This news is just over a month old but is new to me.  Talking to a few of my domainer friends this morning they hadn’t heard of this news either.

Shawn Hogan of Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning of Kessler’s Flying Circus and Brian Dunning of Thunderwood Holdings are being accused of defrauding eBay in a cookie stuffing scheme that made it appear the defendants should be paid commissions.  eBay claims the defendants created a software program that redirects a user’s computer to eBay’s website without the user knowingly clicking on an eBay link.  Once the cookie is stuffed on the user’s computer any future purchases would award the defendants an affiliate commission.

To read the full story visit CourtHouseNews.com and click here to view a copy of the law suit.

On a personal note I will rarely be using Digital Point Forums.  The only use for me is access to some good designers at very reasonable prices.

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Bankrate, Inc. has purchased Bankaholic.com for $12.4 million with up to an additional $2.5 million earn-out payment available if the blog reaches certain performance points in the next 12 months.

The seller, John Wu has been blogging about the banking industry on Bankaholic.com since July of 2006.  He started the blog at only 20 years old, he is now about to turn 23 in November.  This is one heck of a birthday present.

Here is the link to an interview with John on WebProNews.com.

From what I read in the interview John Wu will stay on with Bankrate to help with the blog.  I’m thinking he wants to make sure to get that extra incentive of $2.5 million.

With everything that is going on with the banking industry I personally think this is a great purchase by Bankrate.  Bankaholic.com has tons of banking traffic and has become a very trusted site for information and advice.

Hmmm just a hunch but I am thinking that domainers are going to see what else they can register with “aholic” at the end of it.

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SmashFactory.com, Bidjit.com and Escrow.com are teaming up to hold a 3 day online domain name auction in which part of the proceeds will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation. This auction is a wonderful way for domainers to be able to “give back“. There is a 15% auction fee, of that auction fee 10% will be directly submitted to the Make-A-Wish Foundation by Escrow.com. The remaining 5% will cover any auction and escrow fees.

If you wish to sell a domain name it must be submitted to SmashFactory.com before September 15th.

Our parent company DomainSubway.com will not only be submitting a few domain names for auction but will definitely be buying a few as well.

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This just posted on Conceptualist.com which is the blog of Shara Sarid, owner of Bido.com.

“We gave it another shot today but still had major tech issues. We believe the right thing to do now is to spend time figuring out the issues and come back when we are ready. It may be few days, weeks, months, none of us really knows.”

I think this is a great approach from the Bido team. They have created an amazing auction site but now need to catch up to it’s traffic. This is just a small step back, but as the saying goes “one step back, two steps forward”. I am sure Bido will be back in no time, stronger than before.

After writing this post I went to Bido.com again, it seems that even though the site was down they are reporting the sale of FixedLoans.com for $5,281. If this is true that means the seller lost money. As reported in a previous blog post the domain was purchased at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C auction for $10,000.

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Bido.com went down today in the middle of an auction.

Is it Rick Latona’s fault? Some would wonder, follow me for a minute. Rick purchased FixedLoans.com in 2004 for $1,000. He then sold the domain name at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C event in 2006 for $10,000. Here we are now two years later and the new owner of FixedLoans.com has decided to sell with Bido.com. With all the excitement over a premium domain there was an abundant amount of traffic coming through on Bido.com’s servers.

So I ask again, is it Rick Latona’s fault? Think of this, what would have happened if Rick did not sell the domain at auction two years ago. I will let you determine the answer.

Either way no worries! From what I read the auction will be restarted tomorrow at 1pm. I for one will be there to see what happens. I was bidding for the first few minutes, then it went above what I was willing to spend.

PS…Along with the sale of FixedLoans.com, Bido implemented a new chat feature, which I’m sure aided in overloading their servers. Hmmm is this the cover-up story so Rick doesn’t get blamed. Of course I’m kidding about Rick. He is an amazing domainer and has done a lot for our industry. Check out his website, RickLatona.com and then Bido.com at 1pm tomorrow for the auction.

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