I recently read a Clickz.com article that I thought was quite interesting entitled “The Home Page Is Dead and Microsites Are the Future – What That Means for New gTLDs”.

It’s a very intriguing article based on the premise that website home pages are dying by the wayside due to more companies using microsites in the future to shorten the sales conversion process.

The author, Jennifer Wolfe, briefly discusses her experience of trying to book a hotel using Marriott.com.

In short, she was unable to to find the hotel that she walked past daily because the home page did not have an effective way to search for hotels and was organized in an ineffective manner.

So what did Wolfe do when met with an antiquated home page?

I’ve written several posts about finding and buying domains, how to lease domains, why domains cost so much, and the new domain name extensions versus .com domains, to name a few.

No matter what I’ve written about in the past, present, or future, there will always be domain buyers, whether end-user customers or domain investors, who send in a lowball offer or counter with an offer that’s not worth the time to entertain.

Although I choose to respond, I’ve noticed domain buyers that are business owners, those who use their business address to inquire about the price of a domain, tend to undervalue domain pricing when attempting to purchase a domain I own. Most of these business owners are offended when they inquire about a domain, and I respond with 5 or 6-figure values.  Most say, “No thanks, I’ll register a different domain name.”

I’m met with terse comments and responses that I wouldn’t dare mention or even say to the face of a person that I so desperately want to buy something. Let’s say that most comments are in the neighborhood of “you’ve lost your mind” or “you’re the scum of capitalism.”

I don’t mind the comments. After all, to some extent, everyone is entitled to their opinion in expressing the first amendment.

Regardless of the inquiry and responses that follow, I make every effort to break down and explain my domain pricing strategy in great detail for each business owner to understand as it relates to their respective industry. Here’s why…

It never fails that I receive a domain inquiry in regards to buying a domain name I own, or questioning whether the domain name is for sale and how much.

Most of the time, such domain inquiries are nothing more than tire kickers that have no intent to buy.

Such tire kickers inquire only to either curse me to the hills and back, try to threaten me with legal action with no leg to stand on, or they try to explain to me why I’m asking too much for the desired domain.

No matter their negative response, such inquirers end up right back where they started: not owning the domain!

Most of the unsuccessful buyers settle for a hand-registered domain that is nothing more than a cheap knockoff of the domain they really desire.

However, there are those few occasions where someone will lowball me for a domain and respond to my counter with a substantially higher amount than their initial offering.

I tend to sell 90% of those types of domain inquiries.

All in all, like everything else in life, you can’t judge a book by its cover when initially fielding domain inquiries.

The other day, I was productively working and completing tasks when I took a moment to reconcile my email inbox.

While scanning through my email, I made notice of a message entitled, “Status Alert: Potential risk to server.”

This piqued my interest seeing the message was from GoDaddy and knowing I use a few of their services (i.e., domain management, email, web hosting, SSL, etc.).

In the recent weeks, Google has gone on record stating that websites that use HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) will receive a bump in their website’s search rankings.

If you have not a clue as to what I’m talking about, when I say “HTTPS”, then I suggest you read up on SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and HTTPS, and why and when they’re to be used.

In short, banking, shopping, email and social media service providers are among the top users of SSL.

SSL is used primarily to keep data encrypted and private from those snoopy eyes trying to pry into the most intimate details of your life. SSL only protects the transferring of data from one connection point to another.

As a matter of fact, if your banking, email, social media, and online shopping providers are not using SSL, the chance of your sensitive data (i.e., credit card information, social security, passwords, username) being compromised is at a greater risk.

Also, just because SSL is used doesn’t mean that the database one stores your information in is secure.

Again, SSL on deals with securing your data as it is transferred throughout wild superhighway known as the Internet. But I digress.

So why then is SSL being used in search such a big factor at all is probably your question?

Today I received a $50 domain inquiry for a top 3 word .com.

I’ll take a few moments to share a few thoughts for domain buyers and sellers.

I’ve received a few offers on this same domain over the last year, so I knew that I was not going to rollover and blindly accept this offer without doing a little research.

Just based on the previous domain inquiries and offers, the lowest price I was willing to accept was $25K.

As I do with every domain and right from the start, I also checked to see if the other domain extensions where registered, available, or developed.

And to my surprise and advantage as a seller, all other domain extensions were registered and a few had fully developed websites belonging to thriving businesses.

So I did what anyone should do, which is performing a few business searches to be sure that those businesses were legit.

I recently was invited to an Entrepreneur Summit sessions held in Round Rock, Texas by a close friend and business partner.

I always find it an intriguing challenge to hear from business owners looking for ways to launch, sustain and grow their businesses.

Having had a chance to address a small group of entrepreneurs about how to grow their businesses as it relates to SEO and domain names, at the table was a photographer, baker, imports/exports operator, and an online retailer.

I didn’t learn much about the online retailer as he wasn’t too forthcoming with his business or business model.

However, I thoroughly enjoyed answering internet marketing and business strategy questions about the photographer, baker and imports/exports operator.

We talked about and discussed many aspects of launching, sustaining and growing their businesses. I’ll attempt to highlight some of the questions asked and addressed in our short time together.