Archive for April, 2014

Rook Media buys DomainSponsor

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 23rd, 2014

Rook-Media-buys-DomainSponsorHello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Today I received an email from Rook Media which is an interesting news for domain community and specially for domainers.

“Dear Rook Customer,

Big things are happening in domain parking and we want to make sure you find out among the first: Today we announced that our company bought DomainSponsor.

The two largest US and European parking companies coming together to form a new type of monetization platform means new opportunities to you as a customer. Everything you like about Rook remains the same, and things will get even better we integrate the best of both companies to push up your earnings.

You log in to the same user interface, and your account representative is there as always to answer questions. Over time you can expect an up-kick in the choice of landers, even more sophisticated monetization of your traffic, and a lot of new alternative monetization options.

Stay tuned: big things are on the horizon!

Your Rook Media-team”

I have accounts with both Rook Media and DomainSponsor and parked some domains with DomainSponsor last year with no success. When I heard about Rook Media I simply joined them and informed that my domains were parked with DomainNameSales and if they can assure I can make more money with them but their answer in short was “NO”.

I am not trying to give any negative feedback against them instead I liked their honesty in giving out the possible outcome.

I sincerely wish them best of luck and hope they achieve many more success in future.

Any of you using DomainSponsor and/or Rook Media for parking your domains? How do you rate them and what do you think of this acquisition?

Posted in Domaining Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments »
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Quite funny unauthorized domain transfer request received

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 17th, 2014

Quite-funny-unauthorized-domain-transfer-request-receivedHello and Assalamo Alaikum everyone,

Recently I received a transfer request from registrar 123Reg/Webfusion which I personally have never used for domain purpose. I was bit surprised to receive such email from them because I never had any domain there or wanted to transfer out to them.

So in actual what happened was the former domain owner first tried to get the domain from me by contacting through DNS parking platform and the offer was somewhere near $100 and of course the deal wasn’t going to be successful at that price and it was declined.

After few months I received the transfer request which goes something like this:

“Attention: abm@AbdulBasit.com

Re: Transfer of xxxxxxxxxxxxx.com

123Reg/Webfusion has received a request from xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@me.com on xx/xx/2014 for us to become the new registrar of record.

You have received this message because you are listed as the Registered Name Holder or Administrative contact for this domain name in the WHOIS database.

Please read the following important information about transferring your domain name:

• You must agree to enter into a new Registration Agreement with us. You can review the full terms and conditions of the Agreement at http://www.domainterms.com/.

• Once you have entered into the Agreement, the transfer will take place within five (5) calendar days unless the current registrar of record denies the request.

• Once a transfer takes place, you will not be able to transfer to another registrar for 60 days, apart from a transfer back to the original registrar, in cases where both registrars so agree or where a decision in the dispute resolution process so directs.

If you WISH TO PROCEED with the transfer, you must respond to this message via one of the following methods (note if you do not respond by xx/xx/2014, xxxxxxxxxxxx.com will not be transferred to us.).
Please go to our website, https://www.xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to confirm.

If you DO NOT WANT the transfer to proceed, then don’t respond to this message.

If you have any questions about this process, please contact http://www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names/.

Kind Regards

123Reg/Webfusion”

It was quite surprising and funny because the former owner might have thought to give this option as try and she might get the domain back. I am using “she” here because the domain was a two word female name and it’s her name too. I responded back to 123Reg/Webfusion informing about this unauthorized domain transfer request.

Not sure if this practice is being used by people to gain someone’s domain

Have you received similar transfer request from the former owner or someone trying to hijack your domain using this method?

Posted in Domaining, Personal Tags: , , No Comments »
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Handling domain inquiries yourself and how you can possibly save yourself from UDRP

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 3rd, 2014

Handling-domain-inquiries-yourself-and-how-you-can-save-yourself-from-UDRPHello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Couple of months back I got a comment from Ajay about self brokering and how do I normally handle the deals. I promised him to write an article about this but somehow forgot it.

Today I wanted to share how I respond to my domain inquiries which will not only give you upper hand but also save you from the domain inquirer filing UDRP against you. Now here I cannot guarantee you as I am not a lawyer but I bet this will save you somehow.

I am not sure I previously mentioned in my posts or not but let me tell you one thing. I have just stopped writing to endusers because the number of inquiries I receive every month are satisfying for me so I don’t need to send emails. This somehow reduces the number of inquiries which we get when writing ourselves but I want endusers to contact me first.

Every time I receive inquiry my normal response is to ask submit an offer. Occasionally I use the default template message of DomainNameSales.com and forwards the inquirer to that page where they can submit an offer.

But when I receive an inquiry on my top quality domains which I think can possibly be hit with UDRP (don’t you ever think I am buying trademarked domains 😉 ) but you can see generic words are also getting a knock with UDRP. My typical response to such type of inquiries goes something like this:

“Hello,

Based on your message, my understanding is that you wish to discuss purchasing this domain name from us.
 
Due to bad faith of previous parties, in order for us to even think this you must first explicitly agree in writing to the following:
 
You acknowledge that (a) this is a dialogue commenced by you, (b) these discussions will remain between us and you, and (c) both the fact of these discussions and the material of them will not be used as evidence in any legal forum, including in any court or domain name arbitration.
 
If you do not accept these three things, we will not be able to persist discussing this matter.”

As you know email conversations are used as proof in filing UDRP and are accepted. So once I send this type of response to the inquirer and if I don’t hear back, I simply trash the lead. Or if there is acceptance from the inquirer to all my terms than I proceed to next step by asking to submit an offer.

Sometimes people ask what the hell is that may be because they don’t understand all these technicalities or want to file UDRP against you but most of the time they quickly agree to it.

You need to have patience and back yourself as this strategy has so far worked nicely for me.

Is there any one out there using this strategy in handling domain inquiries? Do you think this can be helpful for you?

Posted in Domaining, Personal Tags: , , , , , 6 Comments »
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