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SnapNames Employee Caught Bidding on Auctions

Elliot Silver
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50

SnapNamesLogoI just received the following statement from Snapnames, and I wanted to share it with readers of my blog, who may have been impacted. Below the statement is some commentary and additional information from Snapnames.

“Recently, SnapNames.com, Inc., discovered that an employee had set up an account on the SnapNames system under a false name and, under this name, bid in SnapNames auctions.   This is a clear violation of our internal policy and was not approved by the company.

Extent of impact

This conduct affected a small percentage of SnapNames auctions:
·                 Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007, before SnapNames was acquired by Oversee.   To a much lesser extent, auctions in 2008 and 2009 were also impacted.
o               In less than one percent of these auctions, the employee won the auction
o               In the other four percent, the employee lost the auction
·                 The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames auction revenues since 2005.

SnapNames further discovered that, on certain recent and limited occasions, when the employee won an auction, the employee secretly arranged to refund from SnapNames to the fictitious account a portion of the winning bid amount.

To avoid any question about whether the company benefited from this conduct, SnapNames will offer a rebate to impacted customers, including 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), of the difference between the prices they paid in winning auctions, and the prices they would have paid had the employee not bid in the auctions.   Impacted customers will be notified by SnapNames or its representative with instructions for the offer of a rebate.

SnapNames has already begun notifying customers of the situation.

SnapNames also has taken further action to ensure its policies regarding auctions are followed, and the company remains committed to taking whatever action is necessary to protect the integrity of its auction platform.

SnapNames deeply regrets this situation and is committed to addressing its customers’ needs quickly and fairly.

Customers with questions may contact:

By e-mail:                                         support@snapnames.com
Phone:                                                   +1 (866) 690-6279 (toll-free in the U.S.)
+1 (503) 241-8547 (outside the U.S.)”

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Last year, there were issues surrounding a Godaddy employee who was bidding on expired domain auctions. At the time Oversee.net told Domain Name Wire, “Oversee.net employees are strictly disallowed from bidding against customers.”

Mason Cole, a spokesman for Snapnames has told me the company will not reveal the name of the employee, but DNN is reporting that the user name involved is “HALVAREZ.” The company will not disclose any legal matters related to whether charges are going to be filed against the employee.

One has to also wonder if Oversee.net has any recourse related to the private Snapnames acquisition. The bidding activity impacted revenues prior to the acquisition, and it also had an impact on bidding activity as well. I want to applaud Oversee.net for taking the actions they did and for coming forward with this information. I am sure it will hurt their bottom line, but their reputation is much more important.

I will post further information as I receive it.

Define Your Business Goals

Elliot Silver
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0

I think one of the most important things you can do in order to achieve success in this business is to define the goals for your business and set milestones to achieving your short and long term goals. Think about the question, what would you like to accomplish in the domain investment business?

If you are looking to buy and sell domain names as a hobby, you can probably forget all about mini sites and web development. You will end up spending a lot of money on things that are unnecessary. Keep abreast of domain news, trends, and threats to make sure your business model is evolving as necessary. Continue buying good names for good prices, and do what you can to keep your costs and overhead minimal.

If you see yourself being involved in the domain business full time at some point, I strongly advise you learn about web development and SEO from non-domainers (similar to what Alan said). I may be able to share a little bit of knowledge about web development, but you really need to learn about that stuff from experts. I can help you with domain names, and I can share the things I am doing with you, but when it comes to web development, programming, SEO and other technical things, I am just learning, too, and the best advice I can give is to do what I did and research the smartest people in those fields and learn what you can from them.

For me,   two years ago, I realized that it might get difficult to make a good living (for my career) simply buying and selling domain names, so I opted to go the development route. I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I’ve also done some things right. Fortunately, the domain sales business has remained pretty good, and I have built value on many of my development projects, but I am constantly refining my plans and path for the future. It’s critical to keep your eyes focused not only on the things that are right in front of you, but also on things that are going to happen down the road.

Think about it for a minute. On domain forums, blogs, news sites, corporate sites…etc, every person and company situation   is different. Some people do this as a part time hobby, others do this full time because they were smart enough to register great names many years ago, and yet others are somewhere in the middle. There are people living in high tax areas and people living in tax havens. Some people are married and have kids, while others are in college or high school. We all are in different situations and what one person does has no bearing on what others should do.

How you see yourself in the future as it relates to the domain space is important, because you need to do things now to accomplish your future goals. Take some time to figure out where you see yourself and do what it takes to get there. Everybody has a different path and a different road map. What’s good today may not be good tomorrow.

Elephant Traffic Unveils Interface for Advertisers to Capture Direct Nav Traffic

Elliot Silver
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3

One of the few new companies I learned about at Traffic New York was Elephant Traffic, and I just saw the press release below announcing the launch of their platform. The company has a large presence at Ad:Tech New York this week, and I think it’s good to see domain portfolio holding company reaching out at a mainstream event. The company is officially launching this week, and they’re holding a launch party tonight in the City.

Here’s the press release:

Elephant Traffic announced today the official U.S. launch of its new web-based interface to drive targeted search traffic to users’ domains. The service is designed to help advertisers optimize online spend by offering a steady traffic stream that is 50% more likely to convert and 40% cheaper than that of pay-per-click ads. Elephant Traffic provides real-time reporting and unprecedented transparency.

Elephant Traffic and its partners have a vast portfolio of domains with high traffic that results from direct navigation searches, which entails searching by URL such as laptops.com or mexicovacations.com as opposed to using search terms in a search engine. That traffic, which can be grouped by vertical and geography, can be directed to the buyer’s site of preference using the Elephant Traffic’s web-based interface found at http://Elephant-Traffic.com. Advertisers select streams of traffic from available domains and redirects can be set-up with a few clicks of the mouse with real-time monitoring. Elephant Traffic is the only provider of transparent direct navigation traffic, which allows you to choose the exact domains from which you would like to receive traffic.

Wei-Hai Chu, Elephant Traffic’s CEO, explains, “Not many people are aware direct navigation search amounts to 14% of all online searches and that only 11.5% of this traffic is being captured by traditional online advertising. Elephant Traffic gives advertisers the ability to capture this highly targeted yet untapped traffic quickly and easily using a streamlined interface.”

Discussing the direct benefits for advertisers, Commercial Director Daniel Goris says, “We’re able to give advertisers direct access to consumers who are twice as likely to complete an online purchase. Direct navigation search traffic has been neglected till now but our research has shown that it delivers up to 50% higher conversions rates than standard PPC advertising. What we’ve put together offers advertisers a great tool to diversify their online budgets and boost conversion rates.”

Elephant Traffic is pleased to launch in the U.S. at ad:tech New York and will host an official launch party on Nov. 4th at 1OAK on W. 17th St. between 9th and 10th Avenue from 7-11pm. The event is by invitation only but to register for more information, please visit http://Elephant-Traffic.com/adtech.

Elephant Traffic specializes in providing advertisers with high-quality targeted redirects originating from direct navigation search traffic. Elephant Traffic is part of Elephant Orchestra, a Prague-based company dedicated to innovation within the world of domains and traffic monetization. For more information please contact Jeremy Lopez at +420 725 060 188 or email jlopez@elephant-traffic.com or visit http://www.elephant-traffic.com.

Registering ccTLD Domains Under the Guise of Brand Protection

Elliot Silver
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9

I won’t call this a “scam” email because I don’t think it meets the definition of scam, but I’ve received a number of similar emails and wanted to share it with you. Clearly, it looks like the objective is to get me to register a bunch of ccTLD domain names I probably would not have wanted, under the guise of brand protection.

The initial email stated:

Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on November 2, 2009, One company which self-styled “NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD” are applying to register “burbank” as brand name and domain names as below:
burbank.asia
burbank.com.hk
burbank.com.tw
burbank.hk
burbank.net.cn
burbank.org.cn
burbank.tw
After our initial checking, we found the brand name and these domain names being applied are as same as your company’s, so we need to get the confirmation from your company. If the aforesaid company is your business partner or your subsidiary company, please DO NOT reply us, we will approve the application automatically. If you have no any relationship with this company, please contact us within 10 workdays. If out of the deadline, we will approve the application   submitted by “NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD” unconditionally.

Best Regards,
Alan jin

After receiving this email, I replied that the “applicant” is not affiliated with my company. Their reply had a more direct sales pitch, as expected:

Dear sir,

Many thanks for your confirmation.As soon as receiving the application of “NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD”.we checked and found “burbank” is your company’s registered trademark.So we inform you also that’s reason why we sent email to you.If you did not authorized such apply we suspect 2 points:

1. This company uses your brand   to build market in Asia.
2. This company may be doing your same business, or your competitors.

But you should know that The domain names regisration is open in China. so “NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD” has right to apply for the available domain names. For this reason ” NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD” is also licit applicant and we have no right to reject them.You only own the preferential rights to register them.

In addition.please inform us your company’s decision of this issue. if these domain names are important to your company.we can send you a dispute application form and help you register them. If these are not important.we will accept “NOA INDUSTRIAL LTD’s application. Thanks for your understanding.

Best Regards,
Alan jin

The emails look official, and some companies might worry that their brand mark could be abused. Just a head’s up that I’m not buying it, and I would bet if I check in 6 months from now NOA Industrial will not own Burbank.whatever either.

Did Microsoft Buy Vaccination.com?

Elliot Silver
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11

I was doing some domain research, and I noticed that Vaccination.com is now registered to a company known as Media Market of Boise, Idaho. As of September 24, 2009, the domain name was registered to Internet REIT, but on October 20, 2009, the domain name changed hands and is now registered to Media Market.

I don’t know anything about Media Market, but I do know they were the company who registered quite a few Bing related typo domain names just before they were acquired by Microsoft. Interestingly enough, Jamie reported that Microsoft recently acquired H1N1Symptoms.com, and the domain name resolves to the Bing results page for the search phrase “h1n1symptoms.” This is great for the owner of h1n1symptoms.us, as that website currently ranks #1 for the search term.

Prior to Microsoft’s acquisition of H1N1Symptoms.com, it was registered to TenPenny Group, a company that among other things, acquires domain names on behalf of Microsoft and other large companies.

Special Blog Advertising Opportunity to Help The Water School

Elliot Silver
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1

During the Traffic conference, I learned quite a bit about The Water School, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “provide simple, safe, strategic, and sustainable clean water solutions to the developing world.” A number of prominent domain investors have been actively supporting the project, and a special domain investor climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro is planned for March, with the proceeds being donated to The Water School.

I think this organization’s goals are very worthy, and I want to help in my own small way. Above each post, and at the top of the index page on my blog, I have space for a 468×60 banner. A DN Forum banner currently occupies the top of the main index page, and the four color on hover banners are on the top of individual post pages.

From November 15 through the end of the year, I am offering this top spot to one company, and the proceeds will be donated by me to The Water School. If your company is interested in this advertising opportunity that will benefit The Water School, drop me an email and I will discuss rates/traffic with you. This is available to one company from November 15 – December 31, 2009 and it’s on a first come, first served basis.

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