If you want to get to the TRAFFIC conference in Orlando in a couple of weeks, head over to DNZoom and either login to your account or sign-up for their services. In honor of their one year anniversary, they are going to raffle off a ticket to TRAFFIC. From DNZoom today:

“As we mark our one year anniversary, we want to give a big “Thanks!” to everyone in the DNZoom community. We have more than 1000 beta users and have struck partnerships with the best companies in the domain industry.

Here is our birthday present to you — A chance to win a free ticket to T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Orlando.”

Check out DNZoom when you have a chance… and a Happy Birthday/Congratulations to Sean Stafford and the folks at DNZoom.

I wanted to share some advice to people who are new to the industry, and perhaps others who make the same beginner mistakes. If you just registered a domain name in the past month or two, and you are looking to sell it for thousands of dollars, it makes you look pretty silly. Unless you registered a domain name for a term that was just coined or some other very hot trend, chances are good that the reason it was unregistered was that others didn’t believe it was worth the registration fee, let alone the thousands of dollars you are trying to get for the name.

One of the keys to my success when I started out was that I priced my new registrations pretty well. I saw people were trying to sell new registrations for several hundred dollars, and I was very happy to sell the names I just registered for $30-100/each. Sure, it took longer to make a large profit than it would have if I sold just one name for several thousand dollars; however, the likelihood of selling a new registration for thousands of dollars is slim to none (and slim just left the building). Yes, I’ve seen it done a couple of times, but I’ve seen more people get chastised for trying to do this than for actually selling them.

If you are trying to break into the business and do well financially, it looks pretty unprofessional to expect a gigantic return on your very short-term investment. Don’t be greedy, and you will be rewarded over time. For some examples of this, search the term “domain” on Ebay and sort from highest prices to lowest, and you will see plenty.

It’s great to wake up and see an article in my local newspaper about an upcoming domain auction. In this morning’s New York Post, there is a small article announcing that Israel.com will be on the auction block at TRAFFIC East in May. From the article,

“Israel is being sold off to the highest bidder.

Jean-Noel Frydman, 46, registered the domain name in 1994 and never imagined at the time it would be worth millions.

“Mainly, I didn’t want anyone to misuse it. That’s why I registered it,” he said, noting he retains final approval on the sale at the May 23 auction.”

Of interest is that Moniker may have given the owner authority to back out of a deal if he doesn’t approve of the new owner. On a strictly personal level, I am glad to see this as it would be terrible for Israel.com to go into the hands of a terrorist or other extremist group. As a domain investor, I think this sets a pretty poor precedent, as a domain owner shouldn’t be able to cancel an auction because he doesn’t approve of the bidder.

If I was a betting person (which I am), I would wager that the domain name will not sell for $5m despite the hype. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity, but organizations who could afford to spend $5m probably can’t justify spending it on a domain name - yet. People will kick themselves for missing out on this opportunity in a few years though.