Here’s some free consulting for .eco top level domain supporters.
You may have recently read about a tiff between two groups competing to launch .eco, a domain name for companies to showcase their environmental friendliness. In one corner you’ve got Dot Eco, LLC, with support from Al Gore. In the other corner is Big Room. There’s also another company that has applied for a trademark to .eco, which could make things messier.
Both sides have been trading jabs. But all of this is just a public front. In the back room they’re all trying to figure out how to make their TLD successful. By that I mean make money, which both say will be shared with charities.
So here’s an informative and free, “How to Make .Eco a Success’
1. Hide the amount of carbon your team is emitting into the atmosphere by lobbying for .eco. All those plane trips to ICANN meetings sure do pollute. Make sure no bloggers think about exposing that, or worse, calculating the exact amount of carbon you’ve spent on your effort.
2. Make sure to have no restrictions on who can register a domain name. This is important for item #3.
3. Hold a sunrise period in which trademark holders can register their trademarks for an exorbitant fee based on company size. For example, Exxon and Ford may have to pay $50,000 each. Stress upon them that if they don’t register the domain, then someone else can register it upon general release. For example, Greenpeace may register the domain to do an expose on how the company is polluting.
4. Reserve all “premium” keywords to auction off to sucker domains. For example, Sex.eco is premium because it would be perfect for selling biodegradable condoms. Take domains like Sex.eco, poker.eco, and loans.eco and auction them off at a live auction at a domainer conference. Make sure that everyone’s financial incentives are aligned to sell the domains for top dollar at the event, get some press, and then build a .eco pricing bubble.
5. Make sure no one points out that running separate .eco web sites instead of using companyname.com/eco pollutes the earth by requiring more servers. Don’t let someone get everyone in a tizzy over the fact that having multiple TLDs is inefficient, resulting in more computing resources and energy waste.
6. Try to defame your challenger for .eco. If both of you end up going for it, you may face off in an auction that costs over $1M for the TLD. Imagine what you could have done by just donating that $1M to charity. Plus, it’s kind of funny seeing greenies fight each other.
7. Make sure the other side doesn’t decide to just get .green instead. You need to get their heads stuck on .eco. If they opt for .green, you could have long term competition. And that’s not what this is about; you need to get a monopoly TLD.
8. Dot Eco, LLC should complain to ICANN about how Big Room has filed a pre-emptive trademark for .eco with the USPTO.
Hopefully this free consulting will help our friends at Dot Eco and Big Room. My invoice is in the mail.
Shaun says
Brilliant post 🙂
Darren Spielman says
Andrew, I need to remember these helpful tips for future legal domain related ventures. LOL Thanks!
Steve Morsa says
Takes “tongue-in-cheek” to a whole new level…
…which explains all that blood running down your neck. 🙂
Clayton Narcis says
Great post. The feud is gonna get more interesting towards Seoul.
Mike in Bali says
Nice post. It makes you really wonder how much companies can make from these new tlds. .eco for example, is only going to appeal to non-profits who don’t have a lot of money to spend.