Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

As I am multi-tasking away in the 25th hour of the day at my computer, my email notification “dings”; is it yet another Viagra spam or an offer from an automated user of the DRT software?

I take a sip from my Gatorade bottle – lemonade flavor is my new favorite – and I switch over to Eudora. No Outlook for me, thanks. I’ve been using Eudora since I got away from Mail and Pine, both residing in the heart of the then Unix – now Linux – operating system. That was 15 years ago; if Eudora were a teenager, she’d be looking like Miley Cyrus by now.

I delete a few obvious spam emails that somehow made it through the server’s firewall and the spam filter; the Hoodia peddlers are getting craftier these days. I scroll down to what appears to be a series of messages from eNom, a reminder for tomorrow’s meeting and…an offer from Sedo.

A click later, the subject line seems to contradict the domain referred to in the message itself. But, we’re all human and make mistakes: Matt at Sedo is a nice guy that I’ve talked to on the phone a few times. Very polite, easy to relay my concerns to. He’s now trying to broker through an offer for a domain that I own.

I gawk at the amount. It’s $2,200 – for a domain that Sedo themselves recently appraised at more than $5,000. What the fuck is going on???

Flashback time.

The same domain of mine has been getting a lot of inquiries recently. Some come from anonymous cowards that attempt to exploit their apparent advantage of hiding behind an offer with no signature. Like that guy from Norway who made a $60 offer, then accepted my $75,000 counter-offer, only to conveniently claim it was accidental, two days later.

Whatever, bitch.

I don’t get worked up much, unless shit like this happens, when a company that wants to be taken seriously, such as Sedo, fucks up in their own modus operandi.

More flashbacks.

After that $75k “deal” was annulled faster than Britney Spears’ first wedding (poor chick, she has a nice ass but no brains) I received a direct offer in my email. A few email exchanges later, I was talking on the phone with a potential buyer; to whom I mentioned my firm asking price of mid 5-figures.

The potential buyer then pulled back, to discuss their options. Fair enough.

A week later they emailed me, with a double-whammy: an offer within 10% of my asking price (a winner, in my book) and a paid appraisal from Sedo. Curious as I am, I opened the Sedo Adobe PDF; only to almost piss myself.

OK, I’ve been in the domain business since February 1997, that’s when I bought my first domain. Even back then, I would not be as clueless in order to valuate domains based on some random jumbling up of similar words in comparable sales.

Each domain is different; it has its own features and characteristics beyond the traffic and revenue it might be generating. There is also the age factor; in my book, a 10 year old domain tips the virtual scales more than a 2 year old.

Sedo’s appraisal was such a joke that poor old Matt heard me getting all frothy and furious on the phone, unlike other times. I’m a nice guy – I don’t cuss, unless someone pokes me hard in the eye. I don’t punch, unless someone tries to grab my ass.

First of all WHAT IN THE G-D DAMN sake does Sedo think, when they offer $39 appraisals to Joe Blow, for a domain they don’t own, which is actively parked and brokered through Sedo themselves? When that very same Joe Blow comes to me – all smirking – with an appraisal from Sedo and shoves it down my throat, saying “This is how much your domain is worth, this is how much I will be paying” – what can I say back, when I am using the very same broker, Sedo, in order to commence a profitable sale?

I don’t know what I said to Matt, I was seeing red during my conversation. My voice was spewing dragon breath, not mint and niceties.

So, I’ll say it again: STOP UNDERCUTTING us, Sedo. Stop offering domain appraisals, as if you were GoDaddy or Network Solutions or Jim Bob’s Domain Appraisal Store on eBay. Think for a second what it’s costing us, the seller that uses your services, then think what it’d cost you – the broker – in lost fees. Your brokers and valuators just plain SUCK ASS.

This time, I took two mid-5-figures sales outside of Sedo.

Sorry, but although I like the efficiency of their process, I have had it, man! I don’t want the kind of shit that creates more problems than solves. I am tired of being told by morons, that Sedo appraised my domain at $5k, then receive brokered offers for half as much! Jesus f-cking Christ! Does Sedo keep track of a domain’s history in their German databases? I thought Germans were organized, all the way down to the fall of the Berlin wall.

Enough of this.

In two weeks’ time, I will be seating my ass on a fat “wallet” and maintaining a stronger relationship with domain outlets such as Escrow.com, Moniker and AfterNIC. Too many slip-ups by Sedo and there is always the proverbial straw that somehow broke the camel’s back.

I said camel’s, not camelto.es

One of the best decisions I ever made, was to entrust my tax processing to a professional. No, I am not talking about those colorful individuals from H&R Block. Surely, if you’re in a hurry, as an individual with uncomplicated financial status and in no need of real savings, you can go with these guys – or even buy one of the several commercial software solutions and just do it yourself.

On the other hand, if you’re looking for real attention about tax & business-related issues throughout the year, it’s worth locating and establishing a long-lasting relationship with a CPA – a Certified Public Accountant. Preferably, one that is aware of all new laws regarding the handling of “virtual” or intangible property, such as domains.

The first few times I did my taxes by myself. Back then I was married filing jointly, with kids, a house and a full time job. Over the course of several years, I am quite certain that I lost several thousand dollars due to being unaware of minimum deductions that apply by default: without a need for any real receipts. Did you know, for example that your car – once used to conduct business – has a depreciating value applied each year, including gas mileage? I didn’t know and neither did the software I used to do my taxes, after I gave up on the standard 1040 form done by “hand”. At one point, I missed out on $1,000 of deductions which I only discovered by accident a few months later; I was smart enough to apply for an amendment and I can only thank Google for that.

A CPA literally takes the burden of tax processing off your shoulders. Preferably, they run an office within close proximity, they have an active web site that you can manage your documents at and they offer support and consultations with you on a per request basis. Most important, they don’t charge for their services other than the annual processing fee.

Just tonight, I read on CNN that “tax season became a little more taxing this year, with the average person spending more than a day and more than $200 collecting, calculating and compiling those numbers for the tax man, according to a report based on Internal Revenue Service figures.”

Two hundred bucks is a lot of money to bear the burden of responsibility and the task of doing everything right, all by myself!

The first time I used my current CPA was a little over 3 years ago. At that time, I was recently divorced, had sold my home and moved to another job; all while using Turbo Tax, which had taken me through all the loops and automated whistles it offers. At the final page I was looking at a grim $1,275 of tax payable to the IRS. Not too thrilled, if you asked me.

My girlfriend of that time suggested that I should use the very same CPA her parents used for years for their taxes. Now, I take advice from women very seriously, especially the ones with pretty blue eyes. So – reluctantly – I contacted their office and provided all the information needed, hoping that they’d do a better job than Turbo Tax. That year, I had a return of $850 after my fees to the CPA were paid. How’s that compared to a potential loss of $1,275 to the Man?

Of course, one still needs to be on top of things and save receipts, document transactions and register purchases and sales – along with “bugging” the usual suspects, the parking companies for the 1099 forms each year and all other sources of income. I must say that both Parked.com and Sedo.com are religious in their sending of the forms and that gives me plenty of time to gather all the information and submit it to my CPA. Thanks guys, at least all the money you make off my traffic goes to good use.

A Certified Public Accountant can be located in your local Yellow Pages, or – preferably – can be referred to by other friends and relatives in your area. It’s an investment well worth the cost (in the $200 to $350 region per year). Did I mention the CPA’s tax processing charge is a business deduction as well?

This year’s April 15th tax deadline is already here; get a CPA for your taxes and file for a 6 month extension with the IRS. You won’t regret it.

In an unprecedented late-night meeting that lasted well into the early morning hours of April 1st, ICANNT members emerged from the organization headquarters in Arlington, VA with the big news: all single letter .com/.net/.org domain names, will be released effective today, 9:45 a.m. Eastern Daylight Saving Time. When the clock strikes 9:45 all names will be released on a first-come, first-served basis; the price will be the standard registration fee (plus $0.25 handling fee per domain to cover ICANNT overtime costs.)

Only 26 such letters, per TLD, exist on the entire Internet thus making them extremely valuable.

This obviously comes as a shock to many domain investors and corporations like Overstock or Yahoo! who held high hopes of registering trademarks with “O” and “Y”, respectively before claiming the single-letter domains in a public auction, as it was announced last year. These companies were willing to invest tens of millions of dollars in this partially untapped namespace, so far owned by literally a handful of entities, such as Quest – Q.com, Nissan – Z.com, Paypal – X.com, X Org Foundation – X.org and Thunayan Khalid AL-Ghanim (Elequa) who owns I.net.

As the news came in, we rushed to inform a few influential individuals in the domain industry. Among them, Jerry Floski of Metadata Data Corp, Andrei Dimitriev of Bulgarian Domain Exports and Olga Hollander of Out of TIME & Space Magazine – all of which expressed both excitement and shock at hearing the news.

“At 9:45am, Internet history will re-write itself“, Hollander said.
“It’s a chance for me to grab the big ‘O’ although I am sure Oprah Winfrey will be trying to register it at the same time!“, she added.

No major domain outlets have been notified yet as there will be intense competition that would enable speculators to charge hundreds of dollars in fees. It’s certain though that major registrars, such as eNom and GoDaddy will be fighting tooth and nail against Entertainment Yesterday and Gayest Media respectively, to secure ownership of “E.com” and “G.com”.

While .com is still king, it is expected that the lesser .net and .org TLD’s will be registered as well within minutes of the 9:45am landrush – after all, that’s only 73 domains that in the early days of the Internet one would have hand-registered in a few hours, all while enjoying a slowly-roasted cup of java connected via Compuserve at 300bps. This time however, it will be considerably tougher to register more than one such domain via the special registration portal designated by the Registry.

Good luck everyone!