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How To: Use Fiverr to make money with domain names

Fiverr

Fiverr.com, the website where people share things they’re willing to do for $5, attracted a lot of news coverage in 2010.  The service which launched in February 2010, saw its traffic spike to over 400,000 unique visitors by March after a number of news sites and technology blogs like TechCrunch reported  news of the start-up. 

In Nov. I wrote about the zany service, after a Fiverr-clone reportedly sold on Flippa for $52,000.  The winning bidder from the November auction attempted to re-flip the site again earlier this week.  The auction for Zeerk.com, which closed today for $74,999 appears to be another failed auction at Flippa, after an apparent disgruntled Flippa user made a bid for $1 less than buy-it-now price.   

While Fiverr is just in time for a troubled economy, it’s nowhere near as popular as say, group-buying, despite Fiverr-clones already appearing online – a sign that a site is successful to some degree.   

Fiverr for entrepreneurs

Owen Frager’s blog linked to an article by Dave Lavinsky’s article where he summed up the site’s success in a few lines: “This is a pretty simple concept and the site works very simply. I’m sure that the founders have thousands of ideas to make the site better (e.g., adding things that people will do for $25, etc.), but they started simply with the minimal viable product). Now, with success, they are adding more features (based on what customers are saying they want!). This is the formula for success.”

While thousands of people are making money selling their services for $5, it’s not just the usual internet marketers pitching gimmicks that are making money off the web site.

How are people making money off domain names?

A lot of Fiverr users are promising to find the best possible domain names that can still be hand-registered. 

For example, here’s one seller that will give you five .com domain ideas that have Estibot values of at leat $100.  For readers unfamiliar with Estibot, the website provides free domain appraisals, a somewhat tricky business with no perfect science.

I will give you 5 .com domain names that are available to be registered and that have Estibot values of at least $100. I have many years of domain name buying experience and can help you obtain quality domain names that are actually being searched for based on keywords. I own hundreds of domains and I buy and sell them on a regular basis.

Another seller who goes by tigerheart says he’s the master at finding high-quality domain names.

I’m a master at finding high quality domains for people and organizations. I have dozens of sites myself that represent different projects -> thevoiceman.com, socialexpression.com, jvny.com, inspirology.com, smartmillion.com, processtoprofit.com, heartessentials.com and dozens more.

WordPress hosting, lists of typo domains, killer domain ideas, and much much more; there is definitely no lack of creativity by people selling domain services on Fiverr.

Fiverr

Use Fiverr’s search tool to see what gigs are being posted related to “domain names”, “seo” and other related services.

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Confirmed: Microsoft Corporation now owns the domain Kinect.com

Kinect.com domain name

When Microsoft launched its now-popular Kinect, the controller-free add-on for the Xbox in early November, it didn’t own the domain name Kinect.com.  Kinect.com has been registered since the nineties and the domain name re-directed to CAHG.com, a company that helped others grow their leadership brands. 

Earlier this week, back on Dec. 30th, Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire and other bloggers and writers described how Microsoft had filed a UDRP to get the following domain names:  MicrosoftKinect.com, KinectWorld.com, KinectPro.com, and KinectReviews.us.  At the time of the story, Microsoft still didn’t own Kinect.com.

While it appears many reported the news about the UDRP cases, no one has reported that the domain name switched owners on New Year’s Eve.

As of December 31st, 2010, the domain name is now registered to Microsoft Corporation.

Domain Administrator
Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way 
Redmond WA 98052

Created on…………..: 1998-11-17.
Expires on…………..: 2014-11-16.
Record last updated on..: 2010-12-31.

The change in owners comes only days after Microsoft filed the first UDRP cases. 

According to registrant records, Microsoft now owns the Kinect.com domain name.  

kinect registrant

While the price of the name remains undisclosed, one can only imagine what Microsoft had to shell out.  A recent article in Gamasutra pointed out that Microsoft aims to sell 12.1 million units of the Kinect device by the end of 2011 after the company already sold 2.5 million units worldwide through November.

Over a year ago, Microsoft acquired the domain name Office.com in a transaction that was highly publicized by a number of technology sites after it was revealed that Microsoft used a company called Marksmen, a Microsoft contractor to purchase the name for an undisclosed amount.

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Something fishy about the “Most Active” auction on Flippa bidding at $830,000?

Flippa Most Active Acction

A number of users are voicing their opinion and displeasure on what is the “Most Active” auction currently over at Flippa.  The bidding price, which has topped $800,000 for a website that claims to make thousands monthly by selling iPads and iPhones – is just another indication that some Flippa users are clearly irritated with the listing.   

In addition to what appears to be artificial bidding by upset Flippa users, many have left comments on the listing.

What’s the issue?

What’s at issue here are some of the claims made by the seller, which include an Alexa Rank of 2,097 and over 500,000 unique visitors per month. 

The site being put up for auction is affordableelectronicsandmore.yolasite.com, which is hosted on Yola, a popular website builder and hosting service that was started in 2007.  Yolasite.com, is the website with the Alexa rank of 2,097, not the sub-domain as one reader commented: “…yolasite.com has an alexa ranking of 2,097, not your site”.

The traffic and Alexa ranking claims are just the tip of the iceberg.  

Users chimed in with a laundry list of issues in the comments section which include: how could someone buy iPads for $200 for resale, how come there is no checkout on the site, why is the seller’s eBay user id is new with zero feedback?  And on and on.

As one user writes to the seller in the comments: “Well so far you have a bunch of shill bidders, who aren’t going to pay you $10 let alone a quarter of a million dollars. The sad part of this is, that these sales just make a poor impression on Flippa than anything.”

Flippa isn’t perfect, but it could probably improve its system when it comes to certain types of listings.  

In March 2010, Flippa was credited with selling Retweet.com at public auction for $250,000 – it’s biggest sale at the time, since the site launched in 2009. 

Is this listing for affordableelectronicsandmore.yolasite.com, really legit?

Whatever this listing is, it’s certainly upsetting several Flippa users.

UPDATE:  Since this story went online earlier this morning, the auction listing has now been removed.

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News

Juggle.com acquires Debate.org from WebCorp owner Philip Ferreira

juggle

Juggle.com, the company that builds and creates websites focused on engaging users with quality content, acquired the website Debate.org from WebCorp owner Philip Ferreira.   As reported here, a few weeks ago, Debate.org sold on Flippa for $130,000.

Juggle

Juggle CEO Stephanie Leffler and President Ryan Noble, founded the company in 2008 after selling their ecommerce platform MonsterCommerce, to Network Solutions in 2006.  According the company’s info page: “In the last year, Ryan Noble and Stephanie Leffler’s leadership has helped Juggle.com surge from 400,000 monthly unique visitors to 1.7 million. Their dedication to publishing has grown the site from a mere 150,000 pages of information to 8.3 million and counting. The company has even grown beyond the flagship site, adding on MonsterMarketplace.com and ScalableWorkforce.com in the last year.”

Juggle Debates

Juggle updated its own home page and Debate.org.  The Debate.org About page now reads: “Debate.org was acquired by Juggle LLC in the winter of 2010. Juggle builds and creates websites heavily focused on engaging users with quality content, organized information and useful features. Moving forward, Juggle will focus on improving the site by expanding the debate platform to allow multiple debate formats, enhance usability and design, and improving member profiles and features.”

Juggle already runs its own online debates,  covering a variety of topics like politics and religion, on debates.juggle.com.

WebCorp Auctions

Philip Ferreira the President of WebCorp who sold Debate.org to Juggle, has been using Flippa in an attempt to sell off several of his company’s assets in order to focus on DORK.com (a social gaming web site with over 1,000,000 games played).  Auctions have included: Debate.org, Dontvote.org, Swap.net, NewCars.org, and others.

The public auction for Swap.net, a proprietary swapping classified Website like CraigsList ended at $8,000 – failing to meet its reserve price in early December.  Dontvote.org sold for $2,100.   The auction for Newcars.org ended on November 25, but failed to meet its reserve price.  The auction ended with 4 bids, with the high bid coming in at $20,000.

Philip Ferreira recently listed some not-so-premium names up for sale including a group of dating names: DateFree.net, DateFree.org, DateFree.us, and DateFree.biz.  Bidding at $11, the lot of names already reached their reserve price.   In addition to the dating names, Philip listed TheWimp.com which is already bidding above its reserve at $65.

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Years after discontinuing its Hardwire products, Xilinx lets Hardwire.com expire

Xilinx logo

Founded more than 25 years ago, Xilinx the semiconductor company, whose programmable chips can be found in 3D televisions, mobile communications equipment and even on board the Mars Rover space mission, has allowed its hardwire.com domain name to expire. 

Hardwire.com, originally registered in the mid-nineties, expired on 11/27/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion.  The expiration comes years after the company discontinued its HardWire line of products in February 2003.

The name is now up for auction on NameJet with the high pre-bid topping $1,000.   

Could Xilinx, whose own domain name was first registered in 1991, have just simply forgotten to renew the name? 

Whatever the reason, don’t expect Hardwire.com to go for cheap.  There are a number of uses and products for Hardwire – and at the time of this story, there are over 130 bidders angling to be the new owners.