The Million Dollar Vibrator

There is a small, private company in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan called PriveCo Inc. They had $1million in the bank. Late one night, someone had that luvin feelin. Did they turn to Internet porn? Nope, they bought vibrators.com for $1M instead. There is a lesson here for all domainers, don’t buy domains when you need some luvin!!

Ok, so that’s not really how it happened. I’ll let Tom Nardone, President of PriveCo tell you instead:

Oh, and for those people who want to buy a vibrator, use the coupon code “video” for a 10% discount. Who says I have to just give out domaining coupons on here anyway?

Will Obama Shape The Future Of The Internet?

2009 is going to be a big year for all of us. ICANN wants to divorce the US government and screw up the Internet with 50 companies running new top-level domains, and application fees at $185,000 each.  This gives them a mere $9,250,000 in cash; then cometh the domain registrations. Can we stop this? Yes we can!

The WSJ is reporting that companies are protesting about the proposed new domain names. Who is going to own .hotel or .bank and how much will they charge for a domain name in those TLD’s? Think about all the brands, variants, trademarks – this is going to be a very costly nightmare for business and lead to mass confusion on the part of the consumer.

ICANN‘s pathetic reason for existence is based on a deal with the US Government which expires in September 2009. The agreement is through the Department of Commerce and is known as the Joint Project Agreement (JPA). Will Obama renew it? What are some of the alternatives to ICANN? Running it through/with the Internet Governance Forum at the United Nations?

Somalian Government Wants .so TLD Back

Its been reported that the government of Somalia has applied to IANA requesting the control of the .so TLD. The current delegation of .so is listed in the USA under:

World Class Domains
c/o Monolith Innovation Group
Box 8159
Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15217
United States

Apparently .so isn’t operational, so its expected that “World Class Domains” will have to hand it back or somehow prove that the government of Somalia gave them permission to run it.

Jim Reid, founder of RTFM told Network World that “The process could take days, weeks or months; it depends on the workload of IANA staff. It is unlikely that IANA will ignore a request from a sovereign government.”

Given the public telecommunications system was almost completely destroyed or dismantled during the civil war and that there is no Internet Society, its going to be interesting to see how this is managed. My guess is someone is going through a list of 3rd world countries saying, “Hey, there is this thing called the Internets – its like a series of tubes“. Lets hope Somalia doesn’t go the same way as our friends in Nigeria.

The Fake Domain Downturn

OMG the world is going to end – your domains will be worthless! That’s what a number of attention seeking ill informed, oxygen thieving, wannabe amateur domainers will have you believe. Am I being a little bit harsh?

While the kids have been crying about their parking revenue, I’ve been buying BIG time and making a profit. Some of you who know me will know that I’ve only ever sold a handful of few domain names. Why? Because

a) I don’t buy rubbish

b) In the past people have made me offers that I just couldn’t refuse

c) I have made mistakes! Who would believe it eh?

Here is an example of one such mistake. A couple of months ago I purchased a domain with traffic in a gambling related niche. I thought it would make money and couldn’t get it working with traditional parking. It would have been a good name to develop, but I just don’t have the time and I wasn’t 100% convinced that my efforts would be rewarded. As such, I left the domain parked and wasn’t going to do anything with it. A couple of weeks after I purchased the domain I received an offer of just on 400% more than what I paid for it. I thought about it for 24 hours (you have to sleep on these things) and sold it.

There is a well known saying “When everyone zigs, you should zag” and that’s just what I’ve been doing. But you shouldn’t, because then there wouldn’t be any opportunities for me. Go and join the herd. Baaaaa.

Missing eNom Domain Recovered

Remember that domain name that disappeared out of my eNom account? Thanks to a good deal of escalation at both eNom and NameJet – its back in my account.

I’ve yet to be told how Domain Jingles is involved in this, but

From what I understand, Domain Jingles is a Partner Registrar with eNom for acquiring dropping names. It appears that when I won the domain name from NameJet, the domain was registered in that credential by the eNom process that picks up names in the drop. Later on, the registry at Domain Jingles couldn’t communicate with eNom because a server had changed its IP address due to a subnet modification. For those people that have no idea what I just said – its basically “two computers couldn’t talk to each other”. Of course this doesn’t answer the question as to 1) why the name was removed from my account in the first instance and 2) why eNom support claimed it was no longer registered at eNom. When I contacted support to clarify the error message I was getting with the AuthInfo code (due to Domain Jingles changing their subnet), it seems that the support representative “marked” the domain name as transferred away in the eNom system which caused it to no longer appear in my account.

As you know, I tend to judge people on their auctions, not on their words; so if I was to summarize the experience I’d say that from a customer standpoint, eNom first level support were the main issue as they didn’t identify the problem from the outset. Once the matter was escalated, eNom management sorted it out. Their Tech Support Supervisor was in regular contact, as were senior management at Namejet and a former employee related to Domain Jingles (who just happens to read DomainerIncome).

From my point of view, the message from eNom has been clear – “If there are issues with a pending delete domain they should be reported. Should the problem remain the ticket should be escalated, and the issue will be worked until it is resolved.”

Thanks go to the staff and management at eNom and NameJet who sorted this out.

Letting Go Of Your Domains

I had to make a few hard decisions this weekend, both of them philosophical in nature when it comes to domain name investment.

I backordered two domains (com and net) last year that were closely linked together by topic. Both of them were parked at a well known parking company. While both domains got a bit of traffic, they just werent converting. To be honest, I probably could have sold them on DNF for $XX, but I just don’t have the time.

Another domain name I won at auction many years ago has been declining in both traffic and consequently revenue. In 12 months to date its made US$4.50 on a very popular topic. In my book, that’s not enough, so I decided not to renew any of them!

The domain names are now gone, expired, thrown back into the drop. Some domainers that I know would have a heart attack and say “But you could build a site around X and use Adsense and blah blah blah”. But do you *REALLY* have the time to do this? Are you *REALLY* going to do it anyway?

What are your thoughts on this? When do you draw the line and say, enough is enough?