I just bought this name. I know it’s no big generic name, but it cracks me up. I like and I’m not selling it until I get a few thousand for it at least, maybe more. I’ve got some ideas for it, but what kind of site do you guys think it would be a good name for? YouTube (rhymes!) for boobs? A site about idiots? What do you think?
And, hey, I thought I told you in my last post to buy my son’s CD! 
, , , ,
I was looking through some snapnames.com names this morning when I saw that FreeChildPorn.com is up for auction for $60. Who in the hell, who is not into child pron, would buy a name like this? Why doesn’t snapnames and others have filters to block anything with that exact phrase? It’s sick. Hey, I understand anything with the word “teen” in it, because that includes 18 and 19. But kiddie porn!
I’ve always thought it would be fun to look up the names of those owning child porn domains, find them and confront them (yes, I’d interrogate them first to make sure they weren’t holding the name for anti-child porn usage first). I have a feeling I’d immediately know by looking into their eyes.
Now there’s an idea for someone with more time than me. Make a web site that finds child porn loving people through domain names, and lists their names and addresses, much like a sex offender site. Radical? Yeah.
Well, that was an interesting test. About ten days ago, I parked DomainRookie.com as a test. I wanted to see how the parked page would do at Sedo.com and if readers would miss it.
I was pleasantly surprised at the numbers. In the stats for the last seven days at Sedo, I received 4,154 uniques. I don’t think the name was optimized for the first 4-5 days, but now it is with “domain names” as the keyword. It’s received 19 clicks at 49 cent EPC.
I’ve received many emails from people who had to look up my email address on my Whois records to find me. They want the site back for the commentary and the resource page. Thanks for your support!
I’m going to continue with commentary here and, in fact, improve the site over time, as I see it’s desired and it’s getting the hits. I know can put in more effort to monetize it. I’ve really not done much at all to make money from it
However, I’m also going to put it up for sale at a pretty affordable price before I spend the time to beef it up I’ll take the first $5,000 (net to me after expenses) offer.
The site is hosted at my excellent web host, LivingDot.com, in an “add-on” account under my main account. I’m sure they would move the WordPress blog files and database to a new individual LivingDot.com account for free for someone opening up a new account there. It’s $11 a month and I see there is a 50% off coupon code on their home page right now. This company gives (you won’t believe it) five minute or less support response times. (I get no fee for recommending them)
So, if you’d like to run this blog, with all its room for growth, or use the domain for something else, let me know through the contact page on the site.
Note: This was a PR4 blog for a long time. It currently shows zero. It must have been the temporary parking that made it a PR0 for some reason, for the moment. I see I still have my Alexa rank of 174K
, , ,
I started what’s become a great topic at namepros.com titled, Type-in Behavior Changing?. In my opinion, it’s a must read. If you are buying names for type-in income, you better read it. Pay particularly close attention to my posts (slobizman) and those of Seabass, a brilliant poster.
I’d summarize some of the postings and conclusions here, but I’ve got to keep my eye on the crazy stock market today, and I am in the middle of several domain sale escrows so I’ll ask that you just read the thread. You won’t miss anything that way anyway. Now, don’t stop reading early. It begins talking about the behavior of browsers, but moves on to more general discussions of the possible changing world of type-ins.
(I’ve also got to watch Hillary Clinton being interviewed on CNBC in 45 minutes, about her fears relating to the stock market. I sure hope to hell they have the guts to ask her about how back in her corrupt Arkansas days she turned $1,000 in Cattle futures into $100,000. Just dumb luck she says. Yeah right. LOL! Political payback. But I digress…)
, , , ,
Do you have to pay a big bucks for names to make big profits on them? No. Are the only good names already taken and do you have to bid them up at dropcatchers to get them? No. Decent names abound at low prices and can even still be hand registered.
To illustrate, in the last week, I sold seven names. All were purchased in the last year. Three were hand registered and four were picked up at tdnam for $5 to $15 dollars, plus registration fee. What did I gross on those names? $5,240.
That’s $92 turned into $5,240, less Sedo or escrow.com fees.
And, I didn’t have much risk with these names as they were so inexpensive. Don’t get me wrong, I do buy more expensive names as well, having paid up to a several thousand dollars for a name. And I’d certainly be willing to pay $50,000 - $100,000 or more for a truly great name. But, when names get into that price range, they are invariably on a major dropcatcher’s site and there are tool many fools there spending their money like it’s 1999 in the tech bubble stock market again. No way I’m going to hang on to millions of dollars of names in a market that could bust (or change) when you least expect it. And we could likely be going into a housing led recession by next year and that will effect all investment markets…but I digress. Am I missing out on making the million dollar hit? Of course. But I do that in other business ventures, not this little hobby.
There are many thousands of dollars to be made by thinking differently, not chasing keywords everyone is chasing, being well-read and opportunistic, being a good negotiator, and most of all using your intuition — if you have it.
, , , , , ,
It used to drive me nuts entering names or doing anything in my portfolio in Afternic. I could run to the bathroom while the screen was painting and when I got back I still had to wait. But, over the last few months, it’s been much, much faster. (And it’s quick at telling me my names might be too naughty for them, too!)
But, now the once quick-enough Sedo has taken the place of Afternic as the slow-as-molasses site. It’s truly frustrating sometimes. But, I sell just about all my domains there, so I guess I’m stuck with it. But I can still complain.
How’s your experience?
, , ,
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.
, , ,
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!
, , , , , ,
On November 26th, I finally had to go public on NamePros.com with my bitching about Sedo’s policy of placing negotiation comments “under review” until the next business day (which is often three calendar days). I had bugged many Sedo employees about this for the last year privately, and I only got polite excuses on how they didn’t want anyone to get hurt feelings with insensitive remarks.
So, I began the thread called Sedo Comments “Under Review” Sucks! . This thread finally brought in a Sedo rep, but even with the pleas from Namepros members, they held their ground. Well, about a week or two ago I started noticing that my comments were going through. I could actually conduct business during U.S. nights and weekends!
Here’s the initial post of the thread:
Listen Sedo, I’m a big customer of yours. I have 4,000 names there, I’ve sold about $30,000 of names from your site in the last year. So I think I’ve earned the right to say this for the tenth time publicly,
YOUR REVIEW OF COMMENTS SUCKS!!!
It really does.
I’ve been waiting three days wondering what a bidder is telling me in their comments with the bid. I have no idea. Who knows?
I know last week one evening I placed a comment with a bid that might have been instructive to the other party, but instead of waiting until the comment was reviewed, they canceled the transaction. What if I had said “hey, I’ll give you the .net and ,org and .info for this price too”? I’ve done thatbefore and had the thread canceled. The other party never knew.
This is so stupid, Sedo. I’ve told you over and over to get rid of this. No one likes it. What are you afraid of? Someone might call me poopy pants or something and hurt my feelings? Oh, I know, someone might send off their email to me, to get around the 10% fee. Most people are not like that. And if they wanted to, the contact info is easily found in the Whois record.
I know you only have 35 hours in European work week to think this over. But think! No one likes this. Get rid of it immediately please. We could be losing sales, so you could be losing commissions. In fact, I’m ceratin you are.
Anyone else agree?
Today, I was alerted that others on Namepros were talking about how their comments are going through now too. Until now, I had no idea if it were just me, just a certain level of user, or everyone. Sounds like everyone.
So, hooray for us! And even if Sedo has no clue yet, hooray for them as they will make more money by not losing sales due to miscommunication and time delays.
Now, guys, let’s not screw this up. Be nice in your comments.
, , ,
You know, I often watch with amusement how domainers all follow the same old formula. Overture! Number of web pages! Pagerank! Sure, all that is very important, extremely important. But, that’s not all there is. You have to think differently too. In investing, anyone who does what everyone else does will end up getting clobbered in the end (watch those overpaying on snapnames in a few years).
I look at early trends, future technologies and often buy names that have none of the traditional metrics. I can get them cheap. Hell, sometimes I am able to hand-reg a name and resell it relatively quickly for a large profit.
Here’s a case in point that just happened today: I know that Virtual Worlds, in which people actually work and play, are going to be huge. Look at SecondLife already. Lots of entrepreneurial activity going on there. So, back in July I thought up the word Virtualpreneur. I may have not been the first to think it up, but I was ready to be the first to act on it.
But it had zero OVT, was not a real word and Google Search shows exactly 25 pages that have the term on it. The tlds were available (although now I see that the .biz version is taken and I cannot remember if it was back then or not). All metrics that would steer a traditional domain name investor away from the name were in place. Well, I registered Virtualpreneur.com at for $7 at GoDaddy anyway, on the basis of my perception of the future.
Today, I got an offer for a few hundred dollars on it. I countered with $750 and the buyer immediately took it. I actually should have gone for more. But, that’s over 100 times my money in less than half a year.
I’ve done this before. It’s called thinking, not following.
So, being the virtualpreneur that I am, I immediately went and bought the remaining good TLD’s for the name.
Think. Lead. Don’t follow.
, , , , ,
