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Can a domain name be the difference between success and failure in a business? Are domain names the single best investment one can possibly make in one’s business? These are the main questions debated in an ongoing chain of posts, then my comments, and a follow-up post, and another of my comments and yet another post between myself and Andrei over at DomainingTips.

The conventional wisdom among domainers is that without the domain name, you’re nowhere, or, investing in domain names is the single best thing you can do to achieve some kind of “edge” in the competitive marketplace.

My opinion is different. I think the people who care most about domain names, are domainers. I don’t think that a domain name will be the key to success or failure and I can’t even parse the assertion that anything is “the best” investment because I think that statement is more rhetoric than anything else.

Let’s dissect.

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Under a proposed Verisign initiative, all .COM/.NET domains exist at the pleasure of the United States government.

Verisign just released an overview of their proposed “Anti-Abuse Domain Use Policy” Under ICANN’s Registry Services Evaluation Process. The program’s chief aim is to provide a takedown mechanism of malicious websites distributing malware. In itself, not a bad thing, considering some registrars are unresponsive toward abuse or network stability issues.

However, lumped in with the conditions under which Verisign can invoke their takedown capabilities are some troubling “add ons”, as quoted below:

(read the rest on the easyDNS blog)

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I just read Rick Spence’s “What’s in a name? It could be a fortune on the Internet“, (HT to HybridDomainer), which seemingly dials the needle back to (pick one), 2005 or 2007, or maybe 2010 and drinks the Kool-Aid every domainer has on an IV drip: the notion that fortune and success can be achieved simply by virtue of “owning the right names” (i.e How can we be bankrupt? Don’t we own TenMillionDollars.com?)

Only in this case, he’s talking about the seemingly impending new top-level-domains. “New domain names will rank above the current crop”, he gushes. Really? You mean now I get to defend my trademark in .www, .website, .bank, .toledo, .xxx and .FML ? Great! I think what we will see happen is a buyers’ strike in defensive names. It will become impossible to defend one’s names in all possible TLDs, brand owners will simply stop doing it, defensive registrations in new TLDs collapse, kicking out one of the two legs holding up most new TLDs (the other being speculative registrations). Read more »

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/04/01/11 TORONTO/ – easyDNS Technologies Inc., the ultra-cool DNS guys, today announced it is moving forward to secure .SUX under the ICANN new TLD process.

The .SUX domain is not intended to encourage registrations which disparage any company or entity.

“A number of factors have converged to make this possible”, said CEO Mark Jeftovic, “the new rules permitting vertical integration allow us as to function as Registrar, Registry, root DNS provider.”

Under the proposed terms of the new TLD, sunrise claims will be subject to a non-refundable $10,000 application fee. Landrush applications will ring in at $100/year with an  initial term minimum of 10-years. Conflicting applications will be automatically entered into an auction process subject to high-pressure sales tactics and shill bidding.

Jeftovic downplayed assertions that everybody on the internet would be held hostage to defend their marks under a TLD with less-than-flattering connotations, “Nonsense”, said Jeftovic, “there are lots of other perfectly legitimate reasons people would want to register names like citibank.sux, bp.sux or maybe gawker.sux” he explained.

Easydns.sux  would be reserved under the TLD and unavailable for registration.

(original post)

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(Background: as you may or may not be aware, earlier in the year the US Department of Homeland Security began seizing domain names of various filesharing websites. Suddenly the agency tasked with protecting the United States from further terrorist attacks was now seizing domain names to combat copyright infringement. Without further adieu, I bring you “First they came for the file-sharing websites….)

First, they came for the file-sharing websites, because they were infringing on copyright. (I didn’t care, because I didn’t share files).

Then, they came for the illegal offshore pharmacies, because they were facilitating the import of dangerous generic pharmaceuticals that massively undercut the name brand companies. (I didn’t care because I didn’t buy generic drugs)

These first choices may have seemed odd, because there were far worse things out there on the internet to go after. However, since nobody cared too much about the file-sharing sites and the illegal generic pharmacies, they figured it was safe to take things up a notch…. Read more »

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After having lunch with YummyName’s Bill Sweetman a few months ago, I posted “5 Ways to Increase Your Domain Sales”, and after writing the article I took his program to heart and went out and implemented two key points from his 5-point program:

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I put this down whilst killing time on an errand as I was thumbing through the comment thread  on TheDomains in response to the Adage article that had the posited Facebook as “a domain killer”. Just a harmless riff on an old theme with no disrespect intended.

How Many Domainers Does It Take to Screw In A Lightbulb? Read more »

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I make it a personal mantra to never do business with spammers. There’s a guy who keeps comment spamming this blog and then leaving hostile comments “why aren’t you publishing my comments?” – Because they’re spam, you imbecile.

Well right now the cake has been taken, with about 2 dozen spam comments received so far, coming in at the rate of one-per-minute: parksdot.com, who are ostensibly “parking the net”, but whom I’ve never heard of before today are spamming the hell out of me.

This is no way to enter a business and gain any cred guys. Cut it out. My recommendation to anybody looking to test unknown, obscure, second tier domain parking platforms: give these guys a pass.

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I was away on St. Lucia for a couple weeks and on a really crummy internet connection which made blogging very cumbersome. I did read with interest three articles from Epik’s Rob Monster: The Quest for Recurring Income, Explaining Domains as an Asset Class to Finance types and Called it: Sell stocks and bonds. Buy domains and websites!.

While I’m largely in agreement with his assessment of the current economic climate and find his business-like approach to domaining refreshing, I wanted to weigh in a few points. Read more »

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I have always noticed a large cognitive void in the minds of domainers when it comes to DNS. Frank Schilling has correctly identified another Achilles Heel of the domainer: that of the registrar, to the point of recommending that any serious domainer own his own registrar. Yet domainers may end up running multi-million dollar portfolios on DNS servers held together by spit and twist ties.

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