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

New gTLD’s – Just Remakes of 80′s Pop Songs?

“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?

Australian Government To Consider Public Comments On ICANNs gTLD’s.

The Australian Government has released a Fact Sheet on ICANN’s new gTLD process. The purpose is to raise community awareness and allow interested people the opportunity to feed comments back to the Government.

A spokesperson from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) told Domainer Income that the Australian Government “is not conducting a formal consultation with a set time frame“, however DBCDE “will consider any comments received“.

Its known that many Governments, including Australia, provide advice to ICANN on matters of interest or concern through the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC). However, final decision making authority ultimately rests with the ICANN Board.

The Australian Government is an active member of the GAC, and has been since its inception in 1999. Officers from the Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy represent the Australian Government in the GAC. Note that ICANN meets three times a year and right now, the GAC is meeting in Brussels.

This presents many Domain Investors with a unique opportunity to provide feedback directly to the Australian government, without going through auDA. The reason I mention that, is because auDA holds the “delegation of authority for administration of the au ccTLD” on behalf of the Commonwealth (of Australia).

As such, I’d STRONGLY encourage everyone to submit questions, comments and/or concerns – about ICANN’s proposal to the following:

Via Email: newgTLDs at DBCDE.gov.au

In Writing:

The Director
Internet Governance, IPND and Numbering Team
Department of Broadband, Communications
and the Digital Economy
GPO Box 2154
Canberra ACT 2601

Feel free to post a comment and let everyone know you made a submission.

New Godaddy Phishing Attempt – .Info Bulk Orders

There is a new phishing email doing the rounds, masquerading as a Godaddy email. I received it this morning and have since notified Godaddy.

There are a few things that are interesting about this email:

1.It uses the actual Godaddy graphics on the Godaddy web server, so it looks real.

2. In the body of the message it says “Dear <your email address”.

3. It was sent to an email address on my server that doesn’t exist (normally I’d throw away those “catch all” emails, but not in this case).

4. The fake email was (spoofed) from sales at godaddy.com with a subject of “GoDaddy.com Order Confirmation”. So if you have a lot of automatic email rules that archive off these types of notices, it may find its way into your inbox, and you may never notice it.

5. FYI: The links go through to “dextersss-com-ua.1gb.ua/zzx.htm” – the webserver is live, but the site is currently producing a 404.

6. For the techo’s, SpamAssassin gave it a score of 17.223.

I only initially picked up on it because I didn’t recall ordering 300 .INFO domains. If that had of arrived during a bulk ordering process, I may have not noticed.

Given the fact it’s a bulk registration. Could this be a targetted email especially for domain investors? The average person isn’t going to register 300 domains! Of course, the other side of that thought process is that phishing emails are designed to be “clicked on”, so if a member of public sees it, they will probably freak out first, click it and then inadvertently hand over their credentials (login id and password).

What do you think? Have you received this email?

NBC Backs Out Of Women.com & Women.Net Sale – Gets Sued

Its been reported that NBC Universal (GE) is being sued by Done Ventures after the sale of women.com and women.net fell through.

A complaint was allegedly filed in Los Angeles Superior Court. Here are a couple of points of interest:

1. Sedo had been hired as a “domain name broker”.
2. The offer for both domains was allegedly accepted (both verbally and via email) for the price of $1M
3. NBC’s “Jeff Zucker has overruled the transaction” and the deal was off.
4. “Sedo…..had earned the commission that was due to them under the brokerage agreement….”

Obviously there are two sides to a story. Its going to be a very interesting case to watch.

$2.3 Million Of Domain Sales In 1 Day

DOMAINfest Ft. Lauderdale has sold a massive $2,386,550 of domains at auction.

Here are the details:

Dating.com – $1,750,000.00
BoardGames.com – $450,000.00
Therapists.com – $50,000.00
Antidepressant.com – $30,000.00
GolfResorts.com – $22,500.00
EFP.com – $9,950.00
GJ.net – $7,200.00
BJH.com – $6,500.00
Birth.net – $6,000.00
PatioTables.com – $5,500.00
Sentimental.com – $5,250.00
Taunt.com – $5,000.00
ArtAppraisal.com – $4,000.00
Vinyl.net – $4,000.00
QWZ.com – $3,850.00
CarSecurity.com – $3,500.00
LasVegasDiscounts.com – $3,500.00
UsedHybridCars.com – $3,250.00
CakeStand.com – $3,000.00
CaribbeanCruises.net – $2,500.00
DivorceRecord.com – $1,500.00
StoneFurniture.com – $1,500.00
SchoolTutors.com – $1,200.00
AAC.co.uk – $1,000.00
CherryTrees.com – $950.00
BudgetOnline.com – $900.00
SportsSites.com – $850.00
MicroManaged.com – $600.00
LateShows.com – $500.00
LowerUtilityBills.com – $500.00
Day.me – $400.00
CdCollection.com – $300.00
NYC.asia – $300.00
TaxTube.com – $300.00
PersonalBanker.net – $250.00

Congratulations Snapnames on the impressive auction line up and a great result.

Coming To America

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.

New IDN ccTLDs Added To Internet DNS

A few hours ago I was informed that the first three non-Latin top-level domains were added to the DNS root zone.

When you visit these sites, you may see a list of letters and numbers in your address bar (depending on the browser).

The three new are السعودية (Al-Saudiah), امارات (Emarat) and صر. (Misr).

You can test them by visiting this, right now! وزارة-الأتصالات.مصر

Snapnames Files Suit Against Former Employee

This morning I received the following statement.

SnapNames, and its parent company, Oversee.net, have filed suit against Nelson Brady in federal court in Oregon.

Brady is a former employee who, under the false name “Hank Alvarez,” improperly bid in certain SnapNames auctions. In some cases, Brady also embezzled funds from Oversee by fraudulently refunding himself a share of the purchase price for names he won.

For several months, the company has in good faith attempted to settle privately with Brady to recover its losses, including the rebate fund established by Oversee to address Brady’s activities and the funds he embezzled from Oversee. Those settlement efforts have been unsuccessful.

The suit seeks over $33 million in damages, including punitive damages.

Context

· In October 2009, Oversee discovered an employee, Nelson Brady, using an account under the false name “Hank Alvarez,” engaged in improper bidding activities in domain name auctions on the SnapNames platform.

· Oversee and SnapNames disclosed the situation to its customers and employees in November 2009. Oversee made available to affected customers a cash rebate in the amount of overpayment, plus 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), of any amounts paid exceeding what the auction price would have been without employee bidding.

· Since that time, more than 60% of the aggregate rebate amount has been claimed.

Impact of Brady’s actions on auctions

· Brady’s conduct affected:

· 5% of auctions since 2005

· 75% of total impacted auctions were between 2005 and 2007

· Less than 1% of SnapNames auctions during this period were won by the employee

· The remaining 4% were won by SnapNames clients.

· Brady’s bidding affected approximately 1% of SnapNames’ auction revenue during the full period.

Impact of Brady’s actions on SnapNames and Oversee

Oversee will be demanding millions of dollars from Brady for the damage he caused to Oversee and SnapNames. No amount of money, however, could compensate the damage Brady has caused to SnapNames’ and Oversee’s reputation in the marketplace.

Law enforcement

In November 2009, Oversee voluntarily disclosed Brady’s conduct to both the US Attorney’s Office and to the Federal Trade Commission. Oversee will not publicly discuss anything relating to law enforcement matters.

Customer Service

SnapNames customers who have questions about the rebate offer can contact the SnapNames support team:

On the web: http://snapnames.custhelp.com
By e-mail: supp...@snapnames.com

Phone:

+1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)

Getting Ready To Change Domaining Forever!

Very soon, we will be launching a new and exciting Domain Investment service. It will set the standard for the industry.

Our email subscribers will be given both advanced notice and priority. If you haven’t signed up for “7 Tips For Profitable Domaining” (see the box on the right) – do it now. Consider this advanced notice, so you don’t miss out!

For The Technical People

After 497 days of uptime, we are decommissioning the main Domainer Income webserver that has served you over the past 2.5+ years. For the techos  amongst us, here is a little “top” statistic for you:

The Domainer Income website will be migrating to the new server in the next few days. Fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.

See you on the other side!