"RegisterFly has flown..."

Brawling RegisterFly partners in fight to the death
Malaysia Sun
Saturday 24th February, 2007

Big News Network.com: The extraordinary unraveling of embattled domain registrar RegisterFly.com has continued into the weekend.

The two principal shareholders John Naruszewicz and Kevin Medina at the weeks-end were still trading verbal blows, while ICANN stepped in to the fray after nearly three years of complaints. Whilst most focus has been on the failure of the company's support systems, allegations of fraud and corruption were flowing freely Friday, not only from the principals involved, but from ICANN.

Meantime the control of RegisterFly.com, seized by Naruszewicz on Tuesday, was back in the hands of Medina late Friday. Both parties are accusing the other of hijacking the company's Web site and administration, which has been effectively dysfunctional for weeks. Medina has also replicated the current site at www.registerfly-inc.com so if he loses control again, or the original site is brought down, he can continue to trade on.

Whilst existing customers are up in arms over the loss of control of their intellectual property, and their inability to obtain redress, RegisterFly remains open for business, offering its services to new, unsuspecting customers. Despite its registration, renewal, and transfer systems all being dysfunctional, RegisterFly continues to take payments for orders it cannot fulfill.

One large customer who was unaware of the behind-the-scenes debacle tried to acquire what is called a "Flypack" around two weeks ago. A Flypack is a coupon for multiple domains which reduces in price dependant on the volume. These "coupons" can be used to register, renew, or transfer domain names. With the system in-operative the customer's attempts to pay a few thousand dollars for several hundred domains on his credit card was unsuccessful. The customer issued a support ticket and sent an email asking for help. Late Friday Kevin Medina emailed the customer saying he had tried to put the charge of nearly $7,000 through, but was unsuccessful. "I tried to charge your card and it failed," he wrote. "I tried to charge in different amounts but it did not work," he added. He asked the customer to contact the credit card company and have them approve the amount.

While the two 50% shareholders fight for control, the company's hundreds of thousands of customers are getting angrier and angrier. In a normal situation they would be leaving the company in droves. The only problem is their domain names are locked up, and their authorization codes are being withheld preventing transfers to alternative registrars. Domain names reaching their expiry date are simply being lost. With many of these involving Web sites a large number of customers are losing complete businesses or at the very least, important business tools. Compounding the problem is that many of RegisterFly's customers are managing domains and Web sites on behalf of others.

Court documents filed last week by interests associated with Naruszewicz claim 75,000 domain names have been forfeited by RegisterFly.com in the past month alone, due to the registrar's failure to pay registration fees.

Due to the inability of the courts to move swiftly, and ICANN having only initiated a potential breach notice, it appears that without the principals entering into a form of settlement, the death of RegisterFly.com is inevitable.

Already ICANN in its breach notice has raised concerns the registrar "may be bankrupt or insolvent." Even more concerning is that a number of complaints received by ICANN relate to allegations of fraud. Another bombshell from the domain name authority in its breach notice which was made public Friday, but was issued Wednesday, is that the complaints date back to at least 2005. One of the most frequent complaints was that customers were being overcharged two, three and four times per transaction. RegisterFly customers who believe the current serial support issues at their registry are a recent phenomena will be disturbed to know that from late 2005 until early 2006 ICANN was receiving large numbers of complaints that emails and support tickets were going unanswered, and the call hold time was frequently in excess of 30 minutes.

If customers had their credit card company reverse any overcharges, ICANN says RegisterFly "retaliated by denying the customers access to all of the registered names in their account," not just the names involved in the relevant transactions.

It appears ICANN simply forwarded all the complaints received to eNom, which was the primary registrar, with RegisterFly being a reseller.

On January 17 2006 ICANN told eNom it was receiving an "unusually high number of complaints concerning RegisterFly." eNom responded with an explanation from its reseller RegisterFly, which indicated that RegisterFly intended to move its customers domain names from eNom to its own account. Incredibly a month later, at the very time ICANN was accrediting RegisterFly, eNom was contacted again and was told its own accreditation was in potential breach as a result of allegations that its reseller RegisterFly was altering customers' Whois data and populating the Whois record with "intentionally inaccurate data." eNom was told at the time that any domain registrations through its accreditation, even if processed through RegisterFly, were eNom's responsibility.

In April last year ICANN says it continued to receive complaints about RegisterFly. Customers reported being locked out of their accounts, and having domain names disappearing from their accounts. Kevin Medina, says ICANN, responded by saying the issues were as a result of "growing pains."

In May 2006 the complaints started to include reports of "stolen" registrations and renewals. On the 19th of May ICANN says it received a complaint from an owner of 220 domain names who, after a heated argument with RegisterFly, noted the Whois information for his 220 names was changed to reflect "Kevin Medina" as the registrant instead of the domains owner. It took several weeks for RegisterFly to address this issue with ICANN, culminating at a meeting between ICANN staff, Medina, and RegisterFly.com's Glenn Stansbury, where the "inordinate number of complaints ICANN had received regarding RegisterFly" was discussed. Medina and Stansbury both assured ICANN that "RegisterFly was working hard to improve its customer service."

The pair also said they were working to relieve the pressure on their employees in the Risk/Fraud department. It was in this discussion that the RegisterFly executives dropped another bombshell: employees in the Risk/Fraud department were being paid "strictly on commission." The policy was changed "as a result of RegisterFly's discussions with ICANN."

By early December 2006 ICANN says it was still receiving "ever-increasing complaints from RegisterFly customers about over-charging." At a meeting on December 3rd 2006 ICANN met with Stansbury and Mark Klein, the company's Vice President of Sales, who had only joined the company weeks earlier after 5 years at Tucows Inc., to discuss the high volume of complaints which included issues surrounding RegisterFly's failure to renew customers domain names, failure of the support systems, billing errors, insufficient funding of registry accounts, and nonpayment of ICANN invoices.

ICANN says Stansbury and Klein repeated previous assurances that the issues were being corrected, and that the registrar was opening a new customer service facility within a week. ICANN's concerns were detailed in a document handed to the RegisterFly executives at the meeting. Stansbury promised to respond in writing within one month (January 3 2007). ICANN never received a response.

In January 2007 ICANN continued to receive complaints from RegisterFly customers, but complaints by then were also coming in from other ICANN-accredited registrars, ICANN board members, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. Deeply disturbing was the fact that the most common complaint by RegisterFly customers was that transactions that were billed and paid for were not being effected at the registry. "In addition, multiple-year renewals and registrations were only being processed for one year instead of the number of years that had been paid for."

With Naruszewicz and Medina heavily engaged in a bitter dispute, their business dysfunctional but still trading, serious allegations of fraud, misrepresentation, misleading conduct, and theft, afoot; and control of the company's Web site and administration constantly changing amidst claims (by both sides) of hijackings and sabotage, it is unlikely customers can do anything other than stand on the sidelines while the drama plays out.

A slim hope may be concerted action by the domain names industry involving ICANN and some of the leading accredited-registrars. Action could include making application for a court order for authorization codes to be released to customers so transfers can take place, ICANN extending expiry dates of names under RegisterFly's control for up to a period of say six months from now (as a first step) to ensure no more names are lost, and alternative registrars dividing up and taking over blocks of domain names, and acting as interim registrars, at least until the dust settles.

John Naruszewicz, in a statement published Thursday on Registerflies.com said he had personally pledged all of his personal assets, mortgaged his home, leveraged all assets, and was securing large letters of credit to restore the company. Regardless of his motivation, and the extent of his commitment, he needs first to get control of the company's Web site, and it seems even the support emails, which were all clearly in the hands of his partner, Kevin Medina, as of late Friday night.

As for Medina, regardless of the slanging match between he and his partner and the very public, but unproved, claims raised against him in court documents, he has been the President and CEO of RegisterFly during its history of failures, and is unlikely to be part of any solution to the company's woes. His time in any event, since regaining control of RegisterFly late Friday, has been spent trying to process credit card payments from unsuspecting customers, for fictitious services.

For all intensive purposes it appears RegisterFly has flown.

Escape the Bomb game

Try out this game.

Escape The Bomb Point and click escape game.

Let me know what you get!

dotMobi to auction premium mobile domain names

Mobile internet development company dotMobi is to auction off 15 select domains at the Traffic West 2007 conference in Las Vegas.

DotMobi, the informal name of mTLD Top Level Domain Ltd, is a Dublin-based domain name provider which ensures that services and sites developed around .mobi are optimised for use by mobile devices.

Although the company may change this list, the following .mobi names are scheduled for auction on 7 March: 'airfare', 'areacodes', 'cam', 'casinos', 'creditscore', 'directions', 'ea't, 'libre', 'loancalculator', 'models', 'newmusic', 'pics', 'pizza', 'realestate' and 'singles'.

These names come from the dotMobi Premium Names list. Rather than the traditional 'first come, first served' basis on which most domain names are sold, this is a list of commonly used words and phrases which dotMobi has set aside to be sold separately.

The names will be distributed in batches throughout 2008 using auction and Request for Proposal processes.

The names will join the current list of around 400,000 .mobi domains that have been registered since general registration commenced in October last year.

Neil Edwards, chief executive at dotMobi, said: "The sale of these 15 highly desirable names allows dotMobi to fund initiatives for the web developer and content provider communities, such as a developer forum and the free mobile readiness testing and reporting tool."

Edwards is hoping that this auction is as least as successful as the last one in 2006 when .mobi domain names sold for a combined total of just under $400,000.

"Last October, the Traffic auction put three .mobi domains into the top 15 emerging domain sales for 2006. The demand for these domains demonstrated the industry excitement around mobile content," he said.

"We expect this list of 15 names to draw an equal, if not greater, demand. And with the variety of free tools and developer partners we have, building content behind these names will be a simple and affordable proposition for the buyers."


Source

How many possible combinations are there of LLL/NNN?

LLL.com/.net/.org = 17,576 possible domains

NNN.com/.net/.org = 1,000 possible domains

LNL.com/.net/.org = 45,656 possible domains

RegisterFly threatened with ICANN shutdown

ICANN has given scandal-hit domain name registrar Registerfly.com 15 days to sort its problems out or risk losing its license to sell domains.

The organization, which oversees the domain name system's policies and practices, sent a letter with the ultimatum to New Jersey-based Registerfly yesterday, and published it on its own web site.

“It's a rare move for us to send a letter that indicates that we will consider terminating the agreement,” said ICANN vice president Paul Levins.

The move came after several weeks of angst from Registerfly's customers, many of which claim to have lost their domains or to have been overcharged for names that they ultimately lost anyway.

ICANN also sent a separate letter, which has not been published, demanding that Registerfly make all its data available for inspection and copying no later than 10am Friday, according to Levins.

All registrars are obliged to provide their data to ICANN escrow under the terms of their registrar accreditation agreement, Levins said. ICANN would be able to enforce these terms in court if not complied with, he said.

This, it is hoped, will give the registrants of Registerfly's roughly 900,000 domain names some confidence that their data will not be lost if something should happen to Registerfly.

There has been an internal feud at the company for some time between joint owners Kevin Medina, CEO, and John Naruszewicz, vice president, which culminated in a February 12 lawsuit.

Naruszewicz sought, and received, a preliminary court injunction preventing Medina from accessing the company's funds. Naruszewicz claimed that Medina had been using corporate money to pay for a life of luxury, at the expense of the company and its customers.

Among the allegations were claims that Medina has used Registerfly's money to pay for a $10,000-a-month Miami Beach penthouse, a $9,000 escort, and $6,000 of liposuction surgery.

ICANN's seven-page letter outlines several breaches of the registrar contract, and outlines a timeline of customer complaints reaching as far back as late 2005.

It says Registerfly failed to provide its customers with the codes they need to transfer their names to competing registrars and that it kept customers' names in a “locked” status, so they could not be moved.

It also says that ICANN received many complaints that customers were being double, triple or quadruple-billed for domain names, and that the company would deny users access to their names if they tried to chargeback their credit cards.

On one occasion a Registerfly customer complained that their domain's contact information had been altered to “Kevin Medina”, the name of Registerfly's CEO.

Medina told ICANN's registrar liaison these problems were due to “growing pains”, according to ICANN's letter. However, ICANN continued to receive an “inordinate amount of complaints” about the company throughout 2006.

ICANN also received complaints that paid-for multi-year domain registrations would only be made for one year, and that in late 2006 thousands of domains that customers paid for were not registered because Registerfly did not have a sufficient cash float with the domain registry.

“Registerfly’s pattern of neglect of its obligations to ICANN, fellow registrars, and customers demonstrated by the above circumstances is unacceptable,” the letter says. “Registerfly has repeatedly taken what appears to be a cavalier attitude toward the promises it made.”

“The inability to retain sufficient funding for Registry Accounts also raises concerns that Registerfly may be bankrupt or insolvent, which would allow ICANN to immediately terminate the RAA,” ICANN's letter says.

Registerfly now has 15 days to get its act together, or risk losing its ICANN accreditation.

While the enforcement move by ICANN may come as some comfort to Registerfly's customers, it does highlight the fact that ICANN has been aware of the company's customer service problems for the last 15 months and, save securing promises during a handful of backroom meetings, was unable to prevent them continuing.

ICANN now seems set on getting its hands on Registerfly's customer data, to protect currently registered domains should it come to the worst. However, it's less clear what this means for Registerfly's customers at this point.

Source: CBRonline.com

Big names may not prevail in domain name disputes

There was a time when it seemed that powerful trademark holders generally prevailed when they sought the transfer of Internet domain names that contained their trademarks.

But recent decisions show that domain name registrants have a fighting chance under certain circumstances.

Rather than go to federal court, many trademark holders proceed with arbitration in their efforts to seek the transfer of domain names. While they cannot obtain damages and attorney's fees in arbitration, as they could in federal court, a final decision can be obtained in a matter of just a few months, rather than years for final court resolution.

It is common for such arbitrations to be decided by arbitrators in accordance with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

In essence, for a trademark holder to prevail and thus to obtain the transfer of a domain name, the trademark holder must show that: (a) the holder has a valid trademark rights and that the domain name is confusingly similar to its trademark; (b) the domain name registrant has no legitimate interest in the domain name; and (c) the domain name was registered in bad faith.

Rather than go to federal court, many trademark holders proceed with arbitration in their efforts to seek the transfer of domain names. A recent arbitration involving the domain name MagicJohnsonTravelGroup.com is typical of the general trend of domain name arbitrations, in that the trademark holder prevailed in obtaining the transfer of the subject domain name.

In this instance, the domain name MagicJohnsonTravelGroup.com was being used by Myspecialprice.com to display links to Magic Johnson and Los Angeles Lakers apparel and travel agency services.

The arbitrator found that this domain name was confusingly similar to the "Magic Johnson" and "Magic Johnson Travel Group" trademarks held by June Bug Enterprises on behalf of Magic Johnson and his recent venture Magic Johnson Travel Group.

The arbitrator also found that the registrant had no legitimate interest in the domain name. Furthermore, the arbitrator concluded that the registrant had acted in bad faith, as it registered the domain name only a couple of days after the public announcement of the Magic Johnson Travel Group.

Accordingly, all three elements of the ICANN policy were deemed satisfied, and the domain name was transferred to the trademark holder. As mentioned, this has been the general result when trademark holders have sought the transfer of domain names that incorporate their marks.

However, two very recent arbitration results buck this trend.

In the first such arbitration, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, which produced the 1983 movie WarGames, filed an arbitration seeking the transfer of the domain name WarGames.com.

The three-member arbitration panel agreed that the domain name was identical to the MGM Studios registered trademark WarGames.

The panel also found that the registrant used the domain name for pay-per-click advertising for the first eight years he had the domain name. However, the panel found that in 2006 he began using the domain name as an online store to sell military simulation war games.

This, according to the panel, showed there was a bona fide offering of goods. Accordingly, the registrant proved legitimate rights to the domain name WarGames.com. As such, not all three elements of the ICANN policy had been satisfied, and the domain name was not transferred.

In the next such arbitration, New Pig sought the transfer of the domain name Pig.com. The three-member arbitration panel agreed that the Pig.com domain name was identical to the trademark "pig" of New Pig.

However, the panel did not find that the domain name was registered to take advantage of New Pig's mark. Instead, it was used to display pay-per-click links related to the generic term "pig." The panel found that Pig.com was registered in good faith based on the dictionary meaning of the word "pig."

Thus, all three elements of the ICANN policy were not satisfied, and the domain was not transferred.

The foregoing does not mean that trademark holders will not succeed when they seek the transfer of domain names that incorporate their marks under appropriate circumstances--far from it. However, the WarGames.com and Pig.com arbitration results stand for the recent proposition that domain registrants can try to fight off trademark holders when they can show legitimate uses for their domain names and lack of bad faith.

More here.

ICANN letter to Regfly

Letter is in PDF format and can be found here.

Where can I download text files of all the domain names that are expiring?

Pool.com offers a free text file of the domain names that are dropping. I must warn you..this is a complete list and is very long. It is much easier to search the domain names through their site.

The file is located here.

A few thoughts...

Wow. What a week it has been in the domain name world. We seen some great sales this week as well as a collapse of an ICANN accredited registrar. Registerfly is in trouble, and on top of that, the domain name holders with RegFly are in even more trouble. I heard this week that a reseller of RegFly domain names is now in hiding because he is receiving death threats at home to him and his family. There are alot of pissed off people out there and frankly I don't blame them. People's lives WILL be ruined over this mess...and it can all be traced back to one man, Kevin Medina. Medina is the co-founder and ex-CEO of RegisterFly who allegedly has spent $100,000 of the companies money on escorts, personal credit card debts, and personal trips, to name a few.

This week I counted at least 4-5 articles, one by Foxnews.com, on Cyber-squatting and "domain tasting." This negative press is hurting us ladies and gentleman. If you buy a domain name for $8 and resell it for $50 you are a businessman, plain and simple. Congratulations. It is the people that register TM'd domain names and then attempt to sell them to the TM holder for $50,000 that give us the bad name. This is a business ladies and gentleman. ...thats all for now.

Is Dynadot (or any other registrar) selling the domain names that I search for?

RESPONSE FROM DYNADOT:

We are not selling search logs. We would never do something like that. Several people have asked us this recently.

When you do a search, there are several places where your info may be intercepted.

1) Between your browser, and our web server. The connection is not SSL, though we have been thinking of adding a SSL protected search. There may be people out there sniffing traffic.

2) Between our server and the central registry. This is a SSL protected connection. I know we are not selling search data, and I sincerely hope the central registries are not doing it. The main search sends your request to all registries (COM, NET, ORG, INFO, WS, etc) and if only one of them is selling data then the search is compromised.

3) From our web server back to your browser.

More on Regfly

"In the past couple of weeks, over 70% of the non-jurisdictional contacts my Office has received have concerned registerfly… In most circumstances, the matter would be refered to Mr. Mike Zupke, ICANN's Registrar Manager, and he would in turn pass along consumer concerns to the registerfly contact… If, however, Mr. Zupke determined that the matter you are complaining about is unrelated to the Registrar’s Accreditation Agreement, or any other ICANN policy, he will likely encourage you to work out the situation with the registrar..." ICANN Ombudsman’s Blog, February 12, 2007

In light of the current fiasco involving ICANN sanctioned domain registrar Registerfly, readers may be forgiven for asking themselves - just what is ICANN responsible for, anyway?

Judging by the overwhelming attempts to contact Frank Fowlie, the ICANN Ombudsman, regarding the chaos surrounding registerfly.com, and the way he quickly washed his hands of the matter, not a whole lot.

Registerfly is an ICANN-approved provider of internet hosting and domain name registration services based in New Jersey that controls approximately two million domain names for 900,000 different owners. Unfortunately for those whose domains seemingly are disappearing into the ether by the day, the company appears to be coming apart at the seams, with no resolution or government action in sight.

An apparent power struggle between two partners in the company has left customers scrambling to recover domains that were not automatically renewed as agreed, or were paid for and for no apparent reason allowed to lapse well before the agreed upon expiration date.

And what of ICANN's decision to simply refer customers back to Registerfly, when the reason they are contacting ICANN in the first place is for a problem concerning domain registration that Registerfly either cannot or will not resolve on its own? If ICANN itself is either unable or unwilling to handle a problem of this magnitude, what is the point of having ICANN around?

After all, the most immediate concern of domain holders is holding on to their domains, or reclaiming their domains before they are lost forever – the rest can be sorted out later.

As ICANN's own website helpfully notes:

What is ICANN?
ICANN is a technical coordination body. Our primary objective is ensuring the stability of the Internet's system of assigned names and numbers. This objective is furthered by the requirement that every business desiring to become a registrar with direct access to ICANN-designated top-level domains must first become accredited for this purpose by ICANN.

Issues concerning proper domain registration would seem to be the very core of ICANN's mission, if ICANN's own site is to be believed.

The chaos surrounding the split between Kevin Medina, who now resides in a luxury condo in Miami Beach, and his former business partner, John Naruszewicz, has customers burning up two separate customer service lines – one in Jersey and the other in Miami – trying to figure out what is happening to their domains. If they can get through to customer service, they are told that the servers are down and that Registerfly’s own tech support cannot even access the back end of their own system. The problems are legion – enough so that an entire website, www.registerflies.com, has been set up to provide a forum for angry customers.

One irate Reg reader complained over the phone about trouble tickets being immediately bounced back as "completed", without any action being taken. The charade of disingenuous tech support and inaccessible "downed" servers has been going on since Monday, 12 February.

Now one of the largest registrars on the internet, Registerfly for years acted as a reseller for eNom.com, until splitting off on its own and receiving its own accreditation from ...ICANN. What amounts to "accreditation" at this point is anyone’s guess.

Problems initially started surfacing months ago, but eNom only terminated its reseller agreement with Registerfly last week, leading to massive confusion about just where the domains were actually registered – apparently over the course of the year during which Registerfly broke away from eNom, many customers were unknowingly still being registered with eNom through Registerfly.

With ICANN watching from the sidelines, customers can only hope that local or federal authorities will step in. Stay tuned.

Source

RegisterFly.com aka "RegFly" collaspes

Registerfly Collapses


Kevin Medina termination papers.

Civil suit against Medina.

Up to two million domain names, including many with associated Web sites, are at risk over the apparent failure of ICANN-accredited domain registrar, RegisterFly.com.

The company in recent weeks is reportedly almost dysfunctional as customers scramble to register, renew or transfer names. RegisterFly.com's support systems appear to be down, or completely overwhelmed.

It appears all domain names with the registrar are locked, preventing clients transferring, or even updating them. Attempts to change the status of domains are being overridden by the registrar.

Registrars are required to provide owners with authorization codes which are required in transferring to other registrars. These are normally displayed in clients' accounts, which are accessed by private login and password codes. It appears however RegisterFly.com has stopped displaying the codes.

Calls to the various telephone numbers nominated for sales, technical support, and billing enquiries are going unanswered. Emails are not being responded to, and the registrar's online support system appears to be unmanned or so under-resourced it is giving that impression. The company has recently introduced a new fax support system. However faxes are going unanswered as well.

Customers attempting to renew domains are receiving emails saying their renewals have failed, without any other information or explanation. In some cases attempts to subscribe to other services are unsuccessful with online messages indicating there is a problem with their credit card, or payment is denied. On checking with their credit card provider they are sometimes finding charges have in fact gone through.

RegisterFly.com uses a security certificate to encrypt data during transmission. Pop-up prompts now appearing on its site however are notifying site users that the security certificate, which had 12 months duration, expired on Saturday.

A major concern for domain owners is that not only are their names at risk, but in many cases those domains involve Web sites.

A site www.registerflies.com has been established for disgruntled RegisterFly.com customers to air their grievances. Curiously www.registerflysucks.com is actually registered to, and hosted by, RegisterFly.com itself as a "landing page" or "parked" site. Unfortunately for the embattled company the site features a review of RegisterFly.com which is far from favorable. Reviewer Jim Darson says, "It seems from the comments/emails I have received, that you should definitely stay away from this company. How they have managed to continue operating with all the negative feedback I've received is beyond me."

One poster, Anon, added, "My account is restricted, my domains are locked, I can't transfer to another registrar."

Adventurepack commented, "These guys are horrible. Besides quadruple charging my credit card without authorization and trying for weeks to get hold of them by email and phone (one time I called on their toll free line at 2 pm central time and was on hold till I came back the next day at 9 am central time). They tried to use a service called stormpay. What a joke. They try to charge you a $12 fee for returning your money that they wrongfully charged you for in the first place."

Lee S. said, "They have taken at least three of my names and sold them to other parties. I have always paid my renewals on time, but that doesn't matter. One of the names they hijacked isn't up for renewal for three weeks. And, of course, they are still billing me as if nothing is happening."

On digg, poster publicXcuse says, "Over the last three or four weeks I've tried renewing one of my domains about 10-12 times now and I get a failure every time. Registerfly keeps saying sorry and to try again. It keeps failing it doesn't look like it's going to end anytime soon."

The problem with RegisterFly.com highlights the vulnerability of domain name owners generally who entrust the world's approved registrars to act as custodians to what is becoming extremely valuable property.

The value of domain names has shot higher in recent years, particularly with the proliferation of parked Web sites. Here domain registrars, including the majors, are using their customers domain names to establish advertising vehicles for which they derive advertising revenue. Often the domains are used without the authorization, or even the knowledge, of owners. Some however offer customers participation, but usually at a fee. If customers don't take up the option, then the registrar often just uses the domain anyway, pocketing the revenue itself.

The business is so big, one of the majors monetizing domain names, DomainSponsor, has reportedly acquired two of the largest wholesale registrars, Bulk Register.com and Enom.com. Enom.com had ties with RegisterFly.com, which was one of its resellers for several years (since 2000) until the arrangement was terminated in February last year.

DomainSponsor, founded in 2002, is a part of Oversee.net, a technology-driven online media company established in 2000, and headquartered in Los Angeles. In addition to domain monetization, Oversee.net also operates in the online advertising, lead generation, and consumer properties spaces, and has over 150 employees.

A dilemma for domain name owners is that registrars are becoming increasingly involved in the use and monetization of domain names themselves, raising suspicions when owners are not advised of pending expiries of their domains, and in the case of RegisterFly.com where they are unable to renew or transfer them. It is unlikely registrars would deliberately engage in practices to pirate domains they are guardians of, but there are many disgruntled former domain owners who blame their registrars for their losses.

RegisterFly.com is involved in providing what are called, "landing pages," whereby either text ads relevant to the domain name feature, or unique content is established on the domain page or pages, surrounded by advertising banners or links. The advertising revenue generated in this case goes to RegisterFly.com and owners are not given the opportunity to share in it.

At least for the past week the monetized sites appeared to be down with the message: "We're sorry, but something went wrong. We've been notified about this issue and we'll take a look at it shortly." Some domains are now back displaying text ads again, while others don't propagate. Meantime a number of domains registered with RegisterFly.com are now pointing to EventRobot pages related to a company that claims to "transform your site or message board into an interactive social networking experience, converting your audience into a passionate community."

Problems with RegisterFly.com, which claims to have two million domains under its control through one million customers in all fifty U.S. states and 120 countries, appear to have surfaced long before its accreditation with ICANN and appear to have played a major part in the severing of ties with Enom. As of Monday RegisterFly.com was still listed as an ICANN accredited registrar. The ICANN Web site in describing RegisterFly.com says its, "various products and services is backed by 24/7 World class customer service via phone, live chat and email."

RegisterFly.com, which according to ICANN has its offices at 4th Floor, 404 Main Street, Boonton, NJ, also offers hosting services and claims to be presently serving more than 300,000 Web sites. The company claims to be debt-free so it is unclear whether it is undergoing a financial collapse or its technical resources have been exhausted. However the longevity of its problems suggest a structural deficiency. Online blogs point to a partnership dispute between the RegisterFly.com principals, Kevin Medina and John Naruszewicz, however there is no independent verification of this. There are suggestions on blogs the RegisterFly.com offices have been moved to Miami, Florida.

Whatever the case something has gone badly awry and is at complete odds with the company's mission statements posted on its Web site as late as Monday:

"By adhering to our basic principals of low cost and value to our customers and excellent customer service we have grown to be one of the largest low cost registrars on the Web today. In terms of number of customers and domains registered we are one of the 10th largest registrars in the world. We are not a 'one man' shop (like many domain registrars and resellers) or a 'here today gone tomorrow' business, we have invested substantially in positioning Registerfly.com as a global industry leader."

RegisterFly.com says, "We do not believe in spending millions of dollars on ineffective advertising or being lavish. We have built a profitable, thriving business and owe it all to our customers. Our approach is to keep our eye on the bottom line while continuing to develop and offer new products and services to our customers, in other words, value for our customers."

"Sure there are other registrars out there cheaper," says RegisterFly.com. "Some actually are willing to make pennies over cost or worst yet lose money on each domain sold just for the sake of market share, NOT RegisterFly. We are in this business for the long haul," the registrar's Web site states.

ICANN, through its press office, was made aware of the pending publication of this story well prior to the commencement of business on Friday. ICANN was alerted to the claims being made about RegisterFly.com and was asked whether it was prepared to issue a statement concerning the status of the registrar. ICANN was also asked what mechanisms were in place to protect domain owners generally in the event of a default by an ICANN-accredited registrar. ICANN did not respond.

Telephone calls to RegisterFly.com to seek clarification of the company's status went unanswered. An email was sent prior to the commencement of business on Friday care of Support, Customer Care, Sales, and Compliance, at RegisterFly.com, utilizing RegisterFly.com nominated email addresses. An offer was made to include in this story a statement on behalf of the company responding to the issues being raised, and to clarify the company's status. As of Monday morning, and up until this point, no response has been received from the company. If a statement, or any notification, is received from the company it will be posted here. If there is no comment from the company when viewing this story, it will be the case that the company has still not responded to our requests for clarification and/or explanation as to its status.

Source: BigNewsNetwork.com

Another way to promote your website/domain names.

I recently stumbled on PRleap.com. The site is free though you can pay for some upgrades and you will need to put down a deposit of $10. What the site does is publishes press releases that you make to over 26,000 news sites. If your press release is good enough it may be picked up by Google News and your traffic will be over whelming. I suggest this site because if you are a domain seller like myself, this site could make the difference between a $100 sale and a $5,000 sale. Try it out and let me know what you think.

What is PPC in detail?

I don't deal with PPC on a daily basis like some domainer's do so I have provided this article from Wikipedia to help you out.

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

Advertisers bid on "keywords" that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword "red widgets", hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called "sponsored links" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own PPC service, MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.


Categories
PPC engines can be categorized in "Keyword", "Product", "Service" engines. However, a number of companies may fall in two or more categories. More models are continually evolving. Currently, pay per click programs do not generate any revenue solely from traffic for sites that display the ads. Revenue is generated only when a user clicks on the ad itself.


Keyword PPCs
Advertisers using these bid on "keywords", which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of the amount bid. Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are the very heart of pay per click advertising. The terms are guarded as highly valued trade secrets by the advertisers, and many firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop keyword strategies.

As of 2005, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services), Microsoft adCenter, LookSmart, Miva (formerly FindWhat), Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves), 7Search, Kanoodle, and Baidu.


Product PPCs
"Product" engines let advertisers provide "feeds" of their product databases and when users search for a product, the links to the different advertisers for that particular product appear, giving more prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting the user sort by price to see the lowest priced product and then click on it to buy. These engines are also called Product comparison engines or Price comparison engines.

Noteworthy PPC Product search engines are: BizRate.com, Shopzilla.com, NexTag, PriceGrabber.com, and Shopping.com.


Service PPCs
"Service" engines let advertisers provide feeds of their service databases and when users search for a service offering links to advertisers for that particular service appear, giving prominence to advertisers who pay more, but letting users sort their results by price or other methods. Some Product PPCs have expanded into the service space while other service engines operate in specific verticals.

Noteworthy PPC services include NexTag, SideStep, and TripAdvisor.