Daily Snippets – 2 March

Apologies for no post yesterday, but I have been having the mother of all email and computer problems recently. At first I thought this might have to do with my migration to Crucial, but it wasn’t.

Good old Microsoft and Office 365 seemed to be the cause when they did their latest round of updates. The problem started with me receiving quadruple emails on some accounts – when we tried to fix this, my Office 365 installation became corrupted. Lost all my emails, Word and Excel files. Cutting a long story short, still got some problems, but thank goodness for backups!

Here is a roundup of some snippets that I hope you find interesting.

How Not To Sell A Domain Name!

Just read a great story in Andrew Allemann’s Domain Name Wire. This is about someone who bought the domain name Halifax.com for $US175,000, and then immediately tried to flog it to The Bank of Scotland (which operates a financial services company called Halifax).

Needless to say, they came unstuck in a very big way – and lost the domain in a UDRP. One of the three panelists was from Australia – The Hon Neil Brown Q.C.

As Andrew summarised:

“It should be viewed as a lesson on what not to do with a domain name that has both a generic/geo value as well as that of a brand”.

His advice is particularly relevant in Australia given that we have some fairly stringent rules in place about this type of activity.

As a side note, I read with interest the comments of John Berryhill (famed Intellectual Property Attorney) about the respondent’s choice of legal representation (UDRP POLICE):

“What sort of law firm does not list the name of any lawyer on their website?”

I’m not giving them a link here – just Google the name if you want to look them up.

What’s Happening On The Drops

Monday had some reasonable activity – and it was good to see that both Domain Shield and Drop actually picked up a few of the top domains. Camrev.com.au and TheMessenger.com.au were won by DS (losing bids on Netfleet were $400 +/+ and $248 +/+ respectively). CairnsNursingAgency.com.au was won by Drop for $201 +/+ (the losing bid on NF was $200 +/+).

In total, there were 17 contested domains on Netfleet – they won 12 / lost 5 (including 3 of the top 4).

Tuesday had a similar storyline. Of the top 6 domains contested on Netfleet, Domain Shield won 3 and Drop won 1. DS won wms.com.au at a probable bid of $400 inclusive; and good old Drop won me melbourneweddings.com.au for $1 +/+. 🙂 (Losing bids on Netfleet were $476 +/+ and $359 +/+ respectively). My bid on “melbourneweddings” on NF was only $68 – so someone else wanted it keenly.

In summary, there were 19 contested domains on Netfleet – they won 15 / lost 4 (including 4 of the top 6).

Website Of The Day

This has got to go to Honcho.com.au.

I’m especially excited about this one as it was a domain of mine that I sold to a wonderful Australian entrepreneur by the name of Matthew Abrahams. This guy has a string of successful online enterprises – and Honcho looks like it is going to be another winner. Particularly when the ANZ have just partnered with you!

So what does Honcho do? They are basically a one stop shop for starting and running a new business in Australia. The tools on their website are simply awesome – check out the things you can do.

• One simple form to get an ABN, Business Name and domain.

• Free business webpage.

• Ability to send invoices.

• Save important documents in their “vault”.

• And much more …

I wish Matthew great success. 🙂

Motivational Quote Of The Day

“Every problem has in it the seeds of its own solution. If you don’t have any problems, you don’t get any seeds.”

Norman Vincent Peale

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If you have any comments on any of the above, I’d love to hear them.

Best wishes for your online success. 🙂