Ok, that is my last rant! Tucows… Come On!

Ahhhh. I hate doing these posts. I really want to write positive things, I really do and have tried. When I discovered expiring Tucows domains were heading to Afternic, I showed joy and wrote of my happiness here!

Why was I happy? I was hoping, just hoping since the domains would be getting a lot more attention that Tucows would stop "cherry picking" expiring domains.

IMO Tucows domain portfolio should be built the very same way mine is. whether I want to purchase an expired/expring domain I put my hard earned money on the line and purchase it in a way that I consider Legal. Bidding against other’s publicly risking real money that feeds our families as an investment.

Now whether your a publicly traded company and offer domain registrartions like Tucows, and a customers domain expires, Tucows allow you as a customer plenty of duration to renew the domain. During that expiring domain process (about 20 days into expired status) that domain get’s listed in an expired auction. Well, I should say MOST expiring domains are offered Publicly. The ones that do not prepare it to auction are either renewed by the old owner or Tucows just keeps the domain and pay’s the Registry Fee and ICANN fee and that’s it.

Ken Schafer says (Vice President, Marketing and Product Management at Tucows)~ " We do review expiring names and we move a small percentage to our Domain Portfolio at the end of the 40 day Grace Period. The majority of names will now go to the Afternic auction. Source is from Tucows blog and the comment is #2.

Bill Sweetman has confirmed that here on that blog as well in the past that Tucows keeps some expiring domains for it’s portfolio, but Ken cleared it up that they will keep doing it today!

So to shorten that up, As Ken says, The Majority of names will now go to the Afternic auction…. In my eyes and as an investor, that mean and again is in my opinion… We take all the good stuff and leave the shit for the rest of you! So have fun buying all the crap domains we didn’t want…… Suckers!

So I see no reason for me or any other investor to weed throught the crap that Tucows will be sending Afternic now, since it’s already picked through before it even hits auction! whether you think that is wrong that Tucows is allowed (and does) to keep expired domain names and does not allow the general public a Chance at purchasing the domain in a public auction to not feed them with money  for Registration, buying expired domains, etc. (This is your choice. I am not telling you that you have to do this).

I will personally put up $200 and pay for 1 domain (per entity)  to be transfered out of tucows to your registrar of choice. I will pay you via mass pay ($10 Max) paypal. You will need to show proof of the transfer out starting with todays term (June 25, 2008) . Once the domain has finish transfering (approx 5 days) contact me via the contact page here. I will verify with any info you supply and whois history. I will create a page here on the blog of the domains transfered out to keep track of the $200. Please include your paypal mail address when you supply your proof of transfer.

[Source] admin

I’m just saying….. Something you might not know about Afternic DLS

I will start that out by saying Justin Allen (Founder of NameBio.com) who I work with daily always tells me, "Jamie, You look into things to deep and to much" . Well as I tell him, I look into things for reasons and I have proven things to him many times that my digging pays off.

Okay, okay.. Now that is solely in my opinion and you can look at that anyway you want. I can say, the stats I have are facts and stated to the best of my knowledge unless stated.

Afternic.com is a great service and I have many of my domains listed with them. They offer many options for the domain seller and much more. As Afternic states it for sellers who list domains with them:

• Largest number of customers
• Promoted on Afternic, BuyDomains, and many partners
• Our sales team works for you
• Toll-free phone number on parked domains and listing pages
• Automated bid-and-offer system for online sales on Afternic
• Sales and technical help available
• 20% Sales Fee ($120 min.)

• Promoted on Afternic and choose partners
• Technical help available
• Automated bid-and-offer system for online sales on Afternic
• 10% Sales Fee ($60 min.)

So it is stated on Afternic.com that by 2 Million Premium domain names are for sale. What many citizens have said in the past that BuyDomains.com which is part of Afternic, owns in the range of 850,000 domain names and these are pretty much whether not all are listed on Afternic (these are reported numbers, but I think are pretty close) . So that leaves 1,150,000 domains listed by "Members" or domain sellers on Afternic.

42.5% of domains listed on Afternic are owned by them self, which I see fair. 57.5% are listed by members. Basically, it’s pretty equal right. Well….

This week, I took 88 reported domain sales that were reported on DnJournal.com for AfternicDLS. The sales ranged from $2K-$4K and the only reason I picked these domains, considering they were all in a chart and were easy to read. So what did I find out by using DomainTools.com whois history? BuyDomains/Afternic OWNED 85 of the 88 reported domains sold. That is 96.5% . www.dotweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/Afternicdlssales88.xls Here is the excel sheet of the domains and who owned what that you can download yourself.

Now the only reason that made me even think of that, was considering of one reported sale! The reported sale was KidsCard.com for $2,500. Well, I happen to own KidsCards.com (better domain imo) and I have it listed with Afternic. I have it listed with taking offers at $750. Would I sell it at $750, who knows, you would have to prepare an offer… Well, in that case I never got an offer for any amount.

Well, the buyer could of had their eye on that one specific domain. They could of also called or emailed Afternic to see what was for sale with positive keywords, like Kid + Card, which the broker should of listed KidsCard.com and KidsCards.com etc. They could of did a search on the site, but would of likely seen Both domains.

In that case, I do not think the buyer was looking for that specific domain, since it appears the domain is now listed For Sale on Sedo for $3,200 and the buyers site, states "we have acquired many World Wide Web URLs, and currently entertain offers to purchase and lease these pieces of property." (ShadowSoft.com). So whether you were going to build the investment in a domain, one would think they would buy (At least TRY) to get the best domain for the money?

This just makes me think…… Are Afternic employee’s trained to offer the Companies domains Before a customer listed domain? You can decide or think what you think, but you know what I am thinking..

When 96.5% of your reported sales (ones I looked at) are your own domains and member domains outrank domains listed 57.5% to 42.5%, I would think the sales percentage would be a little closer thereupon 96.5% to 3.5%. Is it quality of domains? I don’t think so. Are assured domains given more attention thereupon others? I do not know the reply, but I do have nice domains listed on Afternic and I very rarely get offers on any of the domains unless I send the interested party to it.

I personally think that Afternic is offering their own domains More and Before member listed domains to it’s customers when a rep is contacted. A personal sale is better thereupon 10% or 20% anyday but it’s nice to fall back on that 10-20% when an interested party likes that domain better.

So as a seller on AfternicDLS, your domain names very well could be at a huge disadvantage by looking at these numbers!

[Source] admin

MMST.com, WeddingItems.com & GDH.org end today

3 more domains that I have listed on SnapNames.com end today! All 3 domains I think are Great and ones I would consider well worth the investment! All the domains are listed with No Reserve, so they will sell to the highest bidder and all the domains started at only $99. Here are the current bids and direct urls to the auction page.

MMST.com $405.00 on 16 bids

WeddingItems.com $679.00 on 6 bids

GDH.org $486.00 on 8 bids

The above auctions end at 2:15 Central day today!

I have plus listed 3 more domains yesterday, so again, the earlier the bid is placed the cheaper is it to get in!

Flopped.net

UZUF.com Nice repeating vowels on this VCVC .com

QZV.org A 3 letter .org starting at only $99 with No Reserve!!

More info on the For Sale page here on DotWeekly.com additionally.

[Source] admin

Choosing domain name for Affiliate Marketing Success

It is fundamental that we lay a good foundation. that applies to affiliate marketing too. It always helps to start out your affiliate marketing efforts on the right foot. You have probably spent some moment studying precisely what you’re going to do whenever you start to work on the Web. You browse through all of the marketing forums, look through the affiliate networks and thereupon chose some decent programs. You probably even have an concept of what you’re going to do to promote it. All of that is good but what about choosing a domain name?

[Source] Zack Lim

Choosing domain name for Affiliate Marketing Success

It is fundamental that we lay a good foundation. that applies to affiliate marketing too. It always helps to start out your affiliate marketing efforts on the right foot. You have probably spent some moment studying precisely what you’re going to do whenever you start to work on the Net. You browse through all of the marketing forums, look through the affiliate networks and soon after chose some decent programs. You probably even have an concept of what you’re going to do to promote it. All of that is good but what about choosing a domain name?

[Source] Zack Lim

Aggregate blog and news pulling

If you own a blog or develop sites, you know what Aggregate is. The easiest way to look at it is, one site owner taps your feed to your blog and via settings decides what feed(s) or postings to pull from your site and post on theirs. (domaining.com is a well know site that use that.)

Then your hard work get’s zapped onto their site instantly with little to no work involved. Is that good or poor?

It depends on the orginal poster really. For me, I could care less that somebody is grabbing my material that I write, as towering as the site is "legal" and helps citizens and urls back to me. The reason I spend my instance writing on my blog is for folks to read and learn etc. I do not only want my postings on their site so they build money….

Google likes different substance and that’s what I do. 99.8% of things I write, I come up with. So is my substance different when it get’s to the other site? No.

The things that I do see crucial, is Getting Linked Back, so public can visit the original posting (your site) and give proper credit when credit is due. Not just a: posted by admin. I want to see, From DotWeekly.com or posted by Jamie Zoch of DotWeekly.com etc.

I contacted DotEasyDomains.com who aggregates from DotWeekly and nicely asked that he add: Source, DotWeekly.com and link back. When I contacted him, it was clear he was doing that with Many sites and asked "which site". So now I block or delete most pingbacks since it was never fixed and I have to manually edit each pingback and not another reply back from the owner!

Now the site owner can set the aggregater to grab your feed, but additionally not to pingback. That part ticks me off! Your not linked back and the parts of the story they post on their site can be taken out of context or what ever, plus as the original poster you can not track that back. I additionally use the cipher "<!–more–>" which puts a Read More and cuts the story off, which will normally screw up the aggregater grabber and only grab the posting To that cipher.

If you aggregate, be certain to ask the site owner FIRST before you do it. Secondly, link back to the original story and give proper credit.

[Source] admin

Movies.com~ “purchase price was minimal” ???

As it was reported that AM, Movies.com was purchased from Disney by Fandango which is owned by Comcast. I was reading the story on Yahoo! and was pretty shocked to read Comcast say the "purchase price was minimal" for Movies.com . WHAT??? possibly their "minimal" is WAY different soon after my thinking…

The story plus stated "Fandango said it had 6.3 million monthly different visitors to its Web site in May compared with 1.9 million for Movies.com."

Any domain that is getting 1.9 MILLION UNIQUES per month is going to cost a pretty penny! I know Comcast has a boat load of money, but I’m certain that domain sale could very well rank near the top of all moment domain sales IMO.

Since the selling price was not disclosed, I can not say Disney got the poor end of the deal, but to take in Comcast say the purchase price was minimal, Disney (The Movie Maker) got the short end of the deal. Why list your "movies" under http://home.disney.go.com/movies/ ? Disney already uses Go.com for it’s main site and uses subdomains for all of it’s linking from what I can see, so possibly that’s why they sold?

Also to note: The Montley Fool reports that Fandango did not migrate Movies.com current members into Fandango’s interface, so all Movies.com users will need to sign up with Fandango.

[Source] admin

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