After more than 20 years online, I’ve decided to launch my personal blog and “get back on the bike”.

What Does This Mean For DomainerIncome ?

Our domain investment blog on DomainerIncome, will continue to cover some of the really innovative (and very cool stuff) we are doing in this sector. We have a very active development cycle and are working on some category killer services and applications right now – so stay tuned.

Our TV show at DomainerIncome.TV will focus more on the domaining industry, with high quality, indepth coverage that you just can’t get anywhere else.

SimonJohnson.CO

A couple of people have already asked the question, “Why .CO” ? The answer is simply because .com was unavailable. While I do own a number of domains with my name in them, there is an Aussie gourmet food company (with the same name) that owns the .com; in fact many people incorrectly assume that I own the company! Unfortunately, not – I can’t sell you organic italian pasta sauce, sundried tomatoes or olive oil (even though my name is on all of them).

From an IM point of view, its going to be interesting to see how the .co ranks against the other “simon johnson’s”…. and you thought one was enough!

My personal blog at http://www.simonjohnson.co already contains a number of somewhat embarrassing snapshots from sites and posts I made in the early 1990′s. Head on over and check them out!

“All this has happened before, and all this will happen again“. – Battlestar Galactica (Pythia).

Back in 2001, a company called New.net published a piece of software (.dll file) which enabled people to resolve domain extensions such as .xxx .law .kids and .church and many others. They also teamed up with ISP’s to provide the service. Check it out yourself at archive.org (and before you ask, it wasn’t me who did the johnson.family that’s in the middle of the page).

In any case, these “domains” were not real TLD’s, as we know them today. Many people called them subdomains or an “alternative DNS root”. This wasn’t the first time that these extensions appeared either; Eugene Kashpureff ran Alternic in the mid 90′s, and directly challenged Internic. That was actually fun to watch. Alternic also had .xxx too.

Here are a few extensions that New.Net were marketing back then:

agent
arts
auction
chat
church
club
family
free
game
gmbh
golf
hola
inc
kids
law
llc
llp
love
ltd
med
mp3
school
scifi
shop
soc
sport
tech
travel
video
xxx

Why is this relevant today? The ICANN board meets to discuss .XXX. Will they approve it after all these years? I’m guessing they will. This whole debate has gone on long enough.

Got some new ideas for a gTLD?

This time next week I’ll be flying out of Australia to the USA. Its my second trip the USA in the last 9 months (the video below is just a couple of grabs from my previous trip).

The reason for making the journey to the other side of the planet, is that I’ve been invited to speak on Domaining at a Marketing conference in San Diego. On a personal note, its interesting for me to see that buying & selling domains (including websites) is becoming more mainstream.

Obviously, I’m delighted to be invited to speak and to help raise the profile of the industry, but here’s the thing…. I also love giving back to it – especially an industry that’s given me an “Internet lifestyle” for many years…. so here’s what I’m going to do….

[FLOWPLAYER src=http://domaining.s3.amazonaws.com/usa2009.mp4, width=480, height=360]

I’m going to stay a few weeks and spend some time interviewing prominent people in the domain name industry – from CEO’s, to parking companies, to young upcoming domaining bloggers. The interviews will be recorded on video and posted up here for your enjoyment.

The $100 Million Dollar question, that I have for you is…

What do you REALLY want to know about domaining?

Just post a comment below and let me know. Remember, everyone started somewhere, so there are no stupid questions – ask away!

Are You Based in LA, San Diego, Southern California?

I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a line on Facebook or direct message me on Twitter and lets catch up!

See you next week.

Simon

P.S. While I’m travelling I will be posting photos and updates on Facebook and Twitter so keep an eye out.

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!

The U.S. House Of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet recently met to examine issues related to ICANN, including the expiring JPA (Joint Project Agreement) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN, as well as ICANN’s proposed introduction of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).

What Happened?

It was quite entertaining. See for yourself; we have preserved this historical grilling session here:

Feel free to rate the video and post comments.

Documents

Chair Boucher’s Opening Statement

Chair Waxman’s Opening Statement

Testimony of Fiona Alexander, Associate Administrator, Office of International Affairs, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce

Testimony of Paul Twomey, President and CEO, ICANN

Testimony of Kenneth J. Silva, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, VeriSign

Testimony of Christine N. Jones, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, The Go Daddy Group, Inc

Testimony of Sarah Deutsch, Vice President & Associate General Counsel, Verizon Communications

Testimony of Thomas M. Lenard, President and Senior Fellow, Technology Policy Institute

Hi, I’m Simon and I have a problem. Its been 10 days since my last blog post and I’ve got a confession. I have relapsed and went back to reading Domaining blogs!

I know what you are thinking…. how could he do this? It’s betrayal of the highest order! But you know what? I’ve discovered something…. the usual people are continuing to post drivel (some think its “ohhhh so controversial”) many others appear to actually believe the world is coming to an end.

Its the GFC! No, its not KFC, its got a G in it… no its not the Georgia Football Club either… its the Global Financial Crisis. Global, being stuff outside America? Think of it as all the ccTLD’s, but not .us! Got it now? Good.

This week I went on a bit of an auction binge and purchased a few great names including roses.us. Why? Because people are selling them!

That’s right, its time for the rest of the world to sweep up some quality domain names. With €1 Euro being worth more than US$1.35 – now is the time (although so was mid 2008 when €1 was worth US$1.59).

Here at the Domainer Income Corporate World HQ, I’m sitting by this lake pondering all those opportunities that arise in a recession.

For example, people buy more lottery tickets, they actively seek out cheaper goods. Its not that people arent buying, its just that how some people make those purchases has changed. They might buy less expensive items and expect a greater, faster  ROI. All of this creates opportunity.

Crisis? Recession? Meltdown? Not in my part of the world.

Lately I’ve found myself getting distracted. There is too much noise in the industry and not enough real, fact-based, valuable information. I thought I’d share with you some strategies that are starting to get me more focused and back on track.

After sitting down, I thought about everything that was distracting me and/or was taking my time away from focusing on my goals. I then thought, what can I do to eliminate this? Here is what I did; I have:

1. Stopped reading most of the “popular” domaining blogs, in particular the ones that churn out opinion pieces, day after day. Unless they have something valuable, I’m just not going to read them.
2. No more RSS reader. It just aggregates crap and ties up my time – now gone.
3. Decided not to go to any conferences this year. My time is valuable and I need to concentrate on building my portfolio, not going to the next “must attend” domaining conference at some exotic venue.
4. Posting on forums. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping newbies ( I created the Domaining Wiki ), but I believe there is a better way of giving back to the community.
5. Unsubscribed from HEAPS of mailing lists. As email is no longer coming in, I don’t have to read it.
6. Unsubscribed from domains for sale lists. I figured that if people *really* want me to look at their portfolio, they will contact me. I don’t want to be on a “broadcast list”.
7. Unsubscribed from conference announcements. I wont be attending them this year, so there is really no point.
8. Unsubscribed from forum post / threads. Some forums I’ll still frequent, but I really don’t need to subscribe to the thread and get those notifications every time someone replies. This is too distracting.
9. Unsubscribed from registrar marketing material. I have special discount pricing and unique coupons for me as a “bulk buyer” so there is no real point.
10. Started renewing domains as soon as I could. Given the size of my portfolio, if I renew domains as soon as I’m able, then I receive less email. Some of the more valuables ones I’ve renewed for multiple years.

Why No Conferences In 2009?

1. I thought … when was the last time I *really* learned something new?

2. There are a lot of vendors pushing the same old crap, but just in a different city or country. They get paid to travel the world and do this. I don’t, and it ties up too much time.

3. What became of all those business cards I collected during my last conference? Did those “contacts” come in handy, or did it lead to a heap of Facebook and useless LinkedIn connections?

I must admit, cleaning out all that email was a lot like cleaning my garage. I felt free again!

What do you think? If this gives you a few things to think about, let me know. Its now gone 12:30am, so its off to bed to get some sleep – something else I need. Good night.

Domainers that don’t live in the United States have often reaped the benefits of the currency market.

With world markets going up and down like a game of Donkey Kong (well actually more down than up) its having a serious impact on our cost of goods.

As of today, 1 USD = 1.52384 AUD (Australian dollar), or to flip it around, 1 AUD = 0.656154 USD. If you look at the chart, you will see that six months ago, the Australian dollar was worth US$.96.

Great For Parking

The rest of the world is making MORE money (in their local currency) as they take advantage of being paid in US$ or Euro.

Bad For Buying

The cost of bidding against US domainers has increased.

Great For Selling

While this may seem all “doom and gloom”, there is a hidden upside. If you are a non-US domainer who is selling, then now is the time to sell in US$. Why? It should be worth more in your local currency.

If you are a domainer outside the USA, please feel free to post a comment. I’d love to hear your situation.

Ahh Scotland. The top bit of that big island known as the UK. You know the place: William Wallace, Braveheart, the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Well it appears that they are a little bit irritated by “sharing” .uk and now they want their own TLD. Hmmm.. cant think of any reason why a Scotsman wouldn’t like the English.

Apparently the First Minister Alex Salmond visited the Spanish region of Catalonia and found this thing called the Internet. It turns out that Catalonia has .cat and so he wants .sco – just don’t tell him about SCO Unix. By the way – pussy.cat is taken.

“It is not only for Scots who live in Scotland but for our extensive Diaspora and it will be particularly appropriate for a bid to be made during the 2009 Year of Homecoming” Salmond said. I’m wondering if that means that all the Scots are leaving us to go home now its the new year?

It might come as no surprise that there is strong support for dot scot; according to the UK Press Association “Two government surveys showed support among Scots organisations running at 58% and in an international poll, the figure rose to 82%”. Scotland’s governing party, the SNP has got together a working group and is preparing for the submission to ICANN (assuming .anything-goes).

Word also has it that Groundskeeper Willie wants bigwillie.scot. So what do you think? Should Scotland have it’s own TLD or be made to share with those lovely English folk for a little while longer?

It seems that the people sending the domain name postal mail spam have stopped for Christmas; time now to prepare for the electronic kind. Watch out kids, here it comes!

In order to educate consumers and protect the marketplace from this type of activity, I thought I’d post two examples that have recently popped into my inbox.

I’m just presenting the facts – judge for yourself.

Exhibit A – ZipDomains

I received the email below from i...@zipacquisitions.com. Their website (zipacquisitions.com) diverts to zipdomains.com and has i...@zipdomains.com as the contact.

Both domains are registered to:

Zip Domains i...@zipdomains.com. 233 Middleton Rd. Glenside Wellington 6037 NZ and have a US phone number +1 206-202-1813. Of course I had to call it – its just an automated answering service.

If you check out their website, there is a DNOA logo. However, neither email address can be found in DNOA profile lookup, yet they display the certified reseller logo on their site, without the link.

— Start Of Email —

Subject: edited-out-for-privacy.ORG

Our company specializes in acquiring expired domain names to help individuals and businesses protect their brand online.

The domain name edited-out-for-privacy.COM is expiring and will be available to the public very soon.

We noticed that you own edited-out-for-privacy.ORG and felt that you may be interested.

We can assist in trying to acquire the domain name, as there are likely many interested parties competing for it.

We do not charge upfront, and the fee if we are successful is only $199 USD.

If you are interested, please let us know by December 10 at the latest.
— ends —

I own the .org and the .com is currently in PendingDelete status. So if I say “yeah go ahead”, they just backorder it for me. Who knows…get a few ignorant customers and it might be a nice little earner.

Exhibit B – Register.com

I received an email from register.com with a subject line of “Keep edited-out-for-privacy.COM  Up and Running”.

You can see the graphic below showing “Renewal Notice” in big orange letters. The only thing is that my domain name wasnt due for renewal for another 7 months! But hey, I can pay you $35 for a .com! Now that’s a bargain if I’ve ever seen one!

The ethical issue here is…. a person reading this may think its a domain name renewal notice (therefore thinking their domain is going to expire) and they should pay register.com $$$$. In countries that have relatively mature consumer protection laws (such as Australia) such an email may be regarded as misleading and deceptive conduct. Its important to note that I’m not a lawyer, this is just my opinion – based on receiving this email.

Have you noticed an increase in spam? Post a comment and let us know!