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Have a Great Business Idea and Need to Raise Funding?

One of the things I’ve noticed about domain investors is that they aren’t short on ideas for businesses on their domain names. People seem to buy domain names with a specific idea in mind for them, although many either lack the funding to build out the idea, the drive to build it, or they lack the experience to move forward with their project.

CNNMoney.com has a neat article about 6 startups (which I had never heard of), and the article discusses where the founders came up with the funding to bring their idea to fruition. There are some neat ideas on where to turn if your business concept needs some start-up capital. The CNNMoney.com article covers:

  • AirBnB
  • Makerbeam
  • Boutique Larrieux
  • Everlater
  • Measy.com
  • The Extraordinaries

If you happen to be someone with a great idea that just needs some capital to make it happen, hit me up. I am interested to learn about your idea and may be able to help with funding – or may be able to put you in touch with someone else who can help.

IDN Domain Registration Contest Ends Tomorrow at 9am

The IDN domain name registration contest sponsored by IDN Tools and ElliotsBlog.com will end tomorrow, Thursday, March 25th promptly at 9am EST. All entries must be posted in the comment section of the blog by then, or they will not count.

The newly registered domain name with the highest footprint will win $150. The second place winner will receive $100, and the third place winner will receive $50. Full contest details can be found on the contest article page.

There have been a number of submissions for the contest, and I believe a number of submissions will be made in the closing hours of the contest. Don’t wait until the last moment, as I can not be responsible for slow server time, disconnects, or other site errors that could cause issues with last minute submissions! If you do suspect your post is being spam filtered, email me : DomainNames at gmail.

Good luck to all!!

IDN Domain Contest

Advice to Boston Globe Regarding Boston.com Domain Registration

I sent an email to several officials with the Boston Globe today, as I am considering the sale of a number of Massachusetts city .com domain names. One of the contacts I emailed is a Vice President at the company, and his email address is listed as the Whois contact. For some reason, this particular email address bounced, and the email was returned to me as undeliverable.

At the moment, Boston.com isn’t set to expire until June of 2012. I would imagine they have the name set to auto-renew with a credit card on file, but that isn’t always failproof. One problem they may have as the date gets closer is that as of 2004, the domain name was still to expire in 2012, meaning that they haven’t had to renew Boston.com for several years.

When June of 2012 comes around, the domain registrar will likely automatically email the Whois contact reminder notices to renew the domain name, and those could possibly bounce. In addition, if the credit card on file has since expired, they may not have a payment method on file to pay for the domain name – and they possibly wouldn’t even receive a notice until it’s too late.

Now, it’s unlikely this will happen, but it’s something the management at the Boston Globe (and maybe its New York Times parent company) should look into before it’s too late.

Oh… and if anyone from the Boston Globe happens to read this, I would consider selling Hingham.com, Harwich.com, Abington.com, Norwell.com, Mashpee.com, WestNewbury.com, and Topsfield.com.   I’d also love to chat about doing something with Lowell.com and Newburyport.com.

Update on My Mini Site Revenue and Traffic Performance

I was going through some of my mini site numbers today, and as I’ve done occasionally in the past, I figured I would give you an update on their performance. Prior to building these sites, none of the domain names had much traffic (under 1 visitor per day average), and a few of the domain names were hand registered by me.

These are all domain names I have wanted to sell, and if they weren’t used for mini sites, they would have continued to receive no traffic and virtually no revenue. Please keep in mind that on the sites I didn’t purchase, I did spend my personal time on them, and those costs obviously aren’t reflected in the overall cost.

Ultimately, as you can see, some of the mini sites did better than others and some look better than others.   When the domain names do sell, all of them are indexed in Google, which may not have happened had I parked them. Also, keep in mind that although the numbers are from March of 2009 through today, many of these sites haven’t been up for a full year.

TobagoVacations.com – Purchase Price < $800 on Snapnames

  • Page impressions Since June: 7,901
  • Clicks: 701
  • Revenue: $201.11
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: I used my developer’s template at a cost of $15.00

HockeyGoalieHelmet.com & BullRidingHelmet.com- Purchase Price < $8.00/each hand registrations

  • Page impressions Since April: 5,261
  • Clicks: 407
  • Revenue: $113.77
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: I used a free css template at a cost of under $5.00 for photos
  • I used the same Adsense channel so I can’t break them out

ChainCatshark.com- Purchase Price < $8.00 hand registration

  • Page impressions in last year: 3,506
  • Clicks: 27
  • Revenue: $3.74
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: I used a free css template at a cost of $0
  • This was my first mini site, and it was more for the learning experience

LynnAttorney.com- Purchase Price < $100.00 on Snapnames

  • Page impressions in last year: 289
  • Clicks: 5
  • Revenue: $3.83
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: I used a free css template at a cost of $0

CabCompanies.com- Purchase Price < $100.00 on Snapnames

  • Page impressions since August: 4,933
  • Clicks: 81
  • Revenue: $47.90
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: BigTicketDomains for less than $300

DubrovnikVacations.com and JerusalemVacations.com, – Purchase Price: private

  • Page impressions Since September: 4,186
  • Clicks: 98
  • Revenue: $59.00
  • Monetization: Adsense
  • Mini Site Built by: WannaDevelop for $99/each

UniqueInk.com – Purchase Price < $1,000

  • Page impressions since May: 10,502
  • Clicks: 511
  • Revenue: $39.60
  • Monetization: Adsense & Affiliate
  • Mini Site Built by: I used my developer’s template at a cost of $25.00
  • This domain name has been sold

Double Check Your Spelling When Bidding on Domain Auctions

This should go without saying, but it’s always important to double check your spelling on drop auctions. I am a bidder in the CognitiveBehavorialTherapy.com auction on Namejet, which ends this afternoon.There are 38 bidders in this auction that has 47 bids.

According to Wikipedia, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (commonly referred to as CBT) “is a psychotherapeutic approach that aims to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure.” I am familiar with the term because my wife is studying this as she earns her Psy.D in Clinical Psychology (she’s in her 4th year of 5 years).

While thinking about the value of the domain name, I copied and pasted it into Google, and the first result was Google’s question, “Did you mean: “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy”‘? Of course, that’s what I meant, but it also means that the domain name is a typo. Sometimes typos can be good, but since this is such a long domain name as is, a typo like this is probably not worth a whole lot.

Had I not done the Google search and simply relied on the mentality of crowds (there are 38 bidders, so it must be good), I would have probably bid much more for it without consideration for the actual spelling. As I started this blog post, you should always check the spelling of a domain name before bidding to save on what could be an expensive mistake.

New Report: Domain Name Dispute Stats Reveal Concern Over Panelist Appointment

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The following is a guest post written by Zak Muscovitch, a noted Canadian attorney who has practiced domain name law for ten years. The Muscovitch Law Firm is located in Toronto, Canada.

The WIPO and NAF perform an important service to the trademark and domain name communities. Of course, as a domain name lawyer, I generally sympathize more with the domain name owner’s than with trademark claimants and am often critical of various UDRP decisions. Having represented domain name owners before the WIPO and NAF for over ten years, I have become acutely aware of deficiencies of the ICANN-mandated process. Chief amongst these is the single-panelist selection process.

Most UDRP’s are handled by a single panelist. Cases are not decided by three-person panels unless one of the parties pays an additional fee. When this happens, which is relatively infrequently, it is usually the Respondent domain name owner that requests and pays for the three-person panel.

Three-person panels are viewed as generally reaching a more balanced and fair decision. This is likely so because in three-person panel situations, each party gets to nominate panelists to serve on the panel. The parties are therefore able to include panelists that they feel have a fair-minded track record based upon previous decisions that they have made.

In the case of single-person panels however, the panelist is appointed solely by the Dispute Resolution Provider (chiefly the NAF and WIPO). Panelist selection is hugely important, as panelists have very differing views on domain name law and the UDRP. For example, some have recently adopted a radical re-interpretation of the UDRP dubbed the “Unified Concept” which purports to find bad faith registration retroactively. Others have a dramatically different view and uphold the traditional approach that requires UDRP complainants to prove bad faith registration at the outset of the disputed registration. Moreover, some panelists have a history of panel decisions that are widely criticised as being unsupportable and clearly wrong, even sometimes being severely chastised by appeals courts.

Accordingly, the personality and approach of individual panelists is of paramount importance. That is why I and other domain name lawyers, and even panelists, have been concerned about the process employed by Dispute Resolution Providers such as the NAF and WIPO, in unilaterally selecting the person to hear single-panelist cases. There is no express provision that the appointment must be random however many observers and practitioners expect and understand that the process is random, or at least believe it ought to be random.

The NAF has about 141 Panelists on its roster. After examining case-related data obtained directly from the National Arbitration Forum’s own web site, it was determined that certain panelists were appointed to hear a surprisingly large number of cases. The concentration of panel appointments was apparent after the data showed that, for example, that a particular panelist presided in approximately 966 cases, the vast majority of which were single-panel cases wherein she was appointed by the NAF and not nominated by any party to the arbitration. This represents nearly 10% of the nearly 10,000 such domain name dispute cases heard by NAF, which is a clearly disproportionate amount if cases are or ought to be randomly distributed to the 141 NAF panelists on the roster. If you would like to take a look at the short study, you can read it here.

I think that the NAF and WIPO, with the guidance of ICANN, should review the process for single-panelist selection and require random selection and specifically outline the random selection process so that there is some transparency in this important task.

Furthermore, WIPO decisions receive far greater attention and scrutiny than NAF decisions, and I believe that is because only WIPO sends out daily emails with updates on newly minted cases. Accordingly, to stimulate greater discussion and scrutiny of NAF cases, I have created a daily email service which will provide a link to all new decisions since the last email update. Sign-up is free and is available at http://www.DNattorney.com. Hopefully NAF will create their own email update service and my own will no longer be necessary.

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