An associate of mine, in the commercial real estate development business recently got a fax. This was an official looking document, stating at the top that his company needed to purchase a domain name, his trademarked project name dot US. They cited statutes and explained that IP owners need to actively defend their trademarks or risk their claim on said marks. It also urged swift action, although it seems that the domain in question has never been registered. They gave him one day to claim this domain for $35 per year.

A word of advice - if you get a fax or letter pushing you into registering a domain like this, send a copy to ICANN. And if time allows send a letter explaining that after sending this kind of notice to subsequently register the domain would clearly demonstrate “bad intent” on their part and you would be forced to defend your trademark in that case.

This small fee completely changes the economics of domain tasting. For the average Joe, it means you can change your mind about a domain you registered and get almost a complete refund. I’ve seen the need for this when customers of mine accidentally register typos late at night.

For the predatory companies out there who register domains people are actively searching for on registrar sites in the hopes of extorting a large profit to surrender the domain, this is bad news. And for Network Solutions’ latest PR black eye over scalping searched-for domains - this removes the monetary incentive. Three cheers for ICANN!

Financing options do exist for premium domains, but for small business owners insightful enough to understand the value of getting a great domain that will shape their ongoing business strategy, there is nothing. Conventional lenders are not interested, and generally lack confidence in the accepted valuation methods.Domain names have real value in business, and smart financiers will recognize this.

Interesting too to see him mention travel.com and guess that it’s worth is $50 million. I happen to own the Thai version of that, ??????????.com, and believe it’s worth to be one half of one percent of that, or $250,000. Current market price today would be more like $10,000 I think, reinforcing Jay’s point that valuations go up if good names are made more affordable.

People became insensed with jealous rage and ICANN stepped in and forbade it. Most people feel that it’s unfair for Verisign to have a permanent monopoly in the lucrative .com market, even though they are unaware of how we got to this situation. In the early days Verisign stepped up and did what it took to make the DNS system happen. No it’s not enough to have BIND, and to have ISPs setting up nameservers - it required some infrastructure that someone had to provide.

The clickthru rate is terrific, 20-25% and the clicks range from $0.20 to $1.50 - a resounding success! Let me get busy with cranking out some more….

These 2 Korean terms both mean handphone/cellphone - and they are the largest Korean language domain sale I’ve heard of. Of course, that always needs to be qualified with the usual disclaimer, “the vast majority of sales go unreported” That utterance is never accompanied by any sort of substantiation, but every domainer knows it to be true by extrapolating on his/her personal experience.

http://www.sexdotcom.info