(Editor’s note: Dinheiro is the Portuguese word for ‘Money’.)

While doing some research I conducted a whois lookup on Dinheiro.info, to discover that it’s current contact information lists Sedo’s Domain Transfer Escrow Service as the current registrant.

This article was initially titled, “Dinheiro.info May Have Sold At Sedo”, but I was forced to revise that title upon closer examination, when I deduced that the domain hasn’t in fact been updated since August 2011.

Last Updated On:02-Aug-2011 01:52:54 UTC

That seems to indicate the domain has been stuck in limbo-land somewhere in Sedo for the past five months.  This seems like an awfully long time to sit in escrow/transfer.

The domain’s English equivalent – Money.info – sold for $22,000 back in March of 2007 (via Moniker/TRAFFIC).   If it’s Portuguese relative Dinheiro.info did in fact sell, I’m curious to know what the comparable sale price was.

As of this writing the Brazilian Real (currency) is worth about $0.57 on the U.S. Dollar.  Based on today’s exchange rate, I’d like to be able to put a relative price comparison on Dinheiro.info based on the sale price of Money.info, but its difficult to do.  Market conditions have certainly changed somewhat since 2007, as both concerns the global economy as well as the domain industry and specifically the .info aftermarket.

However if the domain didn’t in fact sell, then I’m all the more curious about it’s present status at Sedo.

On a related note, I’m currently offering the domain Dinheiro.biz for sale @ GoDaddy.

Yea, you knew there was a hook to this article.

As they say in Brazil, “o dinheiro não cresce em árvores.”

I got interested in audio advertising back around late 2007/early 2008 when a company called NetAudioAds made a brief stir in the online advertising world.  They pretty much crashed and burned, and I won’t get into all of that. (but a word of warning, if you visit their website: don’t bother.  The site is still live with all of their marketing copy but notice the Copyright 2008. It’s just a petrified fossil.)

But what ever happened to audio advertising?

Aren’t we hearing it all the time now? I listen to Pandora, and they’ve been running in-stream audio ads for at least the past year, probably two.  I know there are audio ad networks out there, hustling, making deals (Cf. Google News). But none of this seems to have trickled down to impact the b2b search space or the domain space as of yet.

I speculated on some audio advertising domains going back those four years ago, and have been holding many of them ever since: waiting.  And as I go over my renewals for the coming month I’m looking things over and making decisions about what to keep and what to sweep from the cutting room floor.

Of what I’ve got, here’s what I’m continuing to hold (indefinitely):

• AudioAdServices.com
• AudioAdTools.com
• LocalAudioAds.com
• AudioAdBlocker.com

I’ll be releasing the following domains:

• AdultAudioAdvertising.com
• AudioAdAffiliates.com
• AudioAdSpace.com

These just seem too niche specific and too speculative for a trend that still hasn’t really picked up yet after all these years.

I’m on the fence about this one but I’ll most likely drop it as well:

• TargetedAudioAds.com

If I thought the audio ad space was going to go somewhere in the next four years, I might be inclined to hold it, but what is the opportunity cost here?  I’m looking at a domain that I may have to hold for years more with no guarantee of payoff, whereas I could take that $32 + dollars in renewal over the next four years, and pick up a bargain domain on one of the forums, or put it toward a drop catch that has potential to yield something far greater in the more immediate future.

That is the danger in making speculative plays, something I’m much more cautious about now than in my early days when I was first getting started in domain investing.  Some things just don’t pan out.  It also costs time to keep up on these trends, study the news, and make that decision each year to hold or to fold.

But then we come back to the irony of this whole post: Audio ads **are** panning out, aren’t they?  I don’t know, otherwise what is it I’m hearing on Pandora and other places?  Maybe its just plain old ‘advertising’.  Or maybe 2012 is the cusp of when the trend may actually start to rise in terms of search volume and keyword interest. That would mean that you could pick up any of these names today and **maybe** see some kind of decent return within *the next* four years.  If I thought I knew, I wouldn’t have written this post.

This illustrates yet another point, which is: why there’s still opportunity in the domain market. Because times are tight, (I’m feeling it too), and people are forced to make decisions. It’s like having a stable full of racehorses.  I have limited resources and I want to invest only in those horses I foresee having the best shot to reach the finish line. Others will need to be cut loose, but some of those fillies may still have life in them and that creates opportunity for someone else.

So it goes.

Maybe this post will be helpful for any of you out there as you’re deciding what to hold and what to fold in the coming year.

I told you so.

No, this isn’t one of those mean-spirited “I  told you so”s, rather just a “haha yea you were spot on there” type of announcement.

You may remember sometime last year when TheDomains.com published an article called The Next BIG Thing Is 3D.

Well, after the recent Future Trends Domain Auction that was held a couple weeks back, I decided to revisit that old chestnut, which had already crested the 1,000 comment mark the last time I had checked.

At the time it was first published, I knew that post was going to get a lot of mileage.  You could have called it a hunch.

Here’s what I remarked at the time, 3 pages into the comments section:

As you can see, that pronouncement was made over 1 year, 3 months, and 7 days ago.

In case you are wondering, the current comment count is now up to 4,200 comments at 84 pages deep!!

… making it what I think is perhaps the most commented story on any domain blog ever … ( and which has probably generated more page views than my entire blog in same period of time.)

Proving that there are indeed some trends, which are possible to predict.

September’s GreatDomains auction is now under way, having started yesterday September 15, and running through September 22.  There are some interesting domains on auction in a variety of verticals and reserve ranges.  While covering domain auctions isn’t the typical fare for my blog (I tend to leave it to the other more popular and news-oriented blogs) …  however I know several people with domains running in this auction so I thought it’d be nice to give them a plug for some additional exposure.

Following are just some of the domains on auction. The full catalog features almost 200 domains in total.

BurstCloud.com
CDCases.com
Cereal.net
ClevelandOhio.com
CloudComputers.info
CloudCoupon.com
Dogbites.com
Ferrets.com
GymnasticsVideos.com
HairRegrowth.com
Prawns.net
Vote.info
Wear.net
YJA.com

Here is a link to the FULL AUCTION CATALOG.

I run several websites, one of which is focused on Distance Learning. You may recall I wrote early last year about a method for trying to sell the site through LinkedIn Groups. The result of that excursion was fruitful in the sense that I did get many leads, but in the end I passed on selling the site as I wasn’t satisfied with the highest offer received.

I still own the site, and these days I now get regular requests for link trades. But I’m not a big fan of link trading, 3-way link exchanges, or the sort.  My personal opinion is that one needs to be prudent about link-trades and that the practice ought to be applied sparingly.

While backlinks are super-important for SEO, I’m certain that the Google algorithm is advanced enough to see through most thinly veiled link-tradery. The last thing I want to do is give a spammy semblance to a site that I took good care to build and nurture.

So what do I do in these link-request situations? I get creative.

To give you two concrete examples below, here are actual responses that I sent out this morning to incoming link-trade requests …

But FIRST!

Okay, back to our examples:

Example 1

Hi Harry,

I am looking for links from social media.  I will publish your link to my site only if you can either send out a tweet with a link to my site from the ______-______.org Twitter account or post my site on your ______-______.org Facebook wall.  let me know. thanks

Note:  In this case, their Twitter account has 754 followers, and their Facebook page has 363 likes.

Why I like this: I think the social media mention to a large group of followers is much more valuable than just a link from a page on what is usually a site of low-authority.  Remember that the social media mention is still a link, too, and will get crawled by the search engines, AND it also shows that your site is being talked about and gives it a dose of popularity/credibility in the algos.  With any luck a tweet also has the chance to be retweeted and seen by many more followers.  It’s really a double-bonus.

Example 2

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the offer.  Unfortunately I’m not too interested in a link from the site you mentioned.  However, here’s what I’d be interested in.  I will place a link for up to 3 of your client sites on my website, and in exchange, what I would like is for you to include a blurb in your upcoming Newsletter about my website’s “Life Stories” section – [Link]

I can write up the copy to include with the link in your newsletter.  It won’t need to be much,  just a brief highlight of maybe a few sentences.

What do you say?

Why I like this: Although it won’t get you an actual crawlable, indexable link in a search engine (unless the newsletter publisher posts their newsletter archives online, which some do), I know that email marketing is still considered to deliver the highest ROI of any online marketing.  Depending on the size and quality of their subscriber list, this could give your site some great, targeted exposure.

At the least you should get a spike of traffic, and while this is great in itself, what I think this particular strategy is really geared best for is to try to funnel the recipients into some specific actionable goal on your website (i.e. conversion).  In my case, the “Life Stories” section I referenced is a place that I’ve created for distance learning students to share their experiences with online school.  This is a section of the site that has struggled to gain traction, so I’m hoping the newsletter mention will generate some interest and some new story submissions.

I hope this has given you some good ideas about how to get jiggy with link requests.  If you have any other strategies feel free to drop a comment.  Thanks!

A  special pictorial tribute to the humor of DomainGang.com and why satire should never go under-appreciated.

Today I bring you a tribute to DomainGang and the graphic artistry of its creator, who you may know as long-time DNForum member Acro.

Domainer Shore - everyone's favorite goombas

For your visual pleasure, this post contains a hand-curated collection of original DomainGang graphic artwork interspersed as thumbnails throughout. Click on any thumbnail to view the full-size image in all its grandeur and majesty.  (I’ve added my own captions).

DomainGang, if you aren’t aware, is a source of news and commentary for and about domainers and the Domain Industry, delivered in parody similar to The Onion or The Daily Show. The site adds a unique flavor, in both content and style, that was once missing from the giant pot of domain soup we all eat from daily.  It’s safe to say we can no longer imagine a domaining world without DomainGang and its own “Lucius ‘Guns’ Fabrice”.

DOmaiN KING

Some folks in the domaining community though are quite critical of DomainGang for various reasons, chiefly because they either fail to appreciate its humor or they simply don’t understand it’s purpose or motives.  This isn’t a post to attempt to change your mind, for those of you in that camp.  Rather its a simple token of appreciation, and, an opportunity to offer my own personal viewpoint.

A Little Commentary on Satire

It was someone that once said, “Satire is the best weapon … something something ….” or at least I thought that, until I went digging and failed to find anything remotely close to that quote anywhere on the internet. There were however a couple of other good quotes I did find which nicely express my sentiments on the role of satire in public life.

Famed 17th century English poet & playwright Patricius Ruddelius

First from Joseph Addison (a 17th century English poet and playwright who I’ve never heard of.)

Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.

… and then this quote from John Dryden (another 17th century English poet/playwright I’ve never heard of.)

Satire is a kind of poetry in which human vices are reprehended.

TwObama Campaign

I see good satire and parody as having the power to cut through bullshit like a hot knife through butter.  When you see the humor in something, you see it directly for what it is.  There is no logical thinking involved, or even necessary.  Just the ability to apprehend a simple truth … because as the popular saying goes, “It’s funny because its true.”

All In Jest

DomainGang’s intentions are not to inflict wounds on those who fall within their comedic crosshairs, nor to be purposefully muckraking.  In fact, those special characters of the domain landscape who are often at the butt end of the light-hearted jokes, as you’ll recognize in some of the images here and on DomainGang.com, are all great sports about it and nothing that I’m aware of is ever meant to be injurious.  Only Hilarious.

Monte Cahn - fighting the domainer hordes

So with that I say, “Carry on DomainGang!”.  Your heckling of the domain-related news of the day is both entertaining and instructive.

So what do you think of DomainGang? Satirical Genius or not? If there’s a favorite DomainGang image you have in mind that I’ve not included drop me a line below.

In the meantime, view the rest of the DomainGang pictorial tribute below.

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Pope Tart

Captain Ruddell of the Love Boat

Pigeon Domains

Evolution of Domain Development

BP TopKill Humanity

Rick Schwartz - domain king by fiat

Rob Monster - Epik Halloween Jammy Jam

Castro - viva la .cu revolucion

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Lying in bed this morning I was pondering the impression some people may have of what I do for a living from the outside looking in. I began thinking what I would say to anyone who ‘wanted in’ thinking this was some sort of easy money.  In considering my response to such a person, there are two fundamental assertions I would lay before them:

A.  I’ve worked as hard at selling domains as I have at anything else in my life

B.  Buying and selling domains is as much an art as it is a science

First, you have to have a ton of gusto in this business. Most domains don’t move themselves.  It’s a hustle.  Most knowledge is hard fought.  No one’s going to drop anything in your lap.  There isn’t a golden goose that’s going to come along and drop eggs in your basket. And even if there is, you can bet there will be dozens of other guys and gals busting their asses to get their basket in front of yours.

Now, I don’t say this to discourage anyone.  My point is that this isn’t like a jukebox where you stick in a quarter and out comes a song.  It just doesn’t work that way.

Maybe Cheryl Crow said it best when she said, “This ain’t no disco.  This ain’t no country club neither.”

So now that we have that out of the way …

Secondly, assuming you wanted to do what I do, even if I could transfer the bulk of my knowledge over to you, and explain everything I know on the subject, it still wouldn’t make all the difference.  It’s what you do with that knowledge, and there’s an art to it all.  The aftermarket is fluid, and you have to follow it, spend time in the trenches to get a feel for what sells and what doesn’t and at what prices.  What sold yesterday isn’t necessarily what’s going to sell tomorrow.  What you bought for $x today may not sell for $x tomorrow.  What I know now, isn’t necessarily going to apply, or apply the same way today as it will tomorrow.

Domaining is also a long term play, not a get rick quick scheme.  Although there is some fast money to be made, you are just as likely to wind up with an expensive lesson, if that is your approach.  For the most part, domains are not a very liquid investment.  You can’t expect to pick up a domain today and turn it around tomorrow for a hefty profit.   Although there are circumstances where you can do this.  As I’ve read that Rick Latona once wrote, that you make your money in the buying, not the selling.  By this he meant, you’ve got to be buying domains at prices that are undervalued.  To do this you really have to know the markets.  A lot of times this comes down to a gut feel.   It isn’t a pure set of metrics you can just plug in like an automated appraisal.  It comes down to knowing your craft, and knowing it well.

I could tell you how to lay brick, but unless you’ve ever picked up a trowel; know the weight and the feel of it; how the mortar lays, the consistency of it, how to finesse it onto the brick, how to lay the brick so it falls level and plumb and square with every other brick …. you get the idea.

Now, let me finalize this all by saying, although this may or may not come off as some sage-sounding advice, even I am by no means a domain jedi, guru, or master.  I’m still hustling every day and I still have a lot to learn.  There are plenty of people in this business (and I mean plenty) that have been at this much longer than I.  Give us both an equivalent amount  in start-up capital and they would leave me in the dirt in no time.

Still, I’m confident enough to say what I’ve said here in this post, no bullshit.

Today I was updating a website for someone, and I came across a broken link which had a double http:// in front of the www.  Once clicked, instead of the intended destination, the hyperlink typo directed me to a parked page on the domain http.com.

I decided to take a quick peak at the domain’s Compete.com profile, suspecting that it might be getting a boat-load of traffic.  here’s what I saw:

The lowest reported monthly estimate is above 100,000 visitors, and the figure crests at over 241,000 for the highest month.  That my friends, is some nice traffic for a parked page.

How It Works

Allow me to demonstrate.  Say I were to want to link to the best domain blog on the planet.  I would then create a hyperlink as follows …

The Best Domain Blog On the Planet

I’ve made the mistake (intentionally) of inserting a double http:// – and, if you examine the structure of the URLs, you’ll notice that the URL …

http://http://www.DomainAnimal.com/is-the-best-domain-blog-on-the-planet/

gets redirected to http.com and converted to read …

http://www.http.com//www.DomainAnimal.com/is-the-best-domain-blog-on-the-planet/

This mistake is easy enough to make, particularly if using the WordPress CMS, in which case when you click on the icon to add a hyperlink to a bit of text, the popup which displays automatically inserts the ‘http://’ in front of the field for entering your link.  Supposing you just grabbed a URL from the address bar using a copy and past of the entire URL, you would be committing the error in question.

According to Yahoo! Site Explorer, there are 2,758 inbound links to http.com.  This to me seems surprisingly low for how often I would assume this mistake is committed.

How Much Revenue Does HTTP.com generate?

This is really anyone’s guess, but we could lay out some hypothetical numbers that might be in the ballpark.

Let’s assume the domain has an average RPM (revenue per 1000 visitors) of $10.  This is actually lower than any of the average RPM’s I noted in my Domain Parking Provider Face Off, so we’re erring on the side of caution here, if at all.   Given that figure, I’d next take the average monthly visitors over the course of the year, which for simplicity sake we’ll round to 170,000.

Just based on the above I’d estimate the domain http.com to make about $1,700 per month, or a little over $20,000/yr.

Not bad, for a page that requires ZERO maintenance.  And this is why some IP court cases have held in the past that domain parking constitutes a legitimate business model.

I should also point out that I don’t believe the domain is parked with a parking provider.  The DNS points to DNSMADEEASY.com nameservers.   So it looks like the owner’s got their own arrangement worked out with a PPC provider, which means they’ve cut out the middle man and are taking a larger share of the PPC Pie.

In that case I’ll bet they are most certainly earning much more than I’ve estimated. What do you think?

I just watched for the first time, a new show on CNBC called How I Made My Millions.  Each week the show catalogs a handful of successful entrepreneurs and tells the story of how they took an idea and made it into their first million.

In the episode I just finished watching, there was a segue prior to a commercial where they showed a teaser about a guy who made his first million on the internet by ‘buying words’.  From the way in which they phrased it, I was excited to think they may be doing a bit about a successful dot com mogul or someone who made their first million from domain speculating.

I was only slightly disappointed that it turned out not to be a domainer, though, but instead was a profile on a man named Mark DiPaola who launched an early SEM company called Vantage Media which he then sold five years later for $150 million.

Still, it was neat to see a story on an internet entrepreneur whose fortune was intimately tied to the power of keywords.  But it also got me thinking, there are plentiful examples of those who’ve made their first million in domain investing, and I’d still love to see someone representing the domain industry on this show.

Unfortunately for me I don’t happen to be one of those millionaires, or anywhere near it (yet).

But there are those like Mike Mann, Michael Berkens, Rick Schwartz and countless others who fly under the radar, or perhaps someone in the industry who’s founded a domain parking provider, registrar, aftermarket venue or other domain related produce or service.  Maybe that someone is you?

If you made your first millions on domain names and havn’t had your 15 minutes of fame yet (closer to 5 really), why not send your story to the producers of How I Made My Millions?

A peek into the future at what this year’s GoDaddy Super Bowl commercial will look like

I LOVE to make predictions. I also love to be right about them, which of course doesn’t always happen.  Really the point is in conducting the mental exercise in trying to read the future.  That’s what we do, after all, when we speculate.

With just 10 days to go until the Big Game – Super Bowl XLV – never mind who will win.  I actually find myself speculating more about the this year’s GoDaddy commercial.

GoDaddy will no doubt continue it’s Super Bowl tradition of  “shock and awe” with it’s attractive and often scantily-clad spokesmodels. But what I’m more hotly anticipating is that this year’s spot will feature a promotion of the new Dot Co extension.

I’m sure that the executives behind this 7-figure advertising spot have put this thing through the ringer and I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with.  My initial predictions are that:

• Dot Co and Dot Com will be featured side-by-side.  I believe that juxtaposing the two is vital because you have to bring both names into the consciousness at the same time. This will allow the average Joe Public who has never heard of Dot Co and only knows Dot Com, to make the key distinguishment.
• The commercial will involve two GoDaddy girls: one to represent Dot Com, the other to represent Dot Co.
• There will not be a clear winner, but there will be a clear alternative.  That is to say, neither Dot Co nor Dot Com will be presented as being better than the other, but Dot Co will be flaunted.
• The day of the Super Bowl, and for some days following, GoDaddy will make Dot Co the default extension in the domain search bar. (They previously tested this for a single day in late 2010.)

Those are my initial predictions.  Now I have to admit that just after putting these thoughts down I decided to do  some detective work.  It seems GoDaddy had put out a press release on 1/11/11 with more intimate details on the upcoming commercial.  Let’s see how they compare to my predictions …

This year though, Bob Parsons is promising a BIG surprise with Go Daddy’s Super Bowl campaign. Parsons says Go Daddy will unveil its first-ever GoDaddy.CO Girl in one of its two Super Bowl spots …

The new GoDaddy.CO Girl has agreed to keep her identity secret. In the commercial “unveiling,” Go Daddy Girls Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels have roles introducing their new colleague.

So it seems I am right in that there will be more than one GoDaddy girl, and that one will be representing DotCo.  However it seems there will in fact be three girls, rather than two, and it is not clear that the commercial will seek to have the two extensions rivaling it out as I’ve suggested.

Speaking on the identity of the new GoDaddy girl, Bob Parson’s had this to say,

“We are going to out-Go Daddy ourselves with this one,” Parsons declared. “Who is she? I can tell you our new Go Daddy dotCO Girl is a big name – she’s iconic, she’s edgy, she’s off the hook funny and as long as I don’t talk too much, I think most everyone will be absolutely shocked!”

“Our new Go Daddy dotCO Girl is already a big name, but after this Super Bowl commercial, she’s going to be in a whole new realm.”

As to the identity of the new GoDaddy Girl, we have the following data to go on:

• iconic
• edgy
• ‘off the hook’ funny
• already a big name (but not an A-lister, yet)

Who could it be? Any guesses?  Can you read the future?