Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

I get these offers all the time: domain inquiries from anonymous buyers on Sedo.

They don’t necessarily start low but upon my counter-offer they seem to forget that despite a cover of anonymity one needs to maintain their objectivity, common sense and reason.

Some offers can be outright ignorant, such as this fella who upon seeing my counter-offer decided to declare that he’s in fact better off to register a lengthier, composite .com instead of the matching keyword .org

I don’t get worked up by lengthy justifications and “sour grapes” approach by anonymous, so I simply cancel the transaction at that point.

I’m left, however, with one question: if that person feels justified to go register an alternate domain, then why bother contact me in the first place? Does he think I will care more about his thoughts just because he shared them with me? Does he want to intimidate me from behind the veil of anonymity?

The truth is, that there are plenty of ignorant domainers or end-users out there, who believe that anonymity is a surefire method to achieve better pricing. One, however, cannot achieve this by degrading the value of the very domain they are trying to get, in the face of its owner.

A couple of days ago, on the aftermath of the massacre in Norway – where almost 100 people were killed and as many were wounded – I posted a tweet to test the scruples of domainers.

The tweet read:

 NorwayKiller.com is available to register, if you feel so inclined #domains #norway #oslo

It seems that there are plenty of domainers that would stoop to new lows, as to actually register such a domain name. Sure enough, the domain NorwayKiller.com was registered later that day, according to DomainTools.

Nowadays, every major piece of news is a direct invitation to register the .com of the phrase or keywords related to the event. Domainers, however, need to either set some ethical boundaries, or be judged for their poor taste in domain registrations.

Morgan Linton is a smart entrepreneur, whom I’ve met during TRAFFIC in Las Vegas.

His latest project, DomainTheft.org, leaves a lot to be desired; I’m about to unleash a serving of advice and “tough love” based on experience.

For years, I’ve helped domainers (aka, resellers) and end-users alike recover numerous domain names. Such recoveries were successfully achieved only because the driving force was “to do the right thing”.

There was never any money involved, no compensation for costs incurred or time rendered.

When a domain is offered for sale, no artificial algorithm can somehow decide it has been stolen or even laundered several times over. To successfully determine that a domain has been hijacked, one needs to employ time and effort in a quest for the truth.

I won’t lie: DomainTools helps tremendously, it’s the single most important tool one needs in order to check past history of domain ownership.

And yet, even the most seemingly innocent domains can lay dormant in the hands of a thief, only to be offered for sale on every single domain platform available; often, after a quick laundering in ownership.

No domain owner would be willing to offer monetary compensation “as seen fit” with regards to recovering a domain asset. When two letter or three letter dot com domains, generic domains or otherwise valuable domain assets vanish in the hands of a thief, it often takes months of playing hide and seek with digital “ghosts” that originate half across the world, often in China, India and Iran.

Quite often, while in the process of reclaiming a stolen domain, one has to stop short of tagging it as such; there are reasons to follow a thief’s path quietly, as it often leads to a stash of other stolen domains.

It’s the wrong call, in my opinion, to offer a centralized database that can become outdated, or contain false positives at any given time. In the same manner that investigators don’t publicize their research in the daily newspapers, the recovery of stolen domains is an art that cannot be automated.

When pricing domain names for sale, the old rule of “buy low, sell high” applies.

So if you start off with a low acquisition cost, or even hand-registered a domain name, anything above that cost should be considered a fair selling price, right?

Wrong.

Allow me to explain why I don’t share the “flipper” mentality with regards to domains.

Pricing a domain name for sale – or accepting an offer for that particular domain – is based on a combination of parameters, most of which don’t apply when one simply wants to earn a buck or two.

To maximize your return on investment, consider the following:

• What is the domain’s potential for a business? Could you launch or replicate that potential yourself, all while waiting to sell?
• Is the term positive, with numerous search engine results? Is it a term that is marketable or does it have type-in traffic?
• Can you refrain from selling to the first offer – even if it seems sizable – until the perfect storm of an offer comes along?

Quite often, to price a domain accurately for sale you have to dig into records of past sales; this helps gauge potential and to feel more confident about your “gut feeling”. Of course, the saying goes: “Past Performance Is Not an Indication of Future Results” – so be diligent in how you interpret related domain sales.

Old domains, short domains, generic “dictionary” domains – all have an intrinsic value above most others. The same goes for dot com’s versus other TLDs. But don’t let that fool you: there are times when a secondary TLD can perform very well in terms of valuation.

To further gauge potential, I use ZFBot – an invaluable tool for domainers that searches millions of domains for matches against a string. You can use it to find potential buyers, as I’ve done time and again in the past, to send them into an auction frenzy or make cold calls.

Lastly, consider this when getting ready to place a price tag onto your domain: are you leaving money on the table, if you were to sell it without doing research?

That’s why it takes time to price domains and one cannot rely on most automated tools; it’s a gut feeling that one learns to trust with time.

Follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/acroplex for updates.

The .CO landrush clocks a year in existence next week and it seems that if you haven’t renewed your .CO domains yet, you might be having a bit of a problem.

Some registrars charge an arm and a leg for renewals, while others offer coupons and discounts.

After buying a .CO domain earlier today I tried to transfer it to GoDaddy.

The domain was unlocked with “OK” status, the transfer was initiated with the proper authorization code and then GoDaddy sent me an email that the transfer had failed, with the message: The registry rejected the transfer request due to an ineligible domain status.

It seems that .CO domains can’t be transferred to another registrar if there are less than 5 days left until expiration.

So I ended up renewing  it at the current registrar, Namecheap, which turned out to be a whole $6 less than GoDaddy’s regular price!