Global Domains International: The McDonald's of Web Sites...

Selling Web Sites Like McDonald's Sells Hamburgers...

Global Domains International is selling web sites like McDonald's sells hamburgers. McDonald's has excelled by appealing to the masses with instantly available, inexpensive, tasty hamburger meals. Global Domains International has excelled by appealing to the masses with instantly available, inexpensive complete web site packages.

And it works! - Just like McDonald's, Global Domains International has been experiencing the same outrageous growth. In fact, during just the first four years of it's inception, GDI attained #37 on the Inc. 500 "List" of the USA's 500 fastest growing companies.

How It All Began...

Ten years ago, in 1997, Global Domains International was just a twinkle in the eyes of Internet entrepreneurs, Michael Reed and Alan Ezeir, the founders of, and the CEO and President respectively of Global Domains International (GDI).

In 1998, during the dot com boom, people and businesses alike scrambled for a piece of Internet real estate by buying up a lot of dot com domain names. Mike and Alan envisioned that dot com names wouldn't last too long at this rate. They thought, "Besides dot com, are there other extensions that Global Domains International could sell as a domain name?"

A domain name is an Internet address that can be used only once. Domain names are usually made up of words or letters so they are easier to remember and be more relevant to a person or business. Extensions are the codes at the end of those domain names. Extensions signify which country a domain name belongs to, i.e., the .WS extension belongs to Samoa.

Mike and Alan knew that each country had it's own extension code, i.e.: United States was assigned .US and so on. And they also knew the popular .COM and .NET extensions were disappearing quickly, so they researched the codes and finally decided on the extension .WS for Global Domains International. They preferred .WS because it was easy to remember, could easily stand for the words, "web site", and had plenty of room for growth in the future.

The Samoan King Agrees to Let Mike and Alan Sell .WS Domain Names...

The extension, .WS, is owned by the tiny Island nation of Samoa. Samoa, which had a population of less than 200,000, had not yet promoted their .WS domain on a global scale as Mike and Alan had planned for it. But, could Mike and Alan get the rights to sell the .WS extension through their company, Global Domains International?

Mike and Alan brought a 20 page proposal to the Samoan King. The Samoan government, however, wanted a test run to see how successful Mike and Alan could be before committing themselves to an exclusive contract. The Samoan government wanted Global Domains International to sell 15,000 registrations in three years to prove their ability. Mike and Alan did that in their first month!

Because of that initial success promoting the .WS domains, Global Domains International became the owner of an exclusive unheard of 12 year contract to market the .WS domain names globally, with first right of renewal. The Samoans get a percentage of all the .WS domain names sold by GDI.

Positioning GDI For Success...

So how did Mike and Alan pull off 15,000 registrations in the first month alone? Well, you can say it was, FORSIGHT. Just before .WS recorded it's first registration, they did three things to make sure they were on the road to building a multi-national conglomerate. They researched and choose the best possible domain extension to promote; they surrounded themselves with a multi-talented individuals they knew to be capable of taking Global Domains International forward as the next big "dot com"; and they placed some large ads in major media like Fortune magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today.

Thousands of radio spots and a World Baseball Series ad campaign later, In November of 2000, less than nine months after launching .WS to the worldwide Internet community, Global Domains International announced to the world it had sold over 100,000 .WS registrations to businesses and individuals in over 180 countries.

About Global Domains International Today...

In July of 2007, Global Domains International made a new announcement. It had just become a full active member of the DSA (Direct Selling Association). This was not easy and took over a year of intense interviewing to become accepted to the DSA.

Today, Mike and Alan continue to grow Global Domains International, through foresight, hard work and making the right choices, into the multi-national conglomerate it has become. All this, because they envisioned a need - and did their best to fill that need.

A more in-depth article about GDI is available at Global Domains International . The author, DMarie Holtz, is a graduate of The School of Business from Rochester Institute of Technology.