Domain Name Wire has launched FreeDN.com, your source for free domain registrations.

FreeDN provides users with free domain registrations at Dotster, a leading domain registrar. Here’s how it works:

1. Sign up for a free account at FreeDN.com.

2. Complete various advertiser offers to earn points. Many of these offers are completely free, such as completing a survey or signing up for a free trial. Others have small fees but are typically much cheaper than domain registration fees.

AND/OR

Refer your friends to FreeDN. You will earn 10% of your referral’s points.

3. For every 100 points you earn, you get a free domain registration at Dotster — that’s a $15 value!

Many of the advertiser offers payout more than 100 points, meaning you can quickly earn free registrations. FreeDN is brought to you by Andrew Allemann of Domain Name Wire, so you know you can trust FreeDN. The site just launched and should be considered in “Beta”, so please send in any feedback or bug reports.

Please note that you must live in the U.S. to participate due to advertiser restrictions.

Visit FreeDN.com today!

A number of .ws domains have sold in recent weeks.

.Ws, which is the country code for Western Somoa, has never caught on despite a major marketing campaign to rebrand it as an abbreviation for “web site”. But occasionally the domains sell for a respectable price — typically below the equivalent .biz or .info.

According to DNJournal, Blogs.ws sold for $1,600 at Sedo this past week. This is music to my ears since I own blogs.info and weblogs.ws. A number of .ws domains have sold at GoDaddy’s TDNAM recently, including Save.ws for $417 and Green.ws for $227. Avatars.ws sold at Afternic for $400 a couple weeks ago.

A number of domainers that are active internet marketers understand the value of quality one word domains regardless of extension and how this helps you get search engine rankings. Just this week Poker.bs sold for $3,600. Afternic has had a string of poker.something domains sell over the past few months in the $1,500-$2,000 range.

.Ws domains can be purchased for under $10 a year at registrars such as GoDaddy. They cannot be transferred to other registrars, but can be transferred to other people. It is possible to register quality .ws domains at registration fee as the market for dropping .ws domains is not active. For example, I picked up Beds.ws for $10 last year. You can see a list of recently expired .ws domains here.

Sedo, one of the largest domain exchanges and domain parking companies, has launched its SedoPro parking service to the public.

Sedo has been testing the system for a while on an invitation-only basis. Sedo’s regular parking pages can’t compare to SedoPro. Among the cool features of SedoPro:

-View high and low performing domains
-See geographic origin of traffic
-See where traffic is coming from (referrers)
-Add “Page Elements” including custom links, search boxes, and graphics
-Choice of 5 layouts

Here are some examples of pages parked at SedoPro: Wiki-Software.com |
DanceRadio.eu | Uni24.com| LondonGuide.eu

You can learn more about SedoPro by clicking the banner at the top of this page or by visiting SedoPro.com

“Are you Serious?” That’s a question I have for a lot of domain name sellers.

I came across a thread at DNForum in November of last year started by the site’s owner, Adam Dicker. He was complaining about a big he placed on Sedo and the rediculous counter offer he received:

Bid Thread for godfather.com:

2005-11-10 Desired Price: Make Offer
2005-11-10 Your Offer: 4,000 EUR
2005-11-10 Seller´s Counter Offer: 1,000,000 EUR

This stuck out to me, especially when I saw a few months later that GodFather.com sold for €15,000.

I did some research and found that Adam hadn’t bought the domain. I also questioned why someone would respond with a crazy number like €1M to an offer that wasn’t too far off. It someone offers $4k for a domain, they are likely to increase their offer many times. As Adam said in his forum, he would have likely paid €30,000-€40,000 for the domain had the owner made a realistic counter offer.

I’ve felt some of the same frustrations lately. The first bid that was a waste of my time was on a decent two word domain. The seller listed a price expectation (“Desired Price”) in his thread of $100. When I made an offer of $100 the user countered at $3,000! S(he) also used one of the canned bidding responses “I’m also negotiating with other Sedo users.” This wasn’t true, since according to the domain stats I was the first person to make a bid on the domain. I countered the $3,000 offer with another $100 offer, which was the seller’s original asking price, pointing out that the seller was not honoring the desired price and was lying about negotiating with other Sedo users. The seller countered again at $3,000, so I cancelled the negotiation. Had the original desired price been $3,000, or even $5,000, I may have been willing to pay $3,000, but not after the seller wasted my time. (I purchased a domain yesterday for $1,250 that had a desired price of $1,500. I made a respectful $1,000 initial offer and the seller didn’t jerk me around. I was happy to pay close to his asking price.)

Another one that frustrated me was a $1,000 offer I put in for a good compound word. I probably would have been willing to go up to $20k or so. But the bidder responded with a $1M counteroffer and said he’d turned down many offers for over 6 figures. If that’s the case I certainly understand not wanting to entertain my low offer. But here’s what gets me. Sedo let’s you set a minimum amount for offers. This is different from the “desired price” in that it isn’t displayed until you make an offer too low, and it also isn’t your asking price. If you set your floor at $100,000, you’re not saying you’ll sell for $100,000, you’re just saying not to waste the seller’s time unless you’re serious. By not setting a floor, the seller of this domain wasted both of our time.

I made a $3,000 offer for a quality domain over the weekend. The seller responded with a $2.3M counteroffer and pointed me to a list of the highest domain name sales of all time. What was the seller’s point? His domain was good, but not worthy of showing up on a “top sales of all time” list. There are no comparable domains that have sold for more than $50k or so. Much like the seller of GodFather.com, I think this seller passed up a legitimate buyer and will only be dissapointed in the long run.

Now I get as annoyed as anyone when someone places a lowball bid on my domains. I get offers for under $100 for Blogs.info all of the time. I paid many thousands for this domain. But lowball bids are the price I have to pay when I don’t set a minimum bid price. If I get a lot of low bids on a particular domain then I add a minimum offer price to set expectations. If someone is willing to at least start out at the minimum then I hope we can come to an agreement.

In summary:
1. If you place realistic counteroffers you’ll typically sell the domain for more than than if you set unrealistic counteroffers.
2. Don’t complain about lowball bids if you don’t set a minimum price.
3. Let’s keep the buying and selling going!

Nintendo has snapped up a number of Wii-domains for the upcoming launch of its newest video game system.

Moments after announcing the name of its next generation video game system, speculators began snapping up any domain they could think of that included “Wii”. Dozens of speculators posted Wii-domains for sale at DNForum the same day of the announcement. But it looks like Nintendo was smart and snagged a bunch of domains for itself.

An article at computerandvideogames.com uncovers a number of domains registered by the video game giant including Wiipower.com, Wiicreator.com, Wiilove.com, Wiicooking.com, and Shallwii.com:

…some of the dot coms we’ve uncovered actually make sense, but some suggest new Wii revelations in the form of: Wiianimation.com, Wiifitness.com, Wiikaraoke.com, Wiimusic.com and Wiilanguages.com – all of which have us scratching our heads in Friday morning confusion. A Wii fitness game? A Singstar-style karaoke game? All will no-doubt be revealed in the fullness of Wii time.

You should note that Nintendo doesn’t own the three character wii.com domain, which is the web site for conglomerate Weyerhaeuser. Judging from the general cluelessness of many web surfers, especially young ones, Weyerhaeuser can expect to get a lot of inquiries on its web site such as “When is Mario coming out for the Wii??”.

Will the domain speculators that grabbed Wii domains strike it rich in the end? A lot of that depends on the success of the new video game system that faces an uphill battle against the Xbox360 and Sony’s new system.

Or perhaps Wii speculators can look forward to a mailbox full of cease and desist letters from Nintendo.