Council Spends $55 Million Then Closes Website

It’s been reported that the “Brisbane City Council lost $55 million running ourbrisbane.com over the past ten years”. After spending $55 million, you would have expected that they could have bought Brisbane.com.

“In the last council budget, an expected loss of $2.352 million for ourbrisbane.com over the 2009-2010 financial year was recorded, along with a $2.046 million loss for 2010-2011.”

The council’s City Business Chairman, David McLachlan said yesterday that the site would be incorporated into the general council website brisbane.qld.gov.au.

Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Godaddys Biggest Mistake Ever

For many years we have been supporters of Bob Parsons, having watched Godaddy evolve. In fact, his “16 Rules of Success” is framed on our office wall. Unfortunately all that business experience has now fallen by the wayside.

Earlier today we discovered a video clip whereby CEO Bob Parsons took a trip “to Zimbabwe and hunt problem elephant“. Caution: The video is very graphic and may offend some viewers.

After watching the video we decided that we could not support an organisation that engages in such practises and have commenced moving our domain name portfolio to other registrars.

Media Coverage

It seems that over the course of the day, the mainstream media has picked up this story with coverage in:

1. LA Times – Bob Parsons under fire for Zimbabwe elephant-hunting video

2. TMZ – ‘GoDaddy.com’ Elephant Killer — PETA Is Extorting Me

3. PETA – In this letter, awarded Parsons the “first-ever Scummiest CEO of the Year Award”.

Is The Elephant Endangered?

The IFAW lists the African elephant as “Endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) and by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). It is listed on Appendix I of the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora except for populations in those countries (Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia) which were reclassified to Appendix II.”

Note that Zimbabwe “reclassified” the African Elephant. Of course, this is the country run by President (some would say Dictator) Robert Mugabe.

Where Do I Move My Domains?

Godaddys competitors have also publicly denounced Parsons actions and are giving away domains at below their cost. Earlier this evening we received an email from NameCheap titled “Transfer for $4.99 and Help Save the Elephants”.

“Transfer your domains to Namecheap for $4.99 for the next 24 hours through 11:59pm EST on 3/31/11 (limit 10 per user, valid for all com/net/org domains). On top of that, we’ll donate $1 for each transfer to Save The Elephants. Use coupon code BYEBYEGD and let’s help the Elephants together!”

What Do You Think?

Are you moving your portfolio away from Godaddy? Is this really about “protecting crops” or just an excuse to travel to another (perhaps “less regulated”) part of the world and shoot high powered weapons at large animals?

Have your say, post a comment below and let us know.

Get In Quick – com/net/org Domains For $5.99

This is so unbelievably cheap, I just had to post it. It’s sooo cheap, I’m giving serious thought to transferring part of our portfolio (at another registrar) over to Namecheap.

Right now, you can buy any new .com, .net, and .org domain name for a super low price of $5.99 (which includes ICANN fees)!

This offer ends in a few days, so remember the promo code “savebig” and click here to take advantage of this opportunity while it lasts.

Bankrate May Sell Notes To Pay For CreditCards.com & NetQuote Inc ?

This Bloomberg announcement caught my attention this morning. Its about a company called Bankrate who provide information on creditcards and mortgages.

The article speculates that Bankrate:

“may sell $280 million of five- year notes to help pay for the acquisition of NetQuote Inc. and CreditCards.com Inc., according to a person familiar with the offering who declined to be identified because terms aren’t set. “

According to the WSJ, it paid “$145 million for CreditCards.com“.

I’m not one to speculate on things like this, but if true (and being a public company it will come out eventually) we have a public company that:

a) Has a huge asset (creditcards.com) on the books.

b) Is actively engaging in acquiring such a blue chip asset.

I hope they keep it (or sell it to me for $1 – I’d be happy either way).

Domainer Income Goes Public – What It Means For Domainers

About 3 years ago I made one decision that dramatically changed my life for the better. Just like the butterfly effect, that decision is going to change other peoples lives for the better too. Before I tell you what happened, let me give you some context.

As some of you know, I’ve been using the Internet for a long time (I started in 1989), before Mosaic, Netscape or the even the web. For the technical people, back then it was all about Bitnet, ftp and gopher, but that’s another story…. The fact is, I didn’t buy my first domain until the mid 90′s and I didn’t sell a domain until 2002! Why? There was simply no way of monetizing domains like there is now.

When I first began investing in domains, I tried and tested everything I could get my hands on. If there was:

A product – I’d buy it
A service – I’d subscribe to it
A forum post – I’d read it.

To cut a long story short, there wasn’t anything on the market that did what I wanted, so I developed my own system to help me find and buy, the RIGHT KIND of domains, but on a massive scale! It ended up being so big, we built a farm of dedicated servers at a top US Datacenter just to run it! It was a system that “plucked needles from haystacks” over, and over again!

But that led to another problem….

I was buying great domains and hording (stock piling) them. My behaviour was like Gollum from Lord of the Rings – my precious domains yesss….owww dot com….so beautiful. They were mine, mine MINE! In what seems a complete contradiction to many domainers, ego wasn’t a big a part of it. Why? I simply didn’t talk about it. I didn’t go to conferences. I didn’t have a blog back then either. It was “head down” and a hell of a lot of hard work! Then something changed. From a personal standpoint, this was the “tipping point” that changed everything for me….

One afternoon I was talking with my wife, Anna; I’ll never forget this conversation. Our system had identified a lot of high quality domains the week prior and I’d purchased all of them. Ok, I admit, I was actually complaining about the number of domains – there were too many good ones! Of course – I wasn’t going to let them drop or go to someone else for THAT price! If you buy at auction, you’ll know what I mean. Anyway, Anna said “Well why don’t you give this system to other people then?” I burst out laughing and said “Are you crazy? This is making us $$$$ – I’m not telling ANYONE about it”. Lets also not forget that domainers are a very secretive bunch. After a very long, somewhat heated discussion, Anna convinced me to release our domain investment platform to the public. I ended up showing a few domainers what we had done (under strict, non-disclosure agreements of course) and they were completely blown away. There was, and still is – nothing like it.

But that was 3 years ago! What happened I hear you ask? Well, I’m a perfectionist. If I was going to put my name to something, then it better be “the best in the industry”. Those that know me personally, know that I have a professional / corporate background, and have a firm belief in customer support. As such, we spent a lot of time and money making the interface more user friendly. We produced “how to video”s, created detailed online help, a customer support desk, we added all the trimmings a professional investor would expect. Of course, redesigning the site three times with a team of designers doesn’t help either. The fact is, we have been working day and night, making this happen. Its consumed late nights, weekends, kids school holidays – even Christmas afternoon (I should have been sleeping off lunch).

Now its done.

Would I change anything? No way! I still believe that there are MORE than enough domain names for everyone.

I also know this – Domainer Income will:

a) Help many people to generate passive income – making a HUGE difference to peoples lives from a financial standpoint.
b) Take the Domaining industry to a new level.
c) Create a level playing field, by making information available to everyone.

Today, YOU have an opportunity to be a part of that.

So – here is the result of many years of hard work – an enterprise grade, Domain Investment Platform. You now have everything you need to Find, Buy and PROFIT from domain names. Where do you start? I’ve created many FREE videos that explain Domainer Income in more detail. There is also a FREE Membership too – so nobody misses out on an opportunity to start making money with domains.

Please leave a comment and let me know your thoughts….. remember – this has been my baby for many years. I’d love to hear what you think.

Simon

25 Years Of .Com – This .Net Is Older….

Lets not let the facts get in the way of a good story about the Internet. While symbolics.com might be the oldest currently registered dot com, its not the oldest currently registered domain.

As I pointed out years ago, nordu.net has a creation date of 01-jan-1985.

For those that don’t know, nordu.net is used by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as their research and academic backbone. The interesting thing about this domain is that it was registered before you could actually register domains, which officially began on 15 Jan 1985 as per RFC921.

For those Americans reading this; sorry guys, the Europeans beat you to it.

Now lets get back to celebrating how great Verisign is and their price rise to $7.34 in July 2010.

VeriSign Increases Domain Name Fees In 2010

The thieves at Verisign announced today that effective July 1, 2010 there will be an increase in domain name fees for .com and .net.

The registry fee for .com domain names will increase from $6.86 to $7.34 and the registry fee for .net domain names will increase, from $4.23 to $4.65.

In a release to the market today, the organisation appeared to justify the increase saying:

“Over the last decade, the volume of Internet traffic and domain name system (DNS) queries on VeriSign’s global infrastructure has increased from an average of approximately 2 billion queries per day in the year 2000 to more than 50 billion queries per day today..”

To save you some maths, the industry is looking at a .com increase of 48 cents and .net increase of 42 cents. Happy New Year!

White House Dinner Party Crashers Miss Out On Domain Name

Tareq Salahi appears to have missed out on the domain name TareqSalahi.com after it was registered on November 26 to an individual in Palm Beach Florida.

It appears that Tareq registered michaelesalahi.com on June 15, but forgot to register his own name!

He and his wife Michaele gained national attention in November 2009 by allegedly crashing a White House state dinner in honor of India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Michaele Salahi has been filmed as one of the housewives for Bravo’s upcoming The Real Housewives of DC, and sources say cameramen for the show filmed their preparations for the dinner and followed the couple to the White House.

Russia Adds Domain Name To Olympic Emblem

This is the first time a domain name has been part of an Olympic host city’s emblem.

The word “sochi.ru” appears above the number “2014″ in an apparent reflection, symbolizing the southern city’s water-based location on the Black Sea.

“It’s very appealing. It’s very creative, innovative,” International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said at Tuesday’s unveiling. “I think it will appeal especially to the young population.”

It’s been reported that the IOC president then asked someone what a “domain name” was.

For those that believe there could be an opportunity – the .com, .net and .org is taken… as is the .ru.

3,459 Michael Jackson .COM Domains Registered

Where do you draw the line between registering a domain name to mourn or honor an individual, vs profit from their death?

Since MJ died, there have been 3,459 .com domain names registered with the word “michael” in them. Don’t believe me? Well, here is the list I compiled (please give me credit if you use it) and a few extracts of interest:

• michaelisstillalive.com
• michaeljackson-conspiracy.com
• michaeljackson911tape.com
• michaeljacksonautopsy.com
• michaeljacksonconcertrefund.com
• michaeljacksonisfaking.com
• michaeljacksontributetour.com
• michaeljacksonwasmurdered.com
• whopoisonedmichaeljackson.com

In light of this registration frenzy, I’d ask the media, not to “tar and feather” the entire domain name industry with the actions of a few people who lack morals / ethics in this area.

Having said that, newspapers, TV and other sources “profit” from this as well. What do you think? Have you registered a MJ domain?