Last week, I asked for nominations for the best domain forum moderator. I received a number of nominations, and the moderators are listed in the poll below. The person who receives the most votes by Thursday, July 19 at 5pm EDT will receive $200 from me (check or Paypal).

The five nominees are:

I was curious to see what the most expensive men’s watch listed for sale on Ebay, so I searched for “watch” and had the results listed by highest price first. I was surprised to see that the highest priced auction for the “watch” keyword was actually a domain name.

I wanted to see what other keywords had domain names as the highest result, so I checked out a bunch of keywords. Sort of surprisingly (and no wonder people don’t like domain investors), there were a lot of domain names listed as the highest price auction for a variety of keywords.

Here are a bunch of keywords I searched where a domain name was the highest priced item:

I want to share a neat infographic created by Mike Mann’s Domain Market. The infographic contains a brief history of domain names, and it includes information about registrations, usage around the world, and significant domain sales. It’s a pretty cool infographic.

There have been a number of domain industry blogs that have come onto the scene and disappeared shortly there after. I seem them one day on Domaining.com, and a few months later, the blog is nowhere to be found. Writing a blog regularly isn’t all that easy, so who can blame people when the pack it in and decide not to write any longer.

Jamie Zoch wrote the DotWeekly blog for quite a while. He had a unique insight, and you could regularly count on Jamie to write something interesting or thought provoking. He was always looking into registration patterns and things he found to be interesting, and quite often, I found those things interesting, too.

It seemed like he wrote his blog because he enjoyed it rather than as a means to earn income. Of course, when you’re spending a great deal of time blogging, you should have something to show for it, especially if it comes at the expense of spending time with family or working on other projects.

In any case, I miss reading Jamie’s insights, and I hope he returns to blogging.

I’m not very interested in politics, but I do watch and read the news daily. Lately, there has been quite a bit of news regarding United States Attorney General Eric Holder. There was apparently a “Fire Eric Holder” protest held that was reportedly shut down. In any case, it probably hasn’t been a good few weeks for Mr. Holder.

In May of 2011, it was reported that the domain name FireHolder.com was sold for $2,595. Domain portfolio owner Huge Domains appears to have been the seller. I am not sure who bought the name, but at one point there was a site dedicated to the “National Campaign to Fire Attorney General Eric Holder” according to the screenshot from February 2012. The logo for the National Rife Association of America appears on the bottom of the screenshot.

For some reason, the site appears to be abandoned, as it’s now a simple Network Solutions under construction page. It seems strange that an entity would pay almost $3,000 for a domain name, use it for a short period of time, and when it seems most opportune to have a website operational, it’s not being used.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

As much as I enjoy working within the domain industry, there are still plenty of things that annoy me on a daily basis. I want to share my top ten list of things in the domain industry that I find annoying.

There are probably plenty of others that I missed, so feel free to post a comment with some of the things that annoy you. These are in random order.

1. Scammy emails from companies offering “brand protection” if I just buy my keyword domain name in 10 ccTLDs at their registrar I’ve never heard about.

2. Domain appraisal scam emails that feign interest in a domain name I own, but are really trying to get me to buy a worthless appraisal from them for my domain name.

3. Mass inquiry emails sent to all domain owners who own a certain type of domain name (like LLL.com or geodomain names). I’ve never seen a remotely fair offer come from one of these (no, 3 letter .com names haven’t sold for $1,000 for many years).

4.Renewal letters sent to me in the mail trying to get me to agree to transfer my names for ridiculously high prices.

5. Non-buyer replies to a domain sales thread on a forum that triggers an email to me.

6. Seeing Domaining.com filled with the same news story written by five people. Sometimes it can’t be avoided when bloggers get the same exciting press release at the same time.

7. Getting information about an “exclusive” story, only to see it on four other blogs within an hour.

8. Non-paying bidders and offers that fall through while the aftermarket venue can’t or doesn’t help.

9.  People who post comments on blogs and on forums whose views of the domain industry are bearish. I don’t understand why someone would spend hours a week on a business they think is dying or dead. There are plenty of people who only work in this space and live extravagantly.

10. Reading forum posts or blog articles that are interesting, but commenters feel the need to take the discussion way off track.