Take More Risks

Since my last post I’ve been threatened 2 times by arvato finance (1and1’s henchmen) to cough up money for domains that I no longer use in any capacity. I wouldn’t have minded this but I’ve since initiated the cancellation process for the “contracts” that these domains fall under on 2 separate occasions.

I thought it was all over until today when I received a cancellation of service notice from 1and1 dated from the 18th of December saying that if I didn’t pay £12 within 10 days they’d refer me to arvato again. Well holy shit. I wouldn’t have minded this so much if I hadn’t recently become unemployed. Or been subjected to this bullshit on a number of occasions before. Have these fuckers never heard of customer service?

I wish there was a God who would strike these bastards down. Seriously. But sadly there isn’t so I’m gonna have to channel my impotent rage into this dead piece of crap and just call them again to try to resolve this. This will not be the end of it.

Don’t use 1and1 unless you want a life sentence of being threatened by the biggest bunch of bastards on the planet. I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire. It’d sit there with a burger laughing wishing that someone would come along with some petrol to really spark up a show.

Merryyyy fucking Christmas.

A few months ago I received a letter from a debt collection agency regarding the £9 I owed 1and1.co.uk for unpaid domain registrations. I wasn’t aware at the time that 1and1 automatically set domains to renew and thus I’d been billed for a number of domains that had been renewed.

Whilst I realise that this is entirely my own fault for not reading the contract I entered into before registering domains I can’t help but think this practice is slightly dubious. How many other registrars set domains on auto renewal?

I’ve since tried to cancel the contract (after I received another email saying that I’d be charged again in 40 days for domains I haven’t used in 2 years) but I’m getting nowhere. I initated the cancellation process through the 1and1 contracts control panel and the system said that I’d receive an email with a confirmation link that would make the cancellation final. 4 days later – and I’m still waiting. I’ve since contacted the 1and1.co.uk and they’ve been largely unhelpful, recommending that I contact a different department.

It’s been a frustrating experience and I won’t be using 1and1.co.uk again. In future I’ll be more careful and actually read the terms and conditions before registering domains. Or I might just stick with companies that I know and trust.

Google Trends Hot List

I’ve found this is useful for acquiring names of people who are currently in the news. The problem with registering these names is that a lot of people are in the news for a week and then are never heard of again! Through this site I’ve only found one domain name of value and that’s Justin Tuck.com, who is a footballer in the NFL. The crap thing is I might run into issues with copyright or intellectual property rights.

If you land a popular persons name, it’s probably best to develop a fansite dedicated to that person on it. Having the .com domain will definitely add value to the site.

Popurls

This site is an aggregation of most of the popular technology blogs on the Internet. It’s great for finding generic technology names but again you have to careful to avoid registering trademarked domain names. If you keep seeing a new technology popping up such as UMPC (Ultra Mobile PC’s) it’s worth digging deeper for shorter, long tail keywords. For example run a query at Wordtracker Free Keywords for UMPC and see what comes up.

As I speak on the 1st of February umpcmediaextender.com is available. Even though the term only has 14 daily searches, this volume is likely to increase, especially if UMPC’s continue to grow in popularity. You should check to see if this is currently the case over on Google Trends.

It seems as though UMPC as a search term isn’t growing that much, so umpcmediaextender.com probably wouldn’t be worth registering.  Although you never know!

The crap thing is that most of the popular generic search phrases are registered by the big fish. They normally have access to software that uses the Wordtracker API to reel in most popular names. Notice how I say MOST.  By thinking outside the box you can easily land yourself some hot generics.

It’s just about persistance and having a positive attitude !

It’s now part of my daily routine to visit the Google Hot Trends list to try to find some cool domains on emerging topics. I haven’t found anything of note yet bar marilynjojenkins.com (named after one of Bill Clinton’s many mistresses). I assume this story was in the news because of the new book on Hilary Clinton. The domain’s had about 4 typeins over a 36 hour period which is alright but I’m expecting the traffic to die off with the story but you never know!

I’m experimenting quite a bit with domain tasting recently. I’m only gonna learn more about the industry by finding out for myself what works and what doesn’t. You can only learn so much from secondary research! Domain tasting’s cool as it gives you a second chance. You can learn a lesson without losing anything which is invaluable!

My PC still hasn’t arrived unfortunately! It’ll come when I’m in London this week no doubt. Ah I’m not in a big hurry to get it.

Oh and I forgot to mention, I got Guitar Hero II. My Xbox 360 addiction is now officially out of control. Lord help me.

Plug Alert!

This is quite simple! Visit Alexa’s Movers & Shakers page and use your favourite whois tool to check if any common typo domains for the “Moving Up” sites are available and if so register and park it.

You can always use your domains grace period to erase any underperforming domains. It’s best to set yourself a markup goal with each domain. Let’s say that you wanted a 100% return on investment and domain registration costs $9.99. In order to hit your target you’ll have to make at least $0.054 per day for a year. If, during a 5 grace period the domain generates $0.30 then you are set to hit that target. Slowly…

The only question is, how long will it be before you receive a Cease and Desist notice through the door?

Dynadot are currently offering a 5 day grace period on almost of their all newly registered domains, allowing you to delete your names for a full refund in credit. It’s certainly a great idea but one which is liable to be abused. How so?

Well let’s say that you are experimenting with domain typos. Theoretically you could delete all of your domain names which receive little or no traffic within the grace period and have a “second bite of the cherry”. The question is, is this abusing the system or is it a legitmate form of domain speculation?

It definitely has it’s advantages. Firstly it frees up domains that aren’t of any use to you. Secondly it dramatically reduces the amount of risk involved in selecting valuable typos. This could be especially useful for newcomers to the business. It would have saved me $45 last month on registering useless names (if I’d known about it at the time).

The question is, how much is too much? Would Dynadot or any other registrar which implements a similar system allow you to delete 300 domains a day? Would this be dependent on how much you’ve already spent with that company?

If any of you have experience with a grace period system it would be great to hear from you!

$522.30! I can’t believe it!

The best bit about it is that I can now register .com’s for $6.99 a year which is pretty cool.

Good news on the earnings side of things, I’m gradually recovering to my pre-January levels on Adsense, about $6 a day. I want to be closer to $60. I’ve no time scale penned out for it at the minute, I’m too busy concentrating on developing websites now. The earnings will follow natually if I keep penning original content.

I’m definitely thinking of moving to the mainland in May 2008. I’ll have to figure out how much I’ll need long before then though. $60 a day is the equivalent of my current wage which would be enough to survive but I don’t want to be scraping by.

I’m looking to buy a decent budget tool to track my finances. Has anyone any experience with the Accountz programs? I’ve seen some mixed reviews over on Amazon.

It’ll be helpful to seperate my personal and business accounts. Too often I’ve spent £40 on a night out and thought “Shit, I could have bought 8 domains with that!”. Similarly I’ve registered 8 domains in the past and thought “Shit, I’ll have to stick to dingy cider tonight!”.

Another update, I’ve had a great idea for a network of websites! The first of which will be wehatecats.com which is currently in development. It follows on from what I was saying yesterday on how I find it easier to develop pisstake/fun websites. My plan is to generate and reinvest the revenue from these sites into serious ventures.

Yesterday I received an email from a prospective buyer of wusbflashdrive.com, asking if I could supply a price for the domain. Here is a transcript of the email.

Hello,

I found the name in the subject line listed in auction. Please email me your price in US dollars or euros.

Domain names is not my main business. Just another way to make money online on domain reselling. Our company develops software in databases in Delphi and MS Access.

If you offer more domains for sale with good reselling potential please email us your list.

Looking forward to do business with you.

Regards,

Edward Newmann, Ph. D.
President
SNY Digital Software Systems

I was pretty interested so I responded encouraging him to make a bid on the name in question and on a few other related names. Fast forward to earlier this morning, I was sitting in work just back from lunch and this landed in my inbox.

(continue reading…)

You might remember that I explored a method for capturing hot technology related names through scouring Digg in my Little Known Ways Of Registering Valuable Domains article. The principle was simple, I simply scanned through the Upcoming Stories page on Digg until I came across a newish sounding technology, entered the name into a domain search tool and prayed that all of the TLD’s were available. As you can imagine this was very rarely the case and I’d usually give up after 10 or so names.

Now, I tried something slightly different yesterday afternoon. I came across this story on Digg regarding the availability of WUSB (Wireless USB) in the new Nokia phones. Immediately I searched for the availability of wusb in all domain extensions followed up by wirelessusb. No joy. Then it came to me, if WUSB is adopted in any major way related names will be valuable too giving time. Now the problem was, how would I go about deciding which related domains to choose? Easy. Wordtracker.

(continue reading…)