Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

That quote from the 1998 movie, The Big Lebowski always cracks me up. Perhaps, because it’s one of the funniest movies of the late 20th century.

Also, because the quote is perfectly usable when one expects a large amount of money and it doesn’t arrive regardless of any inquiries and attempts to locate it.

I’ve been muttering this quote – where’s the money, Lebowski – since a sale was finalized on Sedo. The amount involved did not justify waiting for a check in the mail, so I changed the payment method to “wire” instead.

Sedo is very prompt with delivering the funds, no question about that. But normally, it takes 2 days maximum for domestic wires to hit one’s bank account.

In this case, I was muttering “where’s the money, Lebowski” for the better part of the week.

Finally, I decided to call my bank and I was told that the routing number for “ACH” wires is different from that of regular wires. In fact, without that proper routing number money will never hit your account.

So next time, before you start mumbling to yourself and others “where’s the money, Lebowski” – pick up the phone and call your bank.

Nobody likes competition. Especially the guy who receives an email that clearly states just that.

A few weeks ago I received an offer at Sedo for a financial term, a dot net that I registered “by hand” in 2003. As the story goes, I hold domains until the Rapture occurs and since I am not a Catholic, this might take a full lifetime.

But back to the domain – a two-word compound term that returns 700k results in Google.

The domain was at Parked.com due to its higher PPC for financial terms, but I had also listed it for sale on Sedo. As with most Sedo offers these days, the negotiation started in the low hundreds. I was dealing with an aggressive US buyer that left me with little room to raise my asking price.

The final offer was closer to my expected price but still, I felt I was being short-changed. Don’t get me wrong, $1500 is still good money for a domain I spent $8 to register and another $50 in renewals over the years. But why not expand its potential, if I could?

After all, the sale of 360.org a year and a half ago taught me that if you don’t ask, you don’t receive.

So I sent the domain to auction on Sedo, with the final offer I had received being the reserve.

What I did next was a first for me.

Personally, I am sensitive about receiving emails from companies or individuals that I haven’t solicited. However, in this line of business, a legitimate contact of a person or company related to the product or service on offer, might lead to a potential sale.

I crafted an email that announced the domain name and the fact that it was in a live auction that the recipient could participate in. Then, I searched ZFBot - a great tool for domainers - looking for domains that matched mine – either starting with or ending with the exact string. Once I had these domains, I extracted their contact information from the WHOIS using DRT – Domain Research Tool.

It’s important to mention at this point that ZFBot can narrow down your target recipients by sorting the domains according to their parking status: in my case, I wanted to avoid contacting any domain owners that simply had parked domains instead of legitimate companies.

I double-checked every email to ensure there was no junk, “do not contact” or WHOIS shield emails; then proceeded with contacting them – a total of 50 or so – with a description of what I had to offer: the opportunity to obtain the keyword domain most closely related to their business.

I made sure that I explained what was on auction, where and when the auction would end. As part of the sales pitch I described the importance of generics and keyword domains, using simple words. When you sell to an end-user, you don’t simply sell them technology and gimmicks; you are offering them an extension of what they already have.

The only thing I did not foresee was the fact that I sent the email right before a long holiday weekend; Monday was a holiday and that took away a day from the remaining days of the auction as most recipients’ businesses were closed!

Twenty-four hours before the auction end I followed up with another similar but shorter email, announcing the ending of the opportunity and its imminent closing; in doing so I used a bit of a provocative subject: In 24 hours new competition is born.

With a few hours remaining, two new bidders started bidding up along with the original offer. The auction was extended several times, as bidder #3 battled with bidder #1 – all the way to a very nice $3350. I’m definitely happy with the outcome and especially with the fact that the buyer is a person from the term’s industry who will put the domain to good use.

Had I attempted to sell the domain via cold calling, I’d probably be given the runaround. But since nobody likes their competition to get an advantage with an asset that’s being openly auctioned, the domain sold at an end-user price.

I’ve no doubt that on July 20, hordes of domain investors will attempt to secure a portion of the new ccTLD pie, .co

Staged as the new alternative to .com, the Colombian national TLD understandably launched an intense marketing campaign to ensure that it is not going to fall flat on its face, like other registries did in the past.

Highlighting a built-in provision that will protect the rights of trademark holders from ‘squatters‘, the .co Registry is also a proud sponsor of several domain events and conferences, including the upcoming ICANN meeting in Carthagena, Colombia.

As part of the .co marketing campaign – other than paying bloggers $80 /month for 125 x 125 square ads – the .co Registry decided to put on the chopping block one of its biggest assets: the domain e.co

Instead of waiting several years after the launch of the .co TLD, the .co Registry is actually doing something smart – at least from a marketing standpoint.

So e.co will go on auction, via Sedo and according to the web site at http://e.co the proceeds of the auction will go to a global charity of the winning bidder’s choice. The .co Registry does not shy away from stating the fact that the single letter plus the extension form the word “eco” – a term popular with today’s green-focused economy, the environment and ecology in general.

Sounds like an angelic world, with charities and good intentions.

However, at least 1,300 trademarks that contain the word “eco” exist in the USPTO database, all of which would most likely object to seeing their mark be used as a global URL. Several hundred of these trademarks are indeed of ecological focus which would bring them directly interested in both obtaining and objecting this unique match of URL/trademark.

If that weren’t big enough of a reason to be skeptical about the upcoming auction of e.co consider that there is also an active and rather large initiative about the gTLD .eco in the works.

Supported by no other than former US vice president and Nobel Peace prize winner, Al Gore, the Dot Eco initiative is the single largest force behind the launch of this generic TLD; promoting green energy, alternative power sources, the environment and a global policy against pollution.

A few questions arise:

• Is the .co Registry wrapping up the sellout of e.co as a “charity event” in order to avoid direct repercussions from the “eco” trademark holders?
• How is this going to affect the ICANN application for .eco by the Dot Eco initiative, especially since the Colombian TLD is the shortest possible form of the applied gTLD?
• Is there already an agreement between the .co Registry and Dot Eco and the auction is simply a trick to attract more attention to the launch a national TLD which will face several critical issues in the future?

One thing is certain: domain holders are witnessing their revenue drop constantly, all while large brokerage and PPC companies announce record profit and sales. As the Registries increase their profits by raising prices for the most commonly used TLDs, the cost of owning and monetizing a large number of domains is increasing.

Perhaps, it’s time for justice to begin at home instead of next door.

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The auction over at Sedo of the domain 24.org ended at $7,100. This is a rather disappointing result for a number that returns almost 5 billion results in Google.

The seller, however, took advantage of the traffic of his other domain, 24.net to increase the pageviews of the 24.org auction – the redirect was taken down once the auction ended. Where I come from, this is called ‘cooking the books’.

Regardless, the low selling price of 24.org is a direct result of Sedo’s decision to move the ‘ending soon’ auctions to a secondary page; a move that has hurt sales as many domain auctions used to receive bids the last minute, simply from the exposure they received on the Sedo.com homepage.

When I sold 360.org a little over a year ago for $25 grand, little did I know that it’d set a record as the biggest NNN.org sale to this day. It’s also a financial indication of our bad economy, since a NN.org like 24.org just sold for almost a quarter of that amount.

24.org is a great domain, a number indicative of man’s obsession with 24 hour cycles; our day begins and ends on a twenty four hour continuum. Anything that happens ‘around the clock’ can be displayed with the number ’24′ – much like the number 360 is a full circle.

Good luck with 24.net next time. At least, it really has the traffic it loaned to 24.org for the 7 days of the auction.

Follow me on twitter: http://twitter.com/acroplex

It seems that Sedo.com has run into a potential issue when it comes down to managing domain pushes at Fabulous.com

Several domainers complained that once instructed to push a domain to the Sedo account as part of a sale, they are faced with a message at Fabulous, stating that the Sedo account is invalid or locked.

The problem appears to be that Fabulous locks accounts out for multiple login failures – as part of a security measure. While the measure is valid – and yet another reason to choose Fabulous.com as your preferred domain registrar – it creates some practical issues with regards to completing sales at Sedo.com

Yesterday, while in the middle of a web server crisis I had to deal with this very issue at Sedo/Fabulous.

After calling Sedo and realizing that the business-to-business bureaucracy would add several days to my ongoing mid $x,xxx sale, I decided to take matters in my own hands.

And that’s the Acro way.

Despite the 1/2 day time difference between the East US coast and Australia, my message to Mike “Fabulous” Robertson about the issue was treated with kangaroo speed. They unlocked Sedo’s account and I was able to push the domain and update the transaction, which was then completed within hours.

It’s interesting seeing how complex matters can be resolved within a reasonable amount of time and minimal effort, once you realize that it’s all a matter of good business relationships. Kudos to Mike and Fabulous.com

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As I traveled by airplane during the change of the year, I could not but notice how the rules of the traveling game have become stricter. After the incident with the Nigerian terrorist who attempted to blow up a Delta Airlines plane bound for Detroit, there is no more room for mistakes.

TSA’s new set of regulations include enforcing restrictions of flying to high-risk individuals, tighter control of carry-on luggage and manual “frisking” of travelers. Despite the inconvenience caused by this detailed checking of human flow, the end result is higher security and flight safety for all air travelers.

Meanwhile, for the third time I’ve had a non-paying bidder at Sedo from a country in the Middle East.

Although Sedo supposedly collects information that verifies the identity of individuals and companies, it’s unacceptable that a pattern of non-paying bidders isn’t eliminated by enforcing similar rules to those observed by the TSA.

Sedo should restrict domain bidding by “domainers” that originate in countries with a high rate of fraud or non-payment. As a US-based corporation, there is little one can do with so-called “binding” contracts between US-based sellers and those outside Uncle Sam’s reach.

Prevention is better than sitting and wasting one’s time and locked down PPC revenue, all while waiting for the foreign prankster to unveil their lack of commitment to a business deal.

The entrepreneurial spirit of Nick Spanos, a respectable Real Estate broker from Manhattan, NY and owner of bApple.com, led him to new ventures in the 1990′s. His vacation rental business was thriving and so was his portfolio of domain names. Nick’s business expanded on the Web to promote these vacation rental properties, through the simple philosophy outlined below:

In the past, the popularity of hotels was primarily due to the accessibility. You knew that if you went to the center of NY City there would be a hotel that might be able to accommodate you. Now, through the NoMoreHotels.com network, thousands of available rooms, villas, condos, estates, beachfront rentals, and apartments are for rent by owners and are accessible at the click of a mouse.

Nick’s an ever-busy mind, he programs his own applications, structures his own databases and runs his own hosting servers. This multiplicity of skills has allowed him to overcome tough times in life.

When the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center took America’s society by surprise, Nick went to ground zero to help with the rescue efforts as a volunteer. At that time, all travel stopped, tourism dropped to zero and his vacation rental business tanked, with the Bank taking 100% of the bookings. In his own words, Nick lost his shirt in the aftermath of 9-11.

As a domainer, Nick Spanos is fond of  establishing domain verticals for his business and at the peak of his NoMoreHotels venture he also registered NoHotel.com and NoHotels.com, figuring that it’d be easier for non-Americans to remember. This foresight proved extremely worthy 10 years later.

Right after Christmas of 2008, Nick received a $1,000 offer via Sedo, for the domain NoHotels.com to which he countered with a whopping $100,000 ticket. During the course of the following weeks, Nick negotiated aggressively with what appeared to be an increasingly impatient buyer, who jumped from his original offer to $8,000 – then $15,000 and $16,000 – before showing his true financial colors by raising the offer to $55,000.

At that point, Nick’s asking price was $70,000 and he was soon contacted by a Sedo broker on behalf of the buyer. The deal was closed at $60,000 for both NoHotel.com and NoHotels.com – a move showing that the Norwegian buyer fully intends to capitalize on the brand: “No” is the ISO country code for Norway.

Nick Spanos could not be happier; a great domain sale that successfully closed the link to the past business and emphasizes the importance of negotiation: go with your gut feeling – if you don’t ask, you don’t get.