There have been a number of comments posted on my blog where the commenter has expressed a view that either disputes something I said or opposes my viewpoint.   I want to say thank you to everyone who takes the time to express their opinions here even when they are 180 degrees from what I post.

I have been a domain investor for a few years and recently moved to domain development. As they say, I know enough about a lot of things to be dangerous 🙂 but I still don’t consider myself an expert in many areas. There are many ways to be successful online, and a lot of people have different experiences than mine. Sharing them is what makes my blog more interesting, and I appreciate all comments.

Unless a comment gets caught by my Askimet spam filter or is abusive to me or someone else, I will approve it. I don’t censor my blog comments because I don’t think it’s right to do that and it would make for an uninteresting one-way discussion if I only posted comments that were in agreement with what I wrote. Whether we agree or disagree, I like to think that I’d still go out for a coffee or meal with just about everyone who posts here. I’ve learned a lot from you, and I hope you’ve also learned a lot from others who have posted comments here.

If you write a comment and it doesn’t show up, it’s more than likely that it ended up getting blocked by Askimet, so just drop me a note to let me know. It also might be that I am busy on another project or my Blackberry doesn’t have reception. I get hundreds of spam comments a day, and some do get filtered in error. If you wrote something rude or abusive, I probably won’t post it because that’s not constructive.

As many people know, I went to grad school for direct marketing (NYU), and I enjoy a great infomercial more than most. Ron Popeil and Billy Mays were people I looked up to in graduate school, and I think Vince Shlomi is over the top but a good sales guy. I want to share a video I just saw, which is a re-mix of Shlomi’s Slap Chop infomercial.

This remix, dubbed “Rap Chop,” was created by DJ Steve Porter. I think you’re going to have a laugh. Rumor has it that the remix is going on the air tonight as a real television commercial… nice!

Big congratulations go out to domainer Adam Strong and his wife Angie on the birth of their second son, Grant Nathaniel Strong. Grant is the second-born son of Adam and Angie and the new brother of Blake.   I am happy to hear the great news and wish the Strong family all the best!

I have two domaining pet peeves. Actually, I probably have a bunch more, but there are two that I see more often than others.

I get annoyed when I see people trying to sell domain names for exorbitant prices simply because they are similar to a domain name that sold for big bucks. Just because Rick sold Candy.com for $3 million doesn’t mean that the domain name SugaryCandies.net is worth anything. It’s especially silly to see on a domain forum because it either means the seller doesn’t know much about domain names or thinks at least one other person is dumb enough to buy it at that price. 🙂

There are great names that are “similar” to Candy.com, such as Sweets.com, Chocolates.com, or even HardCandies.com, but those are great because they are well searched keywords. Just because a name may be similar in appearance doesn’t mean its worth anything close to the original domain that sold – or worth anything at all for that matter. The key to domain value is that it means something and can/should be used commercially.

My other pet peeve is when I see someone referencing Google results without quotes – or part of a Google search when the quoted term makes no sense. In the first case, Google returns every page that has those words on them, but not necessarily in that order. For example, wicked cool bank returns 106,000 results, but the quoted term yields just 2 results.

In the second case, it references part of a term but not the entire term. For example, quoting “York Stock Exchange” and its 6,190,000 results is stupid because people would generally search for “New York Stock Exchange” or “Stock Exchange” rather than “York Stock Exchange.” In my opinion, a name like YorkStockExchange.com, despite its 6m+ results in Google for the keyword, is worth nothing.

What are your pet peeves – (other than domain blogs where the writer complains about pet peeves!)?

BTW – I am away right now, so comments will be moderated when I get an opportunity.