Rook Media buys DomainSponsor

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 23rd, 2014 2 Comment

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: , , , , , ,

Quite funny unauthorized domain transfer request received

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 17th, 2014 0 Comment

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: , ,

Handling domain inquiries yourself and how you can possibly save yourself from UDRP

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on April 3rd, 2014 6 Comment

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: , , , , ,

5 goals I have to achieve in 2014

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 26th, 2014 8 Comment

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

Although only couple of months have passed for this year but I wanted to share some goals I want to achieve this year.

1) I want to have 1,000 domains under my portfolio by the end of Dec 2014.

2) To earn US$1,000 in domain parking every month from Jan 2015. Although I have listed my goals for 2014 but the domains I will gather till December will be making parking revenue in the month of January 2015.

3) Make at least one big sale of six fig5-goals-I-have-to-achieve-in-2014ures.

4) I publish very few posts each month but always wanted to increase the numbers quickly. However, my aim is to hit 200 mark by the end of this year. I know it’s easy to publish crappy stuff here and there but I want to share only good stuff which has something to learn from it.

5) This is my personal goal not related to domain. To gain weight and reach 72 kgs. Right now it’s just 63 kgs.

Care to share your own goals set to get by the end of this year?

Posted in Domaining, Personal Tags: , ,

Another domain sold through DomainNameSales.com for high four figures

Posted by AbdulBasit Makrani on March 19th, 2014 13 Comment

Another-domain-sold-through-DomainNameSales.com-for-high-four-figuresHello and Assalamo Alaikum,

This is my 100th published post so please congratulate me 😉

As you can read in one of my previous post where I mentioned of holding domains instead of selling them for quick cash. I want to squeeze out maximum money from each domain so that I don’t regret later on for selling it for lower price.

Just a few days back I was able to successfully sell another domain with DomainNameSales.com broker Phillip Hutauruk. The lead was from GoDaddy. The communication and the way Phillip Hutauruk handled the deal was really nice and I appreciate that. Although there was 20% commission but still I made good money on that. The domain was .com and it’s small town in Europe. It was sold for $7,500.

The same time I received email from broker at Afternic wanting the same domain. I knew it would be same buyer. The max offer from Afternic was $4k.

Once the domain was transferred to buyer’s account I am unable to see for what purpose he bought it. I will keep an eye on that.

I would recommend everyone to use Domain Name Syndication option at DomainNameSales.com which definitely increases the number of inquiries and chances of selling more domains.

Any feedback is welcome no matter how good or good they are 😉

Posted in Domaining, Domain Sales, Personal Tags: , , , , , ,


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