Squatter Creates Fake Liberal National Party Site
August 14, 1 CommentThe Australian media is covering some guy who registered liberalnationalparty.org and has created a fake Liberal National Party (LNP) of Queensland.
Yawn…. Now we have so called experts crying out “cybersquatter” and a heap of uneducated politicians crying about how their domain name was stolen (as opposed to being registered, before they thought of it).
So if you are a cybersquatter, what would you do if you had a website widely quoted in the media? Probably the opposite of this guy who put dating ads, Google adsense at the top and bottom and a forum in the middle. Good luck with that money making strategy.
$5.99 = .Com / .Net + Privacy + SSL Cert
August 13, 2 CommentsNamecheap are doing a promo which expires in the next 72 hours. Take advantage of this right now!
Transfer your .com and .net domains for $5.99 and you get FREE WhoisGuard and a FREE Positive SSL certificate. Just use the coupon code TRANSCHEAP.
You won’t find a cheaper price anywhere.
Exclusive Interview With David Kesmodel – The Domain Game
August 9, 3 CommentsIn an exclusive interview, I speak with David Kesmodel, author of the book The Domain Game – How People Get Rich From Internet Domain Names.
The interview goes for nearly an hour; we covered a wide range of topics including:
* A history of domaining
* Advertising, parking, development
* Secrecy and egos
* Extreme risk takers vs. visionaries
* ICANN & Verisign
* Old school domains and the future of .WhatEverYouWant
* Heaps more !!
This interview is a MUST for serious domainers. I’m sure you are going to LOVE IT.
You can get a copy of this book right now from Amazon. I expect that this book will be on the bookshelf of every domainer on the planet. Once you get a copy, you won’t be able to put it down.
Enjoy.
Snapnames Might Be Up In 18 Hours
August 4, No CommentsI received the email below from Snapnames at 4am. It seems that Snapnames have employed somebody with some basic writing skills as this is slightly more reassuring. However I wouldn’t have explicitly said “It’s very important to us to maintain that confidence in our service and our team” . For one, the sentence doesn’t read very well and secondly, that should be the objective of the email, not something that is explicitly stated.
It’s interesting to note that Snapnames also stated that they are working “with the vendor to correct the issue”. This makes me think that it could be something like a database back end or perhaps some sort of processing that has gone belly up – although I’d just be speculating. Here is the email:
—–
Dear SnapNames Customers:
As you may already be aware, the SnapNames service has been unavailable since Saturday evening, U.S. Pacific time. Since then, our technical team has been working to restore service. Our current estimate is for the service to be on line in the next 18 hours. Should that estimate change, we will post an update at www.snapnames.com .
We recognize this is the third outage for our service within the last several weeks. The problem is related to one of our vendors’ systems, unfortunately, and our team has been working nonstop with the vendor to correct the issue.
Outages of this nature and duration of course are very unusual for SnapNames; since we began our service in 2001, outages have been extremely rare and our record for technical service, customer care and integrity has been well regarded by our customers and partners. It’s very important to us to maintain that confidence in our service and our team, and we’re working as quickly as we can to make sure the problem is resolved correctly.
If you currently have bids placed for auctions that were scheduled to end Sunday or today, those names will now be scheduled to complete auctions tomorrow and Wednesday, respectively. Again, if there is a change to that schedule, we will post a notice at the SnapNames site.
In the meantime, should you have questions, please contact us here:
Technical Support: supp...@snapnames.com
Telephone: 1 800 385-4075 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+1 503-241-8547 (outside the U.S.)
Our team is available during U.S. Pacific time business hours.
Thank you again for your business, and please accept our apologies for this inconvenience.
Sincerely,
The SnapNames Team
—–
Let’s see what tomorrow brings!
DNF Down – Database Error
August 3, No CommentsJust after my previous post I decided to check out what the forums were saying about Snapnames being down. So off I go to DNF… only to get:
What’s a domainer going to do at 6pm on a Sunday night? At least NamePros and NameJet are up…. for now!
Snapnames New Offline Business Model
August 3, No CommentsSnapnames is unavailable AGAIN! Over the past few weeks the site has been up and down like Donkey Kong.
As I type this post, the SnapNames website reads:
“We do not currently have an estimated up time. We will try to update you as we know more. It is probable that auctions scheduled to close Sunday will be moved to Monday. Check the site at 10am PDT Sunday for confirmation of that delay. We’re sorry for this inconvenience.”
You don’t exactly give your customers a level of comfort by using the word “probable“. Perhaps your PR / Corporate Communications people should come up with a nice spiel for your web page when everything breaks.
It’s also interesting to note, that this time last week your website was also down.
Snapnames, what’s the deal? Isn’t it about time you provided an explanation for all this downtime?
Network Solutions, Backorders & Parking Revenue
August 1, No CommentsA couple of hours ago I won another NameJet auction – nothing new there. However, the domain was registered at Network Solutions. Alongside the NameJet auction email was another one from Network Solutions telling me that I’d won the name and that it was renewed and transferred to my account – good.
Like a kid in a candy store, I quickly visit the Network Solutions website to check that everything is ok – but I can’t – their web site isn’t accessible. Grrr… Unfortuantely I can’t make any DNS changes to park the domain name. But then again, should I even have to? If you use Snapnames, you can go into your settings and nominate default DNS servers. Not in this case – I won using NameJet! Network Solutions has my beautiful domain name, parked with their ads! Noooooooo!
Lets look at their cashflow model:
- Sally buys name at Network Solutions = $$$
- Sally doesn’t renew her name
- Network Solutions provides NameJet with the ability to auction the domain name = $$$ ?
- John wins the auction and pays NameJet = $$$
- The domain name is parked at Network Solutions until the owner changes the DNS = parking $$$
- The domain name is renewed by the new owner = $$$
How the role of a domain name registrar has changed!
