Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

It’s 2012, and domain Registrars should provide bulk edit features – or risk losing their accreditation.

I kept about 100 ccTLD domains with Domainmonster for the past year; when the time came for renewal, I decided that having waited for a full year for them to implement their bulk edit feature was plenty of time.

In the past, Domainmonster responded to my request to remove the automatic renewal of my domains positively and once I opened a ticket they removed that feature on my behalf, editing all the domains in bulk.

So I decided to move all of my domains to another registrar. The problem: unlocking the domains and generating the authentication codes can’t be done in bulk mode.

Contacting support did not yield any results either; the Domainmonster support cited security issues that would not allow them to modify the lock status or issue en masse authentication codes on my behalf.

It’s manual edit mode for the last time; it’s the last time that Domainmonster will hear from me and my business, while I’m moving the domains to EuroDNS.

Everyone has their registrar of choice and prefers to register their domains with them.

For the purpose of organizing one’s domains, it’s prudent to keep your domain names with as fewer registrars as possible.

Register.com is not my choice of registrar, although it belongs to the first group of domain registrars to become available after Network Solutions lost its monopoly in 1999.

I acquired a domain at Register.com and having had an account there I unlocked and attempted to transfer it to Fabulous.

Apparently, Register.com implements a tight security regarding the provision of authorization codes; five days later I received an email that my request had been denied and I had to call them.

So I did call them, on a Sunday morning.

The phone was answered promptly and I was patched through to their tech support. At the other end of the line, Gary was understanding and resolved my issue quickly and efficiently.

I had the authorization code in an email within minutes and proceeded with the transfer.

I feel bad when such positive experiences occur at a losing registrar but at the end of the day it’s all about cost of registrations.

Still, I’d give Register.com ten out of ten for customer support efficiency, on a Sunday no less.

As a domain investor I follow a simple mantra: buy low, sell high.

The question is, what exactly is that “low” that will eventually determine the “high” price and how does one determine that?

When evaluating the potential of a domain to be acquired, I consider its TLD, keyword, age, positive meaning and Google results for the keyword as the primary factors.

Price comes second, for a simple reason: when all you examine in an asking price is the monetary value in dollars, you don’t see past the particular sale and you’re ignoring the domain’s potential.

One has to see long-term: how much would the domain be valued a year from now? Five years or longer down the road? Is it worthy of development, or does it have competition in the field?

Whether I spend $30 or $3,000 to acquire a domain, I summarize my decision after consulting those parameters I mentioned above. The end result is then further processed by my own, personal “gut feeling”; something that seasoned domainers develop with time.

What is your sweet spot and how do you determine that?

Wikipedia is out of bounds today, participating in a global protest against the proposed SOPA bill that threatens our civil rights. And yet, I’m not so sad seeing Wikipedia’s black page after each search query.

You see, centralized sources of information aren’t really a good thing. Free or not, Wikipedia has somehow become an authority on people’s online research; whether you type the URL in or after searching in Google, Wikipedia articles maintain top relevancy.

Even when they are inaccurate!

I grew up in a home that encouraged research; my father owned more than 5,000 books from philosophy to astronomy, but not a single standard, multi-volume encyclopaedia. The only thing close to that was probably Le Petit Larousse.

In the 70′s, the “dream” of a grade school student was exactly that abomination: the multi-volume encyclopaedia. It sounds anecdotal but it’s entirely true: when asked to compose an essay, a friend cut out images and text from this precious, 20-volume strong encyclopaedia, then pasted them with glue onto the school book he presented to the teacher. In 1978, that was probably a pioneer act of “cut and paste”.

For that matter, I would like to see Wikipedia stay down longer, be it in protest of SOPA or for  some other reason. Students and others need to learn to do research, versus copy and pasting or plagiarism.

And never trust a single point of authority or one day it might go down along with your trust and dreams.

On Friday, Rick Schwartz announced a deal that myself and 34 others could not refuse; a $995 ticket for TRAFFIC 2012 in Ft. Lauderdale.

Having attended TRAFFIC 2008 in Orlando and TRAFFIC 2010 in Las Vegas, I can only say that I’m very excited to have booked my attendance for this year, a full nine months in advance.

It’s not just the price – now standing at $1,295 – but the fact that it’s for a top tier event I can actually look forward to; TRAFFIC is the top conference for domainers, developers and investors.

Those of you that are still skeptic, don’t be.

Provided that domaining is not just your hobby but a business you dedicate time and money into, attending TRAFFIC is a wise choice. Industry leaders will be attending and industry players will be interacting in a manner unmatched by other domainer conferences.

I’m looking forward to meeting again the best of you and to forge new business relationships as well.

See you in October, at TRAFFIC 2012 in Ft. Lauderdale.