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.
A Great Email Straight And To The Point
Another random email hit my inbox about 17 hours ago. So what’s the difference between an email which looks like spam and one which catches my attention? That’s exactly the question I asked myself after looking at the following email:
Hello,
We would like to let you know that the website HurricaneCenter.com is being put up for sale.
We thought that either you or someone you know may be interested in acquiring the site.
The last day of the sale will be Thursday, May 5 (5/5/11). You can find all the details here:
http://www.hurricanecenter.com/for-sale.htm
Sincerely,
Joe Foley
admin@hurricanecenter.com
The email is simple, straight to the point and sparks my interest. Within seconds of reading the email I found myself clicking on the link. This link leads to a for sale page positioned on the website that is for sale. You then have the option to click on another link which directly leads to the flippa auction or you can wait 7 seconds and the page forwards you directly to the action.
When I checked a few minutes ago the highest bid for the flippa auction was $2,233. Normally I tend to ignore these types of emails, but this email passed my flag as spam test. Yes, good spam does exist especially when you research your target market and a decent product or service is involved.
Here is a screen capture of the for sale page, just in case the page is taken down after the flippa auction is over:
Have You Received An Email Like This Before
Recently I received an email out of the blue with the subject domainking.in et al. The email proceeded to state what domain names the person owned and tried to relate to me by saying we understand you are a domain investor or own similar domains. Yes its true I am a domain investor, but I don’t own similar domain names.
I understand the word “or” was used but wouldn’t you want to try to approach another domainer with domain names that they could potentially be interested in by doing a little research to find out what’s currently in that domainer’s portfolio? Ironically, DomainShane and I were talking about this fairly recently. We discussed how people constantly contact us with a random domain offering without doing the proper due diligence before they approach us.
To add to that, as bloggers we are pretty transparent. We tend to type about the domain names we currently have within our portfolios and the domain names we are interested in acquiring. At times I do tend to derail from my normal preferences but it is safe to say that if you are a fellow domainer trying to sell a domain name to me you should probably fit the following criteria:
1. Offer a domain name similar to one I already own or fits within the same category.
2. Do not utilize a generic email template when emailing me.
3. Do not email me twice within a 7 day period if I didn’t respond to your initial email.
4. Have some sort of story which draws me in!
If this person had followed one or all of these rules it would of saved time for the both of us. I can’t knock the person for trying, but I can say they need to be a little more original in there approach. I’ve purchased domain names from other domainers before, either because they were trusted friends of mine or they contacting me when I asked them to do so.
Here is the email I received, you be the judge:
Hi.
We own the following domains:
- casinoking.in
- domainking.in
- lawnet.in
- sensexbull.com
We understand that you are a domain investor or own similiar domains.
As such, please do let us know whether you would be interested in
purchasing any of these domains. We can then discuss further details.
Thank you.
Yours faithfully,
Brijesh Mirchandani
Slado Ltd
