Joy.tv Cycles off the Great Domains Homepage

Looks like my Joy.tv domain name has cycled off the Great Domains homepage. Of course, it's still listed in Great Domains, it's just not a homepage featured listing anymore. Well, it was a good ride as it brought in lots of great traffic to my custom parked page @ http://www.Joy.tv/. I am hoping it will cycle onto their homepage again REAL soon. I've had one or two problems with Great Domains in the past but seeing my domain on their homepage--and not having to pay any fee for the prime real estate as I would on Sedo or AfterNIC--has made me a Great Domains cheerleader once again. Heh.

I have always known that my Joy.tv domain name is an excellent name, and now I am sure that it's an excellent value as well, especially when compared to other .TV domain names that Great Domains has listed; here's a sampling:

Joy.tv: $25,000
arcades.tv: $25,000
buses.tv: $25,000 (excuse me?)
baths.tv: $25,000 (OMG!)
cuba.tv: $25,000 (Good Name; worth the money)

My Joy.tv name is far more valuable than buses.tv & baths.tv and I don't think anyone would argue with me. I would really have to laugh if buses.tv or baths.tv sold before my Joy.tv sold. Hey: you never know. It's all about the right buyer coming along at the right time. I wouldn't be surprised if my BirthControl.tv name sold on Great Domains before Joy.tv, or maybe even my SupportUSA.net name. Time will tell.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Huge Sale of Typo Domain

Wow. Voyuer.com goes for big bucks, assuming this is a legit deal. I would never have imagined a typo domain going for over $100,000. WOW. And the Overture score isn't really that great, IMO. I guess the typo domain market is heating up!

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Some Advice to GoDaddy Customers

If you have a lot of domains with GoDaddy, call them up and ask for a bulk renewal discount. So if you have 50 .COM names and you can afford to renew them all at once, call them up and ask them for a discount. I don't work for GoDaddy so I can't guarentee anything but I'll bet they'll work with you and give you a good deal. Might save you quite a bit of money; can reinvest the savings in some more domains! Haha!

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

GoDaddy SuperBowl Ad

So GoDaddy has been boasting about their upcoming SuperBowl ad. I don't know about this one Daddy! I think a domain registration commercial during the big game is totally out of place.

Beer: yes.
Cars: sure.
Jeans: why not.
Domain Registration: I don't think so.

I'd be interested in knowing the effect on sales after the game. Hopefully Bob Parsons will post an entry in his blog about it. Actually, if the commercial doesn't do well, he probably won't!

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

One More .CN Name...

Added Free Dating (www.freedating.cn) to my growing list of .CN names. Overture searches for keyphrase "free dating" in December of 2004 = 598,956. Those are the kind of numbers I like! Registered @ eNom. I only have a handful of domains over @ eNom but so far I've been impressed with the efficient registration process and very impressed with the speed of their DNS updates. Imagine: a .CN name resolving to my server less than 24 hours after registration and on a weekend to boot! Very, very nice. I like that a whole lot. My patience is getting shorter and shorter as I get older! So many domains to develop, so little time!

It's tough to compete with GoDaddy as far as pricing is concerned but it's all give and take in this domain registration game. Rock bottom pricing @ GoDaddy but no toll free phone support. Prices a bit higher @ eNom but registration is fast and DNS updated amazing quick. I haven't been able to find a support phone number @ eNom yet. Am I missing something???

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

More Investing In .CN Names

Decided to invest in a few more .CN names. Huge, rapidly growing market. Now that anyone can register .CN names, I think the TLD is going to explode. I bought:

Student Loan (www.studentloan.cn)

Student Loans (www.studentloans.cn)

eBay Auction (www.ebayauction.cn)

I'll post traffic results as they come in. Go, China, go! Viva .CN!

I think maybe my decision to invest in somewhat influenced by my admiration for the Chinese. Ancient civilization. Hard Working people. Much wisdom in their culture. I am not very pleased about the oppressive government but no nation is perfect. China is changing fast. Soon the nation will be wealthy and with wealth comes security. I would like to think that a nation that is secure about itself would not choose to oppress its own citizens. We'll see, I guess.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

GoDaddy Double Billing

Got double billed for a number of my .JP domains that I have registered with GoDaddy. These babies are expensive so once again I went in panic mode! Called them up in Arizona and my GoDaddy Account Executive (assigned to me because I have over 500 domains with them) was very helpful. He's a good man--we'll call him SK--; he scrambled to the GoDaddy's accounting department to get my problem taken care of right away. One doesn't usually see that kind of support enthusiasm @ 5:05pm on a Friday evening, if you know what I mean. SK later emailed me letting me know that a full refund had been issued to my credit card.

Thought this experience was relatively positive, I am still quite nervous about my .JP domains on GoDaddy. Seems that they have a few kinks they need to work out. I've never had any problems with other extensions, just .JP. We'll see how it goes.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

GoDaddy Checkout Update

Well, it seems that I can now set my own nameservers during the checkout process once again. Maybe they added this recently or maybe I was just tired and missed it. Now, after entering your "Domain Use Information," There's some very small text and a link on the next "Registration and Checkout Options" page which you can click to enter your own nameservers. Why the fine print? I do not know. Makes no sense to me. But at least now I know where it is.

GoDaddy's new checkout layout/format is a bit cumbersome at first but I think I'll get used to it quickly. Domainers will be very happy about the new "Don't show me other offers. I'm only interested in purchasing domain name(s)" radio button, which gives you the option of bypassing all the other stuff that GoDaddy tries to sell you as you are checking out. Never bothered me really but a lot of others complained about it. GoDaddy's prices are consistently rock bottom so I don't blame them for trying to sell me other stuff as I am checking out. Some of their sale prices are most likely loss leaders so they are going to try and make a profit with other stuff. That's just business. As long as they don't add anything to my shopping cart that I didn't ask for, I really don't mind.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Domain Hop Update

Got a quick response from Domain Hop with regard to my .TV question, i.e. why Domain Hop doesn't offer $4.00 RPM per domain for the .TV TLD:

There are no current plans to include .tv at this time. This will be apt to change when the general popularity of the suffix (and organic traffic) matches the demand.

I still think this is strange considering that they offer $4.00 RPM per domain for .pro and .museum. I'm going to keep my test group of .TV domains over there for a month or maybe a little longer to see how the revenue flows. Changing these domains back to my custom, AdSense supported "parked" pages on my server is a very simple matter in case it doesn't work out.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Domain Hop Trial

Been hearing a lot of great things about Domain Hop over @ NamePros.com lately so I decided to give them a try with a handful of test domains. Exciting thing about Domain Hop is that they offer revenue for clicks AND will pay for unique hits as well. Exceptions? Yeah: they will offer $4.00 RPM per domain for the following extensions:

.com, .net, .org, .cc, .aero, .biz, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .pro, .edu, .gov, .ca, or .us.

Now, that's a nice groups of TLD's but this list still leaves some of my highest type-in traffic domains out in the cold, e.g. eBay Auction (http://www.ebayauction.tv/) and Joy (http://www.joy.tv/). Seems strange to me that they would offer $4.00 RPM per domain for the nascent .museum and .pro TLD's but not .TV? Hmmmm. I'm going to email them and see what the story is.

So far, I've been very impressed with their content matching. Check out Cellular (http://www.cellular.be/) or WSJ Prime Rate (http://www.wsjprimerate.info/). Matching is just as good as AdSense. We'll have to wait and see if it generates nice revenue.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Recent Renewals

Well, just dropped over $700 on my credit card to renew a bunch of .JP domains. These things are just toooooo expensive so I had to let 10 or so expire . I still have faith in this TLD but the price has to drop and soon. The good people @ GoDaddy gave me a bit of a discount but not anything to write home to mama about.

I am hoping that market forces will cause the cost for registering .JP domains to drop. A new .JP registrar is offering registrations @ $69/year; this is the much needed competition that I've been waiting for. Looks like other new registrars are gearing up to offer .JP domains. We'll just have to wait and see about the pricing.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Why Sedo?

I don't get it: why is Sedo such a popular domain exchange? I'm interested in a name on Sedo yet I can't see what others have bid on the name AND I can't email the owner to ask a question. This leave me with no power to negotiate and I can't stand it! These seem like no-brainer features for a domain exchange. I don't get it.

For many reasons, AfterNIC is just a far superior exchange. I don't mean to sound like an AfterNIC evangelist but my experience with them has been mostly positive. AfterNIC would be perfect--for me, anyway--if they implemented some sort of screening for domain sellers. Great Domains verifies domain ownership before accepting any domains; a time consuming step but necessary, IMO. Maybe AfterNIC could employ a random auditing system, sampling domainers every once in a while for ownership verification.

I hope AfterNIC's new parking system generates more activity for their site. I refuse to list with Sedo!

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

More Demerits for GoDaddy

It's late. I'm tired. But I discovered a gem of a .TV domain that I just had to grab. So I started the process with GoDaddy, only to find that they've once again changed their registration layout & configuration. Bad news! Why? Well, for the life of me, I couldn't find where I should go to input my nameservers. Before--and I mean just yesterday--I would just click a radio button and enter my nameservers. Now: nothing. Is it me? Please let me know.

So, I registered the name and waited a minute for the name to show up in my account. I checked the nameservers--hey: maybe they figured out that I always use my own servers and added my nameservers automatically! NO! The nameservers were set to GoDaddy's default parking servers. So I had to unlock the domain, WAIT, set my own nameservers, WAIT, then relock the damn thing.

I'm annoyed. I need a beer.

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

Domain Hijackings

I've become so paranoid about domain hijackings that I now check the lock/unlock status of my domains every day. Thankfully, this is can be done in a few seconds with GoDaddy.

I have a couple of domains @ enom; seems I can't globally lock/unlock my names! Or am I missing something?

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <

GoDaddy Glitch: A Great Way to Lose Weight!

So I get up yesteray morning, in a bit of a hurry to hit the road before the snow gets bad. I do a last check of my emails before leaving, only to find that GoDaddy had cancelled 10 of my most valuable .JP domain names! Panic? Oh yeah. Hot, sweaty panic! I called them up--something I've never done before beause they have no toll free number--and demand that they get my domains back ASAP. They got them back, and apologized for the problem. This was a serious glitch. The domains in question hadn't even expired and yet the GDaddy system cancelled the names.

And to think I was such a cheerleader for GoDaddy!

--> www.FedPrimeRate.com Privacy Policy <-- >  SITEMAP  <