Interesting Idea By Stephen Douglas At SuccessClick.com
Stephen Douglas over at SuccessClick.com has written a post asking for readers to comment or email him with their thoughts on what the biggest domain scandals have. Knowing Stephen I really think what he puts together around this could be very interesting.
We have had our fair share of scandal lately with the Snapnames/Halvarez/Nelson Brady fiasco but, as one commenter brought up, RegisterFly would be considered another pretty big scandal and some would even consider insider bidding on Tdnam auctions at Godaddy.com a bit of a scandal (although taken care of rather rapidly).
Here is the text of Stephens request:
Question: What scandals have occured in the last five years that you believe were the WORST scandals for our industry?
I welcome all comments, all problems you’ve encountered, whether they were resolved, and what your personal feelings were about the final outcome of the scandal/s you suggest. You can submit several problems you’ve encountered if you like. Tell us your story, and what kind of “impression” about the domain industry was left in your mind, with either a good or bad resolution.
I think this could be an interesting story, if anything just to see what peoples perceptions are of "big" when it comes to scandal. Head over to SuccessClick.com or contact Stephen.
Domaining Blogs Not On Domaining.com
Today as I checked the Domaining.com news list for the 800th time (ok slight exaggeration) I realized that when it comes to domaining news I pretty much only check the top couple aggregators and then move on. That is the beauty of a well put together news aggregator, you do not have to go to each and every sight to see if they have posted something new (ignoring RSS feeds here).
But then it hit me that there are plenty of people on Twitter that I interact with daily that have blogs focused on domaining that are not in the aggregators for various reasons, so I thought I would list a few tonight, if you are not on the list I am sorry, feel free to post your domain related blog in the comments section, this is one time it is ok to comment spam with your domain investment related blog, post links but they must be related. I will check....
Admittedly some of these are more active and indepth than others but I think it is always good to look around some of the sites that are not in the common places we all look. When it comes to other tech niches that I read I look around, but I think the domaining industry pretty much focuses on Domaining.com and Namebee.com (I can tell from my traffic).
RuralTechnocrat.com - If you talk to Cole Mason (not to be mistaken for Mason Cole of Oversee) on Twitter you will know if is a fun guy. RuralTechnocrat.com is his place on the web.
RyanRYoung.com - After putting out a request for unlisted blogs I received this one, looks like he has already made the top 100 list, good for Ryan!
AndrewHazen.com - Although not completely about domaining it is pretty close, a good 50 percent of the articles I saw on the blog were domaining focused. A nice find.
DomainerBlog.org - This blog is just launching and was part of the ChefPatrick.com blog contest. Been exchanging emails with Sergio, the person who runs it, and he has been a great guy to deal with. I look forward to seeing this one grow.
Brian101.com - This blog is stagnant based on the owners comments but about to take off again. Maybe a bit of traffic will get him moving again:)
Domainimal.com - Another find from Twitter, the owner points out it is new, I always find new blogs interesting, especially after starting this one, you never know where it is headed, you feel your way through and find your comfort zone. Good luck to him.
HDN.co.il - If you read ArbelArif.com then you know who runs this one, this blog is Arbel blog focusing on Hebrew domains. Great domain to launch on. If I remember right it got linked by one of the top news sites in Israel lately. Good for him!!!
UPDATE: Adding a couple more as people comment:
OK, comment spam away:) Send us more links to domain related blogs that you have or know about.
Some Random Thoughts Before I Head Out
For the next week I will very likely not be doing many if any posts as I will be doing a week long, very intense road trip following the Tour of Missouri as mentioned yesterday. Most of my focus will be on reporting and blogging cycling news on our Tour.Missouri.me site which will start to have actual stories, videos and pictures starting tomorrow.
So here are a few random things before the week begins. First off there are a few bloggers and friends who will be doing guest posts throughout the week. I look forward to seeing what they have to say. I let them choose their own topics and find it rather fun to have other people posting as guests on a blog with my name on it, should be fun. The first one should go out on Monday.
Next topic - you never know who is reading, remember that, I got a bit of a surprise tonight after one of the communication directors for one of the elite cycling teams racing this week contacted me based on my blog post here and offered up behind the scenes access and help with communications, etc. Kudos goes out to the team at Team Type 1 , this team is based on riders who have Type 1 diabetes and still race at the top levels of the sport. Proves that with the right attitude you can overcome challenges when you are faced with them.
Congrats to my good friend Patrick Ruddell at ChefPatrick.com for being the first guest on Domainvestors.TV. Sounds like the first video will be completed sometime in November. Should be interesting, Morgan Linton has worked hard to build a true video studio in his office (interesting to say the least) and this will be a great start I am sure for many unique reports to come.
On the domain sales front, I had 3 deals go through this week, 2 smaller deals and 1 of reasonable size I hope to announce soon. It was a solid .NET that is a rather high priced product. I will hopefully be able to post details after next week.
Me in a Bido Chat Wednesday and Random Domaining Thoughts
I will be in guest speaker/chatter on Bido.com at Noon EST on Wed, I look forward to doing this and as a big fan of the Social Auction platform that Bido has created I appreciate the offer from Bido to do this. The timing on this for me is great since I see some opening in my schedule to finally start to work on moving some names, I plan on doing a mix of Bido and some offers here on the blog. Look for a very nice one to come up here on my blog in the near future.
Since I became more involved in the community I find myself less and less on the forums and more and more communicating with people through Facebook and Twitter (or actually with real voices on cellphones, who would of thought). But lately I have found myself naturally using Twitter for somethings while using Facebook for others. I will say I use Facebook more for just posting random things and more day to day personal things since I have more than just domainers that I communicate with there. It is the de facto way I keep tabs on people I have been friends or colleagues with for years but may live on other continents now or other such things, although funny enough I think I talk with my neighbors more on there than face to face, and I actually like my neighbors (Hi Paula and Kimball if you read this through the link on Facebook).
But I find that Twitter is more of a quick hit type use for me and more fun interactions with some business thrown in for good measure (although I do have 2 other Twitter accounts which are strictly business and used for promoting various things on developed sites). Long story short, theres a place for both, I could not choose one and not the other. It is funny though when you are communicating with the same person on both Facebook and Twitter at the same time, has social networking turned us into the ultimate multi-taskers?
Next random topic, I had someone send me an email a couple days ago asking about status on my AEIOU.com minisites and have I turned up any lately. Answer is that the revenue on those sites is far above the parking revenue I had been getting on the names but I have been extremely focused on the business at hand for Missouri.me and have stayed out of much of my daily domaining work until I get some initial items out of the way then I can start to allocate some time. I am big on prioritization of work based on return on that time. Although I will say many of my minisites are very solid earners, the revenue from one customer on Missouri.me far outweighs the work on a Minisite (do not take that as a downer on Minisites, just different businesses). I hope in the very near future to be turning up many again, just gotta get past the next few weeks.
On the minisite note, I have been pleasantly surprised by the payback on the Ebay affiliate ad sites I put up, the PHPBay plugin worked great and has paid for itself many times over the past few months. You might want to check out AEIOU.com since they have an Ebay Commerce package pre-built. If you do not have the time or web development skills to do it yourself it is likely more cost effective to have someone like them do it rather than putting all the pieces together yourself.
Oh, one last thing, thanks to Chef Patrick for giving a shout out in his news video a few weeks back when I made the leap to self employment. Its was a huge step and I appreciate the support from everyone in the domaining community. For sometime I had been talking about my love for Geo domains, well when you take something you believe in and go with it usually great things happen.
Domain Investment Company Launches “The Traffic Widget” For Webmasters To Use For FREE!
Exclusive Domaining News today on BruceMarler.com. XF.com has launched the TrafficEstimate.com Widget allowing Web Developers to integrate Traffic Estimate tools directly in their websites. Information on how to get the widget and the tool below.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Domain Investment Company Launches "The Traffic Widget" For Webmasters To Use For FREE!
Cape Girardeau, MO - April 14th, 2009 - XF.com Investments is pleased to announce a FREE Traffic Estimator Widget for Webmasters and Domainers. www.TrafficEstimate.com is a website where visitors can estimate the amount of traffic large domains and websites receive. Now, users are able to incorporate the Traffic Estimator directly onto their own websites.
"TrafficEstimate.com receives a lot of visitors each day, and we are very excited to allow our users to add our estimation tool to their own websites," says Aron Meystedt, CEO of XF.com Investments. "We feel our TrafficEstimate.com website is a valuable resource for those looking to buy and sell domains".
TrafficEstimate.com has been in operation for 4 years, and produces over 100,000 estimates each month. While many websites offer quick appraisals, TrafficEstimate.com is one of very few free services that are able to estimate the actual traffic to a website. TrafficEstimate.com works best on large websites and domains with existing traffic and page rank.
A screen shot showing the results of an estimate are below:
Traffic Estimate
To view and upload the TrafficEstimate.com widget visit: www.TrafficEstimate.com and click on the top banner, seen here:
Traffic Estimate Widget
For additional information on TrafficEstimate.com contact Aron Meystedt at Admin@XF.com or visit www.TrafficEstimate.com .
About XF.com Investments:
XF.com Investments, located in the USA, is owned by Aron Meystedt. XF.com develops two-letter and one-word .com domains. March.com Media is a holding company for XF.com and current projects include HY.com, iBlog.com and ImageSharing.com among others.