Archive for the ‘Domains’ Category

Chinese Domain Name Registration Game

October 17, 2008

I received the following email today from a Chinese “entrepreneur”.

The email is a rather exaggerated attempt at selling Chinese domain name registrations via the 87Global.hk web site.

The email sender’s reply address @ “Registry-China.org” redirects to 87Global.hk – a domain which in turn was registered by “Wang Yugen”.

87Global.hk

87Global.hk

Both the above domains have been registered and online less than three months…

The domain “registrar” site does provide legitimate lists of Asian Pacific and European domains.

Asia Pacific Domains

Asia Pacific Domains

Asia Pacific Domain Extensions

European Domains

European Domains

European Domain Extensions

The site also has a form for registering the following extensions including .Com.Cn domains albeit – at unbelievably high prices.

The .Com.Cn domain is an interesting extension. I am not sure how it came about, but Google already finds about 524,000,000 pages with “com.cn” in them.

.com.cn

.com.cn

I am sure if I did some digging, I would find that both site’s have content that was either – in whole or in part – copied and pasted directly from known and reputable registrar sites.

What I am not sure of is whether anyone has ever registered a domain successfully through either one of the two domains mentioned above.

The aforementioned email:
_____________________________________________________________________________
(If you are NOT the CEO, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks.)

Dear CEO,

We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on October 17th, 2008, One company which self-styled “POI Soft, Inc.” are applying to register “marketingprinciples” as internet brand and CN domain names as below:

marketingprinciples.asia
marketingprinciples.cn
marketingprinciples.com.cn
marketingprinciples.com.tw
marketingprinciples.hk
marketingprinciples.in
marketingprinciples.net.cn
marketingprinciples.org.cn
marketingprinciples.tw

After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand applied for registration are as same as your company’s name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it. hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company and this “POI Soft, Inc.” as the same company, there is no need reply to us, We will accept their application and will register those for them immediately.

If your company has no relationships with that company nor do not authorized, please reply to us within 7 workdays, if we can’t get any information from yours over 7 workdays,we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by “POI Soft, Inc.” .

Thanks for your cooperation.

Best Regards,
Xx Yy

____________________________________________________________________________

If you have an interest in registering your brand or brands in foreign markets and instead of risking domain registration with an unknown registrar, visit Internic to find an accredited registrar for the country and language you plan to register in.

Incidentally, none of the above Chinese “registrars” are listed on Internic’s page of accredited registrars.

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Domain Name Registration Statistics

September 19, 2008

Verisign the global registry operator for .com and .net, has published its September 2008 Domain Name Industry Brief.

Some report highlights:

By mid 2008 there were 168 million domain name registrations across all of the Top Level Domain Names (TLDs).

Domain registrations increased four percent over the first quarter of 2008 and grew 22 percent over the same quarter last year.

The base of Country Code Top Level Domain Names (ccTLDs) totaled 65 million domain names. Country Code Top Level Domain Names had a four percent increase quarter over quarter and a 27 percent increase year over year.

In terms of total domain name registrations, .com has the highest base followed by .de (Germany), .cn (China), and .net.

Rounding out the list of largest TLDs, .uk and .org had approximately the same number of registrations.

Domain Industry Registration Growth:

The number of new domain name registrations across all TLDs in the second quarter of 2008 was 11.7 million.

This represented a decline of new registrations by 18 percent from a very strong first quarter and eight percent from second quarter 2007, driven largely by a decline in Country Code Top Level Domain growth.

The decrease in domain name registrations reflects seasonal slowing historically seen in the second quarter.

“The composition of the domain name industry and rank order in terms of base size remained relatively constant with the largest TLDs remaining in the same rank order.”

Domain Registration Statistics

Domain Registration Statistics

The top ten largest Top Level Domains in terms of base size according to Verisign were:

1) .com
2) .de
3) .cn
4) .net
5) .uk
6) .org
7) .info
8 ) .nl (The Netherlands)
9) .eu (European Union)
10) .biz

MarketingConsultants.com Domain Auction

September 16, 2008

I received this email regarding the auctioning of the domain marketingconsultants.com. My thoughts about this domain and the auction are in [brackets] below.

Hello Tim,

I am the owner of the generic premium domain name MarketingConsultants.com.

Since you are a Marketing Service provider, I thought you or your firm would be interested to know that I am auctioning off the domain through domain broker Sedo.com.

[ I am, I have been a marketing consultant for 19 years.]

The auction for MarketingConsultants.com ends in about 3 days.

You own MarketingConsultants.org.

[Yes, I do.]

Advanced Marketing Consultants

Advanced Marketing Consultants

Why not get the best extension for marketing consultants? .Com is king and this domain has it!

Why should you buy MarketingConsultants.com? Besides the points below, you can also refer to the article here:

dmueller.com/benefits-of-generic-domains

MarketingConsultants.com is without doubt the best domain for Marketing
Consultants. It would be a perfect name & a growing asset for your company.

[Agreed, depending on the price.]

It caters to a highly lucrative niche – Offline & Online Marketing.

There are 612 Pay-per-click Sponsors for the term “Marketing Consultants” on Google.

[I actually found 83 pages of sponsored ads on Google totalling 996 advertisers.]

Marketing Consultants

Marketing Consultants

Pay per click rate for “Marketing Consultants” is $3.00-4.72 at Google Adwords!

Just 750 clicks per month would cost you $3,300+ monthly if you are one of the top advertisers for this keyword, but with this domain, you can get even more targeted traffic consistently for free.

This is just a one-time investment.

[ Actually there is a one time purchase price and then an ongoing annual renewal fee between $7 and $10 depending on which registrar the domain is transferred to.]

This premium domain will bring instant brand recognition!

[ Generic descriptive names can not become brands by definition, however established brands can benefit from owning their generic equivalency.]

It would bring authenticity and trustworthiness to any Marketing Consultancy or Marketing Service business.

The majority of clients are aware that only a serious and successful Marketing Consultant would invest in the most premium domain of their industry. A domain of this generic nature adds credibility to any existing Marketing business.

[ Correct ]

Incredible: over 2,880,000 Google Search Results for “Marketing Consultants”.

Keyword Rich domain: Search engines give lot of importance to keywords in the domain.

Once developed, it will easily get high ranks on Google. Getting 1st spot 1st page position for “Marketing Consultants” would not be difficult at all.

[ If getting first page, first result weren’t difficult then every domain would be first and there wouldn’t be any need for second place results or beyond.]

Sub-domains can be used for high search engine rankings. For example, if the new owner creates sub-domain: Internet.MarketingConsultants.com then the site is most likely to top search engines for the term “internet marketing consultant”.

Same with:

NewYork.MarketingConsultants.com

Top.MarketingConsultants.com

Sophisticated.MarketingConsultants.com etc.

[ Sounds good, but I don’t think I have ever seen a sub-domain on the first page for a competitive keyword.]

MarketingConsultants.com is a 10 year old domain: it is an authority aged domain. Will easily get top ranks in search engines.

[ If so, why isn’t it there now after 10 years?]

Domain is concise and to the point. It would describe the business very well.

No hyphen. No numbers. Correct Spelling.

Domains are growing in value consistently. This domain will be a valuable growing asset for your business.

[ Possibly ]

In the long run, this domain will bring a significant number of clients and build brand awareness for any marketing consultant business. This domain will, without a doubt, give unfair advantage to any Marketing business over competitors. Increasingly larger numbers of businesses are searching, researching and buying online, and with this domain, you will dominate this sector. Disney owns family.com, Intel owns chips.com, GE owns TransportationServices.com.

Who should own MarketingConsultants.com?

It’s a rare gem of a domain. Once sold, the buyer might never sell or will sell for much higher price. Do not miss this only chance!

This domain has been professionally appraised at over $45,000, but I have not put any reserve and the current bid is only at $9,100.

MarketingConsultants.com Sedo Auction

MarketingConsultants.com Sedo Auction

[ A professional domainer will probably end up buying this domain and then monetize it with ads. ]

— More info below—

32,000 searches are done by businesses looking for Marketing Consultants on Google (below is the exact search count). That is 32,000 potential clients for the new owner of MarketingConsultants.com. Since this domain will easily rank high for search phrases like “marketing consultants”, you can expect lot of business traffic from Google alone, and these searchers are targeted and are actively looking to buy Marketing services.

Please refer to search count below:

Searches Keyword

8,967 marketing consultants
6,750 internet marketing consultants
5,484 marketing for consultants
5,229 consultants marketing
620 direct marketing consultants
501 interactive marketing consultants
490 web marketing consultants
475 business marketing consultants
459 search engine marketing consultants
443 marketing strategy consultants
417 search marketing consultants
325 strategic marketing consultants
318 email marketing consultants
310 sales marketing consultants
280 small business marketing consultants
276 network marketing consultants
276 consultants marketing network
242 online marketing consultants
211 marketing consultants houston
211 software marketing consultants
210 boston marketing consultants
193 marketing consultants san diego
175 sales and marketing consultants
152 law firm marketing consultants
145 marketing consultants uk
144 automotive marketing consultants
139 internet marketing strategy consultants
134 marketing consultants new
134 marketing consultants new york
129 real estate marketing consultants
117 marketing communication consultants
110 marketing research consultants
104 affinity marketing consultants
102 marketing communications consultants

Source: PageRank.net/keyword-suggestion

Important:
Sedo requires member verification for bids above $10k, so if you are going to bid, do not forget to verify your account at Sedo first.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me. You can also call me at
xxx-xxx-xxxx

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

X

[ Considering I bought marketingconsultants.org for $7.41, I am having a hard time justifying entering a domain auction for the same domain albeit with the superior extension at over 1,300 times the price I paid for mine.

I will check back in a few months to see what price marketingconsultants.com was auctioned for as well as to learn what steps its new owners have taken to generate a return on their domain investment. ]

InStealthMode.com

June 28, 2007

On numerous occasions I have typed in a domain only to be redirected to the site InStealthMode.com.

Today I found them after looking at my content placement report stats in my Google Adwords My Client Center account.

Of all the sites my ads appeared on yesterday, their Domain Ads had by far generated the largest number of impressions. However, Google doesn’t report “Domain Ads” at the domain level like each of the other content partners in my report. I can only assume Domain Ads is also http://www.domainads.com.

Based on the large number of impressions “Domains Ads” generated, they appear to control a large domain portfolio. This leads me to conclude they are a professional domainer.

The InStealthMode.com site promises to launch on July 7, 2007. (07-07-07)

Their WhoIs Record shows Centreville, VA based DreamSeller Inc. – In Stealth Mode as the registrant.

It would be helpful to advertisers for Google Adwords to parse out the domains within parked domain portfolios too when bundling reports of large quantities of impressions under one reseller like Domain Ads.

InStealthMode.com

TimCohn.com

May 27, 2007

I originally posted the following to a What If? question Rick Schwartz posed on his blog. Owen Frager excerpted a quote, mentioned my interview in Forbes and placed it on his blog so I thought the whole piece should be here now since I am writing regularly on the web again.

In 1996 I was at a conference in Tampa, FL where Denis Waitley suggested to the 200 people in the audience that they should each buy their own name.com because “they” were only making one of them. His recommendation made sense.

I had little idea what the internet was and didn’t even know how to register a domain so I didn’t.

A year or so later, I figured out how to register a domain but still didn’t see the bigger picture.

My name.com was available and because I thought it was unique, I assumed it would always be available.

After Web 1.0 peaked and began heading toward its trough in early 2000, I decided it was time to enter the internet business.

I went to register my name.com and low and behold a Dr. Tim Cohn had registered TimCohn.com for the next ten years.

If a single individual can alter the market’s identification and perception of who that individual is simply by owning their name.com imagine the implications it has where millions even billions of dollars are at stake.