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NCAA College Basketball March Madness: $1,000 in Prizes on Brackets.com

Elliot Silver
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Domain investor launches March Madness bracket selection challenge with $1,000 on the line.

Brackets.com is giving away $1,000 in cash prizes during the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, which begins on Thursday, March 18th. You can print out an official bracket and enter to win $250 – with no entry fee.   The person who has the most points will win $250, the second place finisher will win $150, and the third place finisher will win $100.

Entrants who aren’t good at making college basketball picks can still win. Brackets.com is offering $500 to the person who refers the most valid users.   In addition, to help build awareness, Brackets.com is offering prizes for inbound links from different websites. Higher pagerank websites are worth more points, and the leading referrer will win $250, the second place finisher will win $150, and the third place finisher will win $100.

Full contest details are available on Brackets.com. The tournament begins tomorrow, so sign up today.

Brackets.com is a recently launched venture from 260.com, a domain investment company founded by Tony Peppler.

US Chess Federation Lets Domain Name Drop

Elliot Silver
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The United States Chess Federation seems to have let it’s exact match domain name expire, and it’s now scheduled to hit the Snapnames auction block. USChessFederation.com expired on February 8, 2010 and it is scheduled to be auctioned on March 18th. The auction currently has one bid.

Although the US Chess Federation uses USChess.org for it’s primary website, this domain name has been owned by the organization since February of 2000. From the looks of it, it appears that they either didn’t realize they owned this domain name or they simply forgot to renew the domain name, since they originally registered it for ten years back in 2000.

I really don’t know how someone would be able to use this domain name legitimately. It’s one thing if the domain name was USChess.com as that could be used as a website for US chess players, but this one seems too specific to be used by someone other than the US Chess Federation.

Partial List of Domain Names Revealed for Domain Madness Two

Elliot Silver
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I have obtained an exclusive sneak peek at some of the domains available through the Domain Madness 2 Auction, being held from from March 16th to the 23rd. The second annual conference will feature an online auction, with a live countdown show at 3pm CDT from the Palms in Las Vegas on the 23rd. A link to the auction will be added as soon as it’s set.

From the looks of it, there are some great names up for auction, and knowing the guys running it, I would imagine the reserve prices will be reasonable. More details to come…

Partial DM2 inventory:

  • FreeMovies.com
  • Mad.com
  • GolfEquipment.com
  • Balloon.com
  • FootballUniforms.com
  • Music.net
  • InternetHistory.com
  • Strawberries.com
  • Hook.com
  • VideoRoulette.com
  • Vampires.com
  • BaseballPlayers.com
  • Holdings.com
  • TaxTool.com

Writing Good Content is Time Consuming, But Here’s a Tip to Get It (Cheap)

Elliot Silver
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People always ask me how I find time to write articles on my blog as well as articles on my various websites to keep them up to date and driving traffic. For my blog, it’s pretty easy. When I was in an office with co-workers, if I saw or did something interesting, I would jump over to their office to discuss. Since I don’t have co-workers any longer, I use my blog as an outlet. Writing content for my blog is pretty easy.

However, writing good content for my other websites is not as easy. Although I enjoy some things related to the topics at hand, I am not familiar enough about all of them to write good content. On my geodomain names, I frequently publish press releases or articles that were submitted by readers. This is easy enough, but it doesn’t happen enough to keep the website updated with a variety of interesting information.

One thing I’ve been doing successfully on DogWalker.com would be easy enough for others to do and I want to share this (not unique, but good) idea. When people sign up for listings, I thank them and offer them the opportunity to do an interview or submit an article on any dog-related topic. This has been a big hit and is greatly appreciated. The articles are posted on the DogWalker.com Blog.

Surprisingly, many people have articles they’ve written but haven’t published online yet, and they are very happy to share them.   I have articles on a range of topics either published or scheduled to be published in the coming weeks. There are exercise articles, tips for training dogs, an article about how to help dogs who are afraid of fireworks…etc.

I have been posing the articles and linking to them on Digg and Facebook, which helps drive more traffic and awareness. In addition, a couple of submitters have posted links to the articles on their websites. It’s really a win win for all parties. Since I am using WordPress for my platform, publishing the articles takes under 5 minutes each, and the benefits are considerable.

If you operate a website where you have advertisers – especially small businesses, you should consider offering to feature your advertisers in a guest article or interview. It adds good content (for free) and can help build your relationship with the advertiser while bringing more traffic to your site.

Why It’s Bad Not to Respond to UDRP

Elliot Silver
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7

A few days ago, Mike Berkens reported on the UDRP decision for 7Days.com, a decision that went in favor of the complainant. The owner of the domain name did not file a response to the UDRP, so he couldn’t present his case for ownership. I think not responding to a UDRP is bad for a couple of reasons (unless you are advised by a legal professional that not responding would be in your best interest).

First, you don’t have an opportunity to defend your ownership of the domain name. You’re letting the complainant make its case and aren’t able to rebut its complaint. If the submitted evidence is enough for a panelist to make a decision in favor of the complainant, you could lose the case pretty easily.

The second reason may be less obvious but could pose a future threat to your business. Not even considering that a UDRP loss can be used by a future complainant to show bad faith on other domain names, it could also show others that you are a sitting duck. A non-response could encourage other companies to file UDRP cases for other names you own, believing you may not defend your rights to own other domain names, possibly making their chance better.

Whether you decide to hire a lawyer or not is your decision to make based on the strength of your case, value of your domain names, and/or financial situation, but I don’t think not responding is for the best (unless under the advice of an attorney, which I’ve heard about). If you don’t care enough about your domain name to defend it, perhaps you can just give the name to the company to get them to withdraw the UDRP.

How WhyPark is Saving Me Money on My Google Adwords Campaign

Elliot Silver
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7

A few weeks ago, I wrote about using WhyPark in a SEO play, and I want to share how this is working and how it’s saving me money. I bought several City DogWalker.com, City DogWalkers.com, and City DogWalking.com domain names and put them on WhyPark. I added a couple of links and on a few of the sites, I added a unique article. That’s all I did, and in total, it took somewhere around an hour to set up about 17 websites.

The purpose of this test was more for search engine optimization purposes, but I noticed another benefit that might have an even more valuable pay off.

I was going through my stats on DogWalker.com, and I saw that one of the city WhyPark websites has referred 13 unique visitors in the last 3 weeks. The site is in the top 10 results in Google for “city dog walking” and “dog walking city” and it ranks higher than the main website for that search. I know 8 visitors isn’t much in the whole scheme of things, but I want to share why I think it’s something you should find interesting.

At the moment, I am running a Google Adwords campaign, and I am paying between $.75 and $1.50 per click. The domain name cost me $8.00 and it wasn’t too expensive to open an upgraded WhyPark account. The 8 visitors would have cost me around the $8 registration fee.   Should this domain name refer 8 visitors a month on an ongoing basis, the click value alone is just under $100 in a year. I think the domain names would also be valuable to a local dog walker, but why would I sell it if it’s providing value to one of my websites?

I am not sure whether this is an anomaly or a sign of things to come, but it’s interesting to see. I have different inbound links for each of these “mini sites,” and they are placed in different areas on the sites. In a few months, I will do a more thorough analysis of the traffic, click throughs, and referrals, but it’s something I am tracking and it’s a good sign. A number of the other sites are also sending some traffic, but it’s just one or two visits per site.

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