I have almost all of my 4400 names at Godaddy, but I also have a few dozen at enom. I had the unfortunate opportunity to (attempt to) utilize enom support for the first time this week. Horrible. Nothing like the red carpet treatment I get a GoDaddy.

I had a name that I won in an enom Club Drop auction last year. When I ordered a transfer to Godaddy a few days ago, I realized a very strange problem with the contact data of the name. It still had the contact information of the Israeli drop catcher that caught the name for enom last year. So, I went into my records in my enom account and everything had the proper information in it. Enom’s own Whois showed the proper information too. However, every other Whois showed the old contact information, not mine. I was unable to transfer the name because my email address was not in the record.

I tried calling enom and the recording told me that there would be a one hour wait! I hung up and opened a support ticket. A few hours later I got a lame, canned reply to update the contact information. They were so proud of themselves that they even closed the ticket. The rep obviously did not read my very clear explanation. I wrote back, reopened the ticket, re-explaining the problem.

The next morning, no reply to my reply yet. So I called their support line at a few minutes before 6 am PST. There office was not open yet and there was no way to leave a message. I went back to the support section and opened a new ticket, telling them to look at my old ticket. LOL! After leaving two more messages in the original support ticket, with the last one complaining about them, they eventually closed the ticket with “Duplicate support ticket!” Unfrickinbelievable.

During this time, I had gotten in contact with the enom affiliate through which I originally won the Club Drop name. Even though the name had since been pushed into my enom reseller account, they took the time to work with me, and told me that they didn’t see a way to fix it unless I renewed it. They told me if I pushed it back to their account temporarily, they would renew it for me free of charge. Whatever the glitch was, that worked!

I want to take my hat off to this enom affiliate. It is CatchyDomains.com, a web site that also offers names for sale. They didn’t need to help me, and they did it for free and did it promptly. Thank you Darrell.

As for the future, I will definitely limit the number of names I have registered at enom. I cannot deal with a company that has such poor support. In contrast, the support I get from GoDaddy is incredible. I have never had to wait in a phone queue. I have a account rep that does all sort of things for me, like doing large bulk orders, single orders, creating custom spreadsheets for me, and handles any problems that might arise. This is the way a company should be run. The “Office of the President” even called me last week to tell me that they were sending me a $100 gift certificate because they felt bad for a little problem that a few customers had this month on an ordering quirk (and it was really no big deal).

GoDaddy all the way.

Technorati Tags: domain, name, godaddy, enom

Is Afternic being honest concerning it’s anti-gay stance?

I could kick myself for asking that question. I hate people calling each other intolerant. Sounds like I’m some lib professor in a U.S. university talking about the latest multiculturalist speech codes we’re forcing on our indoctrinated kids. I hate all that diversity-crap talk. I’m actually mostly a conservative. But I’m also a social libertarian. I really don’t care what people do in their own lives. So it pisses me off that Afternic is not allowing gay domain names to be listed under the guise of the names being sexual or obscene.

To be more precise, it’s not that they are not allowing gay names, but that are being DISHONEST about their policy. Here’s what they said when they disallowed Robogay.com to be listed (I have had a few other “gay” names rejected):

Thank you for submitting your name(s) to Afternic for listing. We have made a commitment to our visitors to not show names which promote hate, sex, obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse, violence or gambling. In addition, we cannot list names which violate trademarks, servicemarks, copyrights or other materials protected under US or international law.

Does saying the word “gay” promotes sex , or is obscene, any more than saying the word “straight?” If I submitted RoboStraight.com or RobotHetero.com, would Afternic deny it? No way.

Afternic is not simply filtering out porn, sexual or indecent behavior, they are singling out gay domain names. RoboGay.com does not promote sex any more than RoboStraight.cojm does. And they know it.

It’s a private company, so I firmly believe that they can do as they wish. Seriously. I don’t give crap–I hardly have any gay names. All I want is for them to be honest enough to write the rules as they actually view them: NO GAY NAMES!

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, gay, homosexual, diversity, intolerance, minority

As some of you know, I invest in .CC names. You can see my portfolio of 600 .CC domain names at Speculator.cc.

I noticed something very interesting tonight as I was at the computer with a glass of Grand Mariner, leisurely checking the status of what I thought would be upcoming Pending-Delete .CC names, so I can snatch them up. I have a list of over 30,000 registered .cc names that I have put together through various means. Periodically, I run this list through a program that updates the recently expired names from the list to see what is going to delete and what has been renewed. It seemed that it was only months ago that a very large number of the names would go unrenewed by their owners. But tonight I was shocked as I went through perhaps 1500 names that had expired in the last couple weeks. Only about a dozen were not renewed! And not all names are the cream of the crop either, although these are the better names that are registered.

I can only draw the conclusion that .CC name owners are becoming more aware of the rising value of these names. It’s a good thing I’ve got 600 of them already.

Technorati Tags: domain name, domain, name, tld

I’ve just accomplished something I have never done before I’ve taken my two month old site, TravelVoyeur.com, form a PR0 to a PR5. A few days ago it was a 0 and now it is a 5! How did I do it?

Well, the first thing I did was before I created the site, I read the incredible book, SEOBook. It’s not cheap, but it’s worth every penny. Then I designed the site with what I learned from it.

One of the most importnat things I learned was the ultimate unimportance of being included in the Yahoo Directory. Since it could take up to a year to get listed, I chose to pay they $299 for a review of my submission within seven days (still, no guarantee of inclusion). Simultaneously, I created a PRWEB.com press release that I guess Yahoo felt was good enough to include in Yahoo News (read it here).

A pick up of the news here and there (not a lot even) and the site is now a PR5. Being moved up higher in the search results now, my keyword-rich pages are being found by web surfers looking for information on particular destinations. What’s really funny is that I am on page 3 (as of today at least) for the very high search count term “voyeur”. It’s not exactly my target audience, but even voyeurs travel I suppose! Hell, maybe even more so.

Now that I am PR5 and getting hundreds of uniques per day, I’m looking for link partners of other high PR sites. I prefer travel-related sites, but I’ll look at other non-porn sites if the ranking is high enough. Please use my contact form here or at TravelVoyeur.com to get in touch.

Now, if I just had the time to fix the SEO of DomainRookie.com! I put this site together before reading SEOBook and it badly needs some SEO work.

First and last names are good domain name investments. Think about it, have you ever looked up your name to see if it was available? Of course, you have. But, the most popular names are taken. However, the ones past the top 1000 or lower rankings, particularly last names, are still valuable. While #1 ranked Smith is the name for about 2,500,000 million people, there are still about 5,000 Hambrick’s ranked 5,003, for example. That’s a lot of potential buyers for any of the major TLD’s.

So where do you find these lists? There are a lot of sites on the web that show the data, but at the core they mostly use the 1990 US Census Data found on this page. From this page you can enter the actual file of last, and both male and female first names. The lists are shown in ranking order, along with the frequency and ranking. In addition, you can search for a name to bring up the data for the name.

Numerous sites parse and display these data in various formats. Just search for them. One nice example is this page at Mongabay.com.

Let me know in the comments any other nice name sites.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, census, genealogy

Just found this Guide to Registering a Trademark for a Domain Name on the U.S. Patent and Trademark website. Thought it might be of interest to you.

Just a few hours left at Sedo Auctions for my names XXXUpload.com and GirlSpaces.com. Better hurry if you want a bargain on these excellent names!

About a month ago, I published an article asking for Overture Keyword Selector Tool Alternatives. I received several sites like really liked. But someone just a few days ago told me about one that I didn’t yet know about. It’s called Keyword Dynamo SecretsToHighProfit.com.

Just pop in your keywords (and the initial captcha for the session) and you’ll get a very nice looking list with the following:

• Related searches that include your term
• Estimated number of times that term was searched on last month (Overture/Yahoo)
• Top Overture/Yahoo Advertiser Bids for each term
• Google Search Results
• KEI, R/S Ratio
• And much more..

In addition, you can export the list! Now that’s what I call service! And it’s all free.

On the page you’ll also see buttons for a Site Analyzer and PR Checker.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, overture, keyword, search, keu, page rank, seo, search engine optimization

If you want to see how ridiculous the GoDaddy appraisals are, look no further than this example: bizjobs.cc, listed at tdnam.

Godaddy’s Certified Domain Appraisal give it a price range of $13,160.00 - $34,216.00. I see no website for the name, no traffic listed, the name itself is stupid and it’s a .cc tld (growing, but still a lower priced tld). Unbelievable.

Technorati Tags: godaddy, domain, domain name, appraisal

Dang it! I did it again. I forgot that once you choose to send a name at Sedo, based on an offer received, the description is LOCKED!! The reason to send a name to auction at Sedo is to get more exposure for the name and not creating a great description is a wasted opportunity.

And I just did this with a great name — LearnAjax.com — a subject that is very , very popular among internet developers, but perhaps could use some explanation for a domain name investor who sees the name on auction. Not everyone knows what Ajax is. But, programmers sure do. Wordtracker shows around 50,000 search requests a month and searching Google for Ajax Programming shows 28,000,000 pages!

But, I’ve lost my opportunity to explain it to those who don’t know, so I might not get the price I would like. In case you are interested, the auction ends Jan/07/07 03:05 PM EST.

Always, always check your description before sending a name to Sedo auction.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, Sedo, auction, Ajax