The latest twist on an old scam.

Over the weekend I received three identical e-mails that show the domain name appraisal scam is alive and well.

Here’s one of the emails:

Dear sir,

we are interested to buy your domain name.COM and offer 65% of the appraised market value.

As of now we accept appraisals from one of these leading companies:

sed o.com
pozde.com
accuratedomains.com

Should you already have an appraisal please forward it to us.

We appreciate your business,

Sincerely,

R. Thomas
DNR, Inc.

The previous incarnation of this scam sent you to a forum that discussed the best place to get a domain appraisal. This version takes a different angle, displaying the popular Sedo site first to make you think it is legit. Another variation of the email mentions Sedo and Moniker. The goal appears to be for you to order an appraisal through Pozde.com, since it offers the lowest price domain appraisal service of the three.

Most people would love to sell their domains for 65% of the typical domain appraisal price, which is why this email will hook many people.

When you get an email like this, just hit the “Report Spam” button in your email system.

An unwise typo domain purchase.

This domain name auction, which concluded earlier today, begs two questions:

1. Do domain parkers click on ads when they accidentally stumble across a parked page?

2. Who would be stupid enough to shell out $2,250 on a domain that they’ll lose through arbitration?

Update 3/23: I received a note from Sedo today that the transaction was canceled. With regards to the comments below about allowing sales like this to happen, my experience with Sedo is they’ll take these auctions down in a heartbeat if you notify them. They also monitor auctions, but occasionally miss some.]

Domain tasting operation picks up a domain and parks it with the “r” word.

[Updated: eNom is now forwarding the domain name to r-word.org and says it will transfer ownership to Special Olympics.] In many ways President Obama’s gaffe on The Tonight Show last night was the best thing to happen to the Special Olympics in a long time. (Obama, speaking about his lack of bowling skills, suggested his performance was like the Special Olympics). Not only can the organization be assured that Obama won’t cut government support anytime soon, but the organization was readying a new ad-campaign called “the r-word”. The Special Olympics is trying to compare the word retard to some other words that most people wouldn’t mutter or print, such as the n-word. It’s campaign is now in the limelight.

Special Olympics is using the domain name r-word.org for its campaign. Regretfully, a domain tasting operation owned by Demand Media — eNom467 Incorporated — snapped up r-word.com earlier this year and is parking it. (In November, eNom467 added 748 domain names and deleted 10,346). You can even buy the r-word.com domain name through another associated eNom company, AcquireThisName.

Oh, and here’s the parking page:

I suppose if you’re going to blindly test domains for traffic, you have to suffer the embarrassing consequences of occasionally picking up a domain name you’d rather not own.

RWord.org, without the dash, was registered just days after Special Olympics picked up r-word.org. Its parked page isn’t pleasant, either.

Here’s how to bulk upload all of your domain names for sale to aftermarkets.

You know that old lottery saying “You can’t win if you don’t play”? The same thing applies to domains. If you’re looking to sell them, you should list them on the major domain aftermarkets Sedo and Afternic where buyers can find them.

I’ve written tutorials on how to do this at both Afternic (tutorial) and Sedo (tutorial) before, but I just refreshed my portfolio and went through the process again. A few things have changed since then.

First I updated my portfolio at Afternic. It surprises me how many people list their domains with Sedo but not Afternic. Although Sedo will sell more of your domains, no one tops Afternic (through its BuyDomains site) for marketing to end users. Don’t let a $20 annual fee stop you.

In my previous Afternic bulk uploading tutorial I noted that the changes were processed immediately (while Sedo took a week or two). Now when you do a bulk upload to Afternic it goes into a holding queue so it can be reviewed for trademarks, vice, and adult domains. It took only a day or two for this to be completed.

I recommend choosing the “expanded promotion” option for your domains at Afternic. There’s a 20% commission, but your domains will be cross-listed on other sites including BuyDomains. Domains listed with expanded promotion are 10 times more likely to sell.

As for Sedo, the process is very similar to before. You download a spreadsheet (actually csv) and add and categorize your domains. You then submit a support ticket and attach the spreadsheet. Although it’s not an automatic process, I received a response in about 5 minutes that my domains had been added. (As always, Sedo then verifies domains that it can’t automatically verify).

The most tedious part of adding your domains to Sedo and Afternic is categorizing them. (I find the category picker in Sedo’s spreadsheet to be very tiny and annoying.) But categorized domains are 2.8 times more likely to sell than uncategorized domains. So suck it up, or pay your kid to do it for you.

Domain picking contest tied to domain name auction begins.

I’ve never been good at picking the winners in the March Madness basketball bracket. I’m better at picking winning domain names. And now there’s a way to cash in on your ability to pick the winners at a domain auction with Domain Consultant’s “Domain Madness” contest.

The contest, open to residents of the United States, asks you to pick which domain names will sell at Domain Consultant’s upcoming online domain auction that concludes March 31. You score points for correctly picking whether a domain will sell or not, and certain domains are worth more points. The winner takes home $1,000.

The auction includes a good inventory of domains in all price ranges, such as:

Cutout.com $2,300
ePills.com $3,600
Toyfest.com $350
PrescriptionBenefits.com $2,200

The most expensive domains are autofinding.com at $1.65M inventing.com with a $75,000 starting bid.

Domain Consultant is using the Aftermarket.com platform for the auction. Domain Consultant has worked with Aftermarket.com in the past be selecting domain names for Aftermarket.com’s auctions, including the recent Domainer Mardi Gras auction.