As part of the recent redesign, Dotster has lowered the price of their shared hosting account to $5.75/month. At the same time, they are offering free domain registration with any hosting purchase. This means that shrewd domain investors can purchase domain names for less than the registry and ICANN fees.

Of course you will have to cancel your hosting account shortly after it is provisioned, and transfer your domains to your preferred registrar, but if you are looking to save  a couple bucks then this is the promotion for you.

The Dotster coupon code is “freedom15″ in case you want to give it a try. I opened four new accounts to test, but setting up four hosting plans under the same account would probably work. Drop me a comment if it works for you.

There were three major remodels last week: Sedo, Dotster, and Dynadot. While the reviews have been mixed, I would say that Dynadot was the most successful of the bunch and not just because they were the only company to leave a login form on the homepage.
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Sedo had a down week reporting sales of just 150 domains for a total of $824,830. Sedo’s median sales price jumped up to $2,850 thanks to the six digit sale of IDN domain name büromöbel.de (“office furniture” in German, “xn--brombel-d1a4c.com” in IDN) and 14 other five digit sales. The top five sales included:

büromöbel.de    $101,064
spb.com    $65,000
arenal.com    $40,000
mylikes.com    $40,000
apps.net    $25,900

December traditionally is a down month for domain sales because there are usually few if any domain auctions or trade shows.

That's your brand?

Penpal.net was the second domain name that I ever registered. It was way back in October of 1996 when domain names cost $100 to register and there was only one registrar: Internic.net.

It has taken 13 years, four major software upgrades, and countless mistakes to finally evolve into a modern social networking website for pen pals. Today I am excited to announce the re-launch of one of my oldest websites: Penpal.net.
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