Castles Made of Sand

The .TV relaunch was not very successful because the premium domain name prices are yearly recurring fees (which may increase beyond that price buy some unknown amount). People who would create great content and later stumble into a business model are not likely to do so on a premium .tv name...which means most of those domain names won't have high quality content on them. Those that do may see thin profit margins because they have no control over their domain names...as they make them more valuable the registrar can increase prices without mercy, and when the registrant can no longer afford the domain names the registry gets to keep or sell any brand value the registrant built up. John Scott had a great post about people feeling guilty for buying links:

If you feel guilty about buying links, you’re probably feeling guilty for a reason. Perhaps your guilt comes from the fact that you are trying to rank a site for a keyword it doesn’t deserve ranking for. If that’s the case, stop trying to rank it for that keyword, and get you’re business in order. Get the site and your business to the place where you can honestly say that your site deserves to rank #1 for that keyword, and your business deserves to be #1 based on the merits of your business.

Yesterday at a market I bought this terrific soap with my girlfriend. The problem is that the packaging has a URL on it. No need to go to the vendor again. It is hard for the end vendor to get any traction as the supplier sells directly, has pricing control, and is more convenient to order from.

If you are too dependant on any one supplier or any one source of leads then you need to re-evaluate your position to decrease your risk profile and come up with ways to build your brand value.