According to today’s post on DomainNameNews, a class action lawsuit was filed against Network Solutions and ICANN by the law firm of Kabateck Brown Kellner. The firm issued a press release announcing the action earlier today.

This is the second article written by Frank and Adam today about Network Solutions, the first being an article about the company monetizing a racially sensitive domain name owned by the NAACP, presumably to prevent links like this from being displayed.

People have asked me to speculate on why a domain name of theirs could possibly be banned by Google. There are many potential reasons, but an acquaintance of mined mentioned that spam related to the domain name could potentially be a reason for banning. From what I understand, it isn’t very difficult to spoof a spam email to make it look like it came from a particular domain name. If this happens and the domain name is put on a spam list, it could potentially lead to other negative ramifications.

One possible way to see if your domain name is being used for spamming is to create an email account with your hosting company, and have it act as a “catch all” for any email that comes to any email address associated with the domain name. While your inbox Read More »

Below are a few unregistered domain names I believe have good potential. Although I am not charging anything for researching these names, I am requesting that the person who registers each makes a donation to a non-profit organization.

JetMechanics.com
YachtMechanics.com
SpareMotorcycleParts.com
MotorcycleCustomization.com
MotorcycleCustomizations.com
PreownedDress.com
TradeGowns.com
DancingDirections.com
ExtremeMotorcycling.com

You don’t need to tell me how much was donated, but I would love to know which charity was helped, so please drop me a line after!

A few non-profits I recommend (with the link to make a donation):

Dana Farber Cancer Institute
ALS Association
The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure for Breast Cancer
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Meir Panim
American Cancer Society
Turning Point (Domestic Violence Organization)
BC Children’s Hospital

Charities Previously Helped By Generous Readers of My Blog:

The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Dana Farber Cancer Institute
ALS Association
American Cancer Society
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

Sean Stafford’s entry into the domain industry was similar to mine. He got his start registering names for around $8 and selling them to others for 4-5 times the purchase price. Once he found success at that, Sean began to focus on higher value deals, as the risk and reward is much greater. An idea of Sean’s sparked the creation of a company (DNZoom), which has received significant industry press of late. Sean has done very well for himself in the domain industry, and I keep hearing good things about him and his company.

I received a copy of Sean’s Domain Graduate e-book a couple of weeks ago, but I just recently had the time to read it. If you are new to the domain industry, I think Sean’s book is a very good read, and it’s jam-packed with information about the many facets of the domain industry. There are many things that are second nature to me now, but it would have been great to know about them when I was first starting out. Whether you want to learn about the different types of traffic, the best way to monetize your names, analyzing a domain name on the aftermarket… etc - it’s all in the book.

Although the price of the book is a bit hefty, I think it will help flatten the learning curve, which can be pretty steep (and costly if you are registering hundreds of new names). If you learn just a couple of things from Sean’s book, you could literally save hundreds of dollars. Honestly, I don’t know if I would have purchased this book when I was first starting out because $97 could have bought 10 new domain names. However, if I knew how much information was included in the book, it would have been a big a mistake to not buy it, because it would have saved me hundreds of dollars.

According to the Domain Graduate homepage, the price of the book is going to increase to $197 once 200 copies have been sold. I have no idea how long until that will happen, so you might consider buying it now.

Received this email from Mike Mann this afternoon:

“First off I have never done domain tasting, nor did BuyDomains.com when I managed it, and our new domain trading and building platform, DomainMarket.com, doesn’t either. When we and others first began thinking about it around 5 years ago it was bad protocol at best, and really considered a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against the Netsol/Verisign registry system since robots slam the systems to buy thousands of name at once; so it was against NSI/VRSN rules and possibly illegal too.

However once Verisign realized how many domains would ultimately be registered to their benefit (eventhough I imagine 99% of the inventory is never paid for and is re-deleted back to the unregistered pool of potential new domains) they decided domain tasting for 5 days to measure the PPC traffic and value and buy the statistical gems was OK.

However domain tasting is indiscriminate and buyers end up having their robots purchase other peoples’ clear trademarks, as well as a lot of lewdly suggestive names, or names that once resolved to questionable content. So again its nothing Id want my team to take part in.

In the past I thought nobody should do it. Today I think it should actually be done by others carefully for one simple reason: It’s good for the economy. People are typing in and clicking on legacy domain links for expired domains, and if they get a 404 error it’s a waste of time, energy and bandwidth - and nobody gets paid, however if it lands on a tasting speculators PPC page or monetizable site then someone is getting paid, and they can pay their employees, taxes, and tips at the local restaurant, etc. So domain tasting while lame in most respects is still good for the economy.

I’ve rethought this subject and I think it’s good for others as long as they don’t buy trademarks or domains that they deem offensive. Outside of moral considerations they need to be concerned about being sued or harassed somehow, which could have negative financial consequences, balanced by the value of the trickle down economics accidentally applied to attorneys and their caddies.

Thats all, LMK what you think. Cheers“

I don’t know think I personally know anyone who operates any of the various niche domain price guides, and I don’t think I’ve visited one in a couple of years, but do the owners/publishers own names in that niche? If they do, wouldn’t it be a bit biased to publish pricing material, where their financial holdings would be impacted by a change in price?

For example, if I own a whole bunch of names that begin with 123, and I start a price guide called “123Name Prices,” wouldn’t it be silly for others to read my price guide and consider it an authoritative source, when the value of my names could be impacted by what I publish? When it comes to domain values, I trust my gut and my own personal instinct. When I really need to look for comps, I look at the DNJournal Sales Report as well as DNSalePrice.com, which has an archive of most public sales dating back several years.

I am all for people building websites about smaller niches within the domain industry, but I think people should ask questions when looking at a niche price guide to ensure there is no bias whatsoever. Do the publishers own names in this niche? Do the publishers review all reported sales (looking at escrow/bank statements)? Are ALL public sales taken into consideration - even those that aren’t reported but occur on a public platform (forum, auction, aftermarket site)?

If there is any way a domain price guide could be biased, the person who is relying on it for accurate information should ask those questions before quoting the source.

With the most recent TRAFFIC auction not performing up to my expectations considering the quality of the domain names at auction, I think the premium domain sales market is taking a temporary breather. Sellers still have high expectations for their domain names and buyers are reluctant to pay those prices, causing a stalemate. While there are still areas of growth persevering in niche markets, the overall market is resting.

Previously, domain owners could expect their premium domain names would sell for anywhere from wholesale to end-user prices at an industry conference live auction, but that hasn’t been the case for the past two main industry events. In many cases, buyers aren’t willing to pay the premium asking prices right now, and the sellers are reluctant to lower their reserve prices, causing a stalemate in the market. While this might be a cause for concern for those who are heavily invested in domain names, it could develop into a good buying opportunity, so liquidity is important.

While $10 million in domain sales Read More »

I don’t think the results were particularly strong for tonight’s TRAFFIC West auction in Las Vegas, but it resulted in $4.3 million in domain sales. There were some great names up for auction, but in the end, most of them didn’t end up selling.

The silent auction continues for the next few days, and the names that didn’t sell will be available to purchase. The full auction sales list can be found at TheDomains.com.

I am looking to sell a geographic .com domain name for the Australian beach resort town, Trinity Beach. The domain name I am selling is TrinityBeach.com.

Domain Name is now Sold.

I wanted to remind those of you in the New York area that we will be getting together for an informal dinner on Tuesday, February 26th at 7pm. There are 18 people who have confirmed so far, and a couple more have verbally confirmed to me but haven’t responded to the Evite I sent out.

If you are interested in attending the dinner, please drop me a note and I will send you the Evite. This promises to be a fun networking event for people involved in the domain industry. I am looking forward to seeing and meeting you in a few days!