SkyDomains

The Friday edition of  The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bob Parson, the founder and CEO of GoDaddy.com has just paid a whooping $8.72 million for a Balinese -style house on Hawaii’s Big Island that was built by Singer-actress, Cher. The property went to auction last month. “Located at the Four Seasons’ Hualalai resort, the property includes a main house and four one-bedroom bungalows. Cher bought the property in December 2004 for $2.9 million and last year began building the house but never lived in it” WSJ (2010).

Talking about Cher, is she still on her never ending final tour? It appears so.

Who owns Cher.com ? The site looks like it should belong to her and is devoted to her but who-is points to :

Registrant:
   Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP
   11355 W. Olympic Blvd
   Los Angeles, CA  90064
   US

This is probably her production company that registered the name for her. Awesome mini site!

OK people, I am back to studying for a test tonight. It was nice chatting with you guys again even if it was for a short trivial fact.

Happy new year everyone.  Over the last few days of last year, I worked tirelessly trying to bring a deal to a close. It was not easy having to balance between work, school and a rather demanding customer. Over a period of two weeks we went from a decent offer (I have refused better for the same domain) to negotiating an advertising deal with the domain. This was particularly challenging because I was also writing my end of term exams at the time and this buyer turned advertiser wanted all kinds of stats. Well in the end the deal never panned out. However an ex US Marine recruiter once told me, “if they keep coming back, they want something”  This customer did come back a couple of time so I am almost certain that we will write a deal one day. It is not unlike one of my current advertisers (more…)

Jessica Dicker of CNN Money wrote today that Gourmet Magazine after 70 years of publication will be shut down despite over 1 million subscribers. In addition to Gourmet, parenting magazine Cookie and two wedding magazines, Elegant Bride and Modern Bride will also  be getting  the axe. 

“The magazine industry is in a difficult position generally speaking, it’s losing revenue to online advertising and it’s a tough business right now,” said Richard Dorfman, managing director of Richard Alan Inc., a financial advisory and investment company focusing on the media industry.

This is futher evidence that online advertising is indeed hiting conventional media hard where it hurts.

Have you ever wondered how long it will take you to make it to the number one spot for your most coveted search term in Google? More importantly when you get there, have you ever wondered how long it will take you to climb back to the first page of search for your desired keyword much less your esteemed position at the number one spot. It happened to me and I am about to tell you a tale that is so resent, I am still recovering from the aftermath effects.

When I build a site, my ultimate goal is that one day it ranks on the first page for one or two search terms I choose from the beginning. If the domain name makes up this search term, then I can not accept anything short of the top 3 spot as satisfactory.
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Hello people. I am proud to be a domainer and my guess is that you are too, however the present and persistent happenings in the industry has given me cause to sit back and ponder. Every week great sales are announced. We all enjoy reading about those, don’t we? While theyare great news of hope, fact remains that the very cancer (Heaven forbids) that will destroy this industry continues to grow. Myself like the rest of the domaining industry look the other way, each of us concerned only of our own piece of virtual real estate(s). I am going to focus on the resent issue of Ad.com, AOL , Overseas and Skenzo.

Here is a brief recap of the issue: Skenzo commits to buy Ad.com from Overseas, AOL raises dust and claims that Ad.com infringes on their Adverstise.com mark. Skenzo panics (more…)

Hello people. My disdain for 1&1 domain registrar is not new. I have often tagged them as the worst registrar in the world and rightly so.  They have one of the worst interface in my own opinion. They are also second only to GoDaddy in “bait and switch”. This is where a registrar  attracts you with nice initial low registration fees  and then sticks it to you real hard the next year with super inflated renewal fees. 

 I had two domains in 1&1, I tried to stop the renewal of these domains but failed because I just could not navigate there interface (I later learned that you need to do it in writing – go figure!), so  I simply declined to update the credit card I had on file with them. To make a long story short,  they still went ahead and billed me anyway. When they sent me the bill I complained and was told to cancel the account in writing which I did.  Four months later, I am faced with a letter from a collection agency plus added collection fees.

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Hello people. Some of you might have been wondering what’s up with me. Some pals even sent me emails and direct messages from twitter to make sure that all is well with me. Well I will update you on what has been happening since my sabbatical. First and foremost, I went back to school. I am going for a  degree in Business with an emphasis on Marketing this time. How this fits my bachelors in  Chemistry, I have no clue but I believe along with the times, my dreams  and where I have found myself in life, this was a necessary move. This is what I have always wanted to do anyway.  Though my true passion is actually Business with emphasis in Advertising but the college I choose for certain reasons does not offer this program. I think Marketing is close enough and probably a case of semantics. It is never too late to teach an old dog new tricks and now is always a good time to start that dream you have been procrastinating  on.

In this period I sold what I believe is my first .org sale ever.  I own very little .org. Most where regged because I own the other two primary extensions. An example will be SkyDomains.org. Not that I do not believe in .org’s but most of the time, the return on investment is slim.

Well now you know why I have not been very active. I do have a few juicy stories to share with you guys in the next couple of days. Stay tuned

As some of you know, I am a big  fan of OLED which stands for An organic light emitting diode. I also own a good number of  OLED related names. I thought I should share this youtube video I ran across while checking up on OLED news and update.

What is  your best OLED domain? I own P-OLED.com which is another form of OLED and when rightly spelt, it comes with a dash just like my domain.

This is truly awesome. Click here for Video

Ever wonder how a great one worder ends up on the delete list and finally in auction? Sometimes the owners are not stupid or too broke to renew it, they probably just can’t. They are probably dead and no one even knows that they owned such a domain or that they even owned domains at all.

By now every breathing person who owns a TV or a radio and hopefully speaks English, already knows about the passing of “King of Pop” at the age of 50. Events like this somehow reminds one of his own mortality. Death is a future tense. It is going to happen but we just do not (more…)

This is a special post not only because I ordinarily do not blog on Sundays but also because today is Father’s Day. This post also has some pictures which is an anomaly in my blog. I urge you domainers especially those of us that are very active in domaining and at work to take the time sometime during the week to read this post. There is a message there for everyone. How will this post affect your domaining empire? I will say immensely because life has always been a matter of balance and to me the most successful domainers or individual is someone who has found a way to balance work and life.  In the end your most priceless domain is the one you lay your head in, not the physical structure but the people around you that make up what we have come to call family. My daughter turned eight months old  yesterday so the first set of pics where at the beach yesterday while the other set of pics are from today after church service.

Happy father’s day to all the current and future father’s out there, a quick shout out to my friend “Mike” (ocDomainer) I know you are having a swell time with Sam. (more…)