The other day, I was at the dentist’s office, and we were talking about my business and websites. Since the dentist is a family friend (my college roommate’s uncle), I busted his chops a bit for not having a website. I explained how it could help him control what people read about him instead of relying on Yelp reviews. Not that the reviews are bad at all, but it’s almost always better if you can control the message.
After discussing this, my dentist said he’d think about having someone build a website, perhaps even a friend of his family who does it as a hobby. Obviously, my dentist didn’t own his name or his name +DDS domain names, and I quickly emailed my Moniker rep (Bari) and she bought those two names for me, literally as I was in the chair.
When I register new domain names, I have the default Parked nameservers set up for the domain names, and of course, these two new domain names were pointed at Parked from the get-go. When I went back to the dentist a few days later, he started busting my chops because the two domain names were showing cosmetic dentistry advertisements and he kidded that I was making money from his domain names (not that there’s any traffic).
Of course it was true that the domain names resolved to parked pages, but it wasn’t intended.
So now to the point of the post. When you purchase new domain names, you must be sure to point the DNS correctly, point the names to DNS where it won’t resolve, or self-optimize them if that’s your intent. While showing cosmetic dentistry ads wasn’t such a bad thing, it could have been bad if it was adult advertisements or something otherwise inappropriate. When parking landers self-optimize, you are at the whim of the parking company and the algorithm that controls the content.
I apologize if the title doesn’t exactly jive with the advice given in this post. I couldn’t really think of a better way to title the article, but I think it’s something you’ll want to keep in mind for some of your new domain registrations.
Your dentist “busted your chops”? You should sue 😉
@ Kevin
LOL 🙂
Is your dentist running his dental clinic in a Mall? In that case he should acquire domain name MallDentist dot com 😉
I don’t think there are any malls in Manhattan, and it was hard enough convincing him to allow me to buy his name .com so I don’t think any acquisitions are in the cards 🙂
“I don’t think there are any malls in Manhattan”
@ El
There’s the Manhattan Mall @ 33 street and 6th Avenue
(Taken up mostly by JCP.)
Elliot,
So, did you finally end-up selling the domain name to that dentist and if so then for how much ?
You really are an opportunist aren’t you ? Finding yourself here and there and suddenly finding your pocket full of money funding your next holiday ?
Have you ever thought-about creating a new twitter account that only posts sales you made on the spots ? You’ll probably find a lot of sponsors willing to pay you hundreds or even thousands of dollars just to mention their link alongside your twitter post.
Oh by the way, if you decide to do this then don’t forget to split 50% of your tweet profits with me for suggestign the idea ! Lol! You will do that, won’t you, hey ?