.In Domains

One of the most under-rated domain extensions is .in.  .in is the country extension for India.

Here’s a few facts about India:

• Population of India is 1.2 billion. It is expected to become the most populous nation in the world by 2025.
• Recent economic growth of 8% per year.
• Rapidly growing middle class that will increasingly be able to afford and use computers.
• Huge high tech industry including out-sourcing by companyies based in the United States and other industrialized countries. The high tech city of Bangalore now rivals Silicon Valley in California.

Note that anyone can own a .in domain – you don’t require a presence in India.

A few of the domains that I own are:

mfn.in
mox.in
nft.in
nsh.in
tnh.in

PayPal and Domaining

A frequent question among beginning domainers is the use of PayPal and whether accepting PayPal makes you vulnerable to fraud.  The fear is that people will pay for and receive your domain and then dispute the tranaction to get a refund.  Here’s my understanding of how it works. 

Section 11 of the PayPal user agreement describes PayPal’s policy on chargebacks.  It states that:  “A Chargeback is covered if it was due to non-receipt of merchandise, or an unauthorized payment. A Reversal is covered if it was due to an unauthorized payment. The Seller Protection Policy does not cover Claims for Significantly Not as Described or for non-receipt of merchandise, or sales of intangible goods, services, or licenses for digital content.”  Clearly domains are intangible goods and therefor not covered by the PayPal Buyer protection policy.  Nevertheless buyers in some countries may be able to do a credit card chargeback if their PayPal payment was funded by a credit card. 

Here’s a few tips for protecting yourself:

- know your buyer.  If you are dealing in an domain name forum like NamePro’s or anther forum where there is a buyer feedback – look at the feedback and if you don’t feel right about a transaction its ok to pass. 

- require that payment be from the seller’s cash balance.  Your buyer can’t do a credit card chargeback if he doesn’t use a credit card.  Also saves on fees if your money is paid to a personal account. 

- For higher dollar amount Escrow.com is a good alternative.  But their $25 minimum fee makes it too expensive for smaller dollar transactions.  One platform I’ve used for smaller amounts is TDNam.  Cost is only $5 for transactions under $100 and I’ve been told by TDNam that if you delivery the domain they absorb the risk of chargebacks.  Of course both buyer and seller have to both be members of TDNam which is $4.99/year. 

My personal experience with PayPal has been good.  I’ve done hundreds of transactions and have not yet had a chargeback. 

GoDaddy Registration Deals

If you own a lot of domains paying the cheapest domain name registration fees is important to your profitability as a domainer.  This is particularly the case after Verisign raised its wholesale price for domains to $6.42 – a price increase most registrars have passed on to their customers. 

A couple of deals out there.  GoDaddy offers a Discount Domain Club.  Sample rates:

• .com – $6.85/year (plus $.20 ICANN charge)
• .net – $6.99/year (plus $.20 ICANN charge)
• .us – $6.99/year

Similar discounts apply to other domain extensions. In addition if you pay from a cash balance deposited with GoDaddy the rate is reduced by an additional 2%.  Cost of the club is $89.99/year.  If you are active domainer registering multiple domain names its an option that will save you money.  Note the discount rate applies to new registrations, renewals, transfers from other registrars and the registration fee portion of TDNam expired name auctions.

Another GoDaddy promotion is their registration rate for transfer from registrars. The rate continues to be $6.99 plus $.20 ICANN fee. A great deal and no membership required!

10 Tips for Protecting your Domain Name Investments

How would feel about losing a domain name worth $44,000?  Someone held the domain name Fleming.com and let the domain expire.  The domain name went for auction at SnapNames and was sold for $44,261.  The previous owner’s share of this beauty?  Zero, zippo, nadda.  The proceeds were entirely split between SnapNames and the former registar.  This little drama occurs hundreds of times every day causing domain owners to collectively lose millions of dollars. 

A different type of loss occurs when an account is hyjacked – somehow, someone discovers an account password gets into your account and steals your names.  This article consists of 10 tips for guarding your domain name investment. 

1. Use a password for each registrar account which is unique to each account, kept secure and impossible for someone else to guess – passwords like ‘pass’ are definitely a bad idea.
2. If you own a name make sure the whois lists you as the domain owner. Whois should not list an employee, web developer or web host. And there is no reason for you to share your password or allow someone else to log in to domain registration account. There have been cases where employees, developers and web hosts have decided to keep an employer’s or client’s domain name – don’t be a victim.
3. Make sure your domains are locked. Each domain registrar has slightly different procedures for accomplishing this but if the domain is locked it means that transfer requests to a different request are automatically rejected until you unlock the domain.
4. Keep your contact information up-to-date including a working e-mail address that you check regularly. This will enable you to receive renewal notices and any notifications from your registrar about activity in your account. ICANN rules require you to maintain up-to-date contact information on your domains.
5. Don’t use free e-mail address. Free e-mail addresses may expire if you don’t log on for a period. This will enable a potential hyjacker to take over your e-mail address.
6. Maintain records of your domains and their expiry dates so you are not dependent on receiving an expiry notice from your registrar.
7. Consolidate your domain names at a single registrar. This limits the number of accounts that have to monitor. 
8. Beware of ‘phishing’ scams.  Make sure that e-mails – are really from your registar – and not an attempt to defraud you.  One sure fire tip – your registrar will never e-mail you asking you for your log-in name and password.  When in doubt about an e-mail call the registrar’s Tech Support or log in to your account using a known web link.  Don’t depend on a link in an e-mail which could be fraudulent.
9. Avoid trademarked domains. If your name contains Microsoft, Mastercard or any trademarked word you are inviting legal action that will result in you losing your domain name.
10. Consider how your domain name will be sold should you die or become unable to maintain your domain names. Without a plan in place your domain name will expire and will be taken from you and auctioned off to the highest bidder.

4 Letter .com’s Buyout!

Dyyo.com shows a list of only 265 domains remaining.  People have continued to buy domains since the last update.  I checked a few of the domains and most are now registered.  We are likely to see a full buy-out of 4 letter .com’s in the next update.  Good news for all of us that have been investing in 4 letter .com domains. 

Of course there is always tasting going on in the 4 character market and drops of tasted domains may mean the buy-out does not last the first time around.  But the trend toward a buy-out has been going on for a long time here and it will hold if not today – very soon. 

There’s been a lot of speculation about an increase in prices once the buy-out occurs.  It will be interesting to see.  It partly depends on who did the buy-out.  If its predominately long term investors who are not willing to sell until the right offer comes along then prices will move up a notch.   If its short-term investors trying to do a quick flip we may see some cheap domains very quickly – as these domains appear in places like EBay. 

For my part I was not involved in the buy-out.  The list of remaining domains over the last month has consisted of very low quality letter combinations.  All of these domains have been tasted for traffic multiple times so you know there is not sufficient parking income to pay for registration fee.