German country code domain name for “Cruise” sells at Sedo.

Domain name broker Sedo has completed the sale of seereise.de, which is German for cruise, for 59,500 EUR (about $80,000 USD at today’s exchange rates).

The buyer appears to be a travel company called “alltours Reisecenter”.

Sedo didn’t crack the six figure barrier again this week, but still turned in some respectable sales. It sold the four character domain name sgbl.com for $18,750, and sold the gambling domain name PokerVillage.com for $10,000. LocalStars.com sold for $9,000, followed by GoldCard.com for 8,000 EUR. The latter seems like a good deal, although I guess gold cards are no longer “in” thanks to Platinum credit cards. Other notable .com sales include:

mento.com 7,500 EUR
stromtarife.com 7,100 EUR Electricity tax in German
vengaporno.com 7,100 USD
detectinvisible.com 6,500 USD
beximco.com 5,500 EUR
creditscore24.com 5,000 EUR
snowboardsinc.com 5,000 USD
earthsown.com 5,000 USD
exw.com (GreatDomains) 4,500 EUR

Sedo sold another German domain, content.de, for 13,000 EUR. It completed the sale of a handful of .me domain names too: Rock.me ($12,000), Join.me ($10,099), Pick.me ($10,099), and Remember.me ($7,600).

Other notable country code domain sales include Muziek.be (music in Dutch) for $9,999 EUR and Esel.de (goat in German) for 5,000 EUR.

Sedo sold two three letter .net domain names for high prices: ABI.net for $12,600 and EXT.net for $9,000. It also sold a couple .orgs for nice prices including NursingSchool.org for $6,000 and Singularity.org for $5,999.

Sedo’s next GreatDomains auction starts Thursday.

Company awarded 2 of 4 domain names related to Merrill Lynch acquisition.

It’s not often that I read a domain name arbitration decision and think a cybersquatter won. But that’s the case with a recent decision handed down through National Arbitration Forum.

A New York company registered four domain names last year related to Bank of America’s (NYSE: BAC) acquisition: bofaml.com, mlbofa.com, bofamerrill.com, and merrillbofa.com. When you look at these four domain names, it’s clear what the domain owner was trying to do. The owner said in its response that it “is a ‘domainer’ group where the group looks to acquire high value domain names and park them with domain parking service providers to generate pay-per-click revenue”. Domainer group? Try cybersquatting group.

The respondent claimed it registered the domains “because BOFA stands for two highly regarded Chinese characters meaning treasure (pronounced “bo” in Cantonese) and rich (pronounced “fa” or “fat” in Cantonese).”

And the ML and Merrill part?

But the arbitrator on the case decided that only bofaml.com and mlbofa.com were confusingly similar to Bank of America’s BofA trademark.

The Panel does not consider that “bofamerrill” or “merrillbofa” is confusingly similar to any of the registered trademarks. The joinder of BOAC and Merrill Lynch as co-complainants does not entail the creation of rights in portmanteau trademark combinations such as “B OF A MERRILL LYNCH” or “MERRILL LYNCH B OF A”. The registered trademarks continue to have their own separate proprietorship and, by reason only of the joining of the parties in these proceedings, there are no new rights created in combinations of the registered marks.

The problem with this decision, right or wrong, is that it will paint true domainers in a bad light.

Domain name brings value to advertisers — and money in my pocket.

A couple months ago I bought a generic expired domain name related to summer camps. It doesn’t get much traffic. But on May 5th my preliminary traffic report at my parking company showed the domain got 21 clicks from one visitor. I assumed it was a bot, but when the stats were finalized it turns out the visitor was legit and generated $12.11 in revenue for me.

I went to look at the domain name and it became apparent why this visitor generated so much revenue. The landing page was a one-click lander, meaning it had ads directly on the first page the visitor saw. Every single ad was for a particular summer camp. And thanks to geo-targeting technology, some of those ads were for camps in the vicinity of the visitor. The parked page basically acted as a directory of summer camps for the visitor.

Month-to-date this domain officially has an RPM of $507.81. But all of the clicks and revenue came from just 2 of the 32 visitors. Over the weekend another visitor stopped by, clicked on multiple ads, and deposited $4.14 into my account.

This clearly isn’t a story about getting rich from a domain name. It has earned less than $20 this month. But it shows how the right generic domain and well targeted ads can add value to visitors — and the domain owner.

After RegisterFly, ESTdomains, and Parava, here are some tips to avoid bad domain name registrars.

Even when a relatively small domain name registrar, such as Parava, loses its ICANN accreditation, it can have devastating consequences for web site owners. But there are usually tell-tale signs that a company isn’t doing well. Below are six warning signs that your domain name registrar might not be in it for the long run.

1. It isn’t accessible in a public forum, such as a domain forum, Twitter, or Facebook. Most good domain name registrars care about their public relations. It will regularly monitor customer feedback on open forums and will even proactively participate.

2. Registry and registrar expiration dates don’t match. If a registrar takes your money for a multi-year renewal but the registry shows only one year added to the expiration date, the registrar may be holding back the rest of the money to manually renew the domain each year. This means the company has a cashflow problem, and it will only get worse as it pays higher wholesale prices year-after-year to renew your domain. It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme. Don’t rely on the registrar’s expiration date; only the registry’s.

3. It never sends a representative in person to a domain conference. If the registrar never sends a real, breathing, human being to a domain conference, you should be worried. Perhaps the registrar is located in a remote locale different from its stated location. Or it doesn’t want to establish personal relationships with customers that it might screw over one day. The biggest registrars should send at least one employee to each conference; smaller ones should occasionally attend.

4. They use whois privacy for their own domain name. If a registrar protects its own contact information in whois, it’s time to run for the hills. What are they hiding?

5. Its founder has a criminal record. ‘Nuff said.

6. It isn’t escrowing whois data. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to know right now if a registrar is escrowing its whois data. But if you find out (likely through a default notice), then transfer your domains out right away.

Software giant goes after SAP consulting company and loses.

Enterprise software company SAP (NYSE: SAP) has lost another domain name dispute.

The company went after the domain name Unisap.com, which has been used by a provider of SAP consulting services for almost a decade. The arbitrator decided that SAP had not proven the domain name was registered and used in bad faith:

The Panel has also considered the purpose of the UDRP, namely to prevent the abusive registration of domain names. The Panel cannot, on the present record, confidently say that the Respondent has engaged in cybersquatting…

In these particular circumstances, the Respondent could be said to be providing legitimate services from the disputed domain name, under the Unisap brand. In the Panel’s view, this is enough to tip the finely balanced scales in the Respondent’s favour, on the provided record in this particular case.

The arbitrator said it was a close call. The panelist seemed to think SAP didn’t do a good job stating its case that Unisap had no rights or interests in the domain and that it was registered in bad faith. This seems to be a case for the courts, not UDRP. But companies that provide services related to a trademarked product should consider avoiding the use of the trademark in their name. (Read decision)

Earlier this year SAP lost an arbitration case for the domain name SAP-Microsoft.com.