The email below was sent to our whois contact for a particular .net domain that we own.

It states that the organisation has “secured” the “.com version of your domain”. In fact they have done no such thing. The .com is available for anyone to register at any registrar.

If you click on the link, it takes you to a page asking you for US$99 and to pay via Paypal. This is essentially 10 times the asking price of a .com domain name.

We are posting this here in the hope that people will find it and not fall victim to this misleading conduct.

————

Hi,

Recently, we contacted you to inform you of the upcoming availability of DOMAIN.com. We are happy to inform you that right now the .com version of your domain is secured by Simple Domain Recovery and is available for purchase at our page.

What we do is take different measures to help you promote your brand on the Internet. Little things’ effectiveness can compare to securing .com to a domain with any other extension. Everyone knows .com, a lot of users will intuitively seek you at .com extension so don’t give a chance to anyone else to use that advantage of yours.

There are third parties who may be interested in your domain. Many people out there reserve .coms to existing sites and domains in order to make profit of ‘em. We may sell the domain to any of these persons and businesses but this is you who decides whether or not we do so. Please choose one of the following:

Secure DOMAIN.com right now!
Let it go (unsubscribe).

Best regards,
<name omitted>
Simple Domain Recovery,
<email omitted>

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).

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

PETA has announced their desire to acquire sex.com. Executive Vice President has written this letter to Dom Partners LLC stating:

“Visitors to the newly revamped Sex.com site could watch our sexy Super Bowl ads like “Veggie Love” (about how a vegan diet can enhance your time between the sheets) or watch Alicia Silverstone’s naked testimonial—living proof that a vegan diet does a body good.

They could gaze on sultry ads featuring gorgeous vegetarians, like Pamela Anderson and Owain Yeoman, or join the action and participate in one of our Sexiest Vegetarian contests. They could also read about the many vegan foods that are natural aphrodisiacs.”

Based purely on the above photo, I think that its a great idea; lets see Sex.com and PETA hook up.

Its been reported that Sedo has brokered a deal selling poker.org to PokerCompany.com for the sum of $1 million.

Other .org auctions include engineering.org for $198k which happened in 2003 and date.org for $150k in 2006.

Kelsey Grammer has reportedly given up on trying to get back kelseygrammer.com after someone else registered the domain name.

Grammer launched KelseyLive.com after refusing to buy kelseygrammer.com. The former Frasier star reportedly said:

“Twenty years ago, everybody bought everybody’s name and I never paid for mine back. I just said, ‘Screw ya’.”

Kikabink News reports that Insure.com, Inc. has sold its domain name and website for $16 million in cash. The company bought Insure.com for $1.6 million back in 2001.

Check out the article for more details.

Its been reported that a woman in the UK has become the first person to change her name by Deed Poll to a domain name.

24 year old Claire Forshaw changed her name earlier this week to Princess-Rainbow.com.

“I knew that if ever I got the chance I would change [my name] to a web domain, to hopefully become the first. My boyfriend has always told me it cost hundreds of pounds to do, so I just forgot about it”

“When I realised it actually cost as little as £10 my boyfriend said that Princess-Rainbow.com was ideal for me because I am mad on rainbows!”

“My dream has always been to sell my artwork to a wider audience and after studying art at college, me and my friend who has an art degree, said that we would love to go into business together selling our creations. Changing my name has given me that kick-start into pursuing my dream and the new site will feature everything from paintings, textiles, 3D work and jewellery.“

“My name change is great and although my friends have started referring to me by my new name, and my place of work have changed all of the paperwork to include my new name, both my boss and my mum are refusing to call me Princess-Rainbow.com!”

Commentary

To be honest, I’m surprised that certain individuals in the domaining industry haven’t changed their name! Perhaps this will spark a new trend?

I’m going to change my name right now to:

“domaining wire king journal acro elliot whizzbang parked chef”

What do you think? Like my new name? Ohhhh…. what’s that? I can hear the ka-ching of UDRP’s coming!

Sources: Independent and PRUrgent.

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?

For a mere $25,000 (US dollars) you can be the proud owner of one website domain named susanboyle.com The British singer is perhaps a bit peeved with the confusion that surrounds when a fan is misdirected to a site owned by American artist Susan K. Boyle.

The “Britain’s Got Talent” star is an unlikely diva, with her self professed “frumpy” appearance. But when she raises the mic-the audiences are treated to a phenomenal feast of musical magnitude.

In attempts to avoid disappointing her fans and mistaken identity, Susan Boyle has moved her site. Fans can find her at sboyleart.com

As for the former site–let the buyer decide.

Via: NewKerala and Susan Boyle (Artist)