I just received an email from Rick Latona announcing that he is raising money for his climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro in March. The money he and his group are raising will be donated to The Water School to support simple, safe, strategic, and sustainable clean water solutions to the developing world. Through their programs, TWS provides clean drinkable water using extremely inexpensive and locally available materials.

There is a fairly large group of people from the domain community who will be making the trip, and the complete list can be found on the Kili2010 website. Rick’s fundraising goal is $19,340, which amounts to $1.00 per foot that he and his group will be climbing.

You can make a donation directly on Rick’s pledge page or you can donate to one of the other climbers. My company just made a pledge to help Rick achieve his goal, and I hope you will think about doing the same.

I hope you are either celebrating Christmas with your families and friends or enjoying a nice day off today. As the year winds down, I want to say thank you to a the readers who visit my blog, and especially those who contribute to it with comments and feedback. The dialog is what keeps me actively blogging to share and learn.

I would also like to give a special thank you to the advertisers who helped support my blog this past year. I appreciate their business, and I sincerely thank them for advertising on my blog. Here’s to a successful 2010.

National A-1 Advertising – NA-1 owns some of the best possible domain names, and they are always willing to pay for the great generic domain names.

Rick Latona – Rick was one of the most active members of the domain industry in 2009. His company will be running the TRAFFIC shows and auctions all over the world in 2010. Also a great big THANK YOU for the wine from Vino.com!

LuxuryNames.com – The company introduced a high end domain sales newsletter this year and held a successful domain auction. I am looking forward to seeing what they do in 2010.

Escrow.com – I almost exclusively use Escrow.com for my domain sales and purchases that require an escrow service. I’ve had great luck working with them and especially like their customer service.

WhyPark.com – I’ve been doing quite a bit of testing with my domain names that are targeted but don’t get a lot of type in traffic. I’ve seen an increase in traffic to many of these names, and I am looking forward to sharing results in the new year.

Domain Capital – If you are in need of financing for your high value domain names, these are the guys to see. They are trustworthy and fair, which are the most important things you need to know.

DomainStryker.com – Save time finding expiring and dropping domain names on Snapnames, Namejet, and Godaddy, with their recently introduced service.

NameDrive – They’ve brokered close to $16 million in domain names since 2006! They are looking to help sell revenue generating domain names.

MiniSites.com – This company burst onto the scene in 2009, and they’ve made some great looking mini-sites for quite a large number of clients.

Domainvestors.tv – Morgan Linton has been all over the place this past year. He recently started a domain-specific television show and has actively been building his company, while teaching about his business.

DomainTools – I use Domaintools’ Whois lookup several times a day, and I use their other tools very frequently as well. The industry wouldn’t be the same without them.

Traffic Vault – Andrew is a SEO and marketing expert who was featured in Long Island Business news this year. He has given me quite a bit of SEO and marketing advice, which has been helpful to my sites.

Inforum.in – This is the place you go to learn and discuss business if you are a .IN ccTLD investor. There’s a lot to learn in this great domain forum.

NoParking.com – If you are tired of parking your domain names, get in touch with these guys whose personalized touch can help your domain names make money.

Domaining.com – Francois isn’t an advertiser on my blog, but he is a big supporter of my company and the entire domain industry. His site has given many people added exposure, and he is always doing what he can to balance domain investors’ needs with those of the bloggers – despite not speaking English as his first language.

Special Thanks:

I also want to thank the following companies and people for their support with my blog this year:

Kevin Leto – Big Ticket Domains

Moniker – Bary Meyerson, Monte Cahn, and Victor Pitts

Mike McAlister – Six One Five Design

Michael Sumner – DN Media

Snapnames – Jonathan Stanfill, Theresa Armington, Michele Van Tilborg

Oversee.net

Mike St. John

NameBee.com

Photo Credit:   http://www.flickr.com/photos/laurenmanning/ / CC BY 2.0

Tax time is coming! The Domain Tax Guide is a good resource for people who need some tax advice related to domain investments. I bought a guide and sent it to my accountant since he hadn’t worked with a company like mine before. This helped him determine my taxes and learn about how to treat domain sales, domain acquisitions, inventory, and other aspects of domain investing.

Order the Domain Tax Guide Now!

I don’t spend a lot of time reading other domain blogs, but when I do, I generally use Domaining.com because I’ve pre-filtered my preferred feeds already and blocked the websites I don’t read. Instead of having to read through all of the domain-related headlines, I can easily find the most interesting articles from the domain investors I trust and respect, since just about everyone else is blocked.

A couple people have asked about blocking/adding feeds and it’s simple to do. Just sign up for an account and visit the edit feeds page. You can check off the websites that you want to see and the others will be blocked. Now you don’t have to read through all the headlines to find the ones that are of the greatest interest to you. In addition, you can also add non-domain feeds. I’ve added a few like TechCrunch.

Also, I know that some people don’t want to get an email every morning, so you can easily opt out. I actually like the email newsletter because I can see the previous day’s popular headlines that I may not have read.

With so many projects going on, it’s good to be able to cut through the BS and get the news I need when I want it.

I took a gamble on a pair of newly registered domain names today. I was watching the news and heard a report about a drop-side crib recall happening for 2.1 million Stork Craft cribs. I remember writing an article about the lawyer who registered ChineseDrywall.com, and the website now ranks very highly on Google for the exact term, and it even has sitelinks, making it more likely that searchers will click.

Instead of focusing on trademark type names like StorkCraftLawsuit.com, StorkCraftRecall.com and other names that could pose potential legal trouble, I opted to register a couple of generic domain names. While there hasn’t been much search volume for “drop side cribs,” I am sure that will change with the recall.

In light of this, I registered DropSideCribs.com and DropSideCrib.com. I don’t know if a law firm will want the names, but I think they could rank very well for this phrase, which will be highly searched in the coming days.