As a domain investor I have regular moments of embarrassment. Some of those moments have included registering an unintentional typo-domain, forgetting to park recently acquired domains, registering a non .COM name when the .COM was available, and forgetting to renew SnapNames domains at one of the many registrars that don’t send renewal reminders.

Today I experienced a new type of embarrassment: the type that comes from selling a domain so senseless that I’m ashamed to tell my friends. You may wonder why I registered such a domain in the first place if even the thought of selling it would make me blush. The domain in question was registered last month as part of a computer generated batch that I was furiously trying to register at the airport before my flight left. To say I was distracted would be an understatement.

The generated list was not rocket science; it was a simple search-and-replace Excel doc of existing domains. An example is a list of domains where three or more TLDs are registered with keyword “domainnames” and then replacing that string with “domains” before checking .COM availability. Most domain investors can see the logic of such an exercise, but who among us would be so senseless to throw caution to the wind and blindly register that list of hundreds of domains? If that weren’t a rhetorical question, the correct answer would have been “me.”

While my first reaction to the sale was disbelief and embarrassment, my emotions are now mixed. That one sale put all my airport registrations into positive ROI. Now I am wondering if my hand-editing of computer generated lists is really the smart thing to do.

When we take the time to build and invest in our domain analytics, what keeps us from trusting the results? In this instance it was mostly fear of wasting money, but also a bit of ego thinking I knew better than the computer. I doubt I will ever trust a domain analytics system completely, but I’m getting a lot closer.

Rust Consulting has begun e-mailing out the SnapNames rebate offers to all affected customers. I received my e-mail earlier this morning, although it ended up in my Gmail spam folder by mistake. SnapNames customers will have until November 6, 2010 to accept the offer, which is one year from today.
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A detailed look at the whois history of domains won by SnapNames VP of Engineering Nelson Brady shows that he pointed at least one domain to SnapNames DNS servers by mistake, and let a good domain expire.
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Some gave me a hard time for not including more facts in my previous story that speculated on how the SnapNames scam was uncovered. I admit that my previous article was vague where clear facts would have sufficed. So let me set the record straight and dive into the minutia of whois histories that drove my initial conclusions.
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As I mentioned in my previous article about the SnapNames fraud, iREIT may have purchased a portfolio of domains from Nelson Brady in late 2006. An iREIT spokesperson declined to speculate on the accuracy of my claim, but whois records indicate that a number of domains were transferred from DomainQueue of Tacoma, WA to iREIT in late 2006.
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In an e-mail this morning, SnapNames CEO Jeff Kupietzky and general manager Craig Snyder notified SnapNames customers that an ex-employee was involved in up to 5% of auctions between 2005 and 2007. They have also announced a reimbursement program for some of the affected customers. Customers who won auctions where the ex-employee is believed to have bid up the price will receive a refund of the difference with interest. I spoke to a SnapNames employee this afternoon who confirmed that the fired employee was in fact Nelson Brady who used the handle ‘halvarez’ when bidding on SnapNames auctions. A photo of Nelson Brady is available on DNjournal here.
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You’re at the tail end of a 4 day auction. There were one or two early bids, but the price is way below your max. With 10 minutes to go, someone comes in and bids up the domain, but you’re still ahead. Five minutes later they do it again to extend the auction. After 30 minutes of extensions you’re ready to yell because they keep delaying it and you have an appointment to make.
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