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Special Offer: Reserve Your .CO Domain Names for Just $275

Elliot Silver
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8

There are going to be a whole lot of .CO domain names available to the general public which aren’t reserved by the .CO Registry or by trademark holders. These names will be available during the landrush period, which begins on June 21 at a limited number of domain registrars.

Register.com is offering a special price of $275 for .CO domain registrations when you call their customer service number and provide them with the special code LR25 or if you register it online. If for some reason Register.com cannot reserve the domain name from you, they will give a refund less a $9.00 processing fee. If Register.com has multiple reservations for the same domain name, it will be auctioned to those who reserved it.

Here’s the .CO release schedule:

  • Global Sunrise April 26 – June 10
  • Landrush June 21 – July 13
  • General Availability July 20

My Top 10 Favorite Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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32

I was talking with a friend (who isn’t in the domain business) about domain domain names, and he asked me what domain names I wish I owned and what domain names I did own that were my favorites. It wasn’t a long discussion and I gave a few off the cuff answers, but it got me thinking.

Since having the conversation a few days ago, I’ve been thinking about what domain names I wish I owned so I could develop them, and I thought I would share the list on my blog.   I would love to hear about the names you’d love to own.

Favorite Ten Domain Names I Would Love to Own to Develop:

  • Vacation.com
  • Tennis.com
  • Autographs.com
  • TelAviv.com
  • Ski.com
  • Paris.com
  • WindowTreatments.com
  • Wine.com
  • Books.com
  • Coffee.com

Favorite 10 Domain Names I’ve Ever Owned or Currently Own (not considering purchase or sale price)

  • Torah.com
  • FrenchRiviera.com
  • Customs.com
  • DebtCollectors.com
  • 887.com
  • DogWalker.com
  • Arrangements.com
  • Devices.com
  • Burbank.com
  • FlightDelays.com

Rosanna Scotto’s Soy Jizzum… The Race For the .Com is On

Elliot Silver
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8

You may not have seen the clip yet, but on Fox 5 New York this morning, one of the anchors referred to “soy jizzum” in an article about soy milk. The news went viral, with everyone from the Huffington Post to Gawker covering the news.

As the video gets thousands of page views and new remix videos are created on You Tube (see below), the race to register the domain name SoyJizzum.com has officially started. So who will be first? Will the buyer purchase all of those typos? How do you spell jizzum anyway? I bet you’re Googling it right now… dirty minds.

Good News (.com) is Coming Soon, and Millions Will Know About It

Elliot Silver
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9

Goodnews.com

I was typing in a website I frequently visit in the morning, and I accidentally typed in TN.com, a domain name parked at HitFarm and possibly owned by Kevin Ham’s company, Reinvent. I’ve typo’d this before and am familiar with the happy couple that make their home on the TN.com parked page.

Today I was surprised to see a screen takeover on TN.com, encouraging me to sign up for the GoodNews.com newsletter. I checked a few other Reinvent-owned and Hitfarm-parked domain names, and all of those parking pages were similar to TN.com and had the page takeover encouraging the visitor to sign up for the GoodNews.com website.

I visited GoodNews.com, and I see that it’s going to be a website offering special deals on Friday via email. The deals are only good when enough people agree to buy them, so it’s utilizing the power of group buying.

A promotion like this, which will surely be seen by millions of people, would have cost another company millions of dollars to pull off. Of course, the company will certainly loose PPC revenue from people clicking away immediately rather than clicking through on the parking page links, but the sign ups they receive and revenue derived from those people will probably outweigh any lost revenue.

In addition, this can be looked at as testing a new revenue stream for the company. Once they learn what the lost revenue is, they can then offer this opportunity to other companies at a cost that exceeds the lost revenue. It’s a considerable amount of exposure, which could be beneficial depending on the cost.

The Events Calendar Plugin for WordPress

Elliot Silver
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6

My developer installed The Events Calendar plugin for WordPress on Lowell.com, and it’s the best calendar I’ve used. On the home page, I have the upcoming events listed on the upper right, and I have upcoming and past event pages within the site. Each event listing has its own page, allowing easy Google indexing, which is beneficial and sticky. The calendar I previously used did not do this, and that was a setback.

In terms of search engine optimization, the calendar integrates nicely with the All in One SEO plugin I have installed on the site, so each event has good SEO practices built in to it. Additionally, events are easy to add simply by using the post functionality built into the WordPress platform.

My developer was able to make some customizations to the plugin both in terms of appearance and performance. For instance, the website field on each event is now “no follow,” so the site doesn’t leak the “link juice” that may have hurt the site’s rankings. In addition, people can add photos and images within the event listing, making it more appealing. Here’s a sample listing for a Cinco de Mayo Fundraiser.

One of the best things about the plugin has to be the support of the plugin creators. I ran into a minor issue with the appearance of events in the calendar, and when I contacted Shane and Peter, they put me in touch with two of the key developers Justin and Kelsey, and Kelsey was able to troubleshoot and solve the problem quickly.

You don’t always see great support with WordPress plugins, but these guys were great.   If you need an Event Calendar plugin on your WordPress website, I highly recommend The Events Calendar plugin.

Tip for Buying Good Names to Resell

Elliot Silver
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9

Once in a while, I will have a domain buyer who has a specific type of interest. Generally, this comes from a domain sale I made to an end user, and obviously the end user wouldn’t be interested in random other domain names, no matter how great they are.

If you present this buyer with other good names of similar quality to the name he bought, there’s a chance he might buy others. The problem always becomes finding good domain names that are of the same quality. Here’s a tip I can share with you to give you an idea of what I do.

I search for other websites in that industry/vertical, and I find the websites with the best navigation. I then find the keywords that are used for products and services on those websites, noting those that are used most.   Once I have a list (or while still searching through the list), I do both GAKT searches as well as standard Google searches to see the frequency of searches and the number of companies advertising those different terms I’ve found.

Once I have a list of domain names that I think would be valuable, I come up with a sales price in my mind. This may be the hardest part, but I place a hypothetical bottom price I think each domain name could yield to this buyer or to others. I then begin the process of contacting the owners and/or seeing if the domain names are already for sale, and I make offers based on what I think I can get for the domain name.

There are two things you need to be cautious about:

1) The buyer won’t want additional domain names even if they’re of similar quality. You’ll still be able to pitch the name(s) to others, but end user sales aren’t always easy, and it might be tough to flip specific names to domain investors.

2) You obviously need to be realistic with your price, and lowballing to get a name at your necessary level of profit margin generally isn’t a good idea, unless it’s not owned by an end user. Keep in mind that if the name is owned by an end user already and you do make a lowball that’s accepted, it should tell you something about the domain name!

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