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It’s that time of the year again! For people and companies in the US (LLCs for example), estimated taxes are due quarterly. Because the typical September 15 due date falls on a weekend this year, Q3 estimated taxes are due  to be postmarked on Monday, September 17, 2012.

I don’t love writing checks to the US and NY governments, but it sure beats not having to pay taxes!

If you haven’t sent your third quarter estimated taxes in yet, now is the time to do it.

The following is a guest post from Dynadot, a domain registrar that is celebrating its 10 year anniversary with a big sale. The company made a large donation  to help support my fundraising effort for the  Ronald McDonald House. If you could make a donation in any amount, it would be greatly appreciated!

Back in 2002 Dynadot’s founder Todd Han was looking for a domain name and found himself dissatisfied with the control panels of major registrars at the time. So he decided to start his own registrar and on September 3, 2002 Dynadot was officially incorporated.

For the first three years, Todd ran Dynadot from his home, writing the software, keeping the books, and doing customer service. In 2005 he hired his first employee and since then he has built a dynamic team of diverse and quirky people that support Dynadot and its customers everyday.

Flash forward to 2012 and Todd and the entire team here at Dynadot are so excited to be celebrating our 10 year anniversary! If you ask Todd to look back on the last 10 years, the moment that stuck out as one of his happiest was the first order that was Dynadot ever received. According to Todd, he was “so excited [he was] jumping up and down in [his] home office.” The order was only $7.99, but it meant everything to Todd.

That moment is the inspiration behind our anniversary sale. For the entire month of September, we are rolling back our prices to 2002 levels – or $7.99 for new 1 year registrations and transfers for .COM, .NET, & .ORG. We hope you will celebrate with us by taking advantage of our special pricing before it expires at the end of the month, 9/30/12 23:59 PDT.

Now check out our interview with Todd Han about the past 10 years in the industry and what he sees coming in the next 10 years.

What registration trends have you seen in the past 10 years?

Sometimes running a business in the domain industry feels like riding a roller coaster. There have been booms and busts. Companies have come and gone. Entire business models have appeared then disappeared. Through the last 10 years, we have focused on our core business of domain name registration. We have emerged from the turmoil with a loyal customer base and excellent financials. Whatever challenges the future brings, we are well positioned to meet them.

What do you predict for the next 10 years?

Domain names will increase in importance, displacing phone numbers, mailing addresses, and Facebook handles as the dominant addressing scheme. Before deciding on a name for their child, new parents will check to see if the matching domain name is available. The aftermarket will continue to grow as businesses realize that a good domain name is the best advertising investment they can make.

What do you think about the new proposed gTLDs?

I suspect most of the new gTLDs will struggle. Establishing a new TLD in the public consciousness takes huge amounts of money and time. Running out of good names in .COM does not really lead to spillover into other TLDs. It leads to increased aftermarket activity and more creative naming inside .COM. That said I would love to see a new gTLD give .COM some competition. And of course we will offer all the new gTLDs on our website.

If you want to see more from our interview with Todd, visit Dynadot’s blog and don’t forget to get your .COM, .NET, or .ORG domain for our special anniversary sale price while you’re there!

Here is the link to Dynadot’s anniversary blog post.

Without looking at the Whois (unless you’ve already done that) guess who owns the EmptyChair.com domain name.

If you guessed Mike Berkens, you’d be right. If you guessed that he was watching Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican Convention and immediately jumped on to his computer to hand register it, you’d be wrong. Mike’s company has owned EmptyChair.com since at least 2005, according to the Whois history tool.

It seems that the “empty chair” phrase is catching on and has become a hot trend. Apparently, some people put out empty chairs on their lawns yesterday as a sign of frustration at the jobless rate. A union leader apparently threw an empty chair after pretending to speak to Clint Eastwood in the chair.

In any case, if you want to purchase EmptyChair.com, you are in luck. According to the landing page, which does not have any PPC links on it, you can now buy the domain name.

“The hottest political term coming out of the Republican National Convention is now available for immediate purchase!

This domain is priced at $50,000.“

It’s serendipitous when you own the domain name of a hot trend. Hope Mike makes a nice sale.

Let’s say you have a great idea for a website, and now you need to buy a domain name. Just how do you go about doing that? Let’s take a look at what you need to know when you want to buy a domain name.

Where to buy domain names:

Domain names are sold by companies called domain registrars. These are companies that are licensed by ICANN, the governing body that regulates each top-level domain (TLD). You may have seen advertising for domain registrar companies such as

I hope you’re reading this from somewhere cool because it has been crazy hot for the last few days. I try to stay in the air conditioning as much as possible, and when I spend time outdoors on the weekend, it can be brutal when the temps go above 95. Anyway, on to some Sunday updates and tips.

• I was a bidder in a NameJet auction for a brandable domain name that sold for over $3,000, and it had five bidders with $1,000+ bids.  I performed a search on the    USPTO  website to make sure it was usable should I win the auction, and I saw one live trademark for the exact term that covered how the domain name would logically be used. If you buy brandable names, you should always check the USPTO first.

• There are hundreds of dog walking services that advertise on DogWalker.com. Each listing has a link to its own website, and for the first time, there is an advertiser that uses a .CO domain name. Interestingly, the .CO is their brand and not a descriptive term. It’s interesting because they could have used a .net or .org (or something else) but chose the .CO instead. The matching .com is owned by a veterinarian in a different area.

• With the above update in mind, it would be interesting if some of the new gTLD registries partnered with directories and organizations to offer discounts to companies using the TLD. For instance, it would be neat if .Dog worked out a deal with DogWalker.com so that dog walking services that had a .Dog domain name could get a $10 discount on listings and the .Dog Registry would pay me a bounty for every discount given.

• It was great to read about the two RDNH decisions reported by Mike this week. It’s too bad a RDNH finding isn’t anything more than a slap on the wrist since the domain owner needs to pay an attorney thousands of dollars to defend a name that shouldn’t have had a UDRP filed against it in the first place.

• I think the next best thing is the name and shame approach from Andrew in his “Fire your UDRP lawyer” posts. Perhaps some egg on the face will create some buzz to prevent this. I think Rick mastered that approach with his SaveMe.com UDRP reports.

• I am beginning to have an affinity for lease deals. It can be a solid way of generating revenue with your domain names, and instead of getting one lump sum, you’ll get consistent revenue throughout the year. Further, instead of making the leasee pay for the name all up front (which can be difficult for an expensive name) a lease can be a nice alternative. Do any companies in the domain space offer lease administration services?

I will be changing hosting providers within the next 12 hours. I apologize in advance if any comments you make are missing between now and the hosting change. I don’t anticipate that there will be any issues, but I want to give you a head’s up in advance.

Thanks for understanding!