This reduction comes from the permanent effort of the Latin American NICs to make the registration in the region more attractive. To enjoy this discount, visit nameaction and register your domain names.

Juan Enrique Sánchez S.
President
www.nameaction.com
Domains Latin América

· Pre-Registration
· Waiting Period
· Initial Period of Registration

Pre-Registration:
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Duration: May 1st 2009 to July 31st 2009.

The domain names already registered before May 1st 2009 will be blocked so that they are not able to be transferred or deleted during this period.

An accredited Registrar before NIC Mexico is needed (check list).

On this stage ONLY those who have registered a “Domain of Origin” can request a .MX domain.

“Domains of Origin” is any domain registered before March 1st 2009 under any of the following extensions: COM.MX, .NET.MX, .ORG.MX, .EDU.MX, or .GOB.MX.

The information of the .MX will be the same as the domain of origin.

Under .MX the exact domain name of “Domain of Origin” will be able to be requested.

If there are more than 1 request the domain .MX will be given to the one that has the seniority in “Domain of Origin”.

A domain name that is already registered can not be requested, when a domain name is reserved or when the “Domain of Origin” is in Transfer Process.

The domains name will be registered for 1 year.

The price will be US$35.

The information of the assigned domains can be checked at www.whois.mx.

Waiting Period:
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Duration: From the 1st to the 31st of August 2009.

No new request will be received only the pending requests will be processed.

The requests from the 1st stage can be checked at www.whois.mx.

In case you are not satisfied with how the domain name was assigned during this period you will have a chance to initiate a claim.

At the end of this period, the domains are were assigned under .MX will be activated.

Also at this time, the unblocking of transfers and deletion will be done for those registrations before March 1st 2009.

Initial Period of Registration:
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Duration: September 1st to October 31st 2009.

Any person interested will be able to request a domain.

The system “first come, first served” will apply.

The registration period will be for 1 year.

A special outline for prices will be used, escalated, starting with the highest price to be decreasing gradually.

The charge will apply immediately.

There will be reserved domains as for example domains related with ICANN, IANA, etc.

No domains with 1 or 2 characters will be allowed with exception of those that were registered before May 1st 2009.

Juan Enrique Sánchez S.
President
www.nameaction.com
Domains LatinAmérica

The new administrator will be in charge of promotions, management and technical operations for the domains .CO although the Ministry will have under its responsibility the definition of politics, control of the activities and the surveillance of domains .CO.

Second level domain will be approved, therefore directly under .CO, for example business.co. Also, it is said that the cost of the domains .CO could go down in an 80%.

After the selection of the administrator of domain.co, starts the approval from the responsible entity of the coordination of the worlds domain names system (ICANN) so that the politics approved by the Ministry of Communications come to effect.

Source:
http://www.mincomunicaciones.gov.co/mincom/src/index.jsp?page=./mods/contenido/noticia_user_view&id=1043

Juan Enrique Sánchez S.
Presidente
www.nameaction.com
Domains Latin América

As to the Landrush, there is no validation involved. Just type in your domain names and prepare your purse. The only restriction is that you have to register for a three-year period. Please use only ICANN accredited registrars to apply for your TEL domains. Proceed to the link for a full list of TEL registrars. Don’t even attempt to register with a company that is not on the list. Unfortunately, Godaddy is not one of the accredited registrars, however, you will find other reliable companies there. Some companies are claiming that their registration prices are the cheapest, the best, the lowest, “only” or whatever - one of them are EuroDNS charging $444 for a three year TEL registration. Well, all I can say is check the accreditation list before you register. For example, Easyspace from the UK charges $320 per 3 years and Australian Instra - $360.

The EU Domain Name has spent the crisis. Back in May 2008 it lost 100,000 of its registered names but during the rest of the year it has actually added hundreds of thousands to their “portfolio”. Now EU regitry stands at whopping 3,000,000 mark making it the 4th most popular domain name in Europe (after De, UK and Nl of Germany, Britain and Netherlands respectively) and the 9th worldwide. There was a moment when it seemed that European Domain name is doomed, however, it has shown the potential at last. It is expected that May 2009 will see another 100,000 or more domains dropped but it won’t affect EU position drastically.

Green industry is the shaker! In the early 90s, if somebody told you the environmental domain names would be the next big thing, you would laugh at the guy. Now it is true. Global warming and ecology, maybe a hype, but it is a very popular hype. Yahoo has listed the term “global warming” in the top 10 most popular keywords of 2008. Can you imagine that Global Warming is more popular than Miley Cyrus… LOL. Yesterday, the nice and simple SolarEnergy.com was sold for whopping $1.65 million. Solar Egergy is a multi-billion industry - that’s why it’s no wonder that the domain name has reached such a great price.

ME Goes to Hollywood. Several newly released premium ME domain names will find their new owners at the forthcoming Domainfest in Hollywood. feed.me, contact.me, alert.me, read.me and save.me are all expected to hit the $20,000 mark at least. And then there is a hefty $1,000 participation fee just to get to the auction. However, all the big domain figures will be there in Hollywood event running from 27 to 30 January 2009.

Sedo has released the Tops and Flops of 2008 in domain industry. Much of it is just a blah-blah but still it is a very good read. It is advertising domain parking but the truth (well, that’s my truth) is that domain parking will not make you dirty rich. Especially if you weren’t around in the 90s, when all the good domain names went. As you will see, the average domain name price sold on SEDO is just over $2,300. It tells you that it is possible to make money on domain names but it gets more and more difficult to make BIG money. It all depends on your ideas and the volume. Sell one domain name and you can buy some butter, sell 10, and it can provide you with a comfortable living.

There are several ways but the easiest probably is to go to www.hidemyass.com. It is a free pro*y and it does just what is says. It hides your ass. Just type google.com into it and go exploring. It confuses the system and you are given pure American PPC results even if you’re surfing from Asia.

Probably you can do a similar PPC marketing check using semrush and other tools but since google is limiting the bot access, the results are not accurate.

So, go on - regardless of the global crisis, USA still is the Eldorado of internet marketing and American visitors still convert like magick!

Both Alexa and Quantcast give you a wonderful possibility to download a table of the top 1 million most popular web-sites. Some time ago Alexa’s top was a paid service, now it is free.

Download Alexa Million here
and
Quantcast Million here.

Make sure you bookmark this page so that you could come back and download the updates.

Why are Quantcast and Alexa ranking different?

Because they are using different algorythms to gather traffic data. Quantcast’s data is more accurate because they have a line of code embedded in majority of their quanted web-sites while Alexa gathers data from users who have installed Alexa toolbar on their browsers. That means - if you are visited only by users who don’t have an Alexa toolbar, you won’t get any ranking at all. Yet, it is very interesting to look at both tops and compare the data.

What’s the point?

For me it is interesting from domain name appraisal point of view. I usually look at top 500,000 to 1 million results to see which domains rock and rule. It is no good basing domain name appraisal only on this factor alone though.

Newbies can grasp what topics and niches are popular at this very moment from these web-site lists.

I hope you will find these lists useful.

Through the request of “Transfer Blocking”, the owner of a domain name will be able to prevent the change of registrant is the registration, for which he/she will need to request an authorization code.

Likewise, through a request of unblocking, also the restriction can be taken out and allow a transfer. This can be done once the person requesting this shows proof of identity and without this the petition will not be admitted.

Juan Enrique Sánchez S.
President
NameAction.com
Domains Latinamerica.

He mentioned that the .SCO (or .SCOT) domain names would be a good choice not only for the people of Scotland but also for the Scots living abroad. Especially it would matter if ICANN approved the new TLD in 2009 - it is going to be the official Come Home Year for Scots.

The campaign for Scots own domain name was launched back in 2005. Initially it was proposed to use .SCO extension for the new TLD but as time passed many people felt that .SCOT would be more appropriate. If you consider the pronunciation of .SCO, it could really be confused for .CO; the recent proposition makes more sense. There is nothing wrong with 4-letter domain name extensions. The internet already has .INFO, .MOBI, .NAME and others. A public poll that was carried out as part of a research shown that 59% of respondents supported .SCOT while only 14% would prefer .SCO.

Now the Scottish domain name concept looks more and more real than before. The Scottish Government has already created a dedicated working group that deals with technical and administrative questions. dotSCO campaign is helping to prepare the necessary documentation to submit an application at the nearest ICANN meeting, possibly as early as March 01, 2009.

However there’s a catch. The site should be indexed in order to factor it into domain name appraisal. Unfortunately, majority of buy-as-investment domains have been parked or just left inactive. Here comes the sad bit.

If you buy a domain name that has been registered back in 1998 but has never been indexed by search engines, it is just like buying a fresh domain name. You will spend your first year in the sandbox!

The same goes with domains that had dropped long time ago. Google has kicked it from its index and forgotten about it. Even if Archive.org shows that it has some history on the domain, it doesn’t count in domain name appraisal.

I will say it again: parking is a bad idea, a BAAD idea!!! You feed your parking company and leave yourself in a very disadvantageous situation. Whereas if you built a micro-site for each of your domain name, you would earn more from ads and you would build age, credibility and price. Then when you decided to sell the site and ask for domain name appraisal, you would be given a much nicer estimate! Remember that parked domains almost never get indexed and don’t build the age factor. Micro-sites do! Besides you keep all your revenue!

Dropped Names - to Buy or Not

Definitely, don’t discount dropped domain names. Just learn to tell the good from the bad.

How to say if a dropped domain is any good:

• It has a genuine Google PageRank. Use SeoQuake toolbar to determine that. Explore Yahoo Linkdomain and compare the PR with the number and quality of backlinks. If you find a PR3 site with zero or only a couple of backlinks, it is a fake PR.
• Google has retained the domain and at least some sub-pages in its index. If the site has been kicked out of the index, domain age doesn’t count any more. You are buying just another fresh domain name that will spend the next year in the sandbox.
• Look it up on Archive.org. If it had looked like a normal business website, you should be OK. You are trying to find the shameful past of that domain name. Has it hosted *orn, junk or excessive links?

Not every domain will have its value increased with age. Don’t bother with parked domains, inactive domains and ones that have been banned or removed from Google index (unless it is a one-word, a keyword or any other unmissable brilliant kind of name). If you are doomed to spend a year in a sandbox, don’t spill a fortune on it, you might as well pick a fresh name for a reg fee.

Bottomline

So, is age a factor in domain name appraisal? Yes, yes and yes. An aged domain gives you PageRank, residual traffic and credibility, but… There is a but! A parked domain will usually give you no advantage over a fresh name even if it is 10 years old.