A year ago I started the project SafePush.com, for this project I also bought RegistrarPush.com

My idea was the following:
Most domainer sales are doing registrar pushes and making PayPal mass payments, it’s easy and fast. The only problem is the lack of safety.
So I decided to create a service to secure such transactions that domainers could use daily to secure their daily sales/purchases.
At this moment I was also working on another project for which security was an important factor.

So I don’t remember if it was searching a photo related to one or the other project when I found this photo:
http://ecop.com/banners/800×733.jpg

All the persons who saw the photo for the first time said the same: OUCH!
So I decided I absolutely wanted this photo for my site.
This way when people visit, they will not immediately forget the site.
The challenge was to find who was the owner and had the right on this artistic photo. After a deep search I found he was:
S. Demmitt, a photographer from Los Angeles. I contacted him to negotiate the rights to use it for my site.
The negotiation was friendly, and we quickly found a deal of mutual interest.

But I put the project on hold as I was busy with other projects.
As I wanted to give a name to my in house escrow service used in my vertical marketplaces. I found SafePush.com was too restrictive and I needed a better name to hold the service.
So I bought CloseSale.com and soon after, CloseDeal.com with the idea to also offer exchange escrow service.
But the project continued on hold as that is when I started to launch my auctions… so I was busy.

In September, I decided to launch an escrow for domain exchange because there was a serious lack in the domaining world to secure such transactions.
I purchased SwapDomains.com and decided to use the SWAT photo for the site design, I commented the idea to a friend who outlined that SWAT was a typo of SWAP, so I also registered SwatDomains.com to prevent cybersquatting.
But after a week I realized it was smarter to directly launch the full service that allowed escrow of complex domain transactions and not just a service to escrow exchanges.

So again, the problem about what domain to use.
I no longer liked CloseDeal.com as much as I liked it a few months ago.
There was 2 names I had some interest in: SafeDeal.com and MiniEscrow.com.
At that time I only wanted to escrow domain sales under $1K and refer Escrow.com for larger ones so the MiniEscrow.com made sense.

But I was unable to make a decision. Neither was appealing enough for me spend what each owner wanted.
Ideally I wanted to buy both and decide later but for that I needed to lower the price to minimize losses, MiniEscrow.com owner accepted further but it was too late.

As I wanted to accelerate the process. One morning I contacted Vern (he handles Frank Schilling’s domain sales) to propose my last offer for SafeDeal.com
But just an hour after, I got that “genius idea” that the photo was in fact a cop and iCOP or eCOP could be a great name for the project.
The first was used by an established alarm company and the second was for sale by a domainer so I send him an email and after a pair of offers/counter offers I got the name.
Not only did I have the perfect name for the photo but a name that outlines the “secure” spirit of the service.

The name is short, just 5 letters, and my experience is that people type-in your domain when short (we are all a little lazy).
The name is associated with a cop photo which helps to remember the domain name (the photo helps the name and the name helps the photo).
The name and photo help convey the idea that we SECURE domain transactions.
So I probably spent +5 times more buying the mockup domains but finally get one worth much more than what I totally spent.

I am now really happy with the domain name and design!
Even if the other day I should admit I found me contacting the owner of COP.com…

…

PS:
At a moment I considered DomainEscrow.com but I did not pursue on this one as by experience the owner use to ask a fortune for any name he owns and my motivation will probably not have matched his usual huge expectations.
I also purchased DomainEscrowService.com but I do not remember exactly when, more a way to secure the description of a service concept as it was never a real candidate (too long + look likes too much the name of my main competitor, which also leaded me to discard MiniEscrow.com even if at a moment I found it catchy).

Cax.com as you know can be considered as an aggregator of vertical marketplaces:
PremiumDomains.com, Catchy.com, BargainDomains.com, NumericDomains.com, TrafficDomains.com, LocationDomains.com, …

If you are a broker you can now also list your brokered domains and this way benefit of the targetted traffic each vertical receives to make more sales or maximize sale price.
From now, when you submit a domain at: http://www.cax.com/submit/
You will be able to specify if it’s a domain you own or a domain you have under brokerage.

Normal sales commissions are for owners (escrow fee is included):
Trader members: 10%
Domainer members: 9%
Premium members: 8%
If you are the broker then we will consider you sourced the domain and will reduce this sales commission of 2 points.
This simply means that you could list the domains you are brokering for a 6% sales commission only!
I am sure you are charging your clients much more, so you should still generate a nice profit.

As a reminder, Cax.com does not requires any exclusivity on listed domains.
They can be offered for sale through “make offer”, “fixed price” or “auction”.
You can add, edit and remove domains at your convenience.
Also, you can define if you want the sale public or no so your clients can benefit of total privacy if they want.

Last thing, if you like our sale page and:or portfolio technology you can take advantage of it through SalePage.com and DomainPortfolio.com
Basically it’s the possibility to manage your domain sales out of Cax.com for a 3% sales commission only.

…

The $10 we are asking to can sell/buy in the Cax.com marketplaces is working well at stop most of the crap.
But this week-end we had a case at BargainDomains.com where the seller sold behind the scene the name he auctioned in our marketplace.
While we cannot really say the guy is a scammer, he certainly did not act honnestly.
To prevent others members be abused by his bad practices he has been banned.

The positive side of this event is it put in light something that uses to happen each pair of months:
People who want to flip domains quickly contact everyone and list their name everywhere with the hope to make a fast sale.
The main problem is generally they have no ethic and will sell to the one who propose the biggest amount even if their name is in auction somewhere or worst, it has already been sold.

To try to reduce these cases we just shrinked to 7 days the minimum time one can list a name in the Cax.com marketplaces (PremiumDomains.com, BargainDomains.com, Catchy.com, …).
Plus the seller can now have his domains sent to 24H auctions, previously the minimum was 2 days.
I hope this will strongly refrain these bad practices.

In a side note, it’s now possible to list domains for the price you want, just have in mind domainers (our main audience) buy at reseller price:
http://www.cax.com/submit/

Have a good day and be serious!

..

Each one is a world, this is why we are launching a new newsletter that will be broadcasted each Sunday and that will compile all the top news of the week plus good domain deals.
This way the ones who want to be updated about the domain industry at a lower rythm and at no charge should find here the ideal solution.

For domaining addicts we are glad to offer with our “Trader” membership ($10 single time life) these advantages:
- Appraise at no charge up to 25 domains daily at Valuate.com
- Use the ClosingAuctions.com service for no longer miss a great domain deal again.
- Can have up to 10 domains listed at the same time in our Cax.com (Catchy.com, PremiumDomains.com, BargainDomains.com, …) marketplaces.
- Be allowed to place a bid or buy domains in our Cax.com marketplaces.
- Get a free DomainPortfolio.com web page to can present all your domains for sale under the same roof.
- Can continue receiving the Domaining.com daily newsletter.

Just go here to update your membership:
http://www.domaining.com/account/membership/

Thanks for your suppport and happy holidays!

Starting today it’s no longer a requirement to park your domains with Catchy.com for have them listed.

For the ones who want maximize sale speed or make some revenue thanks to our affiliate program it’s still possible to have your domain parked but the domain servers must be changed to:

64.27.57.220 – ns1.salepage.com
64.27.57.221 – ns2.salepage.com

At the end of January we will no longer support the old forwarding nor the old parking name servers so ensure your domains have the good ones (above).

Also, do not forget that more catchy names we can present to buyers, more sale chances each one will have.

Last point, for a fast sale think about not price your brandable short domains over $5K, the amount virtually anyone can spend for name a new company, product, service, … Only put a big price on the exceptional catchy names you may own.
You can edit your domain from your sale page (example: http://cax.com/loli.com), if you are logged you will find an “EDIT” menu in the left pane.

Happy holidays.

…

Many times in the past I wanted to trade domains with other domainers but unfortunatly I never found a trust third party who allow to secure domain exchanges.
I asked one time to an established registrar who also provide escrow services if they could play the third party for an exchange of premium domains and their response was they will charge me x% of the sum of appraisals, in other words many thousands dollars!!!

I think there is a real need of such escrow service, it’s a requirement to develop domain trading and maybe one day see next generation domain marketplaces that also support domain exchange.
We are happy to announce we are trying to fill this gap and should announce very soon our solution to secure domain exchanges.

If you have some interest on such service, some suggestions on how it should work, cost, … you are welcome.
Thanks to your feedback we may still improve what we are cooking.

…

This is the idea I had today when I was driving:

Allow sellers in the domaining.com’s marketplaces to decrease the reserve price of their domains that are in auction.

Remember that I allow a start bid under the reserve price and if the auction finish with the highest bid under the reserve price the domain does not sell except the seller declares the highest bid as sale price (we give him a maximum of 24H after the closing of the auction to decide).

Since this feature is up I noticed how some investors started to place bid in auctions under the reserve with the hope seller accept their lower bid.
And it’s what happen! When their lower bid is not a low ball offer this often generates a sale.

But there is no way for the seller to send a signal to the bidders like:
“Hey buyers, you are right! I just realize I asked too much in my reserve, but you are also not offering enough! If you meet me here then a sale may happen!”

And this is exactly the idea of this new change, allow sellers to decrease their reserve price to motivate bidders to bid just a little higher to generate a sale.
Today the buyer who placed a bid under reserve don’t know until the end of the auction if his bid will generate a sale or no.

So OK, let say this feature is already implemented, what should happen when the seller decrease the reserve price of a domain in auction?
We will send a mail to all the buyers having a bid placed in this auction informing them the reserve has been lowered.
Logical and fine, except some would like to abuse the system and lower their reserve just few dollars many times simply to have emails sent to bidders with the hope they remember their auction is running.
I cannot tolerate having buyers annoyed by multiples emails just saying the reserve is now $25 lower on domain where the current bid has a $3,000 reserve for example.
So the solution should be the same way they are minimum bidding increments I should setup minimum decreasing increments on reserve.

And the “Buy-It-Now” (BIN)?

Remember, the BIN is proposed while there is no bid over the reserve price creating some urgency to bid until reserve for the most motivated buyers.
Why not also allow to decrease it during an auction?
This way the seller could play with it in his sale strategy.
I don’t see why it should not be possible.

I welcome your comments on my ideas and if you think they should be an improvement or no.

What often happen is to create a safe marketplace you are obligated to put restrictive rules simply to avoid a minority without ethic to abuse of the system.

I am going to try to make abstraction of these people and focus on people of good will, serious and that want to make business.

No brokerage exclusivity

So starting today, none of the domaining.com vertical marketplaces will force you to accept any brokerage exclusivity for list your domains.
Basically this means that if your domain is listed at PremiumDomains.com for example then you can at the same time list your domain in others marketplaces or if you find yourself a buyer you may sell it without owe anything.
Now there is an exception on this, an exception that is logical but that I prefer to expose:
If your domain has been sent to auction (3 to 7 days) then during the auction we have the brokerage exclusivity.

Flexible listing time

This lead to the another point, the listing time: Here also there are changes that will make you the live better.
There is 2 ways to sell domains:

HOLDING:
Generally you are willing to wait a long time the best end-user offer.
PremiumDomains.com and Catchy.com are marketplaces for domains you want to hold.

FLIPPING:
It’s when you want to make money quickly and are willing for that to accept a lower benefice.
BargainDomains.com and Flipping.co are marketplaces for domains you want to flip.

So now when you will list a domain you could list it for a specified amount of time or until sold.
But keep in mind this is just a way to automatically manage your listings, at anytime you should be able to remove yourself any of your listed domain.
Here again, while the domain is not in auction.

Implementation of the above will be up before the end of this week.

Trying to create a daily rendez-vous:

A pair of years ago when I was working on another project Mike Berkens (TheDomains.com) suggested me to deliver my expiring daily listings everyday at the same hour to create some addiction. Saying that SnapNames closes at 3h00 PM EST and NameJet.com at 4h00 PM EST so stick at a time around these 2 major daily domainers rendez-vous will finish creating an habit.

Recently Mike Cohen (DomainStryker.com) suggested me the same.
Even if I have allways found it a good idea I never implemented it until now.

So it’s official, from now the BargainDomains.com auctions will close everyday at the same hour of the day:

I prefered this hour better than 2h00 PM EST, first by courtesy because AuctionPus.com closes at this time each day, and because it translates to 2h00 PM in Los Angeles, and I wanted Californian domainers be back at office and relax to can bid.

So now, you know, after the NameJet.com auction wait a moment and place your winning bid on your prefered BargainDomains.com auctions!

Tomorrow a next improvement, so stay tuned. Thanks!

 

This week-end I decided it was time to also start blogging myself.

WordPress looks to be the best software to create blogs, so I googled “wordpress hosting” (I never type-in for search and you?) and was lucky to land on this page:
http://wordpress.org/hosting/
I never hear about the hosting companies featured here except BlueHost (their marketing efforts pays) so I naturally selected this company.
I was suprised by the low price, and how the process was easy and fast: It only takes a click to install WordPress.

I did not wanted to use my own name for the blog.
I purchased DomainWare.com few years ago with the idea to host here a directory of domain resources.
But Rick Latonas given me a smart advice last month saying I should not multiplicate brands but put under the same roof most of my domain services.
Following his recomendation, I will create soon a “Resources” section in Domaining.com, so DomainWare.com was available to become my blog site.
It’s a good fit when a significant part of my posts should be about “(my) domain software”.

The template WordPress presents by default is really ugly so the first thing I did after was to search a nicer one.
I used TemplateMonster.com, this service has the largest web templates inventory and prices are reasonable.

After I installed some pluggins of interest: Twitter and FaceBook and registered with FeedBurner.com

I made my first blog (probably not a very good post for a welcome) and asked the feed inclusion to Domaining.com, no only I was immediately accepted but my setup fee was waived (there is some advantages to closely know the owner).

Finally it has been fast, and no brainer to create my first blog so now I can land you a hand if you need to setup a blog.

If you feel I should use some special pluggins, make some changes,… feel free to comment this post.

Thanks for your time!