Hotmail Down Again

Yes, Hotmail is down again in case you were wondering. The service has been patchy all day with services unavailable in the USA and the UK and quite possibly throughout the rest of the world (have the Pakistanis taken objection to something someone wrote in an e-mail? and pulled the plug?) the outage is causing some havoc for Hotmail users who are voicing their comments on social websites .

There have been numerous reports from hotmail users in the USA in Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey and also in the UK and elsewhere that Microsoft's e-mail service was not working or very slow.

Service was restored but then disappeared again.

At the moment is the service is either very slow or non-existent.

Network Solutions Being Sued

The law firm Kabateck Brown Kellner, has filed a class action suit against Network Solutions and ICANN on behalf of plaintiff Chris McElroy and “all persons or entities in the United States who searched for the availability of a domain name through Network Solutions and subsequently registered that domain name through Network Solutions.”

It is claimed that Network Solutions 'bent the ICANN rules' to say the leat to their own financial advantage, and even ICANN condemned the practice. It is unclear whether ICANN distancing itself in this way will clear it of financial responsibility , but Network Solutions wil find it very difficult to make themselves look blameless.

A few weeks back Network Solutons embarked upon the practice of 'front-running' i.e. if you went to their site and entered a domain name you wanted to register then Network Solutions system immediately locked the name so that you could only register it with them. You could not go to another registrar and register it as it would show up as already taken. If you wante dit you had to go back to Network Solutions who had kindly 'reserved' it for you and they would also charge you $34.99 to register then name whereas other registrars typically charge around $9.

"Imagine if you asked a car dealer if they had a black convertible and were then forced to buy the car from them. Would you get a good deal?" said Brian Kabateck, managing partner at Kabateck Brown Kellner.

All very shady and not designed to endear Network Solutions to domainers, but they are already hated by the domaining community anyway, the people they are interested in are newbies who have no idea how much a domain registration should cost.

It should also be pointed out that some unscrupulous individual swere deliberately typing in domain names such as Microsoftsoftwareiscarp.com just so that NS would reigster it and possibly find itself in a lawsuit with Microsoft, Google, Paypal, Ebay etc... apaprently many thousands of such names were 'registered' by NS in this way.

Well now it's all before the courts ! And about time too. I wonder if Netwrok Solutions still thinks their idea was such a good wheeze ?

StarTrek Klingon Domain Sale

Star Trek Klingon Domain Name For Sale on Ebay - Maveq

I've put my Klingon Domain name maveq.com up for sale on Ebay - http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&Item=150218569326&Category=11153&_trksid=p3907.m29

the starting price is low but given that it is a pronounceable 5 letter .com it is worth something anyway, even without the Klingon connection for Star Trek fans it would make an intereting name for a website.

Maveq means dagger is Klingon.

Check it out if you think you might like to be the owner of a 5 letter .com domain name with Klingon associations which should prove a good investment for the future

Freephone Directory Enquiry Numbers

Free Directory Enquiry Numbers

Freephone Directory Enquiry Numbers

I don't know what it's like in the rest of the world but here in the freemarket UK you normally have to pay to find out a telephone number you don't know. This was a scam introduced by British Telecom a few years back to boost their profits - it used to be free - it's a bit like going into a shop and having to pay to find out if they've got what you are looking for. It may cost you around £1 ($2) to find a number - which will soon add up if you need to do it often.

But I have now come across some freephone numbers that will find a number for you (you have to listen to a 20 second ad.) and also some free websites that will give you the number - for full details about the services see Martin Lewis' excellent site : http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/phones/directory-enquiries-free

The Freephone Directory Enquiry numbers are :

0800 100 100 or 0800 118 3733

The free Directory Enquiry websites are
(Make sure you tick the ‘don't send me further info' boxes if you don't want any 'spam') :

http://www.118.com/ Unlimited searches, no need to register.

http://www.thephonebook.bt.com/ Unlimited searches, no need to register.

http://www.192.com/ requires free registration which gives 10 free searches per day, but has additional options (some you need to pay for) such as the possibility of seeing the electoral roll.

http://www.ukphonebook.com/ 5 free searches a day if you register.

free directory enquiry numbers
freephone directory enquiry numbers
free directory enquiry websites

Big Trouble in Domains World

Big Trouble in Domain Parking World

Today I, along with many thousands of other domainers, received the following e-mail :-

"Dear Parked.com customers,
We were notified today by Yahoo that all Yahoo based parking companies, including Parked.com, must begin enforcing the no arbitrage/no paid traffic general provision. As a reminder, Section 2 Subsection g. in the Parked.com Terms of Service states:
"All other types of traffic including bought traffic, traffic driven by PPC campaigns, traffic directed from hyperlinks are not permitted. If your traffic originates from any sources other than type-in and search engine traffic, you will not be entitled to payment as per this Agreement. Regular checks are carried out and we reserve the right to suspend any domain from our Service at any time, on our sole discretion, if we reasonably believe that you have violated this Agreement; for example, if we suspect that the traffic on your domain is bought, generated or redirected in any way that contravenes these terms and conditions."
For more information please see http://www.parked.com/tos/.
Accordingly, all arbitrage must stop effective 1pm PST on Thursday, February 14, 2008. Even though arbitrage will no longer be allowed, all accounts will still be paid.
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact your account manager.
We thank you for your business and continued support.
Parked.com"

This is trouble for those domainers who use arbitrage and probably for those who don't either, although it may have the opposite effect for them - it's too early to say at the moment.

What is arbitrage ? It means buying adverts using schemes such as Adwords, using your ads. to direct people to a page on which there are adverts that they get paid for when people click on them. So they pay some money to get lots of visitors to their site who then make them more money than they paid in the first place. But this practice is now to be banned, so there will be a sudden and massive drop in visitors and income for some domainers.

It won't affect me much I hope, and may even have a positive effect, as I don't do arbitraging and so the playing field may be a bit leveller.

Interesting times are ahead !

Domain Name Sales

Hi !

If you have arrived at this page because you are interested in acquiring or developing a certain domain name please leave your message below by clicking on 'post a comment' don't forget to mention the name of the domain you are interested in. Thank you.

Some of the names I have for sale

canadawet.com

maveq.com (Klingon for ritual dagger)

80796.com (Postcode for Munich in Germany)

serpents.tv (serpents is also French for snakes)

forexinvestor.in

+ lots more which can be found at Afternic.com or Sedo.com - just type in one of the names above then click on my details page

Christian Science and Domain Names

Christian Science Monitor Discusses Domain Names

I was rather surprised to come across an article on the Christian Science Monitor website about investing in domain names, perhaps it's a sign of how knowledge about domain name investing is spreading out from the rather isolated and closed secretive world of domainers into the wider world (there was also an article recently in the New York Times) or perhaps Paula Mooney has been using her Christian influence !

The CSM points out that while housing markets are slumping, prices for Internet real estate are actually rising - over 100 domain sales sold for over $100,000 last year, which is a first, but they may have got that information from reading my blog ! For more information on how much domain name prices rose last year see here - Top Domain Sales

The CSM article - What's In a Domain Name? - gives lots of useful insights into the domaining industry in general and future trends, but two snippets of information stood out for me, namely that Rick Schwartz, the owner of candy.com and one of the very big hitters in the domaining industry (see Rick's excellent blog here - Rick's Blog), expects that if he ever sells the site it will be for somewhere in excess of $2 million, and also that the site gets over 1500 visitors every day. The visitors just type candy.com into their browser bar (that's what happens when you let kids play with your computer !).

If ten per cent of those visitors click on an ad. and each ad. pays Rick Schwartz $1 then he is making $150 a day from that one site for doing practically nothing. $150 may not sound like a lot but it works out to $54,750 a year from just one site, and Rick Schwartz has lots of sites (over 6,000 I believe) ! Also my estimates may be conservative.

The problem for us newcomers of course is that all the hot dotcoms are already sold so if you want to buy one you have to come up with some serious money.

Personally, I am going down the .in route. .in is the TLD for India but it can also represent other things e.g. Internet, Information etc... plus India has an educated middle class of over 350 million, all of whom speak perfect English, plus you can still find .in domains e.g. Designer Handbags or flashdrives.in , that have never been registered.

You can pick up .ins for around $5 and park them and earn money on them straight away at parking companies such as NameDrive. Once parked, if people click on the ads. then you earn a percentage of the money made. They are nowhere near as valuable as dotcoms but poker.in sold recently for $60,000. Some people think I am nuts wasting my money on an untested domain extension, hopefully I will prove them wrong.

In another departure from tradition, I have just invested in two Klingon domain names ! Maveq.com and ngech.com - maveq means ritual dagger in Klingon and ngech means valley or cleavage ! So lots of scope for a Klingon porn site :-), but more about that later.

selling domain names, monetization, Christian Science Monitor, domain name auctions, Namedrive, Rick Schwartz, StarTrek Klingon Dictionary

$1million Paid for Cruises Domain

Big Money Domain Sales

Domain sales off to a flying start in 2008. Just 5 weeks into the new year and there have already been some big money domain sales - the top ten are :


Cruises.co.uk - $1,099,798
iReport.com - $750,000
a mystery name - $200,000
matureporn.com - $130,000
newlyweds.com - $130,000
hotporn.com - $107,000
spicy.com - $81,000
greenmonday.com - $76,500
seo.de - $70,896
helpline.com - $70,300


At this time last year there had only been 4 sales over $100,000 and the highest of those was sportsbook.mobi at $129,000


So it would seem that 2008 is on track to be even better than 2007 for domain sales, despite the problems with economies around the world and the credit crunch.

Lose Weight Quickly

How Can I Lose Weight Quickly?

The best way to burn fat apparently is by exercising in short, intense bursts; increase the amount of resistance training you do, which builds more muscle; cut down on the amount of food you stuff in your face.

There's no need to exercise for long periods over and over, 12 - 15 minutes is enough, as long periods of exercise makes the body think it needs to store fat ! Resistance training builds muscle and muscle burns more calories than fat.

Vary your exercises, you can do a long period of exercise but not every day, Resistance does build muscle and makes your bones stronger. Experts recommend two short intense (relative to your fitness) periods a week (15 minutes), two moderate periods (40 minutes) walking or cycling, one long period (60 - 90 minutes) walking.

So there you have it, you thought you could lose weight quickly ! So did I ! It turns out you've got to exercise 5 times a week for at least 5 hours ! Lol.

It's yet another scam, probably sponsored by Nike or Adidas to get you to buy more trainers !

I say - Eat Less ! - it'll save you money !

My Very Valuable Blog is Rich !

How Much is My Blog Worth?

This blog, supposedly about making money online has been going for around a year now. I really don't consider it to be one of the most exciting blogs around ! But there have been strange changes in the blogosphere lately. So I have drawn up a list of negatives and positives regarding this blog to highlight the fact that blogging is not an exact science and seems at time highly illogical.

The Negatives
I'm a pretty rubbish blogger ! I still don't understand much about SEO, keywords, backlinks, trackbacks (are they the same?), pings, technorati rank, nofollow and dofollow (which is which? and which am I?), stumbling, clouds, carnivals, plus a whole load of other stuff I can't remember etc... etc... most of this stuff just makes me lose the will to live, I have tried to get my head around it but it just refuses to absorb any of it.

I don't get an enormous amount of visitors, I don't think I've got a single subscriber via Feedburner or any other system, I don't even know how I would find out if I've got any or not, I don't much like the layout of the blog so I keep changing it but never like the changes, I often feel as if I'm talking to myself, I get very few comments and 75% of the ones I do get are spam ("nice advices Dear, please tell me more such extra informations!") that I delete , the blog doesn't bring in much dosh dosh, (my football blog does much better), I waffle on about stuff unrelated to my supposed subject (making money online), I have stopped reading other blogs and leaving comments 'cause I'm basically a lazy sod and seeing so much energy expended on blogs makes me want to go back to bed, I did try to set up a Wordpress blog as I think they look better, but found the software totally incomprehensible and it did my head in just trying to read the help files and scouring forums for information which rarely solved my problems, so I dumped Wordpress and came back to good old blogger. I could go on but you get the picture.

The Positives
I've been getting more spam comments (why that is a positive will become clear later), I've even got some spam e-mail, which means that somebody has taken the time to find out what my e-mail address is and send me some spam (yummmy) (spammers - get a life ! go spam someone who is likely to believe your bs ! ), I assume it was spam but I didn't bother to reply to find out as I figured I might end up with a nasty virus.

One guy said he wanted to put some ads on my blog ! I thought he was nuts and it must be spam because in the words of Groucho Marx "I would never join a club that would have me as a member". But then I got another e-mail from another genius, this guy offered me $4,800 dollars to stick some ads on my blog - I thought he was nuts and therefore probably dangerous so I didn't answer him either. Anybody offering me $4,800 to put an ad on a blog with 100 readers on a good day is clearly an idiot and probably does not have my best interests at heart.

But I have just discovered why I think there has been an increase in spam directed at my good self, namely, this undernourished and rather neglected blog has for some incomprehensible reason been upgraded from a PR3 (which I already found amazing) to a PR4 ! What on earth is going on ? That's the same page ranking as http://www.courtneytuttle.com/ - a guy who I admire, as he clearly knows what he's talking about. And actually higher than the page ranking for http://www.andybeard.eu/ another guy I admire who is ranked a lowly PR3 ! (Eat your heart out AB!)

So clearly something weird is going on (and no my dad doesn't work at Google).

Anyway, encouraged by my new improved ranking I went over to http://www.business-opportunities.biz/ to use their free blogulator - a device that tells you how much your blog is worth and was amazed to discover that this blog is now worth $64,357.36 !! The 64,000 dollar answer !

The only way this blog is going to be worth $64,000 is if somebody offers me $64,000 for it and I say yes (which I might be tempted to do), However, the last time I used Dave Carlson's blogulator a couple of months ago it said I was worth $1,500 or thereabouts, so an increase of 40 x is pretty good going, particularly given the way I have been neglecting this blog.

I don't even know when Google re-did their page ranking. I lost interest as I was convinced I would be booted back down to 0 ! But now I might make more of an effort and post twice a week instead of once ! I would have thought also that having a page rank of 4 might somehow lead to more money, but so far not at all. All very strange and confusing.

So anyway I have a question if one of my elusive and knowledgeable readers would care to leave an answer, how much is a blog, and in particular this blog, actually worth ? And how much do people pay for PR4 blogs ? Answers below please :-)

New York Times Domainers Article

Domainers in the New York Times

There's a very good article about domaining in the New York Times today - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/technology/01domain.html?_r=3&scp=1&sq=domainfest&st=nyt&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

"The names of Web sites can be valuable, cash-generating assets just like stocks, bonds or property " This appears to becoming more widely accepted although many domainers who have been around for along time may nopt be too pleaed about it, as up until now they have had it pretty much to themselves.

Last year over 100 domain names were sold with a price of more than $100,000 each, porn.com, went for nearly $9.5 million but others such as computers.com also went for many millions. So if you've got any domain names lying about now might be the time to dust them off and sell them, or go out and buy some if you haven't got any !