A domain parking scam to avoid at all costs.

Over the past year several Domain Name Wire readers have forwarded emails to me from someone promising to boost revenues to parked domains that didn’t receive any traffic.

I received one such email on Christmas with the title “Merry Christmas to domainer!”

The email promised:

without any extra cost needed and no complicated development work, we can help you increase your no-traffic and non-earning parked domains. In some cases, by using our exclusive and proven techniques, revenue can grow by 5000%+

So how do they do this? They pump traffic to your parked domains. In 99% of circumstances, this is against your parking company’s terms and conditions. Odds are you won’t get paid out by your parking provider.

Whenever someone pitches you something too good to be true, just hit the delete button.

Does this sound too good to be true?

With our service, You can earn hundreds if not thousands of US dollars per day with only 150 No-traffic and useless domains! If we fail to increase your earnings, we will pay you $1000.

I played along with one of these emails, and was told that if I opened an account at HotKeys and parked my domains there I could earn $800 a day.

Registry-Registrar separation will create interesting circumstances for established registries.

ICANN Senior Vice President Kurt Pritz sent a letter to Neustar Vice President Jeff Neuman last week (pdf) regarding registry-registrar separation.

ICANN’s board dropped a bombshell in November when it said there would be no restrictions on registrars owning registries for new top level domains. Observers questioned how exactly this would work for existing registries such as VeriSign, which runs .com and .net.

In the letter, Pritz points out specific language in the board’s resolution:

ICANN will permit existing registry operators to transition to the new form of registry agreement, except that additional conditions may be necessary and appropriate to address particular circumstances of established registries.

Pritz then tries to clarify what this means for Neustar, which runs .biz:

…if and when ICANN launches the new gTLD program, Neustar will be entitled to serve as both a registry and registrar for new gTLDs subject to any conditions that may be necessary and appropriate to address the particular circumstances of the existing .BIZ registry agreement…

So it’s clear that existing registries will be able to own registrars and offer new gTLDs. But what about existing TLDs? Would a registrar owned by Neustar be able to sell .biz?

The bigger question would be restrictions on VeriSign and .com. If VeriSign buys a registrar, you can expect serious focus from anti-trust authorities.

Two letter .com domain name held by Domain Capital will sell this week.

The domain name TZ.com is on auction at Sedo after receiving an $80,000 offer.

TZ.com was previously financed with Domain Capital, a domain name financing company, but the buyer defaulted.

According to DNSalePrice, four publicly disclosed two letter .com domain names have sold so far this year: SZ.com for $125,000, OY.com for $90,000, XI.com for $100,930, and KF.com for $123,504. Given the typical price of two letter .com’s, I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one get another bid, although auctions over the holidays can be a good chance to pick up a bargain.

The auction ends December 28 at 11:10 PM EST.

Plenty of attention to recent Bank of America domain name registrations.

Over the past few days the mainstream media has picked up on a story I first wrote about regarding Bank of America.

The company defensively registered over 300 domain names that included many derogatory terms attached to its executives’ names. Most of the domain names included an executive’s name followed by “sucks” or blows”.

I was quoted in a Financial Times article as well as a Wall Street Journal post about the domain registrations.

This morning I saw a video clip of CNBC’s Squawk Box covering the domain registrations.

New sales channels are opening up for domainers thanks to efforts by Afternic, GoDaddy, and Sedo.

Over the past week Afternic turned up two new partners in its Afternic DLS Premium program and Sedo extended the beta of its SedoMLS program to large domain holders.

Each new partner that gets integrated into these systems means more domain sales. Afternic has found that, with each new registrar partner it adds, sales go up — it’s not just the same number of sales being spread across more partners.

The key to this sales channel working is two fold: getting into the registration path when a person is searching for a domain name and having instant transfer capabilities. That means that Mr. Small Biz can search for a domain name, find your domain for sale, add it to his cart, purchase it, and get the domain name instantly in his account.

Here’s a comparison of the three major services available today:

Registrars providing instant transfer for each service is important on two fronts: they provide a sales outlet for your domains and you need to have your domains at an instant transfer registrar in order to participate. Your domains don’t need to be at the same registrar as where the domain is sold; it just has to be at one of the registrars in that channel’s network.

Both Afternic and SedoMLS are quickly expanding their reach, and I expect more partners for each service in 2011.