Domain Name ExposeExposing Domains & Domainers

I thought this would be an interesting question to see what you might be interested in learning more about. There are numerous resources and tools available that make domaining more accessible to those just getting started and experienced domainers alike.

I am almost positive that “Selling domains to end-users” is the obvious answer to this poll question. End user sales is the most profitable and difficult task a domainer faces. So, I have excluded that response to get a more realistic view of interests. Here are your options…

Building a Domain Portfolio Website

In a previous poll on DotSauce, I found that 37% of respondents had created a custom domain portfolio website. With open source software like WordPress, it’s fairly simple for the average person to create a nice looking web presence.

It pays to learn some of the more advanced features and find the right plugins that complement your site.

Marketing Domains for Sale

I’ve written about selling domain names a few times. It’s always a popular subject as one might guess! Have you embraced new tools, avenues and resources for selling domains in 2010?

Creating an Email Newsletter

Some of the biggest brokers in the world rely on their email newsletters to bring in the sales. Have you considered creating one? There are lots of options in this space, some paid, some free. There’s also the question of just how to get people to subscribe and buy.

Valuating / Appraising Domains

This is a definite skill that can’t be learned over night, but with each sale and purchase you make or hear about experience is gained. Learning from industry experts and keeping a close eye on the aftermarket is a good place to start.

Automated appraisals are a popular topic right now, but are they really useful for valuating a domain for sale?

Researching Domains to Purchase

There are many great tools and techniques for researching expiring domains and domains on other marketplaces and drop houses. Sometimes it can be a bit overwhelming.

Negotiating Domain Sales

This can be a difficult task as each domain sale is unique. Many have shared sales letters, email correspondence, tips and tricks on asking prices, making offers and bartering. What really works?

Please select an option below and click “Vote!” Thank you!

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

Subscribe to DotSauce to be updated on future articles and resources related to the topics you’ve just read about. And be sure to come back soon to view the results of this poll!

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

Poll: What is the most difficult challenge you face as a domainer?

I’ve recently dived back into some domain research after much too long of a break and have chosen a select 42 quality .COM domain names that have recently expired and become available to register.

Here’s your chance to get into the domain game!

Yes, the domain names listed below can be claimed at any registrar for cheap and can be resold at a later date, kept as an investment or developed into a website destination, further increasing their value.

Use this link to GoDaddy.com to register domains for just $10.

If you’re an experienced domainer, you will certainly see the potential in many of these domains.

I have not been able to keep up with regular updates to the previously advertised available domains newsletter over the past few months.  So, I apologize to those who were expecting them. Hopefully things will pick up and I will be able to publish more lists like this soon.

Make A Donation

If you feel inclined to give back, here is a way to make a donation through PayPal for my time spent researching these domains.

Thank you in advance for your consideration. Enjoy your new domains!

42 Expired Domain Names Available to Register

Please show due respect to other readers by not bulk registering. I also ask that you do not republish this list on any other website. Thank you!

1. VitaminFeed.com – Taken
2. VideoIraq.com – Taken
3. AuctionReserves.com – Taken
4. PriceApparel.com – Taken
5. WatchFish.com – Taken
6. ExpressPresents.com – Taken
7. SkilletMeal.com – Taken
8. TrendyBrand.com – Taken
9. TrialCasino.com – Taken
10. RobotShirts.com – Taken
11. LocalMarathon.com – Taken
12. LuxuriousBathrobes.com – Taken
13. HomebuiltComputer.com – Taken
14. GamesAnimation.com – Taken
15. DancerBoots.com – Taken
16. StartingPiano.com – Taken
17. SkateMags.com
18. TranslationGadget.com – Taken
19. NotebookGadget.com – Taken
20. PictureGadget.com – Taken
21. VoIPFeatures.com – Taken
22. PowerfulForms.com – Taken
23. DevelopedMobile.com
24. NetworkingJunkie.com – Taken
25. PlasticFabrics.com
26. SimpleSold.com – Taken
27. LoansQuestion.com – Taken
28. SkydivingJump.com – Taken
29. WatermarkPicture.com – Taken
30. AlbuquerqueLimousines.com
31. HoustonNewsletter.com
32. ProcessorWars.com – Taken
33. StrawberrySweets.com
34. RetailorsReport.com – Taken
35. ArticleRanking.com – Taken
36. AutismDisability.com – Taken
37. CollectibleBaseball.com – Taken
38. BookmarkStart.com – Taken
39. TouchFlash.com
40. WeeklyClearance.com – Taken
41. PopularTicket.com – Taken

As always… any comments, questions or suggestions are welcome!

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

42 Handpicked Expired Domains Available for Registration

Everybody loves a good freebie! I’ve rounded up some of my favorite places to find quality graphics, code and other useful tools and services here. Dive in and get your download fix.

1. Delicious.com Tag: free

If you’ve been using Delicious bookmark service for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed the community is a bunch of geeks! This makes for some fresh design, software and web service freebies almost daily.

2. DevSnippets Free Code & More

Packed with great resource articles and lots of juicy code snippets for bloggers and developers of all experience levels.

3. WebDesignLedger Freebies

WDL provides extensive resource articles, graphic freebies and design goodies.

4. Smashing Magazine Freebies

A crowd favorite for great freebies ranging from WordPress themes, Icons, Wallpapers and more.

5. BittBox Freebies

This great blog has been offering up free graphics for quite awhile and has amassed one of the largest collections of design freebies ever! Textures, fonts, vectors and more.

6. Envato Network Blogs

Oh, how I love ThemeForest and the rest of the Envato marketplaces. They generously offer up one file from each marketplace each month, so stay tuned for January free files coming soon!

7. Noupe Design Freebies

Yet another awesome blog featuring regularly updated graphic design freebies.

8. Tutorial9 Freebies & Resources

Top quality design resources, tutorials and icon sets and some code to boot! You’ll need to subscribe to the newsletter for some exclusive downloads.

9. SEOMoz Free SEO Tools

Some of the most innovative and advanced search optimization tools available are found right here. Alot of SEOMoz tools are free to try and can provide some juicy data on your website.

10. BoagWorld: Free Software for Web Designers

Fresh article points out some quality free alternatives to pricey software designers need.

11. TUTS Plus Free Tutorials

TUTS+ is the leader in quality tutorials for web professionals. They have a huge archive of coding, design, audio, flash, and web development tutorials. I’m a member myself (well worth the $9/month) and love the source files and accompanying video tutorials.

12. Lifehacker Tag: #free

This wildly popular blog often shares free software and resources to keep your PC in tip top shape.

Know of any more great places for web design or development freebies? Please share your favorites in the comments area below.

If you found these freebie locations helpful, definitely bookmark them and consider passing this article on to your network!

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

12 Great Places to Score Web Development and Design Freebies

This new link monetization company launched just days ago with venture capital backing from Google. VigLink aims to provide affiliate earnings to bloggers by automatically detecting outbound links that lead to retailers who provide commissions on sales.

A standard link to any one of thousands of retailers or individual products can be detected by VigLink and once clicked, affiliate tracking information is added dynamically. You earn the commission and VigLink takes a percentage for their wizardry.

GigaOM reports, “VigLink estimates that less than half of links that could be monetized are hooked up to affiliate programs.”

Publishers can request a free pre-sales report which analyzes outbound links and uses several estimates to determine potential earnings. In the example report above, popular blog Gizmodo could potentially earn $4,413 per month with VigLink.

On the Horizon – Affiliate Marketing to the Masses

VigLink’s CEO Oliver Roup has hinted that their open API can already be connected to social services.

I believe VigLink will be able to tap into massive social networks where people are sharing links to products constantly. The major hurdle will be making deals with the likes of Twitter and Facebook. If this doesn’t spark an online business boom, I don’t know what would.

I look forward to watching what happens as the company evolves and will likely be joining in myself as this may be a way to circumvent Amazon’s recent ban of North Carolina affiliates.

What are your thoughts? How did your pre-sales report turn out? Please leave a comment below.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

VigLink To Provide Seamless Affiliate Earnings to Bloggers and Beyond

Google want’s to end censorship of its Google.cn after some hack attempts were found on the e-mails of some Chinese human activists. With the possibility of leaving operations in China due to these reasons, they do in fact go back to their “Do no evil” motto, which I find refreshing, especially after us not getting any [...]

View the rest of Google to end China censorship after e-mail breach at Fka200.com

Just wanted to let everyone know that there are some Snapnames auctions that are ending soon which are from domain blogger Andrei from DomainingTips.com. There are some very eye-catching domains, and I ended up posting about it because I asked to very nicely. I normally don’t blog about individual auctions, but some domains might really be [...]

View the rest of Necklace.net, ArmChair.net, and more! Chance To Buy Some New Domains! at Fka200.com

A few days ago, I was in the middle of working on a presentation for an offline audience using the uber-cool Prezi web based software. I was very curious to test out the embed feature to see how it worked, so I placed the code within a post on my personal blog to take a peek.

Without my knowing (I had forgotten Twitter Tools was enabled), the link to my unfinished presentation was broadcast to Twitter. I found out about the mistake an hour or so later and was surprised to see the presentation had several retweets!

Thanks to those retweets I was inspired to clean up and expand the presentation for publication here on DotSauce!

Within the presentation below you will find a handful of key thoughts and observations I feel are pretty important for business success today. I hope you can follow these general guidelines to help propel your business into the growing social sphere.

You can select Fullscreen view if you prefer. Enjoy!

Did you find this presentation helpful? Consider passing it on to a friend!

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

Starting a Business in 2010

CNNIC has temporarily halted new .CN registrations starting January 6, 2010 while CNNIC refines their audit process. Previous message regarding .CN: Starting in December 2009, CNNIC, the CN central registry, is only allowing organizations and businesses to register .CN domains. They have also implemented an audit process, where each registrant is required to fill out a CNNIC audit [...]

View the rest of CNNIC Temporarily Halts New .CN Registrations at Fka200.com

Overseas Registrations for Chinese ccTLDs Suspended:

CNNIC has informed us that they have decided to temporarily suspend new registrations from overseas registrars  in order to implement a better methodology to verify registrant information from overseas registrations.  This suspension will began:

18:00 PM January 6, 2010 (Beijing time)
10:00 AM January 6, 2010 (GMT)
05:00 AM January 6, 2010 (EST)

Updates on Arabic and North African IDN ccTLDs:

The launch of registration for the Arabic domain .emarat (.امارات), the Arabic equivalent for the currently used domain name “.ae,” is expected in the Q2 2010.  Keep up with our blog and newsletter to find out when it is available.

Egypt is currently on the list of registries for the ccTLD fastrack for .masr (.مصر,) is the Arabic equivalent for .egypt.

Tunisia has also applied for a domain name, dubbed tounes.com (com.تونس) along with its .net. extension.  The country has also applied for the extension  (.med)  for Mediterranean internet users following the launch of the Union for the Mediterranean  (UPM).  More information is available here: http://www.tunisiaonlinenews.com/?p=29442

.ORG IDN:

Registrations of the Chinese IDN ccTLDs will be available on a first-come, first-served basis beginning on 23 January 2010 at 19:00 UTC

There’s always a lot of controversy when it comes to China and the internet (‘Great Firewall’). We all know that the big boys like Google and Bing (November 20, 2009 Bing.com statement regarding Chinese searches) need to adapt to censorship laws in some countries such as China, but that doesn’t mean the average-Joe in China [...]

View the rest of More Censorship in China – Making It Harder For Domainers To Reach The Chinese Population at Fka200.com

Usabilla, a usability testing startup, launched earlier this month and congratulations are in order, as they have already been featured on Mashable.

While there are many popular and effective services for getting feedback about your website or application, Usabilla is bringing powerful tools like heat mapping data display and an innovative test interface to the masses.

As expected, the Usabilla member dashboard is extremely easy to use and building a usability test for your webpage is done in minutes.

Here is a quick video introduction showing Usabilla in action.

Usabilla works by displaying an image of your webpage to a participant who is asked to perform a task or answer a question about the page they are viewing.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to ask your website visitors questions like these?

• What things draw your attention the most?
• Which images are most appealing?
• What elements of the page do you like?
• What things would you remove from the page?
• What things need improvement?
• Where do you click to purchase?
• Where do you click for contact info?
• Where would you click next?

Now you can get valuable feedback from these questions and more.  Participants respond to tasks by tagging or clicking areas of the page and can additionally leave comments.

Once all of the data is collected, you can analyze a test through various methods including a visual heat map (shown below), or you can select a specific element of a page to view corresponding results.

You can use Usabilla on up to 5 pages and share the test with up to 25 participants for free. For those with the need to reach more participants and test more pages, there are Usabilla plans from $50 a year.

While reviewing Usabilla, I did notice that flash objects do not show up in their generated screenshots, so you may want to look into uploading a pixel perfect screenshot of your own to get the best test results. I recommend FireShot for Firefox, it can capture an entire page beyond the page fold.

I would love to hear if you give Usabilla a try and how the results work out for you. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

New Usability Tool Provides Valuable Feedback for Website Owners

I have been enthusiastically beta testing the Wibiya toolbar here on DotSauce for several months.  I’m happy to inform you that registration is now open to any blogger interested in having their own Wibiya toolbar.

The red toolbar you’re seeing at the bottom of the screen now, that’s Wibiya in action. Now loading faster and featuring a handful of new “apps” that can be easily added through a slick user dashboard.

You may have noticed the subtle, yet effective notification messages when visiting DotSauce previously (shown right, currently disabled) which I think is one of the best features of Wibiya toolbar. It provides an unobtrusive way to notify visitors to take action.

Admin Dashboard Features

I could go on at length about the many neat features of Wibiya, but I will spare you the time and just list them here.

• Change color scheme
• Drag and drop interface to arrange each item on toolbar
• Dashboard statistics showing visitor usage
• Suite of add-on applications

On-site Buttons Interact with Toolbar

New “website badges” (which I haven’t tried yet, but look very promising) enable you to place code on your site which interacts with your Wibiya toolbar. So, for example, you could place a “Tweet This” badge which launches your Twitter dashboard.

Excellent Suite of Applications

Who doesn’t love apps? Hopefully more innovative and useful apps will be able to be created by third partys. Here is a quick list of the apps currently available for Wibiya.

• Site Search
• Google Translate
• Latest Posts
• Random Posts
• RSS Subscribe
• Post Sharing Tool
• Live Notifications
• Photo Gallery
• Twitter
• YouTube
• Facebook
• Navigation Links
• Live chat room
• Real time visitors display
• Scroll to Top
• Flash Games

All of those applications translate to alot of value for your website! Here is an older screenshot of my statistics (the stats display has since been enhanced), just to show you how Wibiya is working for me.

Wibiya Works

I believe Wibiya is doing a phenomenal job reducing bounce rates, increasing on-site and social interactivity between a blog / website owner and their audience.

Not only has Wibiya developed the right applications for the job, but they are executing the applications themselves very effectively, reaching out to other companies to bundle features, providing community support and continually innovating!

All that being said, I’m sure you can guess that I highly recommend it! Give Wibiya.com a try on your website as soon as you can.

This article is from DotSauce Magazine.

Wibiya Blog Toolbar Upgraded and Opened to Public

I’m bringing back an old post since I’ve received 3 e-mails in the last month or so regarding AdSense for Domains (Google’s own personal domain parking system) and how to get the settings to work with the registrar Dynadot. Dated exactly 1 year and 10 days ago: Setting Up AdSense For Domains With Dynadot – Google AdSense [...]

View the rest of AdSense Domain Parking (AdSense For Domains) and Dynadot Settings at Fka200.com

Well, here’s another GoDaddy coupon code! GoDaddy will allow you to register .info domain names for $0.49 EACH and that includes  free private who-is for a whole year. The catch? You have to have FIVE of these in your cart to see them at this price (not that bad of a catch though, eh?). If you [...]

View the rest of Another GoDaddy Coupon Code – .info domains with free private whois – $0.49 each at Fka200.com

A very cool infographic about “A day in the internet“. Some amazing statistics I figured a bunch of people will enjoy. Just goes to show how much we might underestimate the actual reach of the internet, right? It’s amazing to know that there is still a LOT more room for internet growth! (Click image if you need [...]

View the rest of A Day In The Internet at Fka200.com