When it comes to choosing a domain name for your business, it helps to have a ‘dirty’ mind. Otherwise you might end up being stuck with a domain name that will get you into trouble with word-based content filters.

That’s right, if your domain name inadvertently contains a ‘naughty’ keyword or phrase, your entire Website may be blocked by content blocking filters still commonly used by large corporations, libraries, schools, and overprotective parents. Your site might also be hindered from showing up in some search engines, and some of the email messages you send from your domain could end up being blocked by spam filters.

Here are some fictitious examples of what at first appear to be innocent domain names:

• HireThisExCopper [dot-something]
• EssexWorld [dot-something]

Look closer, however, and you will notice that the first domain contains the word “sex” and the second contains the phrase “sex world.” Both of these domains could end up running into trouble with filters, especially the second one.

And can you spot what’s problematic with these domain names?

• ScanAlley [dot-something]
• CanalTours [dot-something]

Both contain the word “anal” which also poses a risk of running afoul of filters.

You get the idea…

So before deciding on your next domain name, be sure to scrutinize it carefully. Look for any and all ‘troublesome’ words and phrases. The last thing you want is to have your seemingly innocuous domain name misinterpreted by word-based content filters.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about how to protect your domain names from theft, I’ll point you to a blog post by Bill Sweetman, our General Manager, Domains Portfolio, over at the Canadian Marketing Association’s blog. In that post Bill suggests a domain name related New Year’s Resolution.

I’ll add to Bill’s comments and suggest that while you’re running a WHOIS query on your domains, you should see if you have WHOIS Privacy enabled. If not, enable it and then set those renewal reminders as Bill suggests.

Over Christmas there was a well-publicized case of domain-hijacking that gained some worldwide media attention when David Airey had his domain, www.davidairey.com, stolen. The story was a familiar one ‚Äì a domain thief gained access to a domain holder’s email account (in this case, a Google GMail account) and then used that account to gain control of the domain name and transfer it to himself.

This story had a happy ending and the domain was returned to its rightful owner thanks to, in this case, Go Daddy, which was the receiving Registrar in the fraudulent transfer.

At Tucows we’re actively engaged in the battle against online fraud including domain name theft, phishing, and spam. When domain name thefts are reported to us, our Compliance Team acts accordingly to assist with retrieval of domains where possible.

I talked to Paul Karkas our Compliance Manager. There are a couple of tips to avoiding domain name theft he suggested all domain owners and resellers learn:

1. Use WHOIS Privacy. It can protect you to a certain extent from this kind of theft. If the administrative email address that is listed with the domain name under WHOIS is exposed, then a potential domain thief has two pieces of information he needs – the domain name, and the email address used to manage it. The thief can then gain control of the email address, and then use that email address to gain control of the domain by having passwords emailed to himself. WHOIS Privacy offers some protection because it prevents the domain thief from finding out what the administrative email address is for the domain name.

2. If you can avoid it, don’t use free, web-based email addresses for your administrative contact. In this case, a security flaw in GMail allowed the hacker to gain control of the email account of the domain holder. Likewise, having your entire domain portfolio under a single administrative email account is another mistake. Never mind having one domain name stolen, if a thief gains control of your email account, he could steal your entire portfolio of names.

3. Your domain name is worth more to you than you might think. It may only cost you $10 a year to register the domain, but take a moment to imagine what the cost would be if you had to change domain names tomorrow. It could be as easy as reprinting business cards, or as difficult as re-branding your entire company.

4. Chose your Registrar wisely. Look for a Registrar with a solid Compliance team and a good record within the industry. They’ll have policy and procedures in place to protect you against domain name theft, and in the event your domain is taken from you fraudulently, you stand a better chance of getting it back with a solid registrar. Our CEO, Elliot Noss, has talked about this in the past. You can read his “Ten questions to ask before you pick your domain name Registrar” post for more information on how to make an informed choice.

If you do one thing today, make it this: activate WHOIS privacy on your domains. At Tucows, we recognize the value of WHOIS Privacy, and we include it free with every domain name sold.

It’s been a busy year for our domain name business. We’ve introduced our Premium Domains service, dropped our prices, built a more transparent billing structure and made many of our domain name features – including DNS and WHOIS Privacy – completely free.

Today, we’re adding another big announcement to the pile: we’re going to share over $1 million in revenues with resellers over the next 12 months. We’ll be doing this through our Parked Pages and Expired Domains programs, both of which are designed to help our resellers make more money from unused and expiring domain names.

Under the terms of both these programs, we split all net advertising revenue 50-50 with our resellers. And if, at a later date, we sell one of these names through our Premium Domains service, we’ll share 10% of net revenue with the original reseller as well.

So why did we decide to do this? After all, we could have simply kept the money; in fact, many registrars do. Our philosophy, though, is a little different ‚Äì we think customers should be rewarded for choosing to sell and register names with Tucows. One million dollars, we think, is one very nice way to say “thank you.”

You can read our full announcement here.

Bill Sweetman, Tucows General Manager, Domain Portfolio is out in Vancouver this week for a marketing conference known as “DM Day.” The DM stands for direct marketing, and the conference is presented by the British Columbia Association of Internet Marketers. Bill was asked to talk domains and gave a well-received presentation titled, “Domain Name Karate: The ‚Äòancient‚Äô art of maximizing and defending your domain names.”

Warren Frey of Techvibes was there and gives a nice summary of Bill’s talk on the Techvibes blog. You can read about it here.

And while I’m on the topic of Bill and domain names, our man Sweetman was down at Traffic in Miami a few weeks back and talked to a few of the movers and shakers in the domain industry. You can listen to those interviews by way of his podcast series, “Marketing Martini.” Not surprisingly, those can be found at http://www.marketingmartini.com/. So far Bill’s posted chats with Monte Cahn, founder and CEO of Moniker, Phil Corwin, legal counsel to the Internet Commerce Association and Peter Lamson of NameMedia.

You can listen right on the website, or subscribe to Bill’s podcast series in iTunes via this link.

I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you on a dark day in Internet history. On October 15th the price of a .com will increase by $0.42, marking the first price increase in the history of the modern Internet. Worse, this now signals a near-annual event that will take place in all major gTLDs. It is simply wrong. My full comments in the public forum in Puerto Rico in June are here.

While I do think Verisign has shown a lack of stewardship of this key public resource, I lay the primary blame for this on ICANN staff who put this forward and on ICANN board members who voted for this (it should be noted that the vote was 9-5. One of the closest in ICANN annals). As I said in Puerto Rico, shame on you. We all, all of us involved in the ICANN process in any way, owe the Internet public because of this.

It is important that we do not use this as a sign that ICANN, the idea, is failing. We should not confuse bad execution with bad strategy. The role of ICANN as an example of truly global, not International, governance is important. The role of ICANN in keeping the Internet free from government control and by that the predation of special interests is vital.

And it is a challenging environment. There is a debate inside the Registrar constituency right now, effectively re-fighting a battle that was already won, but sloppily implemented by staff. Many of you (the “you” here is our customers) will have already dealt with the end-user problems created by Go Daddy and Network Solutions in their “interpretation” of transfers policy in the name of “security”. For me this is simply deja vu.

Service providers, there is something you can do. Something important. There has been a process of GNSO reform going on inside of ICANN for the last 18 months. The GNSO is the primary policy-making body in the ICANN process. They are the ones charged with making policy for gTLDs. The board only has the power to ratify policy. Staff only has power to enforce and interpret policy.

Inside of the GNSO there has been something of a stalemate for the last few years. One of the chief reasons is that the Internet Service Providers Constituency (“ISPC”) has consistently sided with the Intellectual Property Constituency (“IPC”) on things like whois access and new gTLDs. I have been in and around the ISP industry now for 13 years and the ISPC does not look like any ISP assembly that I know.

I have been advocating change in the GNSO reform discussions. In Lisbon in March and again in Puerto Rico in June I have advocated a recasting of the ISPC. My position is that it should be a constituency for companies who stand between the “contracting parties” (ICANN-speak for Registrars) and end users. Most of the industry calls these people resellers (an old OpenSRS anachronism). They have no place or voice in the ICANN process right now and they need one. We have been trying to advocate their interests (your interests) for years. You can do a better job of it than we can.

When it comes to transfers, to whois and to most issues of DNS policy they (YOU!) are a voice that needs to be heard.

My advocating is the easy part of the battle. The harder part will be to actually have some of you folks do it. So take this as a plea to storm the ramparts! Now! In the next couple days we will post more about the ISPC, what can be done, and how to do it here. The time commitment is VERY small and the impact can be very large. Just ask George Kirikos what a little effort can accomplish in the ICANN process!

Bill Sweetman, our new General Manager, Domains Portfolio appeared on CP24′s Homepage with host Amber MacArthur this week. Bill was there to explain how to get online with a great domain name, and get started establishing an online identity.

Take a look:

A couple of weeks ago, we made a pretty big announcement that represented a fundamental shift in the way we think about domain name pricing. If you missed it, you can read all about it here. We made a couple of changes that day. First, we included more transparency in the pricing structure for domains that gives you a clear understanding of where your domain dollars are going. Second, we dropped our prices and added features to help you stay competitive in the domains marketplace.

Since that announcement went out, we’ve been working hard to build in several additional improvements all of which went live over the past weekend:

• As promised, the Tucows management fee, registry fee and ICANN fee are now listed as separate items in the Reseller Web Interface.
• We’ve also extended out new, transparent pricing structure to .mobi and .name domain names, too. (It was introduced for .com, .net, .org, .info and .biz domain names earlier this month).
• You can now offer one year .mobi registrations to your customers, down from the previous minimum of two years.
• Managed DNS and WHOIS Privacy are now available free of charge to Tucows customers, providing you with even more value to pass along to your customers.

Looking ahead, we’re going to strive to continue to find innovative ideas that add value and services to our domains package.

Last week, we sent some of our people down to TRAFFIC, which bills itself as the domain industry's premier conference. Among those attending was our very own Adam Eisner, whom I interviewed yesterday about the conference and what he saw. I captured the interview as a podcast, which is a 4.8 MB MP3 file. The transcript for the podcast appears below.

Transcript of the “Tucows Goes to the TRAFFIC Conference” Podcast

Joey deVilla: I'm talking with Adam Eisner, Tucows' product manager for domains and today we're going to be talking about the TRAFFIC conference. Last week you attended it; tell us a little bit about it.

Adam Eisner: Well, TRAFFIC is a trade show of sorts; it brings together domain owners, search engines, internet marketers and together they discuss the latest developments in things like domain names and marketing. It's held a few times a year, and the last one that was held was held last week, June 19th to 22nd in New York City.

Joey: What typically happens at TRAFFIC?

Adam: What you usually get is a couple of straight days of conference sessions focused on the newest developments in the domain name industry, internet marketing, e-commerce, online sales, things like that. You know, the industry is moving so quickly — especially as the domain name aftermarket keeps growing — that it can be really, really difficult to keep up with the latest developments and what's going on.

So TRAFFIC is a really good place to meet with some of the leaders in the space around domain names and internet marketing and to learn about some of what the “next big things” (and I'm making quotation marks, but you probably can't see that because this is a podcast) might be in domain names and internet marketing.

You know, there's also a really popular domain name auction that usually takes place, and that gets a lot of press and attention as well, and this one had a lot of big sales. CreditCheck.com and FreeCreditCheck.com together sold for about $3 million and Seniors.com sold for $1.8 million, interestingly. It was a really interesting auction to attend live for domain names — you know, intangible assets.

Joey: So…is it like an antique furniture auction, where everybody sits and there's a guy at the front going “Okay, what do I…?”

Adam: It is! It actually is. It's really interesting. There is an auctioneer, a real live auctioneer, that you might expect at some sort of event where you were auctioning cattle, and he's sitting around going “Seniors.com, one million, one million one…”

Joey: Is he actually doing the [mimics auctioneer-style talk]?

Adam: He's doing the whole thing, and everybody has paddles, but what people are bidding on are domain names. It's really, really interesting.

Joey: And is there anything beside him like — I don't know — an easel with the domain name for sale? Beside him, or is it projected?

Adam: It's pretty funny. It's projected, and this time — I believe this was new, I hadn't attended the actual auction component before — there was a bank, kind of like a telethon, of people on a riser, toward one side of the room that were sitting in front of telephones, and people were calling in with telephone bids. And so they would yell up in the middle and go “Five hundred thousand dollars!”

Joey: I was going to ask if there were remote bidders like that, like in an auction for tanglible goods.

Adam: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was — not that I've been to a lot of live auctions before; I haven't had the need to buy livestock of anything — it was a real auction. It was really, really interesting.

Joey: Can anybody attend TRAFFIC? If I happen to have the money for an attendance fee, could I just go, or is it invitation-only?

Adam: I believe it's an invitation-only event of sorts, but if you're involved in the industry and you request an invitation, I believe it's pretty easy to attend.

A wide range of people go to this conference: domain name registrars, domain name registries, folsk who own domain name portfolios, internet marketers, investment bankers, anyone with an interest in how the domain name market is developing and how the developments can affect things like online sales and online marketing tend to attend this show, so it is easy to attend, I blieve if you show the genuine desire to go and get involved.

Joey: Okay, and what were we doing there?

Adam: We were there first and foremost to talk about our new Premium Domain Name offering, which includes name from two of the larger players in the space, Fabulous.com and BuyDomains, two larger aftermarket players. We wanted to talk about how we now integrate these names for sale from these providers directly into the Tucows domain name search process, and as fewer and fewer names become available, this feature's only going to become more important.

So, we want to get some information on new market development on the aftermarket, talk about this new feature, see who is interested in this sort of technology and meet a lot of different folks. And when Tucows goes, we go to have a look, and it's also really important to attend and see where the industry is headed.

You know, as the domain name market changes and the aftermarket grows, a lot of participants in these conferences are pretty much down in the middle of things, so to speak — they're heavily involved. So, it's always important to hear what they're thinking, what their thoughts are, and you also get to meet a lot of customers and a lot of partners, all in one central place. It's always worth going.

Joey: Anthing else that you'd like to say? Any interesting observations, funny anecdotes, even?

Adam: You know, what was interesting was — as Tucows, to attend this one and because of our Premium Domains offering, we're becoming a lot more recognized at conferences like this, so it was very productive for us to go because we got to talk to a lot of people about our premium names offering.

Our Premium Names offering is something that is, at this point, more or less ahead of what most registrars have introduced. There are very few registrars out there, particularly on a wholesale level, that have introduced anything like this, so there's a lot of genuine interest from attendees there about what we're doing the in space right now, so it was really good for us to go.

Joey: Cool! Well, that's Adam Eisner, Product Manager for Domains at Tucows. I'm Joey deVilla, Tucows' Technical Evangelist — thanks for listening.

In my last blog entry, I wrote that a domain name suggestion tool was the “tip of the iceberg” in re-thinking the domain name search process. Today we’re pleased to introduce what we think is another important step in the evolution of domain name search: Premium Domain Names.

Like the name implies, Premium Domain Names are high-quality domains that are owned by third parties and available for sale. Historically, these names have been bought and sold among a relatively tight-knit group of professionals; however, this market, also known as the “aftermarket”, is quickly moving mainstream. Consumers and businesses alike are starting to realize that many of the names they once thought to be “unavailable” are actually for sale, and our Premium Domain Names service lets you offer these names to your customers. What’s more, the transaction closely resembles a “new” domain name purchase; so, instead of waiting days for the escrow and transfer processes to complete, these names arrive in your account in seconds. We've made it is easier to find and a buy a great domain name. We put together a screencast that explains how our Premium Domain Name service works. We've also built a demonstration of our service, where you can query our premium name database of over 600,000 high-quality names, and also see the results of our name suggestion tool. Go ahead and check out how easy (and fun) it is to search for a great name for yourself, business, or brand.

For our customers it means that integrating our Name Suggestion Tool and Premium Domain Names feature into the domain name search process, will significantly increase the chance that a visitor to your website will find the domain name they want. And that doesn’t just mean more revenue from a domain name sale; it means more ancillary revenue from services sold on top of the domain, and will result in another (hopefully) long-lasting customer relationship for your business.

Both our Name Suggestion tool and Premium Domain Names feature are entirely free to our wholesale domain resellers; in fact, Tucows resellers earn a 10% commission on any Premium Domain Name sold. And together, these features will make sure out customers satisfy more customer searches and leave less money “on the table.”
 
Customers who already have an account with Tucows, can get started right away. Simply login to the Reseller Web Interface and activate the feature. For more information on Premium Domain Names, visit our Services site.