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.

The largest sales include “designer.co.uk” selling for $121,008, “lundi.fr” (French for “Monday”) selling for $69,235, and “comtech.com” selling for $60,000. Dots News owner and writer Andrew Naylor’s sold “isdb.com” which tied with “golfzone.com” for fourth place.

In the ever increasing furry over Apple’s upcoming tablet device, many are looking to market indicators for a hint of what’s to come. Now there are two markets that indicate “iPad” as the upcoming tablet name: betting websites and domain name registrations.

Betting website Paddy Power has changed the odds in the Apple tablet naming competition. Yesterday “iPad” had a strong lead over “iSlate” with odds 1/3 and 2/1 respectively. Last night, however, “iSlate” odds improved dramatically from 2/1 to 5/4. While the 1/3 odds for “iPad” remained the same, these changes indicate that the recent “iPad” trademarks may not be as convincing as they were earlier in the week when the news first hit.

Meanwhile, dark horse “iBook” has finally joined the race today jumping in at 4th place with 12/1 odds, just behind “iTablet” which has stayed steady at 10/1 odds since Saturday.

While betters may be growing more indecisive, domain investors and speculators are pointing to “iPad” as the tablet name. In analytics I ran earlier this morning on the number of .COM domains registered over the past 48 hours, the keyword “iPad” increased by 93 domains, “iSlate” increased by 76, “iTablet” scored 14, and “iBook” grabbed fourth place with just 12 domain registrations.

Sedo had a good week with a nice six-digit sale, while total sales dropped to $778,261 and the median dropping to $2122. The total number of domains sold (over $700) increased to 182, which indicates that volume is consistent.

The largest sales this week include “website.de” selling for $143,136, “bookkeepers.com” selling for $34,000, “juegos-gratis.com” (“free games” in Spanish) for $26,179, and a great two letter .ORG “ch.org” sold for a reasonable $21,775.

In the last month many trademark filings and a whois record have come to light that point to possible names of Apple’s forthcoming tablet computer. The two names with the most trademarks are “iSlate” and “iPad” with “iTablet” being predicted by at least one Apple blog. While the news, blog, and IP worlds still haven’t decided on a name, the betting world has reached consensus.

European betting website Paddy Power has been running odds on potential Apple tablet names and initially indicated “iSlate” would be the most likely name. Last week they were paying 4/5–less than even money–for “iSlate” and 7/5 odds for “iPad.” The flurry of international trademark activity last week has made big changes to the odds. On Saturday the odds for “iSlate” and “iPad” reversed, giving “iPad” the lead of 1/5 odds before settling down at 1/3 earlier today with “iSlate” running as high as 9/4 before dropping slightly to 2/1.

With odds for the Colts winning the Superbowl at around 1/2, the 1/3 odds for “iPad” make it sound like a sure bet.

Sedo announced sales figures for last week when they sold 174 domains for $860,305. The total was down significantly from the previous week by almost $1 million, with the number of domains sold dropping by almost 14%. The median Sedo sales price kept steady at $2439, up slightly from $2400 last week.

The largest sale this week was Free-SMS.de which went for $164,209, with ConnectionExpress.com taking second place at $30,000. The most undervalued sale was Podium.com which went for only $12,902.

Apple has e-mailed selected media for an invitation-only event on January 27th. The invitation indicates that the event will begin at 10:00 AM and will be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco.

Through leaks, rumors, and wild speculation many expect Apple to announce their tablet, possibly called “iSlate.” The blogging and technology press has been jumping since December 24th when MacRumors announced that Apple owned the “iSlate” trademark and domain name.

UPDATE: Fox News has confirmed that the event will focus on the “tablet device, iPhone 4, and a new round of iLife 2010 software.”

Two six-digit sales pushed Sedo’s weekly numbers up higher than usual, but the median dropped a bit to $2,400. The two big sales were credit.fr for about $850,000 and migraine.com for $125,000. There were sixteen five-digit domains including mysports.com for $60,000, items.com for $50,000, and cityhotels.com for $40,000.

This kind of money pouring into the domain aftermarket is heartening for domain investors to see this early in the year. It should be no surprise to see finance and healthcare taking the top two spots, as those were hot throughout 2009.

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.

Sedo

The largest of the three companies–both in terms of revenues and employees–they made the most dramatic changes. They simplified the homepage, added photos of smiling women to every page, and changed their javascript menus to be more stylish. Unfortunately, the new menus are impossibly difficult to use. The site is still slow with some pages (“Statistics” tab under “Domain Parking”) taking 10 seconds to load, possibly because their web servers are in Europe which makes it slow for US customers. With simplicity comes complexity, as it now takes me two additional clicks to reach the parking “Overview” page. Unfortunately, the default page (“Statistics”) under “Domain Parking” is also the slowest page. I timed how long it took me to get to the “Overview” page at 22 seconds after initially typing in the Sedo homepage URL.

One of Sedo’s challenges has long been their ability to keep currency punctuation and the URL consistent while browsing their website. Even now the “Price” dropdown on the domain search page and parking “Overview” page use the German punctuation instead of English. Despite minor bugs like this, I give Sedo a lot of credit for customizing their website. I am aware of many US-based websites in the domain industry that do not give the option of German punctuation.

While I’m not super happy about the website operations for parking customers, the homepage has definitely improved by changing focus from the small ticket domain auctions to end-user domain buyers. With their high volume of buyers, I would expect these changes to improve their sales numbers. I think a lot more could be done to better accommodate domain buyers, to help them navigate the huge number of domains that Sedo has listed but that’s better explored in another article.

Dotster

With a history of redesigns that added unnecessary complexity and bugs that are subsequently never fixed, this redesign (version 7) continues that trend. Where the last redesign marginalized the bulk domain name search with bugs and obfuscation, this redesign removes the bulk domain search functionality from the homepage and leaves unfixed the “select all” bug created in version 6 that adds “taken” domains to your shopping cart.

They also updated their logo to be more 3D by adding a shadow, and thinned out the font:

Old Logo

New Logo

The new simplified homepage is a huge improvement over the last version and places web hosting as the primary product offered. Domain registrars have increasingly relied on webhosting to increase profit margins in an industry where registry fees are high and price competition among registrars is tight.

Like Sedo, they removed the login form from the homepage and placed all design efforts at attracting new customers. Unfortunately they seem to have messed up the Account Management Control Panel:

Dotster Bug

Dynadot

The Dynadot redesign included a new logo, a slightly redesigned homepage, and an increase in registration prices. There was no real change to the functionality of the site, the most significant change in functionality was the consolidation of marketing boxes along the right side of the homepage. The reason I liked the Dynadot redesign the most was because they did not make it more difficult for existing customers to use the website, and the new logo is an improvement.

Old Logo

New Logo