I’m a very casual domainer and have been buying some domains here and there over the last few years. One of the biggest mistakes I see new domainers make is buying domains with trademarked terms in them. I monitor NameJet for certain terms that drop, and have seen lots of obvious examples of trademark-ridden domains that have gone into auction at ridiculous prices. Do NOT be one of these people.

» Continue reading “My $500 Domain Buying Mistake, and How You can Avoid It”

Are you starting your very own web 2.0 website? Has your thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters taken the day off. Are you too drunk to come up with your very own random string of vowels and phonetic spellings?

Well, my friend, you’re in luck.

» Continue reading “The Lazy Startup’s Guide to a Horrible Domain Name”

Welcome to the Colbert Platinum section of AU Blog. Today we’re gonna talk about flossing your riches with the hottest new status symbol - crazy expensive ccTLD’s. (And maybe, just maybe - before we’re done here.. we’ll all be wearing gold-plated diapers.)

Here’s a little known fact: Ethiopian Domain Names are the Crystal of ccTLD’s.

Yes, we’re talking about the .com.et ccTLD.

It belongs to Ethiopia - and apparently it’s the Crystal of Domain name extensions.

» Continue reading “Bling out your Domain. Go Ethiopian.”

This is a pared down list of county code TLD’s that allow foreign registrations.

This is in contrast to country specific TLD’s that place restrictions on who can register them such as citizenship in that country (ex: .eu - must have official presence in the European Union to register)

(via Wikipedia) » Continue reading “A List of County Code TLD’s that Anyone Can Register”

Browsing the headlines from Digg this afternoon, I noticed that ICANN is finally planning to stop domain tasting and front-running.

Here’s something ironic. From the article:

Under current ICANN rules, anyone who registers a new domain name has a five-day grace period to back out and receive a total refund. The policy is in place to prevent hassles if people mistype domain names during signup or simply have buyer’s remorse at signing up for ilovespaminacan.com. But because a five-day registration is free, some users “taste” millions of domain names in order to see how well they perform as marketing vehicles. The sites that don’t perform are then deleted and the cash refunded.

» Continue reading “How Network Solutions Forced me to Get Spam in a Can”