I was browsing the “recently sold” section on Afternic.com and they have been pushing out some nice five figure domain name sales lately! Domains always seem to amaze me, because one person can look at a domain sale and be like… wow, that was a nice sale, or I wouldn’t pay that much for “that” domain!

Here are just the “reported” five figure sales via Afternic for about the past two weeks.

BargainEnergy.com $13,250 (interesting sale and not a “bargain” for the buyer! I have owned a lot of “bargain” type domains and never had any luck with them)

DermatologyAssociates.com $12,500 (the price paid for having a lot of companies with the “same name” and being the only one to own the .com! There is a Dermatology Associates right down the road from me and they use the crappy domain DermWisconsin.com)

AutoInsuranceGuide.com $15,000 (insurance is a ripoff unless you need it. Insurance domains can be odd, so seeing “this” domain sell for $15K doesn’t overly surprise me, but I know I have never looked for or thought of looking for an auto insurance guide! I call an insurance agent.)

iwcm.com $14,500 (just a random 4 character domain name to me and one you could see on a domain forum passing around $20 bills for it. I own and have owned a lot of 4 letter domains and never struck a sale like this for one.)

TruckGear.com $17,750 (Boys spend big bucks on toys for trucks, but will they spend it on TruckGear.com? Not the best domain in the world to drop nearly $20K on IMO! Since trucks have gears in the rear end and I’m sure other places, the domain could be confusing depending on what the new owners will be using it for. I assume it will be truck accessories.)

KnowYourLegalRights.com $17,500 (simply wow! Deep pocket buyer (likely a lawyer) and a domain seller that wasn’t afraid to ask for five figure price.)

Melvyn.com $26,000 (first name, so it comes down to… who wants it and is willing to pay for it! I’m sure there are several different ways to spell the name, just like my name!)

BadCreditBusinessLoan.com $11,000 (likely a high paying keyword, not saying that the big G might not like the traffic going to it and simply ban it! They seem to like doing that to domains with high paying keywords but I’m sure there is some money in the bad credit business. There are a lot of “lease to own” businesses and these companies feed off these type of people, so I’m sure the same goes for those looking to start a business and they have bad credit but need some money!

Roya.com $22,000 (again, likely a random 4 letter domain… some may say CVCV, some may say it’s a first name etc. 4 letter domains can and do sell for five figures and this proves it once again.)

TheCompany.com $37,500 (it is priceless to be “The Man”, so it should be priceless to be “The Company”! Pretty cool domain and if you are THE Company, TheCompany.com makes perfect sense and it must have at nearly $40 Grand!

That was my take on about the past 10 days of reported Afternic five figure domain sales. I’m sure there were plenty more that went unreported. Maybe you agree with “my take” on sales or maybe you don’t but thanks for reading either way and feel free to comment if you would like.

Back in late January 2013 some rumors swirled that Dr. Oz would be releasing a magazine and was 90% close to inking a deal with Hearst Communications as reported by the NYPost.com …. well, Hearst Communications just registered several domain names that nearly seal the deal with the magazine deal!

Hearst Communications has registered the following domain names on June 5, 2013 according to whois records:

• DoctorOzMag.com
• Dr-OzMag.com
• DrOzMag.com
• TheDrOzMag.com
• TheDr-OzMag.com
• TheDoctorOzMag.com
• TheOzMag.com

None of the domain name resolve to anything at the time of this article, but I would expect to hear some kind of “official release” of the magazine shortly. These type of domain name registration discoveries often lead to an official launch shortly after they are created. Since the NY Post article stated that something would likely be announced in the second half of 2013, it appears to be right on time.

One thing to note, clearly there are A LOT of different combinations of how the magazine could be officially named, aka… and likely “Dr. Oz” but I found it pretty interesting that Hearst would only register the abbreviation of the term “Magazine” and has not registered (that I have seen or found) any with the full term. This could likely change, but I found it interesting.

Thank you for reading a DotWeekly Discoveries and I hope to be doing a lot more of these again, as I always enjoyed finding these stories and sharing them.

I have been parking domain names with SmartName.com for many years. It was never the best, but I did like several things they offered and that is why I used the service. What I liked the most was the way they displayed “for sale” messages ontop of the landing pages for domains you wished to offer for sale. It was custom and you really could put any text and link that text as you wished. I also liked the kickback you would get if you parked with SmartName and sold your domain via Afternic. Well…

Late last night, I got an email totally out of the blue that they were closing my account?

“Dear Jamie Zoch,

Due to continued low traffic quality and anomalous metrics your account has been disabled. Any earnings accrued have been suspended. Should you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Regards,

The SmartName Team

support@smartname.com”

No warning, just BAM! Disabled? I say closed because I can’t even login to see how much of my money they are keeping! No time to change DNS ahead of this closure?

This is all ok with me, because SmartName.com is running a business and if they wish not to serve me, they do not have to. I’m ok with that!

Two things upset me about this.

A.) “Any earnings accrued have been suspended” What? I have NEVER played any of the BS “click on links game” so lets get that out in the open first! What was earned last month (around $70 I think), even if in the opinion of SmartName that the traffic was “low quality” is strongly, IMO my money! What isn’t paid, is stealing. Bad business! They offer a service, I used it, they report the daily earnings, they display the daily earnings, they total up the daily earnings etc. They have never displayed the earnings of “high quality traffic” and “low quality traffic”? They just display earnings!

The normal payout date came and went with nothing taking place (5/15/2013) would have been a normal payout date, so I thought something was a little odd that I didn’t get my money from last months earnings…. so they close my account on 5/21/2013 and just decide to keep my money from 4/15/2013 to 5/21/2013?

B.) Zero warning! I used the service for more than parking, so all my for sale messages on the top of the parking landing pages are gone. This hurts my business, as interested parties are no longer aware the domain may be for sale (until I have time to change services and the system in place to make them aware the domain may be for sale).

Again, SmartName has every right not to do business with me if they choose, even though I have been a customer for years, I’m 100% fine with that. Keeping my money, I’m not fine with that!

If you use SmartName or any NameMedia company, I wanted to make sure you were aware of my story with there service and what happened.

Update: After writing this article I was contacted via email by two SmartName reps and after talking on the phone with Bob Mountain, the issue has been resolved. I expressed my displeasure about the lack of personal contact, which I would expect after being a customer for so many years and instead of the company taking the easy route and simply closing my account, they should have contacted me personally. There was one domain that I have owned for many years (that gets typo traffic because it is a generic term and it is singular and a company uses the plural) that there system recently flag as getting “questionable” traffic that there feed provider wasn’t happy with.