Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

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.

When success arrives in the form of a sale of a business, those of us that partook in its first steps, observing its growth should rejoice.

Ron James of NamePros negotiated a deal with domain monetization company Bodis that few could refuse; the end result will be a bigger, better, faster domain forum for its members.

Along with DNForum, the NamePros forum preserves the legacy of the domain industry’s first steps. Both domain forums have passionate members that keep exchanging ideas and engage in sales and acquisitions.

On both NamePros and DNForum I shared my first steps as a full time domainer, and I am partial to both.

There is plenty of room in the domain industry for active arenas that offer knowledge and tools that assist newbie and experienced domainers alike to succeed.

It’s a great day to be a domainer.

Abdu Tarabichi is an American domain investor and operates several web sites, among which Domainsville.com – a domain and tech news aggregator.

Earlier today, I noticed that several posts were missing from the DomainGang feed on Domainsville and asked Abdu about it. After all, the posts in question were talking about adult content related to the upcoming .XXX launch.

While none of these articles contained nudity per the US guidelines (no nipples, genitals etc.) they did contain discussions of adult nature and descriptions pertaining to and linking to adult industry web sites.

As Abdu explained, this kind of stuff is clashing with his religious views and are thus removed. Abdu stated that he puts faith above all business, and I respect that.

While neither Domaining.com or Namebee.com seem to block content of adult nature, it’s good to know that a businessman like Abdu operates with personal, faith-based scruples. Some might call this old-fashioned but I find it honorable.