Company buys 2Smiles.com domain, but leaves some other obvious ones unregistered.

Earlier this month HP launched Two Smiles, a service that combines custom greeting cards with gift cards.

In advance of the launch HP bought two key domain names for the venture: TwoSmiles.com, the actual web address for the service, and 2Smiles.com, a domain that likely receives visits from visitors who remember the site name as the digit 2 instead of ‘two’ written out.

Based on historical whois records, it appears HP bought TwoSmiles.com from HugeDomains.com. I’m not sure how it tracked down the owner of 2smiles.com because the whois record for that domain had bogus information.

OK, pretty smart to buy 2smiles.com, right?

Yes. Except that 2smiles.com isn’t even set up to forward to TwoSmiles.com.

Also worrisome is that HP didn’t register two other domains that are freely available and could cause confusion. First is TooSmiles.com. I bet some confused visitors show up to this alternative domain. Second is the common www typo, wwwTwoSmiles.com.

Since HP was proactive enough to buy 2Smiles.com, you’d think it would have spent $20 to practice an ounce of prevention with these other domains.

A pharmacy chain, cybersecurity company, and a baseball glove company made domain purchases last week.

Afternic sold just over $1 million worth of domains last week. Here are 22 of the purchases that were clearly to end users.

Glimmerglass, which offers big data product Cybersweep to extract actionable information for cybercrime, bought CyberSweep.com for $19,000.

Examp prep and tutoring company Huntington bought iPrep.com for $7,995.

Amplify, a News Corp company, bought Amplify.net for $10,000.

The owner of SwissMassage.ch bought SwissMassage.com for $1,200.

Dance group travel company Dance Around the World bought DanceAroundTheWorld.com for $4,000. It currently uses the .com.au version of this domain.

LiveCareer LTD, an online resume builder, bought Jobtap.com for $1,700.

Costa Rica IT company Gridshield, part of Nomadic solutions SA, bought Gridshield.com for $1,095. It has been using Gridshield.net.

Concord Health, which sells “medicinal mushroom” products, bought ConcordHealth.com for $2,700. It already owns the .net and .com.au versions of this domain.

Office machines company DocuCopy, Inc. bought OfficePrinter.com for $1,944.

Gulf Business Machines in Dubai bought G-B-M.com for $1,288.

Memorial Hospital in Towanda, Pennsylvania bought eMemorial.org for $1,088.

German company TriSytle Mode GmbH shortened its domain from TristyleGroup.com to Tristyle.com for $3,708.

Commercial real estate company NAI Houston bought ProposalNet.com for $1,200.

Real estate company Steiner + Associates paid $1,488 for LibertyCenter.org for a project it is currently developing.

Canadian drug store Value Drug Mart bought ValueValet.com for $1,588.

Forceout, maker of a spiffy baseball glove, bought Forceout.com for $2,462. It now forwards its old domain, ForceoutGlove.com, to the new one.

Couchsurfing, a company that helps you find a host to stay with when you travel, bought SofaSurfing.com for $3,000.

A London company called Holistic Group bought HolisticGroup.com for $2,000.

Technology company NetworkingLinks upgraded from .net to .com by paying $1,288 for NetworkingLinks.com.

Pacific West Communications, Inc. made a big upgrade with PWCinc.com for $2,000. It has been using PWCinc.ws.

The Risk Management Association bought RMAU.com for $4,288. I assume the first two letters stand for “risk management”.

Medical market research company Ricca Group bought MedScoop.com for $3,000.

Domain name auction that ends tomorrow has lots of activity.

The Moniker Spring Auction on SnapNames doesn’t end until tomorrow, but bidding is already very active.

The auction features 199 domain names and 33 of them already have bids. 22 have met their reserve price.

The leader so far is StumpRemoval.com, which has an $11,770 bid and has met its reserve. I’ve paid for tree stump removal so I know it’s not a cheap service. That said, an individual tree company is unlikely to pay this much for the domain – it will likely be used for a lead generation service.

YogaClasses.com has a $10,250 bid but has not hit its reserve, which is under $25,000.

Many of the domains that have met their reserves are three letter .net domains, including xre.net, jnu.net, and jxb.net.

Electronic Arts among the big name buyers at Sedo last week.

Sedo had some big sales last week, including Moms.com for $252,000. The whois record for Moms.com still shows Sedo, so we don’t yet know how bought the domain. Here are some of Sedo’s other end user sales last week.

Electronic Arts bought BF4.com for $9,000, which is short for its Battlefield 4 game.

Australian wedding site EasyWeddings.com.au bought EasyWeddings.co.uk for $1,250.

Spy equipment site Spy.bg bought Spy.eu for 1,500 GBP.

Local World Limited, publisher of the Nottingham Post, bought NottinghamPost.com for 850 GBP.

Ticket To Heaven A/S, which runs clothing site Ticket Outdoor, bought t2h.com for $4,001.

Australian company Global Pumps bought GlobalPumps.com for $1,999. It uses the .com.au version of this.

Red Ventures bought another domain – FloridaHomeSecurity.com – for $899.

Consulting firm Olive Grove Consulting bought TheOliveGrove.com for $1,000.

Brazilian fabrics and packaging company Évora, which recently changed its name from Petropar, bought Evora.com for $94,000.

ChatThreads, which measures how brand interactions lead to purchases, bought Purchased.com for $X.

I sold my first domain through DNS. What have your experiences been?

Last week I completed my first domain sale using the Internet Traffic/DomainNameSales.com platform.

One thing that is a bit confusing at first is how the communications work inside the DomainNameSales.com platform. The platform is “open”, meaning you can handle domain inquiries yourself or use a number of third party brokers (including DNS itself, like what I chose). By using an outside broker or DNS, some of the communication tabs are bypassed since someone else is handling it for you.

Once you understand that, it’s fairly straight forward.

I set up my account to let the DomainNameSales.com brokerage team handle all incoming domain inquiries. They charge a 10% commission.

I like having a third party manage negotiations even though I have to pay 10% for many reasons.

1. I find that it takes some of the emotion out of negotiations.

2. A broker can play the good cop in negotiations with the other party.

3. In the case of DNS, they offer a phone number for interested parties to call, which can improve conversions and leads.

4. Brokers see a lot more activity than I do as an individual. The broker on my transaction suggested that I raise my counter-offer. She was right; the buyer paid the full amount of my counter-offer.

DNS uses Escrow.com’s broker tool to handle transactions. With the broker service, the buyer pays the total due and then Escrow sends two payments: one to the seller and one to the broker.

At first I was a bit confused by the Escrow.com transaction since the onscreen transaction information didn’t break the price down by sales price and net proceeds after commission. The Escrow.com transaction showed just the proceeds after commission with no indication that the commission had been deducted. It was pretty easy to figure out that it was the amount after commission, but I was concerned that perhaps the amount had been entered incorrectly. The closing statement email does show the full amount plus the amount after commission, but I think it would be helpful if Escrow.com showed a breakdown online when you accept the transaction.

Overall it was a good transaction. Have others had success with DNS? Did you handle the negotiations yourself or use a third party broker?