Many of the voices we have heard speaking out about the proposed .XXX top-level domains (TLD) are mostly from the tech community, the adult industry, and politicians with various agendas. Although I rarely use this blog for editorial purposes, I thought it might be helpful for people to consider the perspective of an educator who has worked in all primary and secondary school levels and will soon start working in higher education.

The benefits of having an entire TLD for adult sites is clear if you are in the adult industry, but what some may not have considered is that it can also have advantages for those trying to prevent children from accessing them. It also provides a definite advantage for tech security professionals who are often given the impossible task of trying to limit access.

Make no mistake, it will not solve all problems, and it is doubtful adult and pornographic sites will limit themselves exclusively to .XXX domains, but part of promoting themselves as legitimate businesses involves making a conscious effort to keep children away from their sites. This could work in favor of both sides of the argument if it is used to its full potential. ICANN is again considering it, and time will tell. But it is certainly worth a second thought.

Photo Source: Flickr

0 comments

Domain Guagua.com sold at auction yesterday for $100,000 USD. While not nearly as much as the $800,000 guns.com fetched, I don’t think I would pass up the chance to earn six figures from a domain.

“Guagua” is a Spanish nickname for a type of small bus common in urban areas. Often called dollar or commuter vans, these vehicles are privately owned and provide transportation in areas not well-served by public transit.

Other sales of note include pepe.com for €45,000 and gastronomie.com for €35,000. The ccTLDs risultati.it (results) and energieagentur.de (energy agency) each sold for €32,000 and €21,500 respectively. It’s been an active week for the domain market indeed.

0 comments

From time to time, you may find that you want to delete a domain name registration. Perhaps the domain has served its use and is no longer useful to you, or maybe you no longer wish to be associated with it. But because so many people simply don’t renew a name instead of deleting it, the process isn’t always straightforward.

At Go Daddy and many other large registrars, however, removing a domain from your account is quite simple. Read step-by-step instructions after the jump.

Continue reading: How to delete a domain

0 comments

After losing a non-enforceable lawsuit against ICM Registry for blocking the .xxx domain, ICANN will reconsider the extension. According to a spokesman, it will be discussed at a meeting this Friday.

As much as we all love the wide array of busts and brawn available online, I really don’t see the point of .xxx. Proponents argue it would make adult content easier to filter, but this would never happen unless all pornographic sites were forced to move to the extension.

ICM Registry seems to be the only one pumping .xxx. Unless the likes of Hugh Hefner get behind, I doubt it willl ever take off. ICANN should just tell ICM to take a hike once and for all.

0 comments

When it comes to increasing website traffic, many webmasters often look to SEO or banner advertising. Both methods are often very expensive and do not result in permanent gains unless continuously maintained. But if you have a high-traffic website, registering typos of your domain could be a cheap way to bring in more visitors.

According to a recent study, some sites can increase their traffic by 1% simply by registering “wwwdomain.com” to redirect typo-prone visitors “www.domain.com.”

This may not seem like a lot, but even for a site that gets 1,000 visitors per day, this traffic adds up. Take 10 extra visitors per day and multiply by 365, you get 3650. Assume a domain costs $10 and divide that number of 3650, and you’ll realize that you’re paying less than a quarter of a cent ($0.0027) per visitor!

This is significantly less than the cost of PPC ads, which can run up to $1.00 or more per click. Just remember to redirect the typo domain to your site, otherwise you won’t gain any traffic!

0 comments

Lock and load ‘em, boys. Guns.com just sold at a auction for a jaw-dropping $800,000 USD. No information about the buyer or seller has been made available.

This is the third-biggest domain sale so far this year. Interestingly, neither of the two names that grossed more, poker.org ($1,000,000) and credit.fr (€587,500), are .coms.

Given the huge market for firearms in the United States, I think the name could have fetched a bit more than $800,000. The arms industry is one of the biggest in the U.S. and Canada. Perhaps the plural form of the name turned buyers away?

Source | DN Journal
Photo | eyebiz

0 comments

In an effort to boost profits, the Nigerian Internet Registration Association (NIRA) has announced the release of some 1,200 “premium” generic keyword .ng domains. The question is, does anyone care?

Sure, ccTLDs are on the up, but only in developed countries and not in places with bad reputations for spamming and scamming. Names like casino.ng or sex.ng might fetch several hundred or perhaps several thousand dollars at auction, but not much. And I suspect few domainers are scratching to get their hands on cars.ng. Vacation.ng might be a goldmine, if it weren’t for the fact no one goes on vacation to Nigeria.

If NIRA were smart, it would hold most of these “premium” names until a sufficient market exists to garner high sale prices. But as it stands now, does anyone really give a hoot about .ng?

Photo | cgarbiano

0 comments

I’ve worked with a number of domain registrars over the years and have had to navigate through dozens of different control panels in the process. While no interface or check out process is perfect, the control panel I hate using the most has to be Go Daddy’s. Why? The company barrages me with dozens of special offers every time I register a domain.

I know what I want to buy and would rather not be told what I need. I don’t want a .net and .org with my .com, and I’m most certainly not reserving a .name. I’m not doing ecommerce so I don’t need SSL. Getting indexed in Google isn’t hard, so I won’t buy your search engine submission package.

Go Daddy should stop overwhelming their customers with “special offers.” Granted, a lot of online stores do this and Go Daddy does offer an express checkout, but even that entails scrolling through a long page of ads. Out of all the registrars, Godaddy is by far the most annoying to order from. And no, a couple of hot girls doesn’t make up for it.

0 comments

Qant.as, a domain that resembles you know, the Australian airline Qantas, was sold for $1.35 million USD. The seller, Dominic Holland, said in a statement, “The domain name Qant.as could be snapped up by a competitor so damage to Qantas’s business could be in the millions of dollars.”

The .as ccTLD is used by American Samoa. Personally, I think the idea that this domain could hurt Qantas is absurd. While the name does spell the name of the airline, most Internet users still aren’t comfortable with including the extension as part of a spelled name. No one would confuse it for the real thing.

There is some question as to whether it violates the airline’s trademark or not, but since extensions usually aren’t considered part of the domain name, I don’t think Qant.as is in violation. Either way, the buyer got a horrible deal.

Source | The Domains
Photo | Flickr

0 comments

Leading the domain sales pack this week is metal.com, which has sold for $165,000 USD. The name would be perfect for a heavy metal music website or perhaps a firm in the metal market.

Another sale of note is stockprices.com for $60,000. If developed into a decent stock quote site, I think this domain would be worth quite a bit more. It has a huge potential market of investors, but any developer will need to build something better than competing services from Google and Yahoo.

Here are some other recent sales:

furniture.co.za- $33,000
bigdaddy.com- $20,000
lookup.com- $17,500
netbingo.com- $15,000
isp.co.uk- £7,500
manilla.com- $10,000

0 comments