President Obama means business for domainers

The citizens of America made a historic decision by electing the country’s first African-American president, Barack Obama. Many newspaper traders are said to be asking for up to US$300 for a copy of The New York Times announcing Obama’s triumph on November 5.

Obama’s historic win also has given rise to hundreds of hopeful domainers and cybersquatters rushed to register domain names with Obama as a keyword. Many of these domain names are being pitched as premium domains and are being offered for sale on eBay, Sedo and many other domain name forums across in internet.

Even Obama’s popular speech termed ‘Yes We Can‘ has inspired people to write songs, record them and upload to Youtube and garner thousands of daily hits. It also seems to have inspired a pornographer who has put his domain www.sexwecan.com for sale for $10,000.

Then there are Obama playing cards, Obama pin badges, Obama plaques, Obama posters and Obama paper dolls and many other Obama items on sale on eBay and elsewhere.

Hope this euphoria augurs well for the new President of the USA and all that we would like to say is that -

Mr. President, We Wish You A Merry Christmas and hope that you will be able to play Santa Claus to the economy of the United States, which would mean some smaller gifts to other fledgling economies worldwide! May you have a terrific time at the White House and be able to pull off a coup of sorts by sorting out the economic mess all around! Amen!

Israel.com sells for $5.88 million!

Another geo domain, Israel.com has been sold for $5.88 million to an unidentified buyer by its previous owner, Joel Noel Friedman, a 46-year-old Jewish American who bought the domain name originally in the year 1994.

The domain auction was managed by one of the leading domain name registrars, Moniker.com.

The new domain name owner has apparently parked the domain with SmartName.com hoping for some quick ROI (return on investment) through click monetization considering the interest the domain is currently generating in the cyber world owing to the publicity of its high profile sale.

This domain name sale is yet another example of how the business of domaining is on a roll with the booming virtual real estate market. A few prominent sales reported earlier this year include the $10 million sale of Fund.com, $2.6 million for Pizza.com and $1.7 million for DataRecovery.com

Also, another premium domain name America.com is up for sale and is expected to fetch record price.

America.com up for sale!

An ultimate geo domain,  America.com is on auction at Sedo.com and the domaining arena is abuzz with speculations that it could easily fetch one of the highest prices ever paid for a domain name.

There has to be a very strong interest among prospective buyers for such a premium domain and it remains to be seen if the final sale price exceeds the estimated $12 million paid for Sex.com a few years ago and considered to be the highest price paid for any domain name.

Geo domains, that contain the names of cities, states, or countries, have emerged as one of the strongest interest area for serious domainers and Sedo brokered Chinese.com for $1.1 million last year. The sale of America.com could turn out the largest sale ever for Sedo, which managed the auction of Vodka.com, its largest sale till date, for $3 million by a Russian vodka company planning to enter North America.

The potential of this domain name seems to be virtually unlimited as the buyer will be able to conduct almost any business from the domain, from hotel rooms to vacation packages and air tickets to real estate! You can be sure that the final buyer’s multi-million investment will be recovered within the first few years itself if he implements a sound business strategy.

In fact, I believe he could be making more money off this compared to any other business he could think of! Just imagine if he had a whole lot of subdomains like newyork.america.com, losangeles.america.com, vacations.america.com, realestate.america.com, onlinecasino.america.com, poker.america.com, sex.america.com, insurance.america.com and more… with each subdomain having its own business strategy headed by experts! The potential is indeed UNLIMITED, I say!

With a domain like that he wouldn’t even required any publicity to build his business. What do you say, guys?

Domain Names costlier! .org hiked by 10%

Public Interest Registry, the registry for .org domain names, has notified ICANN that it is increasing the wholesale prices for .org domain names by 10%. The annual wholesale price for .org domain name registrations will be $6.75, slightly below the $6.86 rate that .com domains are expected to be available at later this year. As the profit margins are thin on domain registrations, the price hike will pinch not your favorite domain registrar’s pocket but yours!

Public Interest Registry has given no rational for the price increase to ICANN. As far as I can make out, it has the most obvious business interest in its mind – profits!

One can’t really blame Public Interest Registry for thinking about ways to increase its profits. After all, it has monopolistic control over the .org domain names! In fact, when .biz registry NeuStar raised prices last year, it was belligerent enough to state the reason for the price hike as – everyone else was doing it. What bullshit!

Also, there are talks that Afilias is all set to hike prices of .info and that NeuStar is already planning another hike in .biz prices.

I have always believed that this whole system of ICANN and domain name registries is rotten to the core. They all have a cartel of sorts. Why does the government allow such monopolistic market conditions to emerge? I wish some intelligent guy in the US will hire good lawyers and file a lawsuit against all this!

Why am I mad? Well, the simple reason is that I have loads of domains that I need to get renewed every year and even now it is quite a lot of money I have to spend. With the price increase it will be a whole lot of new burden.

Yes, yes… I know… you will ask me to monetize the domain to sustain themselves. But bro, monetization doesn’t work on its own. It requires a lot of time, skills and effort, which again costs money. A domainer like me is not a programmer or web designer or an SEO expert. To hire them, I would need to spend money. Domaining is getting costlier by the day. Tsk… Tsk…

if I keep it spending on sustenance, when do I get to enjoy it?

Domain name disputes on the rise!

Domain disputes are on the rise! What else could you expect when the domaining industry is such a huge money spinner while being a low investment business!

Unscrupulous yet highly intelligent cybersquatters pick up premiuim domains related to any event or celebrities/businesses as soon as they get a whiff of something new and exciting comping up. 

Sample this:

The National Arbitration Forum, an international provider of alternative dispute resolution services, administered a total of 1,805 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,658 disputes in 2006. The National Arbitration Forum has been approved as a domain name dispute resolution program provider by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since 1999.

The National Arbitration Forum reports at the end of 2007:

• UDRP domain names with common extensions like .com, .net, and .org accounted for 1,775 filings.
• usDRP domain names with the .us extension accounted for 30 filings.
• Of the 1,805 filings, Panelists heard 1,391 cases; parties worked together to settle many of the rest.
• There were 9,916 total domain name complaints filed since 1999.
• Of those filings, Panelists heard 8,006 cases; the parties settled many of the rest.

- PR-USA

I wish the practice of cybesquatting just disappears overnight. What a better place this world would be!

Hmmm… wishful thinking!

Datarecovery.com sells for $1.7 million!

Now, I never thought that data recovery could be sooooooooooooo hot as a topic or a business! Did you?

According to WikiPedia, Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from damaged, failed, corrupted, or inaccessible primary storage media when it cannot be accessed normally. Often the data are being salvaged from storage media formats such as hard disk drive, storage tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID, and other electronics. This can be due to physical damage to the storage device or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system.

Now, a data recovery related website has been sold for a cool USD 17,000,000! Now, who would have thought of that? But apparently, that is the case!

This makes the deal one of the top 10 most expensive domain name acquisitions history.

The buyer, ESS Data Recovery Inc., is a US based company and seems to take its data recovery business really seriously! Kudos!

However, I’d like to see them develop the domain and optimize it for search engines as it has the potential to make it to the Top 10 search results organically.

What do you say, guys?

WikiLeaks gets a new lease at life!

At least, better sense and justice prevail!

A federal judge on Friday allowed whistle-blower site WikiLeaks to resume operation in the United States, a week after ordering its U.S.  hosting company and domain registrar to shut down and lock the renegade’s site from the internet.

The judge conceded the futility of attempts to censor information, in this instance private banking records, after it has been posted to the internet.

The judge signed an order last week that effectively took down the WikiLeaks site in the United States and also locked the WikiLeaks.org domain name to prevent transfer of the domain name to a different domain registrar.

- Wired.com

For those who came in late, WikiLeaks is a true whistle-blower website that published thousands of leaked documents. The web site was ordered to be taken offline in America after a suit was filed against the site posting allegedly stolen documents containing individuals’ banking records. The documents suggested that a Cayman Islands branch of a Swiss bank was helping customers practice money laundering and tax evasion across the globe.

Now, the banks in Switzerland must be getting the jitters as the pressure on them to be more transparent will be increased!

Cybersquatters aim US presidential candidates!

The bad guys are at it once again! Unscrupulous cybersquatters are taking up domain names that have the name of one or the other from amongst the US presidential candidates!!!

They have registered some really interesting names. Check it out…

The lead up to the US presidential election has seen a dramatic surge in cyber-squatters keen to cash in on the public’s thirst for information.

Domain name management service NetNames said that over 1,900 domain names related to the presidential candidates have been registered as online speculators try to cash in on the heightened media coverage.

Hillary Clinton is the most popular candidate online with 1,080 domain names registered in her name including sites such as Clintonsucks.org.

- VNU Net