The .cc domain has quietly been getting some attention lately. Good names are getting snapped up and prices are rising. Let me clarify that: sales prices on the very best names are rising, and asking prices on average dictionary names are rising with unrealistic expectations by sellers who will have to adjust to reality.

Why .cc? It’s doesn’t “feel” associated with any country or territory, so it’s “feels” in the same category as a com. It has a snappy sound to it. It’s easy to remember. The pricing is a bit more, than a com, but depending on coupons, I get them from $15 - 18 at Godaddy. Anyone can register one.

Is it a risk? Of course, it is. Only you can decide if it’s an investment risk you’ll want to take. I’m taking it.

But, I’m running at the mouth here. The purpose of this post was to tell you about a new site called Speculator.cc. It’s a forum where CC enthusiasts come together to discuss the .cc market. In addition, the always ready-to-share owner, Jennifer, lists ready-to-register .cc names each day. Some of them are pretty damn good too.

There is also a subforum where members can showcase their cc portfolios. You can see my names here.

So, go visit Jennifer’s forum, Speculator.cc

GoDaddy is constantly adding and removing their discount coupon codes. I’ve been meaning to update my neglected list and with the help of this post on TDnam.com by Joeylny, I was able to put a current list together. I’ll update my coupons codes page with the info as well.

I should point out that there is a 12% off any order code about to expire at midnight on 3/26. It’s gdh0324a.

Note that case is not important

Save $2 on .com names

goox3004at
goox3005at
gdh0306

Save $2 on .US names

gdh022130

Save 10% on any order

buy7
catalog
COMMANDN
Hello2
ICANN1
Icann6
MINUTE
Saveten
SB2006
Slash
savenow
todd
tech3
wsm1
window

Save $5 on order of $30 or more

Amazon1
Gdg0805b
Tech1
Welcome
USA5
USA6

Save $10 on orders of $50 or more

gdradio16
gdh0314e
gdh031430

Save $20 on orders of $75 or more

gdradio23

The post I linked to above also has some clever, convoluted ways to save even more on some domain names so you might want to check it out.

I’ll admit it. I’ve misspelled three of my domain names when I purchased them, rendering them useless (I know some misspellings are good and taken on purpose, but not these.).

I don’t know about you, but my fingers are flying on the computer constantly, between a dozen open tabs in Firefox, Word, email and whatever else; not every word ends up spelled correctly. My mind is just too fast for my fat fingers. I’m used to not worrying about it, since I always run the spell checker on documents and email. I even have an extension for Firefox to check my spelling in web page input boxes.

But, the problem is that domain names are not something you are used to spellchecking and it’s easy to miss one when you are registering multiple names a day. It just seems so dumb that you might misspell a short domain name that you don’t even think about it. A quick look at it and it looks fine, right? Not always. Some combinations of letters are deceiving, or you just might be a lousy speller.

So, here’s what I try to do each time I’m ready to buy a name that my registrar says is available: Before jumping up and down and screaming to my wife, “hey honey, guess what name I’m going to buy! I can’t believe it’s available!” I’m going to spell check it. Now how do I spell check a domain name which is most likely not in the dictionary? I copy the word from the input field and paste it into a Word document (all the while making fun of myself for having to do this). Then, I remove the .suffix from it and place spaces between any of the words that are a part of the domain. For example, if the name is iamacrappyspeller.com, I will make it look like “I am a crappy speller”. Then I spell check it.

Of course, if you have a name with character strings that are not words, you can’t expect those portions to spell check.

A similar problem arises when buying a name from an auction. Some words look perfectly normal, but you might not realize that 1) they are misspelled, or 2) one of the letters is a look-alike character. For example, “vv” often looks like “w” and a “1” looks like an “l”. There are others as well.

So, what I do is highlight and copy the word into a Word document, and then check the spelling. If it does not contain all dictionary words, I enlarge it greatly to see if the characters are what I thought. I was almost fooled more than once.

Oh, and while you are at it, while furiously bidding away in the final minutes of an auction, take a few extra seconds to slow down when keying the numbers of your bid, and read it back to yourself out loud before pressing OK. An extra zero can make what was supposed to be a $50 bid $450 more painful.

Does anyone have any horror stories they’d like to share?

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, auction

When I brainstorm for domain names, I use several sites like NameBoy.com, Whois.sc, PCNames.com and Domainsbot.com. With these I can search for available names that include search terms I specify, or names generated using synonyms and related words. I also use search terms to look through expiring names at SnapNames.com and GoDaddy.com’s Domain Aftermarket.

But, I’ve got another tool that just started using that offers up many more potential names for me. The site is called DeletedDomains.com. When I first ordered one month of the service at $14.99, I used it to just look for names that were currently going through the expiration process. If I saw one I really wanted, I then went over to SnapNames.com and backordered it. At that time, while I was just starting to learn the domain game and confusingly bouncing around from site to site, I didn’t see more value in it than using other sites that let me check on expiring or existing domains.

But this last weekend I realized I was up for auto-renewal soon so I thought I’d check it out one more time before canceling. I spent more time on it, and consequently found a fantastic use for it I had not noticed before. Not only does it list expiring names with the search term in it, but it also includes names that have already expired and are deleted–in other words, readily available names.

Why is this different than the other sites that generate suggestions for available names? Well, the other sites use exact matches, synonyms and related words to compile a list of their suggestions. DeletedDomains.com will list actual names that include your search term that people previously felt had warranted a registration. These include many, many names that the other sites algorithms simply don’t come up with.

For example, two of the dozen or so names I found and purchased yesterday were LiveOffGrid.com and Robotants.com. As far as I can remember, the other programs did not suggest them to me. I’d been wanting a decent .com name with “OffGrid” in it and although LiveOffGrid.com is three words, it’s still short and meaningful. If you look at my list of domain names you can see that I’m a big believer in the future of robots; I had never thought of making up the word Robotants. But, it’s a cool name.

You see, the great thing about using DeletedDomains.com is that it lets me capitalize on the creativity of others who have let their domains expire and delete. No backorders, no auctions. I simply go to my registrar and buy it. Of course, I use all the tools at my disposal, but I’ll always go for not having to pay an extra fee when I can help it.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, expired domain, grid, robot, GoDaddy, internet, robot

In my last blog entry I confessed to my name buying addiction and said I would try to stop buying so many names. Yesterday I bought 30 more. LOL! But, there were great, unregistered names and I just had to buy them.

But I partially blame a new domain name idea generating site that I just found–a great, no INCREDIBLE, domain name idea generation site. I just stumbled upon it last week and now use it every time I get an idea. It’s called DomainsBot.com. Until DomainsBot, I’d been mostly using Nameboy.com. That’s a very good site, but I’m more impressed with DomainsBot.com.

The free DomainsBot.com site is packed with useful options, but it is simple and intuitive to use. You simply begin by submitting the words that describe the concept of what you’re looking for, and watch the suggestions fly in. And when I say “fly in,” that’s pretty accurate–this site is fast. In addition to the generated names list, which I’ll get into more, you can also add any name to your cart that you wish to buy, and when you’re done, choose the registrar or vendor of your choice. It also lets you add your names to your DomainsBot portfolio to collect and manage them, make a wish list, and look at the stats of your domain name collection. Even if you decide to use the portfolio system, DomainsBot does not collect any of your personal information, requiring only your email address and password.

When you bring up DomainsBot, it will ask you for the keywords that you wish to use. You can choose to filter your results list by .com, .net, .org, .info, .and biz extensions, and by status of For Sale, Expiring, and Available. Clicking “Search” will then produce a list of domain name ideas, with a rank for each name for a relative value compared to other names on the list. The list is created from the keywords you provided, and synonyms for those keywords

But the real power of DomainsBot is in the way it lets you manage the synonyms that it uses. When you generate a list, it also provides a box on the page showing you the synonyms it is using for each keyword, and gives you the ability to edit those synonyms and update the results! You can remove synonyms that don’t apply to your concept, change synonyms, and add new synonyms. Then, click “update results” and watch the new list of names almost instantaneously pops up. Every change you make is recorded by their system to make it more powerful every time you use it. Your personal synonym changes are retained for the length of your DomainsBot session, and over time the changes you make will be reflected in the results everyone sees.

The list is sorted by the names’ Overall Rank. The DomainsBot system uses a variety of factors to determine the ranking. Understand that the ranking is relative, comparing each result to of the other results in the search. A few of the criteria used to determine the ranking of the results are (not necessarily in this order):

• Strength of the synonyms in the results (how many stars).
• Length (shorter is better)
• Whether the form of the word changed, for example if your original search term was pluralized
• Whether it has hyphens
• Whether a prefix or suffix was added
• The popularity of the top-level domain (a .com will rank higher than a .org)
• The number of times the result appears in different TLDs (among those they handle)
• The popularity of the keywords in the zone file

You can review some of the factors for each name in the list by clicking the gray arrow in the far right column. This will expand the row for that name with a series of progress bars and rankings for Overall Rank, Saturation, Relevance, Popularity and Relative Value of the extension.

There are also columns to denote the domain name’s Status and Action. Status is either Available, Expiring or For Sale. Action is Buy (if Available), Bid (if registered) or Backorder (if expiring).

If you select Buy, Bid or Backorder, it will display a small box on the right of the page that asks if you want to perform those actions now, or if you wish to save them to your portfolio, categorized under Names to Buy, Names to Bid On and Names to Backorder. If you wish to buy a name now, it will produce a list of registrars through which you can purchase, with reviews and ratings by members. If choose to go ahead and bid on a registered name, you can choose from the sites on which the name is listed (like Afternic or Sedo). If you choose to Backorder, you can select from SnapNames and Pool.com; I don’t know if there are others that might pop up for domain names other than those I tested. If simply choose to put the names into you portfolio, you can come back at a later time to perform any of these three actions, or to remove any of the names.

I appreciate DomainBot’s ease of use, simplicity, speed and brainstorming power. This is the best synonym-based name generation program I’ve seen yet.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, domainsbot, internet, brainstorming

In the late 80’s and early 90’s, I owned a publishing company dealing with the IBM AS/400 computer. About ten, twelve years ago, I was creating our first web site and realized I could acquire the available domain name “AS400.com”. It turned out I did not need it and quickly and easily sold it to IBM for an extraordinarily good amount of money. But, I was so busy running/selling my business at the time it did not occur to me that I should do more of this name buying and selling. Duh! What an idiot I now see I was. I could have been sitting on millions of dollars of domain names right now.

During the last ten years, I didn’t really give much thought to investing in domain names, and now it seems everyone is in the game. But, still, I want in too.

I have had some success with a few web sites in the past, and in the process picked up a few dozen domain names I’ve been holding on to. But a few weeks ago the bug really bit me when I had a conversation with a very successful young domain investor. I was fascinated by the subject and pounded the the poor fellow with innumerable questions. Now, two weeks later, I about about 100 names richer (poorer?). Hopefully I don’t have more money than smarts. I know a few were dumb, but I’m learning. I’ll be telling you more about what I’ve been buying in future posts.

But there is one thing that I want to mention in this post that I think was a smart decision. Now, remember, I’m a rookie, so maybe it just seemed smart to me–I don’t know. But, the important thing is that I feel more secure having done what I did. Let me tell you about it.

I had my 50 or so names registered at a small affiliate domain registrar I had picked many years ago for its low prices. Since I was about to register some more names, I decided to give some thought to if the current registrar was the right long-term registrar for me. After all, if I had hundreds or thousands of names down the road, would I really want to have to go through the work of transferring them all later if I so desired? Not really. I wanted to pick the registrar I’d be married to now.

I also thought of something else: what if my registrar went out of business and I was forced to leave them? That was a scary thought so I asked my new domain friend about this. He told me that if they were to go under, it could possibly become difficult to renew a domain name when the time came up. The domain names would have to be “unlocked” before I could initiate a transfer and I might have problems with a new registrar denying my request to unlock them, insisting I use the original registrar for this. If it really became a problem, I just might have to say hello to an Intellectual Property attorney.

Regardless, even if the process were to go relatively smoothly, it’s the last thing I’d want to deal with, with hundreds of names or more! So, I decided I would go with a very large registrar and not ever have to worry about this situation. An added benefit is that I would gain a much better Domain Management system than the very slim one I had with the current registrar.

After looking around, I chose GoDaddy.com. No, it wasn’t because of the SuperBowl ad. It’s just that they are VERY BIG and their tools suit me. Are there other better, very large registrars? I don’t know–quite possibly. But, GoDaddy works for me and I sleep much better at night now knowing the domains I add each day can stay with them safe and sound for a long, long time. I don’t have time for problems.

Technorati Tags: domain, domain name, registrar, godaddy, investing, website, internet