Netpaths Guide to SEO & Web Design » Domain Names

Valuable Domain Name Company.com Reborn As Business Social Network

CVOS — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 07:05:40 +0000

Back when I began my internet aspirations in 1998 I saw the heavy wheeling and dealing at during the height of the dot-com era. When I hung my shingle on the roadside of the information superhighway, toys.com was 100x bigger than Toys R Us and Yahoo was a 130B company.

Domain names rapidly changed hands and seemingly had no limit on their valuation.

I remember coming across Company.com and seeing the unique under construction page:

This domain is owned by Mike O’Connor. As you can see, there’s not much going on at the moment. The short version is that I got this domain Back In The Old Days, and have been so busy that I’ve never gotten around to doing anything with it. I may yet get up the gumption, but obviously haven’t yet! via archive.org

The original owner, Mike O’Connor the self titles Curmudgeon Emeritus dryly writes about his good fortune being an internet pioneer and having the good fortune to create an ISP startup at the beginning of the WWW.

Without going into a huge long rant, my belief is that these “generic” dot-com domain names were (and are) pretty valuable. They’re sort of the Internet version of real estate and I represent the Internet equivalent of a farmer who finds himself next to a rapidly growing city that’s going through rapid boom and bust cycles. So my stupid names (which people thought I was nuts to get) are worth a lot of money (and used to be worth even more).

How much? It’s still hard to say. The market for domain names has matured a lot since the early ’90′s when I got these domains. There was a period in 1999 and 2000 when prices went crazy. My take is that it will take another 3 to 5 years for things to really settle down. Please don’t write me to debate this point. Consider it the ravings of a lunatic if you like. The point is that I’m reluctant to sell right now because I don’t think the market is valuing these names very well at the moment. archived quote.

Times have changed, and an entrepreneur has purchased Company.com and created a business social network site, something the original owner prophesied. I am sure it was a healthy 7 figure sale, which is a stunning creation of wealth for creating absolutely nothing. It seems they have funding, as they are hiring

You can view the Company.com directory which provides free business listings and a clean layout. This web directory is not as good as Business.com and BOTW.org, both of which offer fully followed links, but it has an unbeatable price: free.

I personally believe .com (and some .net & .org) are like real estate and will have lasting values as investments. Quality brand and dictionary domain names will continue to hold value for the indefinite future. Google loves dictionary based domain names and assigns them nearly unlimited authority, making search engine ranking trivially easy. Buy a single word keyword domain, get guaranteed Google love.

Buy well and you can join the relatively elite crowd of premium domain name holders, and possibly retire early and be a Curmudgeon Emeritus like Mr. O’Conner.

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Enom Promo Codes For Discount Domain Name Registrations

CVOS — Fri, 28 May 2010 05:06:51 +0000

Enom has been called the domain name registrar with fantom coupon codes. There is a field to enter a discount code in their shopping cart, but finding actual working codes is more difficult than keeping an ice cube from melting in Palm Springs.

However, we have found some Enom promo codes to share with you that work for the PDQ reseller domain name system. This system is branded as Registry Rocket and allows you to take full control of all your registrations.

Enom Upgrade Promo Code: IRUP2010

Enom Renewal Promo Code: IRREN2010

These discounts will only work with the Enom Instant Reseller program, and provides a free upgrade of existing PDQ accounts. PDQ is branded as the Registry Rocket system, which provides an instant reseller store front where you can sell domain names and customize the price of all names.

Currently The Registryrocket system allows you to sell the following extensions: .COM, .ORG, .NET, .BIZ , .INFO, .CC, .TV, .WS, .NU, .BZ, .US

To use coupon codes on Enom.com you will need to first become an Enom member where you can receive 50% discounts on all domain name registrations.

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75 Domain Name Research Tools

CVOS — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 23:04:26 +0000

Finding a great domain name is hard, we compiled a list of websites that help you find the perfect domain name. We generally recommend not using hyphens in domain names, instead use different extensions or nonstandard spellings. For example, see sites like flippa, wordze, woothemes, and many other quality websites that have bizzare domain names.

Here is a list of 75 great resources to help you in your quest of finding the perfect domain name for your new project.

Domain Name Generators

Search by Keyword

Type To Find

Brand Name Generator

Search by Availability

Domain Name Forums

Domain Auctions

Other

* Sites require a membership or payment

Did we miss any? Feel free to add your favorite domain name research websites in the comments.

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Beware Of Shady Domain Name Registrations From Asia

CVOS — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 12:29:36 +0000

I just received this email in my inbox, a thinly veiled attempt at sucking money out of me to register .asia domain names. Be watchful of notices to register domains to protect your trademark and intellectual property in International areas. The most common I have seen are Chinese .cn domains and .cm domain names.

If you receive an unsolicited email like this is may be a scam. The best thing to do is contact your web developer, web service provider or domain name registrar to verify the legitimacy of the demands.

Before registering any domain name with an exotic extension, make sure you contact your webmaster or local accredited domain name registrar such as NetworkSolutions, Godaddy, or Enom.com

This is the email I received:

Dear CEO & Principal

We are a domain name registration and dispute organization in Asia, which mainly deal with the global companies’ domain name registration and internet Intellectual property right protection in Asia. Currently, we have a pretty important issue needing to confirm with your company.

On Aug 10, 2009, we received an application formally. One company named “FJS Holdings Ltd” wanted to applied for the internet keyword “Netpaths” and some domain names through our body.

Now we are handling with the registration of these domain names and find that the keyword of these domain names and internet keyword is identical with your company’s. So we have to confirm with you at two points:
1. If your company consign FJS Holdings to register these domain names and internet keyword, we will send application form to them and help them finish the registration at once.
2. If your company have nothing to do with FJS Holdings, they maybe have other purposes to register these domain names and internet keyword.

In order to deal with this issue better, please contact us by email or telephone ASAP.

Best Regards,
Tim Hu
Auditing Department
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Tel: +852-2297-9279
Fax: +852-2297-9209
Email: Tim@eworld.hk
Email: Tim@eworlddnr.hk
Website:

http://www.eworld.hk

Tim

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Value of an Authoritative Premium Domain Name

CVOS — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:36:32 +0000

Google is still using the domain name as a primary ranking factor. With a good domain name, rankings are nearly guaranteed.

Below is an example of a niche retail site, but if you want to rank for “Keyword Keyword” all you need to do is purchase www.KeywordKeyword.com and you will have no problems getting to the first page.

In this example, if you do a search for beach towels several sites show up in the Google SERP’s

http://www.google.com/search?q=beach+towels

The #9 result is a single page redirect site, that doesn’t mention the keyword phrase ANYWHERE on the page!

The site ranks for the fairly competitive keyword phrase “beach towels” while breaking every search engine optimization rule available. With some simple SEO this site could rank #1, and beat out target.com

All they did was spend a few thousand dollars on a premium domain name, and the rankings come with no effort.

Note to all SEO’s and entrepreneurs: invest the extra money on your domain name and you will be duly rewarded, premium domain names will increase in value like real estate.

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How Toys R Us Lost with the Toys.com 5.1 Million Dollar Purchase

CVOS — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:21:24 +0000

Global toy conglomerate TOYS R US have purchased the Toys.com domain for the reported 5.1 million dollars, making it the biggest sale of 2009 so far, as well as one of the ten biggest sales ever reported.

The only problem was that this destroyed the SEO for the existing domain, causing Toys R Us to loose a ranking for the keyword ‘toys”

Now, instead of holding position #1 and #4 they only have one.

Corporate IT simply redirected the new domain name to the
Toys’R'Us home page. Toys.com no longer had its own site so Google delisted
it. They will still receive type-in traffic, but all the extra traffic from the additional Google ranking has disappeared.

Normally I recommend focusing your energy on one website and trying to build a single site into a dominant entity. However, for a large corporation with a limitless website that has the potential to rank for multiples of competitive keywords, using multiple websites can be an effective strategy.

This is the worst however. Toys’R'Us has registered the typo
domain ToyRUs.com (missing the first ‘s’) but has not
forward it to ToysRUS.com. This is a huge blunder, and is causing this mega retailer tons of sales.

Toys R Us needs to contract out their search engine optimization or they will keep loosing ground to amazon.com.

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Failed ME Domain Name Registration Landrush

CVOS — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:42:02 +0000

.FAIL

Something is very fishy with the .me domain name registration system. Individuals who have signed up and paid for .me names are not receiving them. Multiple people have even been approved and charged for the same domain name!

Most of the really good names were registered by Afilias. There are super shady registrations where it appears that Afilias pre-registered all the good domains April 29, 2008. Afilias got a deal on all the premium .me names they wanted.

What is even more shady are the trademark dates. Trademarks were done in the year 1900, signed and sealed the same day. Very interesting. A company that was founded in 2000 received trademarks 100 years before their incorporation, and the Afilias.com trademarks were approved faster than any other trademark in history.

Domain registration for bite.me
registered: 4/29/08
trademarked applied: 1/1/1900
trademarked registered: 1/1/1900

Domain registration for mobile.me
registered: 4/29/08
trademarked applied: 1/1/1900
trademarked registered: 1/1/1900

Here is an available name: Do.me

do.me domain name available

but do.me is not available for registration on enom.com

Gogaddy has the same problems with the .me registration

It seems that the .me registrar wants to use their auction system to sell names themselves at an increased price. Most domain names in the .me auction start at $75 but have gone for a lot more topping out at $3605 for lastminute.me

Boy lots of people have been experiencing problems with the failed .me domain name registrations.

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Godaddy Unethical Domain Name Registrar

CVOS — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 22:31:42 +0000

Godaddy has been accused of bidding against its own customers in their tdnam.com domain name auctions.
Domain name auctions are a huge business, which generate millions of dollars for expired domains.

The 3 large players in the expired domains business

NameJet.com
SnapNames.com
Pool.com

TDNAM is the GoDaddy acronym for The Domain Name AfterMarket, and does not provide the same level of service as the 3 main services.

A GoDaddy Vice President has been caught bidding against customers in their own domain name auctions. The employee Adam Dicker isn’t just any GoDaddy employee; he’s head of the GoDaddy subsidiary that controls the auctions. Dicker won some of the domains he bid for, and pushed up the bid price on auctions he didn’t win.

The conflict of interest is unethical, and possibly illegal according to ICANN domain name auction regulations. However, Godaddy loves controversy and I’m sure this is just part of their marketing plan. How many more links have they gained as a result of their controversial domain marketing plans?

See the news on the Nodaddy forum with comments from disgruntled godaddy customers. Nodaddy provides Godaddy reviews and rates Godaddy services.

Slashdot has a large commentary of the godaddy VP bidding on their company auctions.

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Buying and Selling Domain Names

CVOS — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:37:38 +0000

Fox news does a short story on the domain name aftermarket, and as usual offers marginal entertainment and little information. Not surprisingly this media company tells us that sex sells, specifically sex.com sold for 12 million dollars.

See the video clip of 2 women talking about purchasing valuable domain names, wishing they got into this market 10 years ago. Don’t we all?

My tips on buying domain names:

* Get a .com – these are like real estate, are scarce and will only increase in value long term
* Be prepared to spend money for good names. If your business is named Mega Yachts then be prepared to spend several thousand dollars to get MegaYachts.com
* Do not buy domains for Page Rank. PR is virtually useless on transferred domain names if they are setup on a website with a different theme.

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Godaddy Video Ad Using Decades Old Content

CVOS — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:08:16 +0000

Godaddy has a video advertisement on their domain name aftermarket website that features a script from 1992.

While viewing the video ad, remember this is published in 2008.

Some of the Godaddy transcript

For business, the internet is key
Potential is enormous
Transactions happen in real time
The web is alive 24 hours a day 7 days a week
Personal expression has taken off to, thanks to blogging and social networks (ok this did happen in 2004)
Want to stay in touch with family & friends? The internet is perfect for that too.
Think of the internet as a place where people can come together to share news, photos even video clips! (wow even video!)
The internet is doing more than making us money and bring us closer together (really? im all ears)

Yes, this is true. Its amazing that companies don’t turn their servers off at 5pm when they close their offices.

See the Godaddy video that will make you wonder if the Scottsdale Arizona company has 1992 baked into their mission statement.

This is the godaddy video advertising their knowledge of the internets. Bob parsons has hired an attractive female to lure in viewers with subliminal mind tricks, insulting the viewers intelligence with a format similar to infomercials.

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