People generally have poor etiquette when it comes to email marketing. Typically the offenses are small, but at times they are beyond marginal.

Recently, I received an email from someone who had obtained my email address through an associate. First of all I think it is bad practice to provide anther’s email address. A better practice would have been to provide me with the email address of the person seeking to contact me, so that I could make the decision whether to provide my email address. Secondly, they placed my and many other email addresses in the “To” box. This wouldn’t be an issue except that it actually exposed my email to everyone on the email. A better approach would have been to send the email to them self and BCC everyone on the email.

In any event with email seemingly growing at an outstanding rate as a result of all the daily deals, it’s time that people spent some more time understanding email best practices.

The most common objection, “there are no good .com’s left”. I call BS. There’s plenty you’re just not looking in the right places. Sure, their may not be a lot of valuable new registration domains worth purchasing, but there is a ton of value in the aftermarket.

Each purchase you make should be based on research. Going back to an old advisement I used to make, buy what you know. This basically means that if you’re an expert in insurance then you can make educated decisions on insurance domains. That said, I own domains relating to real estate, travel, insurance, and many other verticals. The one common denominator in those purchases is that I always made sure to “consult” an adviser in those fields. Consulting could have consisted of a conversation over a cold beer or an email with specific questions. These individuals provided me with invaluable information that I could never have gotten just from doing internet research.

Where am I going with this? Well, I guess the summation of my point is that be precise about what you buy, make a budget, and consult those that are in the know. These are the simplest of policies you should maintain over your domain buying, but to me are the most important. Furthermore, you may too be a “smart domainer.”

Depending on how you generate and qualify the traffic/lead, you may be able to cross-sell one lead into many different arenas, which poses a whole new venue for untapped revenue. Think about it, if you could generate a life insurance lead and up-sell them in the squeeze process to request info on health insurance, you could sell the lead twice.

These are just some random unstructured thoughts. I will be researching this space thoroughly and will post more regarding my findings. Good luck all.

Under the terms of the performance options agreement, GoDaddy is currently able to exercise 1.6 million of the 6.5 million performance options. As the original domain sales agreement has been terminated, the remainder of the options expired. The Company has not entered into a new performance option agreement.

I believe this deal has less to do with stock options and the Fabulous portfolio and more to do with technology and the Domain Distribution Network (DDN). I think the stock options are just a sweetener then a deal maker. Lately it seems like issuing stock is going out of style for Dark Blue Sea. Recently it was reported that Dark Blue Sea issued new stock in order to acquire an Australian domain drop catcher. This stock dilution indicates 2 important considerations. One, they probably are not very liquid and can’t put out cash to expand. And two, each new stock issuance dilutes current shareholder value.

GoDaddy has for some time struggled in the domain aftermarket and for that the DDN is great. It will provide GoDaddy pertinent information on aftermarket domain values and sales trends. These statistics are critical for updating their aftermarket position outside of expired domains. They’ll have the opportunity to sell to and from the DDN providing more exposure and domain inventory. As with their earlier agreement this will benefit their Premium Domain offerings, which in a previous post I provided a domaining strategy on. I believe there to be a few other factors, but I’ll have to wait and see before I reveal my speculations.

While I’m not here to discuss whether I think the practice is legitimate I am here to suggest a better solution for your DNS. Depending on how technical you are this might throw you a off a bit at first, but I assure you it is your DNS that poses the problem. By default most every user will use their ISPs DNS; however, it is not required and you have the ability to specify your own DNS servers. The only requirement is that you will need your own router, which at this point almost everyone already has.

Steps to setup OpenDNS
1. Register for an account
2. Enter the IP you are wanting to setup OpenDNS on. OpenDNS will detect this for you if it’s for the network you are on.
3. Login to your router admin and set your DNS severs to OpenDNS, which are 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
4. Now you can setup your OpenDNS account for the features you are looking for.

When you login to your account you will see the settings available, such as Content Filtering, Customization, Stats and Logs(good for parents), and Advanced Settings.

Content Filtering
This allows you to filter out content that you don’t want to be available on your network, perhaps porn or malicious sites. I think this is a really useful tool if you’re a parent. How many devices do your Kids have these days that get internet? Trying to install filters on all of them is not realistic, so you with this you can just block it at the source.

Customization
This allows you to customize the different error pages both with text and a logo.

Open DNS Customization

Stats and Logs
This is another really cool feature as you can see what sites users on your networks are using.

Advanced Settings
There are 2 important parts of this section. The ability to update your dynamic IP automatically. Most users are on home networks which don’t have static IPs, so this will prevent you from having to manually update it. Another one, which I think is interesting for domainers is the “Domain Typos” section. Not only will it correct a “.ocm” typo, but it also specifically has a section for “.cm” corrections.

Enable filtering of .cm wildcard

By turning this filter on, if you enter .cm at the end of a domain, the URL will be corrected to .com except for the known registered .cm domains. Important: you must enable typo correction for this feature to work.

It will be interesting to see how this type of feature effects the .cm. It’s already been widely criticized as a type extension which would only lead to the use of this and similar filters. That could lead to a devaluation of the extension.

OpenDNS Avanced Settings

The very simplified basics of backlinking:

• One-way links are better – Getting a site to link to you, but not link to them. A site going out of their way to add a backlink without an exchange builds search engine’s confidence in the site.
• Two-way links are still good – It’s still helpful to exchange links, but since it’s easy for the search engines to recognize this it diminishes the value a bit. Since the link is reciprical the search engines can assume that both sites did so for SEO reasons.
• Anchor text matters – This is highly overlooked. I have a client right now who has gotten many great backlinks, but the link anchor text are his web address. Sure it helps, but had the anchor text contained keywords related to his business they would be significantly more valuable. An example of this, http://www.realestatearizona.com compared to Arizona Real Estate News. This is a blatant way to tell the Search Engines what the site relates to, thus helping to increase your rankings for those keywords.
• Keep your link building strategy organic – Doing too much of one thing what necessarily look good to to the search engines. Having a good mix of one-way, reciprocal, and even nofollow links are common for a site that doesn’t have an active SEO linking campaign; therefore, a site with a linking campaign should have the same mix. Don’t overuse it, but you can buy links from companies such as .
• Don’t be afraid to ask for a link – Getting links is mostly a manual process and sometimes just boils down to an email or phone call. It usually starts with trying to find a website with a related, but non-competing topic. For example, a real estate agent would want to get a link from a mortgage broker. There are few ways to find websites to pursue backlinks from. The simplest is just doing a search; however, it is also very helpful to use a service such as seomoz.org’s juicy link finder. By providing a keyword seomoz.org will compile a list of the most relative sites.
• PR sorta matters – I highly recommend not focusing solely on PR. While Google Pagerank certainly is an indicator and should be taken into account, it shouldn’t be your only reason for pursuing a backlink. Check Compete.com and if you have an seomoz.org account check to see what incoming and outgoing links the site already has. PR can be faked, so finding out what backlinks the site has will tell you if it’s PR is indeed not real.

These are more technical components to obtaining backlinks, which I will delve into further at a later time. I attended Pubcon a few years ago and they said something I find interesting to this day, “One of the cheapest and best backlinks can be had over a good beer.” I guess what I’m trying to say is that, don’t overlook the great links you can get from the person right next to you.

We will all have to wait-and-see, but it’s reasonable to assume that more strange actions by ICANN are soon to come. With their recent decision to allow for a plethora of new gTLDs it seems like “good” timing to be running on their own. Now they will have little oversight in what extensions are approved.

I realize my negative tone in the assessment of this change, but I don’t like it. ICANN has not proven itself to be reliable and performing based on the principles it was setup. Instead the many changes that have been made to the domain industry have benefited, not the registrants, but the registrars and registries. Verisigns hundreds of millions of dollars it makes from managing the .com and the expired domain auctions that domain registrars operate (registrars get the full amount of those auctions, less a renewal fee of around $7 paid to the registry) are good examples. I’ll hope for the best, but expect the worst.

Here’s a video on the ICANN CEO Talking About the New Affirmation of Commitments:

WordPress’ original purpose was only to serve as a blogging system, but through open source development it has become by far one of the best website solutions available. I personally use it for most of my sites. Additionally, it’s a great system to use for clients. It has such as simple back-end that even the most novice web user can easily use it. A good personal example is the GD Jiu-Jitsu website. After converting the website over to wordpress Gustavo, the site owner, has easily been able to update the site himself. His previous site was a static ASP site that he struggled to get updated since his web developer went missing-in-action.

WordPress Templates
Templates are another huge reason I love WordPress. I mean come on, who wants to reinvent the wheel each time you create a new site. With thousands of free templates and thousands of inexpensive premium templates, it makes designing a site as easy as uploading the template files

Recommended WordPress Template Services
StudioPress
Theme Forest

WordPress Plugins
Plugins are what make WordPress so amazing. According to WordPress.org there are 6,735 available through the site and many more available directly from plugin creators. Almost any widget you may want to ad to your site is available making site development quick, easy, and cheap. This is what makes WordPress so attractive. I’ve listed several plugins I commonly use and that can be downloaded from the site or directly from within any hosted wordpress install.

Recommend WordPress Plugins

• All in One SEO Pack – This is a must on every wordpress site. It allows you to create unique META and title information. Additionally, it can automate the process as well.

• Twitter Widget – Makes adding your twitter feed a breeze. Just install, set your username and how many tweets. So much better then messing with the javascript manually.

• Feedburner Feedsmith – Feedburner is rapidly becoming a standard for promoting almost any feed. As with almost any Google service, Feedburner is free and highly useful for any site that posts are actively utilized.

• Tubepress – Adding a single video to your site from Youtube is pretty easy, but adding your playlist or search feed is a hassle. Tubepress makes it simple by allowing you to specify one of your playsists or create a predefined search then display in gallery format all the videos. This is a great way to get users to hang out on your site. I used this heavily on Grappling Academy.

• Featured Content Gallery – A very pretty way to add featured posts to your site with a related image. You can check out an example of this on Real Estate Arizona.

• Redirection – Another must. If you every change your post structure it will automatically add a 301 redirect to the new post. Additionally, any latent links that you may not have manually created 301 redirects for it will try to match to an existing page and forward the visitor. This plugin is especially useful if you are migrating your site to wordpress or changing the domain of the site. I’d recommend reviewing the Plugin Page for all of the features.

• Google Sitemap Generator – Takes all the pain out of creating your sitemap. The sitemap can also be used for Yahoo SiteExplorer and Bing Webmaster Tools.

• WP Google Analytics – Adding the Analytics code manually isn’t that hard, but the nice part of this plugin is that it will tag all outbound links with referrer info. This way its possible to track where visitors go. Additionally, it will remove any traffic from logged in users, which is helpful so you don’t skew your stats.

• WP Super Cache – Any database driven site can be a victim of slow load times. Super Cache will make a static HTML page cache, so the site’s load time will be decreased significantly. One thing to be aware of is that if this is active and you make changes it won’t necessarily be visible if a cache has been made. So if you plan to work on the site, I’d recommend disabling it until you complete your changes.

There are obviously tons more WordPress plugins to choose from, but these are a standard set that I install on nearly every WordPress site I manage.

WordPress Conclusion
I used to deal with so many people that would try and use Joomla or some other obscure CMS, so I hopefully can convince some more folks to use the best (yes I know it’s a superlative) CMS available, WordPress. Many hosts such as DreamHost provide users with a 1-install as well. Good luck with your web endeavors and should you need any advice or guidance please feel free to contact me at lee (at) dotinvesting.com.

GoDaddy offers the ability to list domains within any GoDaddy account as Premium. Premium domains are offered during the purchase path based on the domain name search.

In the event of a direct match the domain will show the following:

Having a person doing a search for a domain you have listed is by far the best scenario you could hope for. Premium Domains are also available through several other areas on the GoDaddy site as “Related Domains” as well as on the WHOIS search.

Potential Premium Domain Customers:

1. The original domain owner. It may seem unreasonable that someone would ignore (their email may have changes as well) the 7 notices GoDaddy sends before a domain expires. Furthermore, then allow 42 days to go by before addressing the fact that their website is no longer active, but it happens more often then you would think. Many of these previously active domains are bought buy large domain buyers whom typically just list the domains for sale after acquiring the name. One mistake they make if they are GoDaddy expired domains is listing them for sale at Sedo or a similar domain auction service. Had they listed it with GoDaddy Premium Domain service they may have sold it. The reason for this is that the domain owner is inclined to call GoDaddy to find out why their site is down and more then likely get the GoDaddy Billing Department. They then are advised that the domain is now owned by another registrant. If the domain was listed as a Premium Domain the billing rep would more then likely offer the domain at the listed price in order to secure a commission. What better scenario could you ask for then a motivated buyer and a motivated sales rep whom is able to sell your domain? I know this as I once was a billing rep for GoDaddy

2. A current or new end-user business. People are starting to realize the marketing power that a good premium domain has, so they’re buying them. Businesses are budgeting thousands of dollars to secure their web identity and GoDaddy is a widely recognized and used company by the end user. End User’s are typically hesitant to contact a domain owner directly or utilize auctions houses, such as SnapNames or Bido.com. They like the “security” they feel by using a well known company, so the ability to buy a domain for a fixed price and have it transferred directly to their account is value added.

3. Another domain investor. It seems unlikely as GoDaddy Premium Domains are typically priced, IMO, on the high side. That said it’s not very uncommon for a domain investor to pick up a domain through Premium Domains.

So what the cost? GoDaddy’s Premium Domain fee is high relative to the industry standard at 32%; however, there are no listing fees, so you have no risk if the domain doesn’t sell. Also, it’s a great way to get exposure on your unused domain inventory. If you bought a domain for $10 and sold it for $500, you’d net $330. That’s a 3300% ROI, which is not bad

This strategy will certainly not work for everyone, but if you have the appropriate budget and a good monetization plan it should be considered. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at lee (at) dotinvesting.com or give me a calla at (480) 463-4533.