Archive for June, 2010
New resource for Domain Developers and Domain Industry Bloggers, The Yahoo! Style Guide
Domain developers and bloggers now have a resource – The Yahoo! Style Guide. TechCrunch, Mashable and numerous other web sites are reporting the news.
According to Yahoo!, “Polished and expanded for its public debut, “The Yahoo! Style Guide” covers the basics of grammar and punctuation plus a multitude of topics with a Web-specific focus. Yahoo! editors discuss effective writing and editing for an online audience, techniques for streamlining copy, basic Web codes, Internet law, search engine optimization.”
The Yahoo! Style Guide
The style guide has 19 Chapters that cover a range of web topics ranging from SEO basics to writing engaging email and newsletters. A quick glance at the website and you’ll notice the information seems straightforward and obvious. It may be good advice for both new and experienced web developers and bloggers.
The site offers good explanations for topics that seem mysterious to many, like SEO.
Here are a few excerpts from the website,
People usually click the links on the first page of results, so sites at the top of the list are more likely to get visitors. And more visitors can mean more page views, more leads, more sales, more ad revenue, and other business benefits.
Search engines and people both like:
Verbosity. In the search engine world, verbosity means substantial, relevant, original content. Do fill your page with words, but write succinctly: Make sure that every word you write is relevant to your audience and to the topic you’re addressing.
Good writing. To a search engine, good writing means using variations of your keywords, including those with different endings. For example, if you are targeting the phrase job interview, use the singular, plural, -ing, and -ed forms, such as job interviews and job interviewing.
In the style guide, Yahoo! even takes you through the steps of optimizing a fictional site in Chapter 17.
You can buy the style guide everywhere books are sold starting July 6 and you can order it online now at sites like Amazon.
Domain Names and Development, “Group Buying” Weekend Edition
Domain and business investors alike, who have been following what's been going on with group buying so far in the last year, know this is an industry that has been trending up with many new players arriving on the scene.
In the Hot world of “Group Buying” there have been a number of developments since my last blog. There are a lot of news stories both in the Group Buying industry and Group Buying domain names.
GroupOn buys GroupOn.se Name for $12K
On June 16, the domain name GroupOn.se sold through Sedo. The name was acquired by one of the more successful group buying websites, GroupOn.com – who announced in May that it had acquired Groupon, one of Europe’s leading companies built after Groupon’s model. Groupon is available in 80 local markets in 16 countries, including Sweden, and quickly demonstrated the strength of Groupon model in Europe.
GoodNews partners with Vancouver.com
Ever since Kevin Ham launched GoodNews.com, his own business venture into the group buying market, the site has been flip flopping back and forth between Beta and a Lead capture page. The Coming Soon landing page now has a new look and feel and brand, and if you pay a visit to Kevin Ham’s Vancouver.com you’ll be met with a sign up page for GoodNews.com. Building on the strength of Vancouver.com, the site runs a banner at the top saying, “Vancouver.com has partnered with GoodNews.com to bring you amazing deals and discounts”
HomeRun.com Delivers on $130K Domain Investment
The domain name HomeRun.com which sold for $130,000 in 2010 was somewhat of a gamble for HomeRun Delivers, another group buying website launched this year. But according to Compete traffic statistics, it was a good gamble. The site enjoyed over 100,000 visitors last month alone, after reporting less than 100 visitors in December 2009.
Aftermarket for Group Buying Domains
Group Buying is an interesting market when it comes to domain names, as many investors and developers don’t necessarily target keyword relevant names, so it makes more difficult for anyone to know what the potential buyers have in mind. Unlike a name like MassBuy.com, group buying sites don’t follow the same model. A catchy brand name is what seems to be what many are aiming for. That being said, on aftermarket sites like NameJet – domain names like Copadeal.com and TucsonCoupon.com have bids. The local group buying market is heating up too, with companies focusing on one city at time before expanding their business model.
Taggle.com launches group buying website
Taggle.com received $8.75 million from Battery Ventures and Greylock Partners. The website promises to provide both the consumers and merchants a win-win platform. Right now the site offers deals only in Bengaluru, India.
DailyBargains.com under construction
An Under Construction page has appeared on the home page of DailyBargains.com, the domain name which sold to a mystery buyer for $10,500 in May.
Hand register Group Buying Domain Names
Every time I write a story, especially for a popular trend or industry, I try and research any available domain names. We’ve picked up a few hand registered names here at Fusible like LocalGroupbuying.com and today we purchased GroupBuyingonline.com.
Rick Schwartz switches gears from trading his domains to auctioning
Before Rick Schwartz had announced his plans to auction off several of his .net and .org domain names, The Domain King had laid out plans to exchange several of his domain names out of his personal collection with other domain investors.
According to a recent post on his personal blog titled Rick to have his First Domain Auction? Ladies.org, Brides.net. Men.net…, he has had a change of heart.
So later this year I plan to sell or auction off some or all of the following domain names. Most if not all have traffic and revenue. But they are not my focus and it is time to parlay these, so I can reinvest in the domains I need to fill in and strengthen what I have at greatly discounted prices. I already bought more domains this year than the last 2 years combined….
After earlier saying he would exchange the names, it looks like he’s finally going to cash in on the properties instead – with many likely to fetch high prices, that is unless he sets the reserve price at an unattractive level.
Rick isn’t known for selling his names cheap.
One of his techniques is to hold onto the name until the market reaches his asking price.
The list of names he plans to auction some time in the future, include:
Men.net
Men.orm
Mens.com
Whore.net
Whores.net
Shit.net
Shit.org
Bitch.org
Ladies.org
Mlm.org
Tits.net
Girls.net
Horny.org
Brides.net
Cock.net
Cock.org
Habits.org
Medicines.org
Seminars.org
Godiva.org
PornStar.org
Cemetary.org
ClassifiedAds.org
EatShit.net
Like Some Domains, Social Media Vanity URLs can be unintentionally confusing like Twitter’s @BP
Although Bryan Pendleton (the grad student, tinkerer and hacker) registered the vanity URL twitter.com/bp with Twitter early on, he’s been the target of mistaken identity by people upset about the BP oil spill which continues to take a toll on the environment and economy.
The official Twitter page for BP is @BP_America, but that hasn’t stopped people from inadvertently sending angry messages to Bryan Pendleton. Bryan Pendleton, who even set up a Twitter list called @bp/i-m-bp-not-bp-america, has been retweeting messages received by angry Twitter users.
Here are some of the messages Bryan has retweeted in recent days:
“RT @CollardGreen: Dear @bp u f*d my life up. Now give me my $. I can’t fish or nothing. Must admit. Don’t need hair grease no more”
“RT @janraposa: @BP. You screwed up royally here, and you’re making me want to drop all my pounds… “
According to Bryan’s friends on twitter, the irony of the whole situation is that Bryan Pendleton is apparently one of the greenest people they know.
Hallpass Media launches another website from their Portfolio of Domains: VirtualPets.com (in Beta)
Hallpass Media has been busy at work --- developing, testing, and launching websites --- with more to come.
Hallpass Media run by Bill Kara, has launched its newest website, VirtualPets.com (currently in Beta). The casual game company that acquires and develops killer game properties unveiled VirtualPets.com earlier today, where casual gamers can adopt, dress up, care for, or play with their favorite zoo, farm, exotic, house and ocean pets.
The site features an ‘Adopt a Pet’ section where players can adopt and care for anything from puppies to pandas. Other sites features allow users to take a visit in the Zoo games section to play with animals from around the world. Breed and train a stallion in the Farm section or enjoy an underwater adventure with some fishy friends in the Ocean section.
The site recently came out of testing after recently launching CookingGames.com in May 2010, which already ranks near the top of search engines for the phrase “cooking games” after only being online for a matter of weeks.
Bill Kara, Eric Borgos have more in common
Eric Borgos, another well-known and respected domainer-developer who operates Impulse Communications, currently owns the top spot in Google Search for the keywords “virtual pets” with his AdoptMe.com website. Eric, who made millions with his sale of Bored.com and 170 other websites – is also a big time domainer, who develops out casual gaming properties as well with properties like Dumb.com.
Bill Kara and Eric Borgos both have been buying and developing domain names for years and making millions in the process, so it should be an interesting competition in the search engines – with the newly launched VirtualPets.com pitted against the long standing AdoptMe.com.
It was only 7 days after launching CookingGames.com, that the site landed on the first page of Google…
Another CamRoulette.com Domain Name Sells for Big Bucks, This Time WebcamRoulette.com for $47,500
Ron Jackson just posted his official weekly domain sales report, and according to the sales chart WebcamRoulette.com sold for $47,000 at the Moniker /iGaming auction held earlier this month. The highest domain sale of the auction was poker.ca for $400,000, in auction that had few reported sales compared to Moniker / SnapNames auctions.
The sale of WebCamRoulette.com wasn’t previously reported – or at least the sale was difficult to find online until now. There was an extended auction as well that included over 600 domain names, but again, results are difficult to track, unless you’re monitoring the auction live.
The buyer of WebCamRoulette.com appears to be Xedoc Holding SA (or at least that’s where the registrant records are pointing), who look to be capitalizing on the Chat Roulette craze that is erupting online.
CamRoulette.com which sold earlier this year for $151,000, experienced a dip in traffic in the month of May, dropping from nearly 12,000 visitors in April to under 6,000 unique visitors in May. In March, webcamroulette.com reported over 2,000 unique visitors according to Compete.com. The site now points to CamLive.com – a website dedicated to adult live cams.
Will copycat domain names and websites be successful?
History shows the ones that get in early and target adult content, have a shot. If you own some roulette domains, you may want to hang onto them – PornRoulette.com and GuyRoulette.com also sold this year through Sedo.
Will we see more CamRoulette-type domain names sell this year? It’s still early.
There are still plenty of hand registered variations available like StreamingCamRoulette.com.
IndependenceDay.com – unused internet property by 20th Century Fox, What a Shame
Independence Day comes with plenty of big fireworks, family fun, cookouts and a slew of local and nationwide events each year.
Independence Day, otherwise known as the Fourth of July here in the United States, commemorates the day that the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Contintental Congress on July 4, 1776.
Independence Day also happens to be a Fox Film that debuted in 1996 and at one point according to Wikipedia – had the second highest worldwide gross of all time with a combined $816,969,268 in domestic and international box offices.
All that and more, but the domain name IndependenceDay.com (which is owned by Fox Film) doesn’t even resolve to a web page.
Fox owns thousands of domains
The unused domain, which has a stellar search volume of nearly 250,000 exact global searches, could make a massive splash on the internet, but instead, the killer domain sits under a pile of domain names owned by Fox – nearly 20,000 of them.
What a shame, that such a great domain isn’t worth pursuing development – or for that matter, even worth redirecting to one of the Fox Film pages.
FourthofJuly.com which is owned by Verimedia, Inc – redirects to GreetingCards.com.
Domain King Rick Schwartz sells two more domains in the six figures, one hand registered for less $100
It’s not often that Rick Schwartz sells a domain name or least shares the sale publicly. Since the nineties, he has only sold a handful of names out of his portfolio of thousands. But the total sales for those domains is in the millions. The Domain King, who got his start in 1995, with the purchase of lipservice.com for $100 has sold less than 20 names.
Today Rick Schwartz announced the sale of two more domain names, each in the six figures. The first one, according to Rick’s blog cannot be disclosed at present, but the second sale which sold for $100,000 was a name he registered early on in his domaining career: SydneyHotels.com.
A name he purchased for less than $100.
These aren’t Rick’s first sales in 2010. In April Rick sold the numeric domain 273.com for $50,000 to a Chinese buyer.
It’s unlikely most domain investors, will see the same results as Rick Schwartz, but if there’s one thing Rick Schwartz can teach you – it’s that patience pays off.
Does anyone really care about the .CO landrush, asks Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney
Next week the .CO Landrush takes place starting June 21 through mid-July. General availability begins July 20 once the global sunrise and landrush processes are complete. Jeremy Schoemaker of ShoeMoney.com, recently wrote a post about the .co landrush and asked his readers whether anyone cares?
Well, obviously, domain investors care. Sadly, there is going to be no shortage of domain names as a flood of new top level domains will ultimately hit the market. So that’s where .CO stands to do well with more companies getting on board like TechCrunch and Twitter – AND – the close similarities between the .COM extension and the .CO extension are appealing to many, especially given its type-in potential due to typos.
More than a few of Jeremey Schoemaker’s readers chimed in. Here is what some readers had to say:
.CO is the best type-in domain extension typo there will be.
Just do a search on compete.com for google.cm, google.co, google.om
You will see that .CO is the most mis-typed extension of .com.
That’s the simple fact behind why it is so popular.yeah, i wouldn’t waste money on these. I got some cool .me that did absolutely nothing. Just a waste of time and cash.
Didn’t everyone get super excited about .mobi? That never went anywhere. I think I’ll wait until after the landrush to investigate the leftovers.
Huh. Is this about typo traffic?
I wanted dis.co but it was taken
Professional Poker Player and Domainer, Dutch Boyd wins second WSOP Bracelet
Dutch Boyd not only blogs about his Poker exploits, but he also blogs about domaining.
He did it again. Dutch Boyd the professional poker player and domainer has won his second WSOP bracelet. He won his second bracelet this past Sunday in the six-handed limit hold ‘em event and collected over $200,000 in winnings.
The buy-in for the tournament was only: $2,500.
Not a bad return for the second youngest law school graduate ever, who chose poker and domain names over practicing law.
Dutch Boyd has struck it big in 2010 with the sale of Cured.com at GreatDomains for $25,000, followed up by his second WSOP bracelet.
We’re fans of Poker and poker domains as well, so news of Dutch’s win at the six-handed limit hold’em event, prompted us to hand-register a few domain names while writing this story, including: Sixhandedholdem.com and ShorthandedHoldem.com.
