There are a few domain gifts that I’d rather not get for the holidays.
Last month I wrote about great gifts for domainers. With Christmas just a week away, I thought I’d point out a few gifts not to get your fravorite domain name friend.
1. A $100 gift certificate to RegisterFly. By the way, have your been to their web site lately? They seem to be in denial. They have a required notice on their home page about losing ICANN accreditation, and then a disclaimer as to why they’re really no longer accredited:
RegisterFly.com was for 6 years a reseller of domain names for multiple different domain registrars. In those 6 years we registered in excess of 2 million names, in fact in 2006 alone we added almost 1 million names. We used the backend and systems of our registrar partners to register and manage domain names through those six years. In January of 2006 we become operational as a registrar and registered names directly under our own accreditation. In February of 2007 we ended our relationship with one of the vendors due to the relationship becoming more of a competitor vs a vendor. In May of 2007, we reached an agreement with another registrar to assume the management of some names in our portfolio that were under our own accreditation.
There was an order granted to ICANN that requires we show this statement on our homepage, is misleading to consumers for several reasons
>We did a bulk transfer of names that were under our accreditation to another registrar, hence we do not function as an ICANN accredited registrar. After the conclusion of the bulk transfer there was no need for us to remain an accredited registrar since the benefits did not merit the cost and effort required
Umm, yeah. You did the bulk transfer to GoDaddy because you were forced to. There was no need to remain an accredited registrar? ICANN yanked your accreditation, so you can’t be one.
2. A “Bob Parsons 16 Rules” poster. OK Bob, we get it. You’re a successful businessman. But you’re not important enough to sell a poster about your philosophy on business. If this were Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, then maybe your poster would sell a few copies. But I don’t need to shell out money for trite rules such as “Never give up” and “Take things a day at a time.”
My guess is Bob didn’t come up with the idea to sell this product by himself; some employee thought it would be a great way to suck up. I ran into a GoDaddy employee at a conference this year. The subject of Parsons and his poster came up. I asked how many the company had sold, and the GoDaddy employee joked “maybe enough for one per employee”.
3. A membership to SiteVestors’ Domain Investor Club. On the surface, this looks like a great offer. Plop down $499 and get a year membership to the club, which gives you updated listed of domains with traffic listed at Afternic, Domain Cargo, and other sites. I paid for the membership earlier this year. Once I logged in I saw only a handful of domains listed for a couple of the domain sites. A month passed and nothing happened. I requested a chargeback through PayPal and suddenly got support from SiteVestors, which finally updated the site. Then it died and nothing new ever happened. I contacted SiteVestors a few weeks ago and they said “oh, the club has been inactive for months. You should have already received a refund.” [paraphrase] I finally got them to issue the refund, but that was a waste of my time.
And for some reason the sales page for the club is still up, and you can still pay your $499 to join. Don’t do it.
4. About 99% of the domains listed at DNForum. Seriously, what happened to the days of quality domains being listed for sale at domain forums? The forum post headlines all read “Great domains CHEAP!” and “Liquidation sale – top domains for $25!”, and then you click through to see names like mydog8urhomework.com and hillaryclinton4prez2008.com. It’s not worth sifting through the lists anymore. There should be a rule that you can’t list a domain you registered this morning.
Eugene says
Great post, Andrew. I absolutely loved #4. Couldn’t stopped laughing. Cheers.
Cybertonic says
LOL
Great and cheap: is not logical.
Top domains for $25: makes no sense.
Just reading titles you should understand behind it’s only garbage!
Annyway it’s rare to find valuable names in these forums.
I noticed when this happens it’s just to promote them before the owner put them at auction in SEDO.
Owners just have one thing in mind: Sell their names through auctions!
Andrew says
Cybertonic, you’re right. But it wasn’t always that way. Even if they were priced high, it used to be that most of the domains were at least worth considering.
Cybertonic says
Ah, the old and great times of domaining…
Unfortunately I did not known these times.
Andrew,
It’s not a problem that is specifically related to forums.
I will say that most of the top premium domains has already been sold and for those still available, the owners don’t want to sell them.
This is what is happening.
We passed recently the 50,000 unique webmaster that submitted his domains for valuation at premiumdomain.com
What we see is when domains are part of the finest ones they are never for sale.
Premiums domains for sale with high scoring are RARE. And the few ones are landing in these domain auctions. And even these auctions are having hard times trying to get a good lot of top premium for sale.
Merry Christmas.
Steve M. says
Thanks, Andrew…my laugh for the day.
ps Has any domain seller/auction ever admitted that one or more of their domains were NOT premium? 😉
Patrick McDermott says
“ICANN yanked your (RegFly) accreditation”
Just as a reminder, RegisterFly never went through the accredation process.
They went through the back door and bought a Registrar that was accredited.
—–
“A “Bob Parsons 16 Rules” poster”
But if it was a:
“Bob Parsons 16 Hot GoDaddy Babes” poster, then you would want it! 🙂
Patrick
Patrick McDermott says
Correction: accredidation
Andrew says
2 good points, Patrick. I’m surprised one of Bob’s 16 rules isn’t “get hot chicks to market your product”.
Domainer's Gazette says
omg, this is funny!
David J Castello says
Andrew, this is hilarious.
By the time I got to #2 (Bob Parsons 16 rules), I was cracking up.
You have to do more of these.