As reported earlier on several domaining blogs, Sex.com is heading to foreclosure auction on March 18th. One quick note, in order to bid you must be prepared to put down a $1 million deposit. For more details visit the auctioneers auction page.

So the question is…

How much do you think the domain name Sex.com will sell for? My opinion, $8 million. Visit DomainShane.com to cast your vote, he already setup a poll.

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Is Modern Domainer Magazine closing shop? I just sent an email to the company to find out. What I can tell you is that ModernDomainer.com, the magazine’s domain name expired on February 4th.

Domainers…I wouldn’t waste your time placing a back order on this domain name. I am 100% sure they will renew. Whether or not they will use it is what we we’ll find out.

I hope this is not the end of Modern Domainer, I truly enjoy the magazine.

When a domain name expires the registrar, in this case DirectNIC, removes the website and parks it.

Thank you to my Twitter friend John @BuySellDomains for pointing out the expired domain name.

UPDATE – Domain has been renewed and the website is back up again.

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To start off the day Domaining.com had at least five new blog feeds that I could see, Mashable, TechCrunch, Engadget, BusinessInsider and ReadWriteWeb. These five websites took over 95% of the showing feeds. They have professional writers that write several times per day. Out of 20 feeds on the first page of Domaining.com, I’d say 16 of them were non-domain related feeds.

Myself, along with several industry members sent an email to the owner, Francois, urging him to take down these feeds. His initial response, in a nutshell, was that he is doing this because after 2+ years he still has not covered his monthly expenses with advertisers or sponsored headlines. His goal was to reach out to webmasters of the world and pull them into the domain sphere. This is just a summary because I do not believe in sharing private emails. I think it is great that he wants to increase domain awareness, but this was not the route to go.

It seems that after enough complaints those feeds have been removed. Smart move!

Now…I have never, not one single time posted anything negative about Domaining.com, until today. I feel a line has been crossed with this new donation button. As you can see below, the donation button says that our industry leaders have no money and to donate money in order to help maintain his website. This from the man that values Domaining.com at $3,000,000, he shouldn’t need the money. If Domaining.com is a business that is not producing revenue, I hate to say this, but either take it down, create a new business model or seek consultation.

I have to say this is the worst message to send to the domain community and potential advertisers. Who the heck would advertise after seeing a message like this? I personally emailed Francois last year offering my assistance to sell advertising, something I have a knack for. Not once was he receptive to the idea. Instead, what he does is sends a message to potential advertisers that they must advertise with Domaining.com to support the domain community. I’m sorry to say this but Domaining.com is not the community, the people that make up our industry are.

This is not a personal attack towards Francois. Not only have I had some very nice email conversations with him, but I do believe most of his efforts benefit our industry. Unfortunately, this is an action that does not.

UPDATE – Since this post Francois has removed both the donate banner and non-domain related news feeds from Domaining.com. Good job Francois!

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I recently had the opportunity to interview Jeff Kupietzky, CEO of Oversee.net and wanted to share a portion of that interview. Below are five questions that to this point have not been answered about the SnapNames auction fraud. Tomorrow I will post the full interview with ten additional questions.

Q. When did Oversee learn about bidding by an employee?
A. October 2009

Q. How did Oversee learn that an employee had been bidding?
A. As part of our ongoing efforts to improve internal controls, our finance group noticed un-authorized refunds which led to an internal inquiry and then an external inquiry that surfaced the issues.

Q. Did anyone ever investigate bidder “halvarez” after so many complaints over the years?
A. Yes.  Unfortunately, the person responsible for investigating was the employee who was perpetrating the fraud and skillfully concealed his conduct.

Q. Did Oversee executives ever try to speak to or meet with “halvarez” who accounted for a % of SnapNames revenue?
A. Yes, but as mentioned above, management unfortunately relied on the representations of the employee.  In hindsight, that obviously was a mistake.  As you know, in our industry there are many individuals who place great value on their privacy.  As such, it was not unusual to have a large bidder who didn’t want to meet.

Q. What measures are in place to ensure insider bidding doesn’t happen again?
A. Apart from continuing to rely on the advice of experts who we are consulting on best practices here, which remains on ongoing process, the company has implemented closer monitoring of bidding activity for suspect behavior; more specific and restrictive domain name ownership policies for employees; and enhanced controls over financial transactions.

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Another casual video this week. I was going to have Tia help me, but she couldn’t make it at the last minute. So, as incentive to watch this week’s video I’m giving away 10 Bido.com accelerator credits. Watch the video for entry details.

Links:

New Site To Sell Your Domains Launches – BestDomainsWebsite.com by TheDomains.com
DomainState.com Up For Sale And Going To Auction by ChefPatrick.com
Submit Your Domain Names For Domainer Mardi Gras Auction by ChefPatrick.com
NameBio.com Sold by DotWeekly.com
Michael Berkens Accepts SnapNames Settlement by TheDomains.com
ExpressBacklinks.com Link Package Giveaway by ChefPatrick.com
Bruce Marler Live Interview On DomainSuccess.com January 13th by BruceMarler.com
Guest Post By The Purchaser Of CookingGames.com $350,000 by DirectNavigation.com

Update – Bido accelerator credits have been awarded to Cole.

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