Herman Cain is absolutely surging in the polls and now leading the Republican Field based in large part to his 999 tax Plan.

While Mr. Cain is a hugely successful self-made businessman he still have could used a good domainer on his staff to lock up some valuable domain names essential to his campaign.

How essential?

Mr. Cain now seems to be completing with Bing.com to buy space under Google adwords for the term 999 plan.

If you do a search under Google for 999 plan the first advertiser is HermanCain.com who is paying on a pay per click basis for traffic based on his own plan.

The only other advertiser on Google for the keyword 999 plan is Bing.com.

Why is Bing.com advertising under the keyword “999 plan”?

That’s another topic for another post, but back to the domain names at hand.

999plan.com was registered on September 7th 2011 and is going to a parked page.

9-9-9plan.com was registered just days ago on October 12 and is also going to a parked page.

999plan.org was also registered just a little while back on September 26th and is going to a parked page while 9-9-9.org was registered in September as well and is not resolving.

Even 9-9-9.org was registered in just late September (also not resolving).

999taxplan.com?

Mr. Cain doesn’t own it either.

It appears none of the 999plan domain names are owned or controlled by the candidate who authored the plan.

Any one of these domain, actually all of these domain names could have been registered by the candidate who named the plan, but he left the door open and is now paying on a Pay Per Click basis for search traffic for his own plan.

Not only on Google but Mr.Cain is paying for pay per click ads on Google, but he is also buying them on Bing.com for the search term “999 plan”. (this may answer why Bing.com is bidding for the traffic on the term on Google, think its called arbitrage)

Note to candidates:

If your going to center your candidacy around  a “plan”,  which you plan to speak about on a daily basis (pun intented) it maybe a good idea to register the .com domain (and the .org wouldn’t hurt) of the name of the plan before you chat about it on every talk and news station on earth, otherwise you might wind up paying on a PPC basis for the search traffic when people are looking for info on your own plan.

Or just go out an hire a domainer before hand to protect your interests.

Last night Elliotsblog.com reported that Domaining was being show on the Chrome browser as a possible web forgery and blocked by the browser.

This morning I got the same thing when I tried to get to the site on FireFox.com.

The domain still seems to be resolving fine on Safari.

You can still access the site on Firefox if you click on ignore this warning which is on the bottom right of the screen and then confirm on the popup that appears that the site is not a forgery.

Last night Elliotsblog.com reported that Domaining was being show on the Chrome browser as a possible web forgery and blocked by the browser.

This morning I got the same thing when I tried to get to the site on FireFox.com.

The domain still seems to be resolving fine on Safari.

You can still access the site on Firefox if you click on ignore this warning which is on the bottom right of the screen and then confirm on the popup that appears that the site is not a forgery.

According to InternetRetailer.com, the site Napster.com has been sold once again, this time from Best Buy to Rhapsody International.

Best Buy which acquired Napster.com for in 2008 for $121 million sold the site to  Rhapsody International for an undisclosed amount

Under the deal Rhapsody International acquires Napster’s subscriber lists and certain other undisclosed assets while Best Buy will retain a minority stake in Rhapsody.

According to MediaPost.com citing stats from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, Internet ad revenue rose 24.1% to $7.7 billion in the second quarter of 2011.

Combined with the results of the 1st Q 2011, Internet ad revenue totaled $14.9 billion in the first half of the year.

“For the first six months, display-related advertising revenue totaled $5.5 billion or 37% revenue, up 27% from the $4.4 billion reported in 2010.

Search revenue for the first six months of 2011 totaled $7.3 billion, up 27% from $5.7 billion in 2010 or about 1/2 of the total Internet Ad spend.

Banners took 23%, or $3.4 billion

Digital video rose 42.1% to $891 million.

Lead generation grew 25.4%, compared with the first six months in 2010, accounting for 5% during the first six months of 2011, or $805 million.

Ads using performance-based models increased faster than ads using impression-based models, rising to $9.6 billion.

In Q2 2011, approximately 64% of revenue came in priced on a performance basis, up from 61% reported in Q2 2010.

About 31% of Q2 2011 revenue was priced on CPM or an impression basis — down from 35% — and 5% of Q2 2011 revenue priced on a hybrid basis, up from the 4% reports in the year-ago quarter.

The study identifies the retail sector as the biggest spenders online.

Retail advertisers accounted for 23% during the first half of 2011, or $3.5 billion, up from $2.5 billion in the first six months of the prior year.

Telecom companies followed, contributing 14%, or $2.1 billion, up from $1.7 billion;

Financial Services, 13%, or $1.9 billion, up from 12%; and Automotive advertisers, 11%, or $1.7 billion, up from $1.3 billion.

The computing sector, spent $1.5 billion

Travel, spent $1.2 billion

consumer packaged goods $866 million

Entertainment, $556 million, up from $508 million

Media, $660 million

Healthcare, $608 million

About 10 days ago we wrote a post about the domain name TeaParty.com which was owned by a band up in Canada, which went public saying they would consider selling the domain for an amount in the 7 figures.

The story was picked up by CNN yesterday and TheDomains.com appeared on TV screens around the country as the background for the story.

A good domainer friend was nice enough to take a picture of his TV when TheDomains.com was upon CNN and sent it to me

Here you go:

The founder of TechCrunch.com Michael Arrington is resigning as editor of the popular technology blog, and will run a $20 million venture-capital fund backed by AOL Inc. and several venture-capital firms according to the WSJ.com which is called CrunchFund.

“Mr. Arrington’s new fund, called CrunchFund, closed Thursday with $20 million”

As one commentator notice already that Michael may have failed to acquire the domain name Crunchfund.com before announcing the venture.

There is probably no one that has published more stories about startups in the Tech space so Its a pretty big miss not to secure the domain name of your $20 Million fund before announcing it to the world.

The domain is listed as owned to a Richard Burton registered in July 2011.

As you maybe aware there are big problems in the Mr.  Murdoch empire with the News of the World Publication which was suddenly shut down after like over 100 years of publishing.

While Mr. Murdoch is trying to decide whether to publish the “Sunday Sun” someone grabbed that domain name way back in 2002.

Check out this article entitled:

Murdoch: No decision made on launching Sunday Sun

Well someone decided that would be a good idea about 10 years ago:

Domain Name: SUNDAYSUN.COM
Registrar: MONIKER

S Jankovic san@izombie.com
Ungarnsgade 8
Copenhagen
DK
Dk-2300
DK

Record created on:        2002-05-15

You can read more about this here and here

So over the last week I have written a couple of stories on subjects which were apparently written or covered by other domain blogs days  or even weeks before.

I have gotten messages like “hey I wrote about that yesterday or two weeks ago.”

On the other hand I see stories written by other’s in the domaining chain I wrote about days or weeks ago published like its big news breaking today.

Personally I have never written to anyone with the “Hey I wrote about that First” line but maybe I’m wrong.

But I understand that not everyone is on domaining.com every day.

I also understand that some people block my feed like they block other domain blog feeds  (i block some feeds as well) and therefore they never read what I or other’s write.

I also understand that the way that a story is titled may draw  a lot more interest in the same exact story just because of the way the story’s headline reads.

Finally I understand that not everyone even uses domaining.com, that readers follow certain blogs, follow certain Twitter accounts and therefore might not see a story I write or someone else writes.

Other days I see the same breaking story basically repeated on many domain blogs (including mine. like the sale of Data.com) within the same 1 or 2 hour period with no objection.

The bottom line is that are you guys are the readers of the material so how do you feel about it?

Do domain bloggers have a obligation to see if a topic has been written about before and if so credit the original source of the material?

Is the 1st in line entitled to credit or is news, news that can be repeated on CNN, ABC news, Fox news MSNBC etc without crediting another or original source?

What do you think?

Over the past few years there hasn’t been a much hotter sector than coupon sites.

Last week we told you the Coupons.com just raised $200 Million giving it a billion dollar valuation and we all know Groupon.com turned down billions from Google to go public later this year, and those are only 2 of many sites dedicated to coupon type offers.

However we are in the worse recession since the great depression and some stats I have been looking at would indicate that when the economy recovers (whenever that will be) people’s use of coupons might greatly decline.

Here are some stories that indicate coupons are tied to the overall economy.

InternetRetailer.com:

The recession prompted consumers to turn to coupons more in 2009 than they did the year before, the first increase in 17 years, according to a new study.

From CouponSherpa.com:

“While the tight economy truly sucks, we’re seeing one big advantage: Many consumers have returned to the frugal ways our grandparents used during the Great Depression. Such practices as re-using plastic bags, limiting or abandoning credit card use, and using coupons to stretch our budgets have become ingrained.”

“In fact, coupon use has grown so monumentally the statistics for 2009 are staggering.

• Coupon use grew to 29 percent, the first annual increase seen since 1992.
• More than 3.3 billion coupons were redeemed in 2009, for a total savings of $858 million.
• Nearly 30 percent of people surveyed by Promo P&I Newsletter in 2009 said they made a special trip to a store to use a coupon.

This trend started in October of 2008 — coinciding with news of the U.S. financial crisis — and led to 15 months of double-digit growth. “””

Lets look back to reports before the recession from 2006 from Couponing.com

“”CMS.com announced that over $331 billion dollars in potential consumer savings were distributed through coupons in 2006 with over 2.6 billion redeemed. This was a decline in both distribution (-12%) and redemption (-13%) from the past year.”

From 2005:

“What is interesting is that the consumer response to coupon promotions fell 6% in 2005 compared to 2004.”

“Consumers redeemed 3 billion coupons compared to 3.2 billion in 2004. ”

According to a study people even admit they use coupons much more during a recession:

From Direct Marketing Canada:

“”A recent US consumer survey by ICOM Information & Communications LP, a Toronto-based marketing consultant and targeted coupon distributor, found that 67% of consumers say they are more likely to redeem a coupon during a recession.”

“Of the 1,529 US consumers participating in the survey, 45 percent said they were much more likely to use more coupons in a recessionary period, and 22 percent said they were somewhat more likely.”

“During the 2001 economic downturn, ICOM’s tracking also showed a significant increase in the number of coupons consumers redeemed each week.”

A” recent US study conducted by Prospectiv of Wakefield, Mass, polled 1,386 consumers and found that 72% are using more coupons than they did six months ago. ”

“Three-quarters of these respondents claimed the economy made them do it. ”

So as the economy improves will coupon usage start declining once again?

And if so the coupon craze might just start dying off just when the economy starts picking up steam.

What are your thoughts?