Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

When I started this blog in February 2008, it was more or less a vessel for venting on personal and professional matters surrounding technology and the Internet.

Blogging was used as a means of counter-balancing my often-skewed daily routine, and through these rants I was able to document and share personal experiences with regards to domaining.

It’s exciting seeing back how it all started and despite still using the same, basic WordPress theme, being able to identify with what I blogged about through these four years.

The domain community contributes daily to providing both the stimulants and the purpose for blogging, tossed around with my usual, spicy flair. It also helped spawn my “alter ego”, DomainGang.com

I’m looking forward to several more years of contribution and rants, experiencing “Domaining in a pool full of sharks and hustlers.”

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.

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?

You don’t have to be a walking advertisement in order to be able to plant the seed for business deals everywhere you go.

All you need is a small stack of quality-made business cards that you carry with you.

You go to the mall for coffee and window shopping? Take the business cards with you.

Attending a wedding or visiting your dentist? Take the stack of your biz cards along.

You never know when the opportunity will knock, but here’s an example.

Yesterday I was at Best Buy and while I waited my turn for the employee to finish with another customer, that customer saw me waiting and she commented on my patience.

Little did she know that I was getting ready to leave. But I seized the opportunity and joined the discussion; she was on a quest for a new laptop.

While I focused on giving her computer advice – and essentially, helping out the Best Buy employee who seemed a little worn out by all this - I was able to ask questions about her interests, type of work and subtly pitch my web & graphics development services.

Being a Texan, she flat out asked for my business card, which I gladly produced from my wallet.

So there you go. Print some quality business cards – I recommend 4by6.com – and go out as usual; you never know what will happen that will benefit your business.

When I bought Acro.net on eBay for about $180 – a bargain for a 4-letter, 12 year old domain with a 4-million Google keyword – I hadn’t thought of using it as my blogging site. In fact, I hadn’t thought of the blogging process as much more than a platform to vent off. A year and more than 50 posts later, I can honestly say that it was a great decision to “sacrifice” a quality name and share with the world my thoughts, experiences and ideas about technology, social issues and doing business in the domain industry.

Other than being a shortened version of my business name, Acroplex.com, “Acro” serves as my nickname on various technology forums I frequent, such as DNForum.com and it allows me to express my viewpoints using my distinct discussion style – sometimes outspoken or sarcastic.

For the most part, my blogging subjects are not related to news; I am not blogging about recent sales or happenings. There are plenty of blogs out there to track and report on these. I’m here to analyze today’s world and society and to offer insight on subjects that I have personally lived through or that I have established an opinion or philosophy about. I want to offer substance and information that can be of value. This way, I keep things interesting and hopefully my readers do not get bored!

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