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What is a Domain Appraisal Scam?

Elliot Silver
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49

I have received a number of emails from readers asking about offer emails they receive that seem fishy. Many times, these offers are domain name appraisal scams. These scams come in a variety of formats, but each has the same objective – getting the domain owner to pay for a domain appraisal when he thinks a potential buyer is interested in purchasing a domain name.

Typically the email offer will be for a domain name, and the scammer will suggest getting an appraisal for the domain name. Usually the scammer will tell the domain owner he is willing to pay either the amount of the appraisal or a percentage of the appraisal, depending on the email.

The email will list a few domain appraisal websites, one of which may be either owned by the scammer or a commission is earned for appraisals. The scammer generally has a 33% chance the domain owner will choose his appraisal service (probably much more considering the price comparison of the appraisals). After the domain owner pays for the appraisal, hoping to close a deal, the scammer is never heard from again.

While these scams probably aren’t illegal, I call them scams because the emailer probably didn’t intend to buy the domain name – just to get the domain owner to buy a domain appraisal.

More info with examples can be seen on these sites:

DNForum

Namepros

Domain Name Wire

Late Night Sunday Update

Elliot Silver
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1

My parents have been in town this weekend, so things have been a bit hectic. Here are a few quick Sunday hits, most of which are unrelated to domain names.

– The Javitz Center in New York was packed with exhibitors for the New York International Gift Fair, and it seemed like there was a lot of order taking and very little commiserating about the economy. The scene was much more upbeat than I thought it would be prior to attending. IMO, this is a very good sign, although I am still a bit pessimistic about our economy. If retailers are busy placing orders for the upcoming holiday season, it means the economy may have turned a corner.

– I made a great salmon dinner tonight and wanted to sort of share the recipe. I basically winged it from a memorable dinner I had a few years ago, but I think it tasted just as good. I spread a very light layer of dijon mustard on top of a salmon filet. I then nearly covered it in finely crushed ginger snap cookies. I baked it for about 20 minutes in an oven that was around 350-375. It tasted great.

– I posted an article earlier today in error. I started writing a couple of blog posts for tomorrow, and instead of scheduling one post for tomorrow, I posted it this afternoon, and the domain news aggregation sites picked up the feed. If you got a 404 error, I apologize.

– I have had a few people complain and/or inquire about my blog not having a full RSS feed. It’s not an error, but rather intentional as I want to maximize the value for my blog advertisers. Sorry to those who use iPhones or other devices and are unable to access my feed.

Defensive Domain Registration Advice

Elliot Silver
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4

Many companies defensively purchase typos and alternative extensions to prevent others from owning them. Defensive domain name registrations aren’t simply for brand protection though. They can also be done to ensure a company prevents another similar company from entering a newly created industry or niche using the type of product as the company’s brand or website.

I spent a couple of hours at the New York International Gift Fair today, and among the hundreds of exhibitors, I saw a company that had a new type of product. This unique gift item may or not be a hit, but it certainly is a one of a kind product that can and will be knocked off by others. The .com of the product type is currently sitting unregistered, available for anyone to register for under $10.

While this product is not similar to door knockers, I will use   door knockers as an example. A few years ago, I saw a guy selling unique metal door knockers at the show. I forgot what they guy’s company was called, but when I was looking it up a few months ago for a friend, I was curious to find out who owned DoorKnockers.com. You probably guessed it… the guy who I saw at the show owns it. Smart guy.

Now back to this new product. I left the show intrigued about the product, but we weren’t convinced to buy it (for my parents’ business). We stopped by dozens of booths, so they are all blending together right now.   I Googled it, but the problem is the guy took a very common utilitarian product (hundreds of thousands of Google results), and he made it completely unique. Because of this, I can’t find his company when searching for the term.

I get that many companies want to have a unique brand rather than a generic industry term for the company name, but even if he simply registered this product .com name, he could at least prevent others from knocking his product off and owning the space online.

The takeaway here is that if you develop your own special type of product and the .com is available, register it. Even if you don’t want to set up a website, at least you can forward that to your brand’s website and prevent someone else from buying it.

Domain Names & SEO | Sulumits Retsambew

Elliot Silver
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6

I am not a search engine optimization expert by any stretch of the imagination. At best, I am fair at SEO on my websites, and at worst, I am dangerous to them :). One thing I can tell you though is that a domain name is critical to a successfully SEO’d website, and having the prominent keywords within the domain name is important to its search engine results page (SERP) positioning.

NetBuilders, a well respected Webmaster forum, began a SEO contest a couple of months ago, with a prize of $1,000 going to the webmaster whose website achieved the #1 position for a keyword phrase it coined, Sulumits Retsambew (webmaster stimulus spelled backwards). With the competition nearly over, I wanted to have a look at the top 5 results to see how important experienced webmasters believe domain names are to good SEO, with a virgin term like Sulumits Retsambew.

Here are the top 5 organic results (not including Google News):
1. SulumitsRetsambew.org
2. SulumitsRetsambewBlog.com
3. SulumitsRetsambewNo.com
4. WebmasterStimulus.org
5. Stevz.com/tag/sulumits-retsambew

With the competition ending today, it seems clear that the domain name should have the keywords of the search term, however, it appears that .com isn’t necessarily king for SEO. Clearly some people spent more time than others on this competition, but you don’t need to have the .com for good SERP positioning.

The major caveat is that most search terms for which people want and need to rank aren’t virgin terms, and you can’t start from scratch. Domain age is something that search engines look at for positioning as well, and generally the best generic .com domain names were bought years ago, so it would be an uphill climb if you register a new domain name and try to compete with other older domain names and websites.

Bottom line is that having a keyword domain name is very important in SEO, but extensions other than .com can still rank very well.

5 Newsletters for Domain Investors

Elliot Silver
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6

There are a number of great newsletters to which I think every domain investor should subscribe, and I listed 10 of the most important ones below. Not all of the newsletters contain sales listings, but all of them contain important domain-related information. Whether you are new to the domain investment industry or a seasoned veteran, the newsletters below are the best of the best.

10 Favorite Domain Investment Newsletters (in no particular order)

DNJournal Newsletter – Domain industry updates, including notifications about the weekly domain sales report and special reports on DN Journal.

Domain Name Wire Newsletter – Domain industry news updates and special reports on Domain Name Wire.

 

WIPO Domain Name Decisions – Recent UDRP decisions made by the World Intellectual Property Organizations, with links to each decision.

National Arbitration Forum Monthly Newsletter – Monthly email with NAF updates and recent decision summaries. You must email them to subscribe.

Domaining.com Daily Email – Links to the ten most popular articles written by domain bloggers and news providers.

Do you receive another domain newsletter that you think provides great information? Please feel free to drop a link   and let us know domain investors should subscribe.

What If a Domain Registry Shuts Down?

Elliot Silver
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15

I saw a thread on a .Mobi domain discussion forum that posed the question, “When will dotMobi shut down?” I know discussions about certain domain extensions are always hot button topics, so I want to refrain from the discussion about specific extensions. However, I want to ask if you have ever considered what would happen to your domain names if a registry were to shut down? I’m not talking about a registrar like RegisterFly.com, but a registry that manages an entire domain extension.

Think this is far fetched? Apparently there were issues related to the company that operated the .Travel registry, and with the potential for a significant amount of gTLDs possibly forthcoming, I believe this will be an eventual issue that domain investors need to consider when purchasing domain names. John Levine discussed this in a blog post back in 2007:

“Given how small .travel is, the resolution is less important for what happens to this particular domain than for the precedent it sets. If ICANN ever comes through with all the new domain names they’ve been promising for the past decade, sooner or later some domain will do a bubble, get wildly successful while firmly cash negative, then run out of money and pop with a million registrants in limbo. That’ll be fun.”

I am in complete agreement with what Levine said above. I’ve received a number of press releases, Facebook fan page requests, and other emails indicating that there will a ton of new extensions. Some potential extensions right now include .horse, .eco, .sport, and even .zulu, mentioned by ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom.   In my opinion, it is likely that there will be gTLD extensions that fail due to financial circumstances.

I don’t see a reason why anyone would want to operate a money losing registry, and this could happen if an unpopular gTLD extension is approved and it isn’t embraced by the public. This could be especially prevalent if consumer adoption of gTLD domain names isn’t as quick as many people hope.

When you buy domain names, have you ever considered what will happen if a domain registry shuts down due to a financial problem? This is another good reason for you to become knowledgeable about ICANN. Andrew discussed it before, I and I want readers to be aware of the potential issue.

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