Free Domain Name: The Great American Domain Name Giveaway!

"The Great American Domain Name Giveaway!" Sounds quite grand, eh? Well, it's true. I'm starting to give away my domain names. I have great development plans for many names in my portfolio and I need to lighten my load of domain names so that my overall situation is more manageable. Once again folks: my loss is your gain! This is a fine opportunity to win yourself a free domain name!

We'll get things started with a name I recently renewed: www.IPOAlert.biz. This is a great keyphrase domain name with fantastic development potential. http://www.ipoalert.biz/ is registered @ GoDaddy.com and has been renewed until March 16, 2006. There are no transfer of ownership fees @ GoDaddy so whoever wins this name pays absolutely nothing for it until it comes up for renewal next year. If you are a domain trader and you end up selling it before March 16, 2006, you will have earned infinite profit on the sale!

The winner of the IPOAlert.biz is: Shaun who guessed the lucky number 23 (my baby girl's birthday.) Congrats to you Shaun! Enjoy the free domain name! I hope you do great things with it! You can click here to jump to an email form that you can use to send me your email address. I will initiate the transfer @ GoDaddy as soon as I get your message (if you have an email address on file with GoDaddy, by sure to send me that same address or else the transfer won't go through.). I hope Shaun will do the right thing and link to this blog!

Thanks to all for playing. If you haven't done so already, please click here to vote in one or more of my polls. That's all I ask in return for offering a chance to win a free domain name. Thanks!

I enjoyed running the contest, so much so that I am writing up the new contest right away! I'll be sure to pick another great name for the next contest, and I'm also going to let a totally independent lottery choose the winning number. Stay tuned!

Confirmed Entries for the (now closed) IPOAlert.biz Domain Name Giveaway:

WLW: -21 (tantamount to "0")
nicedomain4sale_at_gmail.com: 3
PolurNET: 4
OurPortfolio: 7
jan: 13
Lyte: 14
p!nk: 15
Ajeet Khurana: 19
JIm: 20
Shaun: 23 (winner!)
Aboo: 24
holdem: 34
Chris: 35
BrandonG: 39
petter: 41
Tom Knapp: 42 (6*7)
San: 44
Flawebworks: 46
jeter4982: 47
matrics: 52
Gene: 57
colbert: 59
PapaStiz: 65
Snareklutz: 67
John_Loch: 69.99927681206554 (LOL!)
Brian (briman): 73
Stefanio: 74
sadcox66: 75
Version2: 77
Tyro 79
bloggis: 88
Serenity: 94
She Unlimited Magazine: 98

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GoDaddy Is Now The Undisputed King of The Hill

Looks like GoDaddy has finally overtaken Network Solutions and is now the registrar with the most "domain names under management." Congrats to you Bob Parson and the GoDaddy team. You've undersold your competition and now your strategy is paying off.

I think that part of GoDaddy's success can be attributed to their willingness and ability to adapt quickly to the changing moods of the market. For example, I remember when they were just starting out, they used to charge customers $45 to change the ownership of record for any domain name. So if e.g. you moved to a new home and needed to change your address within the GoDaddy system: bam! $45! It was a highly unpopular fee and I'm sure they got lots of complaints about it. But they got rid of that fee fast, and I think it was @ that point that I starting using GoDaddy on a regular basis.

Kudos to you, GoDaddy!

I'm looking forward to following how they are going to leverage the power that this new status has afforded them.

http://www.registrarstats.com/Default.asp

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LaunchUSA.com on eBay

The domain name LaunchUSA.com is for sale on eBay. Auction has no reserve and a very low starting bid price:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5770011482

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SEDO's 30 Day Featured Listing Service

About 2 months ago, I had ordered SEDO's 30 Day Featured Listing service for a few of my domain names. All but one domain was listed successfully. When I emailed SEDO about the domain that didn't make it to their Featured Listings pages, I got a reply from SEDO's Director of Customer Relations:

...I checked your domain and it was listed in our showcase. Unfortunately it was in our German showcase (sedo.de) so I changed it to our US showcase (sedo.com) and added our UK showcase (sedo.co.uk) at no extra charge. I also set you up with a free category showcase for this domain.

Please let me know if you have any other questions. I'll be happy to help.

Best regards...

So, no apology, but at least they tried to make up for the mistake.

Just last week, however, the same thing happened when I tried to have another domain name listed in the Featured Listings section. The name never appeared so I emailed them again and got this response from the Director of Customer Relations:

...I definitely wanted to make sure you felt you got your money's worth here so I have added your domain back into the US showcase.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I'll be happy to help.

Best regards...

So, no apology and no admission of guilt. They listed the domain name but I was still quite annoyed. Why? Because the email makes it seem as though no mistake was made and that they're doing me a big favor by adding my domain name back into the US showcase. The name wasn't listed when I ordered it and if I hadn't contacted them about it I would have spent $39 for nothing. An apology was in order but instead I got a somewhat deceptive email.

I know: it's not the worst situation in the world but I don't think I can trust them to deliver exactly what they promise. I don't think I'll pay for another Featured Listing @ SEDO again. The exposure is pretty good but trust is important to me so I guess I'll save a few dollars and stick to other tried and true methods for promoting my domains.

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Spammer Gets Sentenced To 9 Years!

I am in a constant battle to control the spam coming into my numerous email accounts. I am holding hundreds of domain names, and I've had to setup email accounts for at least a portion of these names, especially the names that I've partially or fully developed. The spam filter I'm using is effective but it's not perfect; I don't think it's possible to design the perfect spam filter. SpamBayes is well designed and I applaud the efforts of its creators, but I still need to spend my precious time "coaching" the software so that it can understand which email I want to keep and which should be banished to the junk mail folder.

You can imagine the grin that came across my face when I learned that a spammer has been sentenced to nine years in prison for spamming through AOL's servers. And this guy was sending out the worst kind of unsolicited email: he was trying to trick people into buying phony products and services. A spammer and a scammer.

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Using Polls to Make My Domains More Interactive

Webmasters have been using polls to make websites more interactive for many years now. It's a great way to make a site more interesting for visitors: give your visitors something interesting to do and it is more likely that they'll return again for more fun in the future.

I've recently found a great poll CGI (PERL) program that I'm now testing on some of the domains I'm developing. If you like polls, please stop by my polls and vote:

Student Loan Poll

0% Credit Card Balance Transfer Poll

Credit Card Internet Merchant Account Provider Poll

Online Dating Poll

Affiliate Programs Poll

eBay Poll

Debt Poll

Auto Insurance Poll

Last, but certainly not least:

Domain Blog Poll


If you are interesting in making your domains more interactive using the software I've discovered, click here to visit the Poll It website. It's FREE (don't you just love free stuff that's useful?) and completely customizable. Setup is very easy. If you've installed CGI scripts before then you could probably setup this program in your sleep (if you have any trouble with setup shoot me an email. I'm happy to help.)

If you decide to install Poll It on your site(s), post a comment here so we can visit your site and vote in your poll! We'll make it poll party! :o)

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