In a stunner of a development, Snapnames has discovered that one of their employees has been secretly bidding on domain names for the last four years. The employee set up a Snapnames account under a fake name and bid on domain names.

The company says in their press release that this affected only a small percentage of auctions. How much exactly is that small percentage? They go on to say:

• Bidding affected approximately five percent of total SnapNames auctions since 2005, most of which occurred between 2005 and 2007.
• The incremental revenue from the bidding represented approximately one percent of SnapNames’ auction revenue since 2005.

Five percent of all auctions since 2005? That’s huge! One percent of total auction revenue coming from one fraudulent employee? Again, that’s huge!

I have many questions about this.

1. How could this have happened? I am quite frankly shocked that this could have gone on for so long undetected. Even now it appears that the employee will retain the domain names he/she purchased.
2. How could an employee come up with the funds to purchase 1% (in revenue) of all domains? Is he independently wealthy? Or did he have a backer who colluded in this fraud and benefited from it? Maybe he was even secretly employed by someone else.
3. In their announcement, Snapnames says they have created new controls and procedures to prevent this from happening again, including, “Specific domain name registration policies for employees.” What? You mean you didn’t already have specific domain name registration policies for employees in place?
4. Does this represent a breach of the law in any way? Can this employee be prosecuted?

Snapnames will be offering a rebate to anyone who participated in an affected auction, amounting to with 5.22% interest (the highest applicable federal rate during the affected time period), to affected customers for the difference between the prices they actually paid and the prices they would have paid, had the employee not bid in the auctions.

I am curious how they will calculate this. It’s not as straightforward as it seems. Sometimes the level of activity in an auction acts as an X-factor that draws in other bidders. But this can be hard to quantify.

This is a bad development for Snapnames. Domain name discussion forums have always been rife with speculation about the presence of company “shills” in auctions. Of course that’s not what this is, since this employee acted independently and against company policy. Still, it will only feed those sorts of rumors.

I like the Snapnames system and I’ve acquired many domains through them. I expect I will be contacted regarding this rebate. I sincerely hope that Snapnames continues to address this issue openly and decisively and comes out of it stronger and wiser as a company.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Happy new year and may this year bring you continued health, increased wealth and blessings in all areas of your lives.

I read recently on TheConceptualist.com that Bido.com domain name auctions will be returning soon. I will definitely have to submit some of my better domain names for inclusion.

The auction of PuntaPacifica.com went reasonably well, with the domain selling for $4,000.

I own a few good geo names with .org and .net extensions, and I’ve been thinking of developing these.

My social network for martial artists, HapkidoNet.com, is progressing nicely. Thank you to those who helped me choose the best domain name for that site.

My new year’s advice to my readers: keep your head up, breathe deep, and discover the sources of your own strength.

Popularity: 60% [?]

A few months ago I was browsing some of the domains coming up for auction at NameJet and I had the idea to see what sorts of common people’s names – I mean the names are common, not the people – might be dropping. I looked at several names and ran Google searches on them, studied the results, and considered their search popularity.

I ended up back ordering a handful of names, and won several at the minimum bid of $69 each. These included AprilWilliams.com, LauraVega.com, and MattGreene.com. I thought I might contact some of the people with those names and try to sell them the domains. As it turned out I got busy with other things, but only a few months later I received an offer for AprilWilliams.com through Sedo, and sold it for $500.

If you’ve been trying to acquire generic domains at auction and getting outbid, you might try some real “names”. If they’re common enough there’s sure to be a market and a steady trickle of traffic, and at the moment there’s not a lot of competition for these domains.

Popularity: 90% [?]

BAAE.com gets good traffic (50 to 70 uniques per month); geographical breakdown so far is 47.3% traffic from North America and 47.5% from Europe.

It got a $9.76 click on Sedo the other day. I think that’s the highest payout I’ve ever gotten on a single click. Update 5-8-2008: A $3.23 click yesterday. Not sure what it is about this domain that is paying off so well.

A Google search of “baae” brings 300,000 results, and BAAE.com itself is number seven on the list. Wow! Search results include:

• British Army Antarctic Expedition
• Basic and Applied Ecology
• Bachelor of Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
• British Airways Avionic Engineering
• Bachelor of Art in Art Education
• Bay Area Automotive Enthusiasts
• Brighton Adult Alternative Education

And the list goes on. That means guaranteed type-in traffic. Develop this domain name, forward the traffic to an established site, or flip it for a quick profit.

BAAE.com:

Buy it now only $1,900

Update: Reduced to $1,750 for quick sale!

Update 4-25-2008: Reduced to $1,500. Come on now, this is as low as it goes. Great deal for someone.

For comparison see these recent LLLL.com sales, all reported at DNJournal.com:

As you can see, BAAE.com is being offered at a discount.
Make your offer through my Contact Form.

Thank you and good luck!

Update 5-8-2008: BAAE is still available. It’s making fairly good money at Sedo. Nothing less than $1,500 will be considered. If I don’t get an offer I’ll hold on to it for now. $1,500 will look like a bargain next year.

Popularity: 97% [?]

There are a number of important differences between Namejet and Snapnames, two popular domain drop-catching services. But there’s one difference in particular that you need to watch out for. It has to do with the auction process.

Namejet.com is, of course, the new domain name drop-catching service that has stolen a lot of business from Snapnames.com. Namejet now gets the domain names that expire on Network Solutions or eNom, while Snapnames picks up expiring domains from dozens of other registrars all over the world, large and small. When I want a domain name, I always back order it at both sites, as well as Pool.com, just to be safe.

When Namejet first debuted late last year, their interface was very buggy, but they seem to have worked out the glitches.

Another point on which Namejet lost to Snapnames was that on Namejet you could not see who you were bidding against when a domain went to auction. They have since corrected this problem and now, once you’ve back ordered a domain name, you can see a complete bid history showing each bidder’s handle, bid amount and time/date of bid.

Watch out when back ordering on Namejet, though. Their back order process works differently from Snapnames.

On Snapnames you can bid the maximum amount you’re willing to pay and the amount will not be displayed to other bidders. Snapnames will increase your bid incrementally as you are outbid, first by increments as small as $1, then increasing to $10 and eventually $20 as the bid increases.

I like this system, because I can look at abc.com and say to myself, “I’d pay as much as $5,000 for that, not a penny more.” So I put in my bid at $5,000, even if it’s still only at $70, and I walk away. Once the auction starts Snapnames will walk up the bid for me incrementally. If I end up getting the domain for $1,000, great. If it costs me $4,500, ok, I was prepared for that. If I get outbid and it goes to someone else for $5,100, well, that sucks but I said in advance that I wasn’t prepared to pay that much, so my absence has enforced a sort of unconscious discipline on my bid.

Namejet does not do this. If there are five current back orders at $69 each, and you order the domain for $5,000, the bid is immediately increased to $5,000 and that is visible to everyone. If you win the auction you will pay $5,000, even if none of the other bidders go above $69. That’s awful. Maybe the other bidders would not have paid more than $1,000, so that’s a wasted $4,000 you did not have to spend.

What that means it that if I really want the domain name I must be present when the auction starts, and I have to sit there, manually increasing my bid by $10 at a time or whatever, until the auction ends.

I don’t care for that system and I have asked Namejet to change it. I will continue to place back orders on Namejet because of the quality of the domains dropping there, but I am careful with my back orders.

Popularity: 92% [?]

PRICES DRASTICALLY REDUCED FOR THE CHRISTMAS SEASON!
SEE BELOW.

I’m offering six domain names for sale, all related to green or organic living. The following discounts are available:

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Popularity: 18% [?]

In my previous post I mentioned Sedo’s ongoing premium dot Mobi auction and suggested two of my own domain names, installer.mobi and updater.mobi, that were included in the auction. I’m not quite satisfied with the results of the auction, but I can live with it.

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Popularity: 18% [?]