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Dotster has announced a happy hour promotion set for tomorrow (April 17th at 4pm Eastern). They will be giving away 500 .com / .net / and .org domain registrations on a first come first serve basis - 1 per customer.

Mark your calendars for the start of Happy Hour this Thursday April 17 at 1 pm PDT / 4 pm EDT. We will be giving away 500 new COM, NET, and ORG domain names on a first-come, first-served basis (1 domain name per customer). During Happy Hour, visit Dotster and click on the Happy Hour banner to receive a coupon code good for one new domain registration. Coupons will be redeemable immediately and will remain valid through April 22, 2008 midnight PDT. 

Now I just need to find a fresh reg I’ve been putting off and wait until 1pm my time.

Justin

My apologies for having not posted in a few days. On April 14th I came down with some heavy duty food poisoning and I was out of commission for about 48 hours. As horrible as I felt, I searched online for any kind of home remedies, or anything that might help with the sickness. I decided for fun, to checkout FoodPoisoning.com to see what was on it.

I was surprised to find it was a developed site, “Sponsored” by a legal practice. After checking the whois, I confirmed the domain was owned by that law firm. I found it a brilliant way to market their own services. They develop out a site, rank decently for the search term (#26 in google), and approach it from a legal perspective. I was impressed with the site, it had some really good content, and plenty of it.

This use of a premium domain is spot on. This law firm is demonstrating perfect use of a complimentary domain. Its only a matter of time before more businesses realize how ingenious this type of marketing is, and join the fold.

Justin

A new strategy is emerging at NameJet. A common practice on Ebay - Auction Sniping, is beginning to develop for backorders. Auction Sniping is where a bid is placed at the very last second of the auction. It gives that bidder the last chance to win the item, without having any other bidders the luxury of raising their own bids. In nearly every domain auction platform, they have something that prevents sniping bids from winning. If a bid is placed in the last moments of an auction, the auction clock resets and time is added.

So you may be wondering how is sniping going on at NameJet? This sniping is actually occurring pre-auction in the backorder phase. NameJet allows bidders to see all domains with bids on them. It even shows how many bids and the highest bid (all before the actual auction). This enables anyone to just search domains that have bids on them already, and backorder those to compete in the auction.

Saavy domainers are waiting until the last few moments to actually backorder the domain they want. All domains must be backordered before 8pm (PST), so many bidders are waiting until about 7:55 to start placing their backorders. This enables the bidders to bid against only the few others who are following the same process. For Instance, on Saturday I tried the technique for only the second time and was fortunate enough to be one of only 2 bidders at auction. This means the bid is still low at $69, and the odds of the domain sky rocketing from demand is greatly diminished.  I’ll update with the results of that auction in 2 days.

Justin

Domain names containing hyphens have always had a poor stigma attached to them. Most domain resellers stay far away because the lack of demand from end-users to use these type of domains and /or the fear of developing on them and having traffic bleed to the non-hyphenated version. However, in the past year, many domainers and web developers have begun to embrace the hyphenated domain as a cheap alternative with nearly equal SEO capabilities.

Today at auction, the domain Pet-Products.com is ending. It currently is at $2,600 with a few hours left and nearly every TLD is registered with “Pet-Products” in it. If you want to see a list of recent domain sales with hyphens in them. Just visit the main page at NameBio.com and put a hyphen in the search box and hit search. I think you’ll find hyphenated domains are starting to show as a nice growing trend.

Justin

A project we have been working on for sometime has just been delayed unfortunately due to the firing of one of our developers. The project was being created using Ajax, and is basically 85% done. There are functionality issues that our developer was never able to resolve and some design issues that need to be addressed. We have a budget of about $400 to complete the project, if anyone is free and would like to hear more, please email me at justin@namebio.com

Justin

I do a lot of acquisitions through direct contact with original owners of domain names. Ususally, I recieve one of the following responses to my inquiry emails:

1. “Yah I could be interested in selling, what do you have in mind?”
2. “Yes, the domain is for sale, $150,000″
3. …………… (no response)
4. “No, this domain is not for sale”

So, it was odd when I received a response urgently demanding that I make an offer as the owner had received 2 others recently and was making a decision that night. I prefer to do business via telephone, however the whois number was inaccurate. I responded asking for a phone number so I can make an offer that way. He responded that he will be making a decision before he goes to bed, and if I dont want to make an offer, thats fine.

So, after pressing me, I made what I felt like was a reasonable offer, but one where I could easily see a profit in flipping. I didnt hear a response the following day, so I sent a follow up email. I then got a response asking about escrow (which I had insisted if he accepted my offer). I explained the process and went out on a limb and initiated escrow via escrow.com. I told him he had 24 hours to accept before the offer gets pulled. This was my chance to press him in the hopes he accepts my offer.

So, here I stand in an uncomfortable position. Waiting impatiently to find out if the seller does in fact accept my offer, when my guess is he is using it to try and milk a better offer from any other interested party. I always prefer doing business over the phone. You get to actually interact and get a decent feel for that person and their intentions. I will update everyone later with the domain name, regardless of the outcome.

Justin

These are exclusively listed on my blog and pricing is good through this weekend. Thanks for looking:

Domain Name: RefinanceMe.com
Creation Date: 12/1/1998
Expiration: 11/30/2008
Keywords: Refinance + Me
Price: $500

Domain: MDBE.com
Registrar: Network Solutions
Registration: 3/13/1991
Expiration: 3/14/2009
Age: 17 Years Old
Price: $2250

Domain: ChildLike.com
Registrar: Network Solutions
Registration: 3/5/1996
Expiration: 3/6/2009
TLD Availability: All Major TLD’s Taken
Price: $1,750

Domain: vGolf.com
Registrar: Network Solutions
Registeration: 3/13/1996
Expiration: 3/14/2009
Age: 12 Years Old
TLD Availability: All Majors Taken, Except .biz
Price: $2,500

Domain: DataInnovation.com
Registrar: Network Solutions
Registration: 6/25/1999
Expiration:6/25/2008
Price: $250

Many domainers would advice you against using credit to purchase domain names. Primarily because unless your a seasoned vet, using credit to purchase a domain name can often times cause much more trouble than anticipated. Imagine overpaying for a domain name that wont gain in value and racking up interest debt in the process. It can get ugly, especially if you jump in too soon or too much.

Now, if the shoe is put on the other foot, there are some great things floating around that you may want to consider taking advantage of. I recently received an offer from Discover for a credit card with 0% APR (FOR LIFE!) on Balance Transfers and a reasonable rate on regular purchases. What does this mean? Well, basically it means I could make a large acquisition of a premium domain name, in the neighborhood of $5-10,000 on a credit card, move the balance to the discover card and pay it off nice and slow without accruing interest. Its like borrowing money for practically free.

Now, you may be saying, Theres gotta be a catch. There is. You must put at least one transaction on your new discover card each month (starting Jan 09). However, this can be as little as .60 cents. So, being a little creative, you can setup a reoccurring bill from your paypal account for $1-2 per month and this is automatically drafted from your Discover card. There is also a Balance Transfer Transaction fee, but that is maxed out at $75.

What Ive described is a great way to borrow money, with practically no interest. Again, its not recommended for those just stepping into the game, but rather for the more seasoned crowd, looking to expand on someone else’s dime. You also of course must need half decent credit. Good luck!

Justin

When we first reported this story, iReit had sold five, 3 letter .com domains for a total of $3,300 dollars on accident. However we have now learned of two more 3 letter .coms that sold for $500 each to the same buyer:

GVU.com and SVJ.com both sold to Michael Bilde of Bangkock. He is also the lucky owner of the other five 3 letter .coms as well. That means he purchased 7 of these types of domain names for $4,300 with a wholesale value in the 65-70k range. He paid about half of what he should have, for just one of those domains.

This mistake just seems to have cost iReit a small fortune and the damages just keep totaling up. Perhaps even more damaging is the blow to the credibility of iReit as being a leader in this industry, It was only last year that DNJournal was announcing them as rising stars.

I have some renewals in the next 2 months of names I had intended to develop, but more than likely will never. Most of these names have some age, several of them from 2001-2003. Most of the remaining were drops that I managed to grab.

LivingFocus.com - $50
GoldGetter.com - $125
CreativeOutput.com - $40
CraftersCorners.com - $15
SelectiveDemolition.com - $150
Transfered.net - $15
Comaholic.com - $25
DotMeUp.com - $30
FundingConcepts.com - $50
SkinLover.com - $35
SpecializedTrucks.com - $200
iVenting.com (typo for Inventing) - $150
Briberies.com - $150
TheBizForum.com - $25
DataForFree.com - $30
ProfessionalLiquidation.com - $45

You can either post an offer or shoot me over a message on the contact form. If you belong to a forum, please include your forum handle.

Thanks,

Justin