As I predicted when Rick announced that there would be multiple live domain auctions at TRAFFIC New York, Moniker just announced that they are reducing their period of exclusivity. From an email that was just received:

Selling names in Moniker’s Live and Extended Domain Auctions just got easier, with a new seller’s agreement that reduces exclusivity terms down to 60 days. This important revision reinforces our commitment to sell domains on behalf of our clients, and is now one of the lowest terms available on the market. The combined selling power of Moniker and SnapNames makes it possible for us to do this – together Moniker and SnapNames offer the widest reach to domain buyers worldwide.

Facing increased competition from other auction houses, Moniker had to alter their standard agreement, as domain owners seem to be opting to list their domains elsewhere. Another telling sign of this is that Moniker is still accepting submissions for the TRAFFIC auction which will be held in less than a month. As I recall, previously, Moniker closed the submission acceptance period much longer than a month before the auction.

Although TropicalBirds.com has been doing well on Google for some long tail keywords, and it continues to grow daily, only the home page shows up in Yahoo. When I inquired about the issue with Yahoo, I filled out a form asking if there’s an issue, and I received a canned response that may provide some information:

Q: What are some of the common reasons that a site may violate Yahoo!’s Content Policy Guidelines?

A: Yahoo!’s Content Quality Guidelines (link above) outline what we are and are not looking for in pages that we index. Listed below are some of the more common reasons that a site may violate these guidelines:

- Cloaking (showing crawlers deceptive content about a site)
- Massive domain interlinking- Use of affiliate programs without the addition of substantial unique content
- Use of reciprocal link programs (aka “link farms”)
- Hidden text
- Excessive keyword repetition

Since I am not a technical person, I don’t know what half the stuff is, nor would I know how to do it. Can anyone have a look at TropicalBirds.com and let me know what they think might be the problem? I haven’t signed up for any linking programs, I don’t have hidden text, my metas and the site aren’t filled with extensive keywords (to my knowledge), and all of the content is 100% unique – created by a writer who researched the topics for me.

I would really appreciate it if someone could provide some feedback, as the canned answer doesn’t help me at all.

THANKS!!

According to an article in the Dutch online publication WebWereld.nl (reported on DNForum), a company based in the Netherlands recently paid $800,000 to acquire Printer.com. The notice currently showing on Printer.com says company plans to launch their new website on September 2, although they did not reveal their plans for the new website.

Personally, I think this is a fantastic deal. In Euros, the company spent just €546,220, which is a great price for this industry defining domain name. Although I don’t have any public sales to share, I know there have been a number of sales to Europeans over the past several months, taking advantage of the weaker US dollar. Similarly, in the 1980′s when the US was going through tough economic times, many huge real estate deals were consummated in New York City by Japanese companies, which used the strong Yen to their advantage.