iEstates.com

An short story appeared on the Deseret News, on how Ryan DeLuca started BodyBuilding.com and turned it into “the Internet most-visited body building and fitness site”

My favorite quote from the article:

“He took a huge risk by getting a $20,000 loan to buy the domain name BodyBuilding.com”

Bodybuilding.com is ranked by Compete.com as having just under 1.5 Million visitors a month.

Not bad for $20K.

Fortunately for Mr. DeLuca he didn’t follow some of the suggestions contained in another article out today, in the WebWorkerDaily.com, which talks about what to do when the .com you want is taken.

Some of the suggestions included:

Pick A Different Name

Add Dashes or Numbers.

Use an alternative extension like .net, .org, .biz, or .info.

In all fairness the article does also list as an option buy the .com from the owner if its not in use, but the article clearly failed to recognize what Mr. DeLuca learned.

There is no replacement for a category killer .com

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The owners of Oakville.com have developed a custom platform they plan to use to build out approximately 100 fully automated city guide web sites. Oakville.com was first off the assembly line and the popular site is extending its reach by helping to market the PGA's Canadian Open that is coming to Oakville July 20.

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Start date: Thursday, July 9th, 2009, start price: 1.00, description: This .com domain name would work rather well as a venue to send e-holiday cards and other holiday themed items.  A good start would be set set up a site which allows users to send holiday greetings to friends throughout the world.  Adding the functionality to send flowers, gift baskets and candy can only help to increase the revenue flowing toward this website.  Of course, a site like this would be at its busiest during the Christmas/Hanukkah season.  But the owner of this domain could easily adapt the site to fit the season.  Mother's Day and Valentine's Day are also huge gift giving occassions that this site could work with as well.  Don't miss the chance to get this fantastic domain name!

Please see media tab for video content related to this domain name.

This is a no
reserve auction and bidding starts at $1. If your pre-bid wins the auction, you will get a 2% cashback bonus. You may place your pre-bid now to instantly get in on the action.

Good luck, and happy bidding!.

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We grew up being told by our parents that crime doesn’t pay, yet after  today’s report, sometimes it does.

ThePiratebay.org, a huge file sharing site, reportedly sold today to a Internet gaming software company for $7.8 Million dollars.

Swedish software company Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) has signed a deal to acquire The Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish Kronor ($7.8 million), including $3.9 million in cash.

GGF, which operates software for a range of Internet cafes and gaming venues, said it plans to keep Pirate Bay in operation, but make the site legal by ensuring copyright owners get paid for material shared on the service.

GGF also announced a 100 million Swedish Kronor ($13 million) deal to buy Peerialism, an IT company that has developed a new file sharing technology.

A couple of months ago, four men who were the founders of the The Pirate Bay,  were found guilty of violating copyright law for assisting the illegal downloading of protected material and sentenced to one year in prison and fines totaling 30 million Swedish Kronor ($3.9 million).

Yesterday the Swedish court turned down their appeal for a new trial.

Note that the cash being paid in this transaction equals the fine the founders received.  So basically the buyer is paying off the founders fines and giving the founders stock in the new venture.

Not bad.

Maybe the lesson is if you have a site with huge traffic, it has substantial value, no matter how you got the traffic.

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.US fans have often said that America's country code is a "sleeping giant." The current global ccTLD boom, recent .us sightings on TV and at the airport, plus the millions of pages from .us business sites that have been indexed by Google indicate the extension might be starting to stir from its slumber.

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Start date: Wednesday, July 8th, 2009, start price: 1.00, description: Who doesn't love dogs? Here is a fine .com domain that can be used in a variety of ways to inform the world about the samoyed breed of dogs.  A site housing everything from basic breed information to videos of proper training techniques is a perfect fit for this domain.  Advertising revenue from pet supply chains and veterinarians is a no brainer to help  boost income for the site. 

Please see the media tab for video content related to this domain name.

This is a no
reserve auction and bidding starts at $1. If your pre-bid wins the auction, you will get a 2% cashback bonus. You may place your pre-bid now to instantly get in on the action.
.

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eBay.com has been active in defending its trademark filing and winning at least 3 UDRP in just the past year including on the domains:

ebaycatwalk.com; ebayip.com and ebayofip.com; watch-ebay.com;

While spending fees and costs to go after trademark infringing domains, its allowing domains that infringe on its own trademark to be sold on its own site.

eBay.Hu.com is proudly  listed for sale right on ebay.com for the bargain “buy it now” price of $628,000. (.hu is the ccTLD for Hungary)

Also for sale on eBay.com currently are:

eBayGuidelines.com for the “Buy it Now”  price of $5,000

eBaySavings.com also for the “Buy it Now” price of $5,000

eBayMotorSales.com for just $49.95

DealsofeBay.com, for just $.99

Sure eBay has every right to file UDRP’s against domains that clearly violate its trademark, but how about policing their own site?

How can eBay possibly allow these domains to be sold on their own auction platform?

Moreover, why isn’t eBay held responsible for facilitating the sale of trademark domains?

Doing a quick check on eBay, I found a ton of clear trademark infringing domains including:

VerizonWirelessSales.com on sale for $10 Million Dollars

VERIZONWIRELESSBLACKBERRYSTORM.COM a nice domain which infringes on the trademarks of 2 companies, with an asking price of $1 Million Dollars.

Microsoft infrgining domains, sure ebay.com got them too:

PoweredbyWindows.com, advertised by the owner as being “a windows Microsoft Domain” and offered for $75K.

Bing4u.com and several others are advertised as being “the new search engine of Microsoft”.

I literally could go on for days giving examples of other infringing domains offered for sale on ebay.com

I believe eBay.com gets paid a percentage of the sales price, so if any of those domains sold, ebay.com would profit from the sale of trademarked domains.

Why is eBay.com permitted to make a commission on the sale of trademark infringing domains?

How much money does eBay.com make a year just from listing fees for trademarked domains?

Now, what about those thousands of Michael Jackson domains that eBay is allowing to be sold.

This is a huge problem

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I am happy to say that my Domain Names Podcast with "Domain King" Rick Schwartz is complete and live to listen to below. Rick is a "tell it like it is" type of guy which is one of the reasons I like to...

Business, Domain Name Industry, Domain Name Registration, Domain Name Sales, Domain Names, Domain Names Podcasts, External Articles, Marketing

Seems like Google is doing a little bit of everything. Here is a link to last week’s comic strip in case you missed it. It was “Hard Core Domainer Leaves For Vacation”.

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TaiwanMobile.com topped the NameJet auctions for the past days at $25,599.

However, how the domain was even at auction is quite confusing, as TaiwanMobile.com appears to be the site of that phone company and continues to resolve to them.

Normally an expired domain ceases to work upon expiration.

Moreover,  the domain does not even appear expired, as the whois is showing and expiration date of  May 18, 2011 and the record was last update all the way back in March, so its not the case of the domain being recently renewed.  The whois record also clearly shows it being owned by the phone company and

For a short time last week the domain, Retweet.com was listed for pre-auction on NameJet.com, and was pulled, after it was pointed out by the domain blog, Dotweekly, that the domain had not expired.  Maybe TaiwanMobile.com is the same situation. Even stranger is that the domains registrar is Register.com, which I believe drops all their expired domains with SnapNames.com.

We will check on this and get an answer for you tomorrow.

Here are some other notable sales from NameJet.com over the past couple of days:

trainings.com $10,000

bunk.com $9,300

alike.com $9,100

yse.com $7,600

share.me $5,300

worldtalk.com $4,001

jeffs.com $3,701

techscout.com $3,400

bankruptcyattorney.org $3,144

toread.com $2,099

worldlotto.com $2,001

converted.com $1,613

desires.net $1,580

grilling.net $1,402

We should also note that this was the first week that NameJet started reserve price auctions,  and of the 4 reserve domains that NameJet auctioned off this week, none of them met reserve,  although they show as “sold”, the high bidder is clearly “NameJet reserve”.

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