Just Found An Incredible Tool Called Traffic Travis
It’s a funny sounding name, but this piece of software is MAJOR! I spent a few hours looking for a SEO tool I could run directly from my trusty laptop. I’ve tried tools like SEOMOZ but the service itself is pricey and the product is a complete overkill to what I really need. That’s where Traffic Travis has come in. I just installed the free version of the software and it looks promissing. Please keep in mind this isn’t a formal review of any nature. 
I am just excited that I found something that looks like it works. I was actually looking into buying Market Samaurai but I read up on a number of reviews and forum posts that the support for the product is poor and the software itself is extremely buggy. I can’t wait to really give TrafficTravis a spin. I’ll make sure to post a couple blog entries about the software, once I have had the chance to really test it.
Now go back to sleep, let me be the one that works at 2:08AM in the morning on a Saturday!
DNPimping.com Update!
As most of you know I have been focusing my attention on my new blog. This new blog would be considered a little more professional then this one. Think of DNPimping.com as a way of having a little fun when things get boring during my daily domain investing activities. The site still remains a PR4 and I haven’t even blogged on it since December. I had the blog removed from both of the main domaining aggregation feeds, because I felt there were a few individuals out there getting the wrong impression.
Now that I am off these feeds, it is time to get back to having a little fun! You can expect me to blog more frequently on this site, but if you are sensitive to some of the material that you have read here in the past or your sense of humor for some reason just doesn’t click with my writing style, feel free to ignore the site. This site is in no way representative of me as a domaining professional and those that I conduct business with. I am not a PIMP and have never wanted to be one.
With that said, I will be actively using this site to flip names and write about the topics that I deem important as a domain investor. Thanks for all of the support over the years! I am glad that many of you appreciate a witty blog entry. If anyone is interested in exchanging links, feel free to email me at info[a]dnpimping.com. I am welcoming any and all of you who need a little PR4 boost, to exchange links with me on this site as long as your site pertains to the domaining industry.
I want to thank my girlfriend for lighting a fire under me to start blogging again on this site. She and my Dad both love the site. I also want to thank a few domain investors, who will remain nameless for always believing in DNPimping.com. You’d be amazed of the controversy that this site stirred up since its inception. As my girlfriend would put it, that’s a good thing! She is definitely spot on with that one!
Make sure to get away from the computer this weekend! Yes, there is money to be made but can’t you make that on Monday. Have a great weekend everybody!
PS: I’ve been listening to this song on repeat. See if you can guess who is talking at the beginning. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I Received A Weird Call From Enom Today
I received one of the weirdest calls I have ever received from a domain registrar today. Today I received an inbound phone call from (310)394-6400. I figured I would pick it up since it was a local area code. It could either be a family member or a friend. It is the holidays and I am receiving a lot of phone calls and text messages about both Christmas and my birthday. I proceeded to answer the phone and a frantic woman started telling me about a domain name that was in my account.
She was more concerned about the domain name expiring then I was! At first I thought this was an inquiry about a particular domain, maybe she was interested in purchasing it. I threw that theory completely out of the window once she started to ramble on about the different pricing packages to renew the domain name. The numbers that were coming out of her mouth were both inflated and utterly ridiculous.
She stated renewal prices, business directory listings and a whole host of other things that just didn’t add up. I eventually asked her what company she was calling from and she stated she was calling from Enom. This is the first call I’ve ever received from Enom. I was a little dumbfounded at the timing of this call. I realize that the domain she was calling about expires on the 26th, but I just felt the timing was wrong. If I wanted to be called every time one of my domain names expires I would make sure to setup some sort of process with the respective registrar. This was obviously an attempt to upsell me on products and services that I am just not interested in.
It’s two days until my birthday and the last thing I want to think about are products and services which simply aren’t relevant to me or are overpriced. Today I’ve been relaxing. I slept in late and had the chance to reflect on an amazing night with friends. I popped open a bottle of red wine and am sipping from the glass as I type this blog entry. At the same time I am really thinking about what just happened with the woman who seemed to be extremely stressed pitching me on upsells. Towards the end of the conversation she mentioned that the Enom offices would be closing soon. She made it sound as if I couldn’t simply pop open my laptop and move forward with the $10 renewal service.
I’m just a little taken back by the entire process. I think that there should be black out days for calls like this and the 23rd of December should definitely be one of those days! I don’t know about you but the last thing I want to hear right now are product / service pitches. Anyways, I hope everyone has a great Christmas and hopefully I don’t receive anymore calls of this nature until 2012!
Have You Heard About SacramentoHeatingAndAir.com?
According to the mainstream media the owners of the domain name SacramentoHeatingAndAir.com unknowingly had there domain name diverted to a porn site. They were notified by one of there customers about this situation.
The company’s marketing director stated he registered the domain name through GoDaddy in 2009. He also went on to explain that the domain name bill was paid up until 2012. KCRA.com, the news outlet which covered this story first said that GoDaddy provided a letter stating that Affordable Heating and Air didn’t complete the required steps, so the domain name registration never actually happened.
Apparently two weeks ago a third party ended up securing the domain name. GoDaddy tried to offer Affordable Heating and Air a refund but they complained about how they didn’t ask for a refund. They just wanted there old site up and running the way it looked before the new owners acquired the name.
So what exactly happened here, since I wasn’t involved in this transaction or occurrence I can only speculate. According to archive.org Affordable Heating and Air did in fact have a website on this domain name. You can see the website using this link. Archive.org crawled this site around February 7, 2011 but there aren’t anymore references for it since then.
For curiosity sake I used my domaintools.com account to look up the whois history for the cache date of October 27, 2011. What did I find? I found out that Affordable Heating & Air let this domain name expire on September 23, 2011. Over a month had gone by and it still included the owners whois information:
Registrant:
Affordaable Heating & Air
Domain Name: SACRAMENTOHEATINGANDAIR.COM
Created on: 23-Sep-08
Expires on: 23-Sep-11
Last Updated on: 23-Sep-10
The next cache date I was presented with was November 6, 2011. It displayed the new owners information. This is the case of the company’s marketing director not taking care of what he was supposed to take care of. The whois information doesn’t lie, unless someone stole the domain name which I highly doubt. The marketing director of the company thought he regged the name until 2012 but that obviously wasn’t the case.
This case includes a group of people that complained to the media that they were victims. The media in this case being KCRA.com decided to write about the story because a big name registry called GoDaddy is involved. All of this could of been prevented if the marketing director of the company, the person who was responsible for taking care of this domain registration and/or renewal would of just done there job. This whole event didn’t need to be covered by the mainstream media and KCRA should research the facts before they cover any future stories similar to this.
As domainers, we all know that this name was probably picked up off of a drop. I am sure the new owner registered this name simply because it received a healthy amount of traffic and they wanted to divert that traffic to none other than a porn site. Regardless of how you feel about porn or the fact that a company’s old domain name is being used to traffic visitors to a porn site. You have to admit that this story is a bit bias and it could be considered another case where mainstream media instills fear into the public about the domain industry.
The real problem is why KCRA.com decided to only give half of the story. They even covered this in a video news segment. You can view the entire KCRA article and video news segment here. You be the judge!
For Those Of You Domainers That Are Gamers Modern Warfare 3 Comes Out At Midnight
I am a domainer gamer and was happy to hear that Modern Warfare 3 is coming out at midnight. On the east coast there are long lines at Game Stop. Here on the west coast we are being told that Game Stop will close at there normal hours tonight then reopen at 10:00 pm in anticipation of the crowd which will start to gather outside. If I decide to drive down to my local Game Stop at the Howard Hughes center, I’m sure I will have to get there early. This release is practically the biggest video game release of the year.
For those of you that don’t know, Modern Warfare 2 generated more than $1 billion dollars in sales. Industry insiders are expecting that Modern Warfare 3 will do the same thing. Best of all, the title was developed right here in sunny California. We have some of the best developers on this coast, now if they are actually from here is another question!
It is safe to say that ModernWarefare3.com is owned by the right people! As for MW3.com, that is another story. Whoever owns MW3.com might make out like a bandit if they decide to put up a domain sales page with the appropriate contact information. Unfortunately the domain name is displaying a generic 403 forbidden page. I really do hope the owner of the domain name decides to wake up and realizes that he or she just might be missing out on an opportunity of a lifetime.
Lets see a company which generated more than a billion dollars in sales on Modern Warfare 2 could probably scramble up a little change for MW2.com but as we all know sometimes opportunities tend to pass a few domain owners by. If I decide to drive down to my local Game Stop tonight I’ll make sure to take a few pictures to share with everyone.
Twelve Domains Close Above $1,000 In The .CO Land Rush Re-Auction
The .CO land rush re-auction ended on Pool today with twelve domain names selling for four figures and above. The clear leader in this auction was injurylawyers.co which sold for $18,001. I am not surprised as this was one of the best domain names in the batch that was listed.
| injurylawyers.co | $18,001 |
| omg.co | $2,500 |
| legacy.co | $2,100 |
| veterinarian.co | $1,950 |
| hub.co | $1,650 |
| assets.co | $1,606 |
| chips.co | $1,455 |
| seoul.co | $1,350 |
| forms.co | $1,265 |
| foro.co | $1,265 |
| etc.co | $1,075 |
| accidentlawyers.co | $1,025 |
VIP.ME Tops The Sedo Dot Me Auction At $11,600
It’s safe to say that VIP.ME is most likely the bread winner for the Sedo .ME auction which ends today. There were 68 bids placed on this domain auction with the final bid of $11,600. The .ME extension received a great deal of publicity from this auction. I saw a few names I was interested in myself but was outbid in the end.
Congrats to the winner of VIP.ME, I am especially interested to see what happens to this name. Something tells me that this name was either acquired by a startup company or an established business which caters to the nightlife industry. Either way I will be watching to see what happens with this domain name. With the success of about.me and fashion.me I can see vip.me being put to great use in the near future.
This Sedo auction proves once again that there is a great deal of interest and value left in ccTLDs!
Amazon’s Affiliate Program
Los Angeles is a great place to live, but lately affiliates like myself are second guessing the home by the sea. California affiliates are being hit hard due to new rules and guidelines completely changing the Internet landscape for big online retailers like Amazon. Since our state decided to pass a new law forcing Amazon to pay sales tax on anything purchased via the website the golden Amazon affiliate program that we have all come to love has taken a nosedive.
Technically I am no longer allowed to be a part of the Amazon affiliate program because Amazon has decided to cancel the program all together. The company has decided to take a political stance to try and fight the “affiliate tax” by filing a petition with the California Attorney General to suspend the law. Numerous articles have been written on the subject matter, many of which state that small businesses which depend on affiliate programs like Amazon’s might have to shut down.
Personally, affiliate programs are important to me. Although I do not make a large stream of income from programs of this nature the income is still significant. Affiliate programs such as Amazon’s have enabled me to take one step closer to fully maximizing the monetization potential of my domain portfolio. To put it short, it was fun while it lasted and now I am having to come up with new strategies to recoup the lost stream of income.
Yes it’s true that there are plenty of other affiliate programs out there, but I am an Amazon customer and will most likely be one for the rest of my life. They provide excellent service and have treated me well as both a customer and affiliate. In the end, I hope that the law does get suspended and eventually gets revoked in its entirety. Until then, I will be utilizing the Ebay Partner Program in Amazon’s place. Hopefully I will see the same returns as I once experienced with Amazon’s affiliate program.
Now I need to find someone who wants to purchase Associate-O-Matic from me as I have no use for it now… 
GoDaddy Down
If you haven’t heard already from CNET GoDaddy went down today approximately 2 hours ago and was immediately rerouted to a mobile version of the site. I noticed this while logging into my account to renew a few domains today. One of the ironic things that I noticed is a domain name which expired on May 26, 2011 was sitting pretty in my account. I tried to renew this domain name over the weekend, but it was no longer available to be renewed.
Does this mean that the mobile version of GoDaddy has different offers in comparison to what you receive on the standard site or did I flat out get lucky? Either way I was very happy to see that a domain name I wanted to register magically appeared again to do so. I guess I just might be lucky. Did I mention that I was able to search for a discount code while the main site was down! This is definitely one of those days.
Did anyone else get GoDaddy Mobile lucky today?
A Mutually Beneficial Arrangement
Does the title of this blog entry sound familiar? If it does, then you’ve probably run into an Internet ad advertising such a thing. Now that you’ve reminisced about the old Craigslist days (joke), lets shed a little more light on this topic. First and foremost, a mutually beneficial arrangement can apply to almost any industry.
For me a mutually beneficial arrangement is an agreement you set in place to receive a service where the person providing the service also benefits equally. In the last month or so I have been fortunate enough to setup such an arrangement with a web development firm.
So how exactly did I do this?
I decided to start developing a website which pertained to the same target audience they are marketing towards. I told them what I had in mind for the site and why it would benefit them directly. They understand this notion immediately and had me meet with their project manager a few weeks ago.
How much money have I spent in this arrangement?
Zero, zilch, nada! That’s why these arrangements work. If I can help a company gain more traction and exposure in the industry in which they compete then it is a win, win scenario for the both of us. This is just the beginning of our arrangement and I am getting the full client experience.
Don’t you love when that happens! The company I am working with saw my vision and now they are helping me turn this vision into a reality. I’m excited about this project and can’t wait to write about my experience.
