issues of fame, status, fear, popularity and influence. Without that, all you will ever have is a convention of stifled environments, fear, and failure to address a matter as well and fully and truthfully as it should be.”
      “At the end of the day, taking someones advice is just as much a gamble as playing black-jack at the casino or investing in a domain you know little to nothing about. However, I’m fairly certain that rejecting advice without research based on the thought process that once can’t trust any advice they are given because there is a possibility that the givers experience differs from the receivers is the wrong direction to go”
      From 168,
      I have heeded advice from several experts, mentors, and just plain folk from vastly different backgrounds over the years which has greatly contributed to my knowledge and success as a life long entrepreneur and investor. So sorry Elliot the whole point to advice and opinions is for a receiver to take away bits and pieces, weigh the pros and cons to come to their own conclusions based on their circumstance and also take responsibility for those conclusions.
      The prevailing “I’m right and your wrong” attitudes rampant in this industry only harms the “brand” as a whole, confuses new investors and end users. Diversity is critical to the growth of this industry. Without it, it’s a monopoly with a handful of participants and end users with few desirable options.

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