Butler, the domain man

A COMPANY that would rather describe itself as ‘domain name strategists’, rather than ‘cyber-squatters’, has beaten the Daily Record to register a web address sounding awfully close to its recently-launched evening editions.

Visit www.recordpm.com and there is certainly a news feed, plus a bunch of pub and other listings – in their infancy. But it has nothing to do with the Daily Record, despite it having recently-launched PM editions, for both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The domain name instead belongs to Glasgow-based Tommy Butler, who operates 800 websites, almost all of which earn him money from Google adverts. Visit recordpm.com and one of the Google ads might be for a recruitment agency. Click on it, and Butler earns a little money, perhaps only an US cent or two. But his strategy is simple: lots of clicks across lots of sites builds into a nice little earner.

It is understood he did try to sell the Record the recordpm.com domain name, which he bought on the fifth of this month, but the offer was declined, the company preferring, instead, to register www.recordpm.co.uk, glasgowpm.com and co.uk, and edinburghpm.com and co.uk.