The folks at AvivaDirectory just published a article entitled: 10 US Laws Every Domainer Needs To know. In addition to issues near and dear to the domaining community like domain sniffing and trademark law, the article also devotes a lot of energy to business structure. I admit the nuiance of trademark law and choosing business structure aren’t the kind of things that get me really excited but as Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.

On a side note, I like the idea of Top 10 lists. People seem to be drawn to top 10 lists (or maybe it’s just me). The focus the attention of the writer and, if done well, they’re great long standing resources. Here’s a few random domain related Top Ten Lists I found.

Top 10 Cheap Domain Name Registrars
Top 10 Domain Name Extensions
The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
Top 10 Urban Copyright Myths
Top 10 Domain Names Do’s and Dont’s
Top 10 Reasons People Overprice Domains

Do you think top 10 lists are a useful way to make a point?

What topics would make great subjectmatter?

What are your favorite Top 10 Domain related lists? Post your comments!

domain investment is often compared with real estate investment, here’s an audio recording that goes into that analogy a little further…

I just received the following promotion from GoldKey.com via email. I’ve always liked Goldkey, although I’ve got my names mostly at SedoPro now (I went there when they accepted me into the Pro system). But, I think I’m going to give some names a shot at GoldKey.com again with all these changes they’ve listed.

You too, should think about at least setting up an account and try out a few names. To do so, go to GoldKey.com. It’s pretty simple to get going with them.

To Our Valued Customers:

We are pleased to announce that on March 1 we are launching a major upgrade to GoldKey.com that features many of the options and features you’ve requested, including:

· Setting your domain names to 1-click results or 2-click landers at your discretion

· Placing your own custom logo for the top of your sites

· Uploading your own main photo image for lander pages

· Testing up to four of your own keywords in rotation for auto-optimization of landers, and

· Customizing landers with up to 21 of your own hand-selected keywords.

In addition, we’ve added several new template layouts and now offer almost 500 themes, from Amish Country to Hip-Hop. Combined with our 70 color schemes, we now offer more than 300,000 variations of pages available to maximize the experience for users of your sites.

Also as part of this major launch, we are also changing our upstream feed provider of CPC advertisements to further maximize the revenue potential of your traffic. As a result, you’ll notice slight changes to our templates recommended by our new feed partner to further clarify to users what they can expect when they click or search. Revenue reports from our provider are scheduled to arrive in our systems by 1 p.m. ET, so expect them to show shortly after processing on our end.

We are excited about these upgrades, many of which came from your ongoing comments and suggestions. Further updates are in store - for example, we’re acting on your requests to return simple report data to the first page you reach upon login, and receive more e-mail reports. Please keep the comments and suggestions coming, and as always, contact us if you have any questions or need assistance.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, goldkey, sedo, afternic, PPC, parking

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?

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, after, sedo

Afternic domain name sellers received an email today telling them that any names they have listed that promote “hate, sex, obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse, violence and gambling” will be delisted.

Well, that’s about a quarter of the domain names. LOL!

Hey, that means my new IHateRobots.com won’t even be able to be listed any longer. RoboPhobia? Crap. Robot hate crimes? I’m in trouble.

I’ve already had too much wine at the Los Olivos Cafe (you know, that movie called Sideways where the actors got drunk) so I want to be careful to not say too much tonight. I should really wait until the morning. But, I’ve got a big mouth so I can’t wait.

Seriously though, I can say that I certainly respect the rights of any private business to do as they please; I’m a conservative thinker (no not a religious conservative)–so do what you want with your business. I don’t think it’s a smart decision, if it helps them sleep better at night, then it’s the right decision for them. It’s just too bad that the only real hope of competition to get Sedo to improve their impossibly frustrating user interface is going to quickly fade away. Sedo NEEDS competition.

Anyway, Afternic’s got the religion, but nothing is going to change in the domain world. They’ll lose not only the “bad” domain names, but the rest of the names in peoples’ portfolio’s that have those domain names in them. People don’t want to start having to keep track of subsets of their portfolio at one of the sales sites; it’s enough work as it is to keep track of thousands of domains and where they are listed.

Hey, I was just wondering…I’ve got this cool name called Pleasurama.com. I suppose you guys with dirty minds think it’s about something sexual, but listen up Afternic, it’s not. Please don’t delist it. It’s about chocolate. Yeah, that’s it. Chocolate. It’s not naughty. Okay? The pleasure of chocolate.

Here’s the letter. What’s your opinion?

Note: Do you guys think you could digg the article so the subject gets some attention? if you will, please go here for the Digg page.

Dear Members, Domainers and Friends:

We want to share with you a recent decision that we believe will put Afternic in an even better position to serve the small business, SOHO community and greater domain industry.

After extensive consideration, we have decided to no longer accept domain names that promote hate, sex, obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse, violence and gambling. The sole rationale behind our decision is to make Afternic a more comfortable site for mainstream domain name shoppers, especially small business owners. We recognize that taking a leadership role on this issue may have a negative financial impact on our business in the near term. Nonetheless, we believe strongly that it’s the right thing long-term decision for our industry and Afternic.

In the next few days, we will de-list these kinds of domain names currently posted on our site. Members who own such names will receive a letter from us informing them which names will no longer be listed. We hope that they, and others, will understand that we have no interest in censorship and that we fully support First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression. And, there is certainly no lack of other Internet sites where such names are welcomed.

The Internet, much like the early days of television, is still a new frontier. We believe it is up to the industry leaders-and we include Afternic here-to step up and determine what constitutes professional standards and practices. We take this action in the interest of socially responsible corporate behavior and hope that it leads to further healthy industry dialog and discussion on the topic.

We greatly appreciate your business and support of Afternic, and will continue to endeavor to earn your confidence and trust.

Very best regards,
Roger Collins
President of Afternic, Inc.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, afternic, sedo, sex, gambling, drugs

There is an interesting discussion going on over at NamePros.com where member “cfguru360″ has initiated a discussion regarding starting an alternative to Sedo, Afternic, et al. But before he begins the project, he is asking users for input on what would make a great parking/sales system.

It remains to be seen if anything comes of this. But even if not, I think it’s primary value is for the big parking providers such as Sedo and Afternic to pay attention. Sedo, in particular, needs to really pay attention. Their programmers are apparently busy (well, as much as a German ‘work week” allows) doing all sorts of projects, but they are not doing many of the simple things that users require. I can tell you from personal experience that great idea and great idea is “heard” (many times) and then never to be seen in production. Afternic, on the other hand, has added two categories I have suggested. And don’t get me started on Sedo categories…they are created and organized as if by a third grade class. But, I digress.

To view the thread, go here

Here is the initial post of the thread:

Recently I have been fed up with the low paying parking sponsors such as Sedo and the rest that just lie to us and drop our revenue day by day blaming it on advertiser bids. Some parking sponsors close your account when you are making too much, others don’t account for more than half of your traffic or don’t have any support team or a support team of 1 person - the owner.

It is TIME FOR A CHANGE. I am going to invest this month’s and next month’s revenue from my parked domains to create a domaing parking program with suggestions, advice, and ideas by domainers for domainers. When is the last time you seen decent templates that don’t look like they were made in 1995 - take DomainSponsor for example. Yes, DomainSponsor may have nice payouts, but CTR will not be as nice as a domain with RevenueDirect, will it? But what about RevenueDirect? Well pay is not great there as it is on DomainSponsor. What about the nice tools with Sedopro and others? Well, it is time to combine all of that to make 1 great service, that has great templates, great payouts, and great tools. And I will make that happen. I will be hiring a template designer to make the best templates, so that they can have the BEST possible CTR. With this parking program I promise to all fellow domainers, there will be no games, no lies, and no excuses.

I am asking other fellow Namepros members to contribute their suggestions/advice for this parking program that they’d like to see. Do you have a unique idea that you always wished Sedopro, or DomainSponsor, or whoever had? Well it is time to contribue that idea below, and I will do everything possible to contribute it in one way or another.

Sound off!

If you haven’t read it yet, read DNJournal’s article on the State of the Domain Industry. It’s a great article and a critical read for any domain investor.

The introduction of the article:

In our first State of the Industry survey of domain business experts a year ago, our panel predicted a phenomenal year in 2005. Their global forecast for the industry was right on the money as were many of their predictions regarding specific issues and events. Considering their track record we have been chomping at the bit to round up the channel’s best and brightest once again to get their insight into the events and trends of 2005 and more importantly, what they expect for the New Year ahead.

You will hear from a blue ribbon group of 20 experts that include key executives from the leading companies in the registration, PPC, aftermarket sales, drop catching and domain development sectors, as well as leading industry attorneys, trade show organizers and the people whose broad shoulders carry those mentioned above - domain name owners.

Technorati Tags: internet, domain, domain name

A couple weeks ago I published the article, Moving My Parking to Goldkey. In that article, I asked that anyone who wanted to sign up with Goldkey to please use my referral link as it doesn’t reduce your earnings whatsoever. In return I would be happy to provide you with any tech support for using Goldkey you might need. I’ve have a half dozen people sign up using my referrer id and I just wanted to say thank you.

I urge everyone to try Goldkey. I won’t go into all the reasons again; you can read the original article if you haven’t already. If you do, please use this link (or any other in this article) to help support this site, and to receive free tech support from me.

Technorati Tags: internet, domain, domain name, goldkey, parking, ppc

I think Afternic has really decent categories for tagging domain names. On the other hand, I’m not impressed with the categories on Sedo–I’ve given up trying to categorize anything on that site. I’ve given them suggestions for categories, they politely thank me, and that’s the end of that. But, I gave Afternic a couple of suggestions a few days ago and they implemented one already! Now that’s customer service.

The new category is Robotics and you’ll find it under the major Technology heading. Click this link to see the names under this new category.

Thanks Afternic for providing a place for all my robotics names!

Technorati Tags: internet, domain, domain name, afternic, sedo, ppc, parking

I’m very happy with the results my initial testing with the PPC parking service GoldKey.com, and over the last several weeks I’ve been in the process of moving my parked names from Afternic.com to GoldKey.com. I’m over half way done.

What’s so great about GoldKey? In a word, flexibility. Too often with other PPC services, my parked domain sites simply displayed a list of generic links for travel, fitness and so forth, generally producing no income. But GoldKey lets you supply not only keywords to help associate proper ad links, but create Google sitemaps, choose from hundreds of header banners, colors, search box positions, inclusion of “favorites” (extra, general links), link exchanges and more.

Take a look at one of my domain names, AboutFaith.com. With GoldKey I was able to create a beautiful page with a “religion-based” banner image and appropriate links. Notice that it also provides a “For Sale” link where I can insert my own custom sales text if I were to so choose. Check out GoldProfits.com for another example; this one has an image of money in green.

Now you need to see something really cool! Click on the Related Topics link below the main categories. Clicking on any of the letters will display the related topics that I’ve set up in my sitemap (which GoldKey creates for you with your supplied keywords). For example, click on B and then Buddhism, and you’ll get an entirely new page that reflects the keyword Buddhism and only the keyword Buddhism! Now that is impressive. You are allowed up to 512 sitemap keywords, so in essence your parked page can become a 512 page web site! If you didn’t know, Sitemap pages are a SEO technique where a layout of keyword-optimized HTML pages is provided for search engines. When these pages are indexed by search engines’ robots, the result is a higher probability that this domain will show up on search results pages and will therefore get more visitors. By design, visitors from search engines will be visiting the keyword optimized page (not the root of the domain) and will therefore see listings related to the keyword they were searching.

GoldKey pays at least 50% of the commissions it earns from Overture. They pay every month on the 15th for the previous calendar month’s earnings. From reading various posts on domain forums, it sounds like they are always prompt. Payments are made through Paypal, wire transfer or by check.

GoldKey really shines in the statistical reports it offers. I don’t think there is another site that offers as much detail. Page views, and detailed traffic numbers are real time; and the earnings accounting seems to lag by about one to three days, which is understandable. You can view visits and clicks for each or all domain names within various time periods. You can even see which keyword links visitors are clicking! And, an SEO report shows you what keywords where entered into which search engine to get to your page.

They also offer a Link Exchange program where other sites can request to exchange links with you, thereby increasing your page rank. You can link some of your own pages together, but be careful not to overdo it and appear as a link farm.

There are many more features that I can’t fit into what I’m trying to keep a short article and you can’t see until you sign up with an account.

GoldKey offers a referral program, which pays the referrer a commission equal to 10% of the referred client’s earnings. Nothing is subtracted from the referred client’s earnings, however, so there is no penalty whatsoever for someone signing up as a referral. Which brings me to my request: if you create your free account—and every one of you should sign up to at least test the service—I ask that you use this link (or any GoldKey link in this article) so you can be a referral of mine. It will not cost you nothing, and will not limit your own referrals someday, and the potential commissions will help me to maintain this web site. I’ll also make a deal with you: if you sign up as a referral, I’ll be glad to help you out with through email with any of your GoldKey questions. There is a learning curve as the documentation does not explain everything as it should and I’m sure I could be of assistance to you.

Technorati Tags: internet, domain, domain name, parking, PPC, goldkey, afternic, SEO, search, search engine