Live Sells Two Domains – US $1.65 million

Live Current Media Inc. (OTCBB:LIVC) has announced that it has entered agreements to sell two more of its non-core domain names for $1.65 million.

Live Current Chairman and CEO Geoff Hampson said “We believe the recent sales of three of Live Current’s non-core domain names for a total of over US $2 million is a testament to the inherent value of our domain name assets, especially in this challenging economic climate.”

From the looks of things it seems that they need the cash – “These sales form part of management’s strategy to achieve the goal of cash flow positive operations by the end of 2009.”

I will be interesting to see if other domaining companies follow suit and start selling the family jewels to keep their heads above water. Seems time to pick up a few bargains!

ICANN To Spend $1M On Ads – Reports $4.7M Investment Loss

ICANN is apparently embarking on a million dollar campaign to convince us to buy their story on generic domains. Its reported that the campaign will start in Q4 2009 with a series of announcements and PR.

The Australian is reporting that Dr Twomey said an independent panel would be appointed to decide who would be allowed to register a disputed domain, but no details were available about who might be on it. I’m sure its going to be “fair and balanced” – just like Fox news.

Best of luck to the ICANN Executive who are no doubt practicing their Jedi mind tricks – “these arent the domains droids your looking for”.

What do you think? Is $1million a waste of funds? After all, its 5,000,000 ICANN .20 cent fees for a .com!

Add this to the “Realized and unrealized investment losses of $4.7 mil thru year to date” which was very quietly disclosed in the unaudited financial results. Click on the down arrow on the left hand side of the graph and you will see a little pop-up that mentions this little gem!

Who in ICANN is being made accountable for this investment loss?

Domaining Noise – How I Made It Stop

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.

Domaining Companies Breached: Why Changing Passwords Is Not Enough

Early last year I posted my Top 10 Tips For Keeping Your Domains Safe. Tip #9 covered password protection and recommended that you use a program such as Password Safe and use the random password generator. If you followed that advice, then its likely that you only have to change one password. If you didn’t follow that advice, you could be in a world of trouble.

Over the past week I’ve received far too many notices from parking companies telling me to change my password. At first I thought I had been transported back to 1990 or a scene out of the Matrix whereby someone types in a password and gets access to “the mainframe”. Here is why changing your password isn’t enough.

Identity Theft

Your parking accounts provide valuable information such as your name, address, telephone number, credit cards etc.. While there are legitimate reasons for companies asking you for this information (such as to verify your identity when you sign up), if the information is stolen then it can be combined with other information so that:

• Loans can be taken out in your name.
• Credit cards can be obtained in your name.
• Other identity documents can be issued.
• Someone else can become you!

Domain Theft

Just when you thought that getting your identity stolen was bad enough, your portfolio is being transferred. I’ve already written about how you can secure your domain names before, so I won’t go into it here – just read the article.

Money Laundering

Change your passwords on your paypal account and bank account. Paypal have a Security Key that costs you $5. It provides extra security on top of your password. It’s not fool proof, but will help deter the dumb crooks. I suggest you use it. The last thing you need is for your paypal account or bank account to be emptied and/or used to transfer large sums of money on behalf of criminals.

Next Steps

1. Use Password Safe and randomly generate a passwords for all your accounts.

2. Change your EMAIL (pop3/IMAP) passwords. These are often used to reset passwords. eg: people click on “Reset my password” or “I’ve forgotten my password” and an email is sent to you. Of course, the crooks know your ISP (from your domain name in your email address)and can probably login your your email via webmail and get that password reset email before you. Didn’t think of that, now did you?

3. Change your server, blog, paypal and any other passwords.

I hope this has given you a few things to think about. Your domains are valuable assets. It’s time to treat them that way.

Currency Markets Impact Foreign Domainers

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.

Tips: Making an Offer On a Domain Name

Kikabink News is running a series of articles around tips for domain name acquisitions. This is an area that is often under the radar of many people, not just newbies. Here are a few that I really like:

“when it comes to making an offer… don’t…..instead…. ask the domain name holder what they would be prepared to sell the domain for“

“While you wait to hear from the domain name holder, do what research you can into them, their business, their business model, their web statistics, etc. You want to get an idea of what the value of the domain is TO THEM.“

“the more certain you are about the value of the domain to you… and the value of the domain to THEM… the better the price you’ll be able to negotiate.”

The last one is particularly relevant because in 2001 I negotiated a very high 5 figure sum for a domain name that I owned. Believe it or not, the CEO of a well known company called me directly and said he wanted to buy it. Grin… I was very happy with that negotiation – as was the company that bought it. They still own the domain name 8 years later.

If you have any tips, feel free to post them in the comments.

Slept In, Missed The Auction, But Found Some More Names….

Over the past week or so I’ve observed a number of premium names in the drop process. While not unusual I was surprised at how low they went for.

I’ve always maintained that now is a great time to buy domains. Those that are focused on the short term (or need cash to pay off their mortgages) are selling or simply not renewing. Those with cash (who are buying), have less competitors in auctions because some people don’t want to spend.

Here is an example of a name that went for more than $2,300 this morning over at NameJet. It was InternetMarketing.org. To be honest, I was in the auction but decided to sleep in on Sunday. The drop times are not that attractive to those outside the USA.

After I got up and had a coffee, I decided to have a look over at Snapnames and found some great domains with low starting prices. Check them out:

• tuition.com – $60 min bid
• corporateevents.com – $79 min bid
• rentalpackages.com – $79 min bid
  
• punishable.com – $79 min bid
  
• socialiser.com – $59 min bid
• letteropener.com – $79 min bid
• ferriswheel.com – $79 min bid

My favorite is of course tuition.com, followed by ferriswheel.com. Tuition is highly searched on, just think of all the college students! People are addicted to going on FerrisWheels, so having FerrisWheel.com might be a good novelty / niche site.

Traffic DownUnder 2008 Videos Available (Free)

You may recall my live coverage of Traffic DownUnder 2008. For those people that couldn’t attend in person, the video is now available for streaming. You can view the agenda and two days of sessions as well as slides.

A big thank you goes to Fabulous for a mind-blowing conference. They have set the bar extremely high – I seriously doubt that someone is going to top that event.

Enjoy.

Bricks & Mortar – Interesting Use Of .Com

I was driving in Richmond today and noticed this massive domain name plastered on the side of the building. What a great use of a domain name! Look how big this thing is compared to a car – you can see it for miles away.

Being the domainer, I had to park and take a photo. The strange thing is, their website doesn’t even have a picture of the building. You’d think you were almost dealing with an online mailorder company.

At the top of the site is this quote – “When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So let’s all get drunk and go to heaven!” – Brian O’Rourke.

Maybe they got the idea to make those HUGE letters over a few bottles of red wine?

Luv.Me For A Price

Not a week goes by where I’m not sent portfolios to buy, auctions to promote, conferences to go to. Such is life. What was unusual about today was that I received an email from someone who actually did their homework! As such I thought it was worthy of a post.

luv.me is for sale at Sedo and is currently at 5,600 EURO. That’s quite a lot of $$ love for a .me.

Anyway, what got my attention was the research they sent through. At first I thought the person was a domainer, but then I found out that the domain is currently owned by two partners of Brands-and-Jingles, an advertising firm. Here is a cut down version of what they sent through:

• Date.me went for $70,000
• Love.me went for $32,000
• A three-letter domain is the shortest you can have with .me
• It sounds better as a statement

According to Wikipedia, Luv or LUV may refer to:

• Luv (song), a song by Janet Jackson.
• Luv (television series), a BBC sitcom.
• Luv, a Broadway play and 1967 film.
• The Dutch pop group Luv’
• The Chevrolet LUV, a “light utility vehicle”
• Linux Users of Victoria (http://www.luv.asn.au)
• The New York Stock Exchange symbol for Southwest Airlines
• The IATA airport code of Dumatubin Airport in Langgur, Kai Islands, in the Maluku province of Indonesia
• Large unilamellar vesicle: a type of phospholipid bilayer micelle.
• The L*u*v* color space, a perceptually uniform color space used in computer graphics
• A heart-shaped friendship token used on Bebo that can be giving out daily
• The windward or “upstream” side of a dune; compare “alluvial”
• Lava (Ramayana), a son of Rama in Hindu mythology

What do I think? Its a good name, very brandable, short, sharp and probably going to end up being a dating site. Best of luck with the bidding. Would I buy it? If I was planning to run a dating site, absolutely.