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So what happened with Eric Borgos and his 9,000 domain names?

Name Shopping

In mid-November Eric Borgos wrote a story on his company’s blog entitled: What To Do With My 9000 Domain Names?

The story sparked a lot of interest from readers and people started commenting with their own thoughts on what Eric should do with his 9,000 domain names.  Readers posted over 100 comments on the site that were all over the place – some offering to buy several of the names, to some suggesting Eric mass-sell or drop the worst of the domain names. 

Eric laid out a number of ideas in the beginning of the article on what he wants to do. 

Selling all his domain names at once to one buyer at wholesale prices was at the top of his list of considerations.  Eric wrote: “for $8 million for example, I would make $15,000/month in interest from the money in the bank (after income taxes and the brokerage fee I would net around $4.5 million from the sale) plus I would gain another $2000/month from the savings on domain fees (the difference between my parking income and my registration fees) that I no longer have to pay.” 

Unfortunately, there are very few buyers of portfolios right now Eric points out, but the wholesale option seems to be “Eric’s choice”.

Other considerations included selling more domain names than before by listing them with more brokers, setting up all his parked domains on minisites, and setting up real sites on his better domain names.

So, what did Eric do with his 9,000 domain names?

If you read through all the comments on the post, you’ll notice Eric is active and regularly responds to readers’ comments, even the not-so-nice ones.

You’ll also learn more about what he’s decided to do, that is, until selling all of his domain names to one buyer comes through. 

Eric doesn’t believe parking is the answer, and has no plans to let any of his names expire or sell any of them at registration fee.  “In terms of keeping vs selling my domains that make no money, the vast majority of my domains are worth at least a few hundred dollars each $500”, Eric writes.

Eric also states that he continues to get a high click through rate on Google Adsense ads, contrary to what many other domain investors are saying about their own domains.   

As far as his adult domain names, Eric is working with xpays.com: “A month ago I changed all my adult domains to be parked at xpays.com. They are not a parking company though, they put up a splash page giving the visitor some free content and then it tries to get them to signup for a free trial. I get paid $35 for each signup. Xpays has many different types of sites, and directs each of my domain to the best matching site of theirs. I switched my domains to their dns, so I did not have to do anything to set things up.”

Eric claims to have doubled his revenue using xpays, making nearly $2000/month from xpays with his 4,000 adult domains, rather than the $1000/month he was pulling in using traditional parking.

For Eric’s 4,000 non-adult domain names, he’s creating minisites using his own automated mass-development system he spent several months setting up.   Go to Inventing.com to take a look at an example of the mini site template that he is using across thousands of his domains. 

After all is said and done, Eric is still developing bigger web sites like Dumb.com and WatchMovies.com, and he’s still selling his domain names – with 2010 being one of his best years in terms of volume. 

Eric comments: ” Most years I think I have sold 30-50, but i am trying to accept more offers this year. I am not doing anything different to market them, and have never done any marketing other than listing them on Sedo.com and Afternic.com and on my own site at NameShopping.com.”

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Premium auction at Sedo’s GreatDomains exceeds half a million dollars with 4 days left

hundred dollar bills

With 4 days left of bidding, the latest GreatDomains auction has drawn in over $500,000 in from buyers.

There are more than 200 domain names up for sale, including several two-letter domain names that hit the auction block.

The two-letter domain name KF.com has already topped $80,000 in bidding, while JF.com has reached $60,000. 

Both names could sell for a lot more.  SZ.com sold for $125,000 earlier this year in a private transaction, followed by the sale of Xi.com in August for $100,930.

Additional highlights of the GreatDomains auction, include Fork.com and LawFirm.com bidding at $25,000 each, while the two-number domain name 06.com has a current high bid of $54,000.

At this rate, the auction which doesn’t end until December 9, could bring in one of the largest auction totals for GreatDomains in 2010. 

Over 100 of the domain names already have bids.

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Tablets.com to provide reviews, buying advice, news and more for tablet enthusiasts

ipad games

It’s been only a month since Aron Meystedt of XF.com acquired the category-killer domain name Tablets.com

So what’s in store for one of the hottest gadgets and domain names on the market?

Bill Kara of Hallpass Media whose casual game network receives over 3.5 million visitors monthly, suggested back in early November on Fusible that Tablets.com: “should make a comparison engine and do some peer rankings to really get the SEO juice going.   I don’t think a blog is the best use of this type of domain IMO…”, he commented.

Aron responded that the blog is just temporary, and plans were underway for a comparsion engine and more. 

If you’ve visited Tablets.com recently, you’ll know the search is on for writers to write reviews, articles, news, buying advice, information and more.  Literally, anything about tablets.

Whatever site is ultimately launched, right now tablets.com continues to show up on page 1 of Google for the search phrase ‘tablets’, and ranks above Apple, Amazon, RadioShack, Best Buy and other popular sites that sell tablets.

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Owners of domain names seized by ICE, using Twitter to communicate with users

Domain names seized by ICE - Homeland Security investigations

TechCrunch is reporting that many of the owners of the domain names seized by Homeland Security earlier this week because of copyright infringement are now moving their web sites to alternate domain names. 

And the owners are using Twitter to get the word out about the “move”.

Some have already started to migrate to other domains, though it’s likely choices like .net won’t be any safer. Torrent-Finder owner Waleed Gad El Kareem said he switched his site over to Torrent-Finder.info the moment he saw the ICE message on Torrent-Finder.com, posting the new site’s address on Twitter.

As TechCrunch points out, some web sites have switched from .com to .net, as well as .com to .info.   Jamie Zoch, of DotWeekly, has a full rundown of all the domain names seized.

RapGodfathers.info, one of the sites that had its .com seized, registered the .info on Nov. 25th (see Whois Record below).  The .net and .org were already registered.

rapgodfathers.info whois record

Read more about Sites With Government Seized Domains Are Moving On, On Twitter.

What do you think? Should the owners have gone with .info, a different extension, a .com with hyphens, or something entirely different?

 

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Kentucky internet gambling case: Court date scheduled for December 6

courthouse

For those interested in the Kentucky internet gambling case that began in September 2008, in which the state of Kentucky tried seizing 141 domain names of gambling sites, a new court date has been scheduled for December 6, 2010. 

As CasinoAdvisor reports: ‘The case is back in the court of Judge Thomas Wingate, who was the original judge that ruled that Kentucky was legally able to exert jurisdiction over the specified domain names, even though all the domains are owned and operated outside of the Commonwealth.’

While there are 141 domain names involved in the case, the state’s attorneys in an attempt to identify the owners of the domains, wants to divide up the domain names into groups. 

According to CasinoAdvisor, the state’s attorney’s submitted the following before the court: ‘In order to effectively manage the large number of sites, the Commonwealth suggests that the determination of identification and ownership of sites occur in groups. The Commonwealth requests that the initial group consist of playersonly.com, sportsbook.com, sportsinteraction.com, mysportsbook.com, and linesmaker.com.’

Who knows whether this case will ever end. 

What do you think of this latest submission by the state’s attorneys?

See the original list of the defendants’ 141 domain names, which includes Fulltiltpoker.com, Goldenpalace.com, Bodoglife.com and Pokerstars.com (just to name a few).