Beware All Domainers!

[investica2008]

How naïve can a Newbie (like me) be! The following is what I learnt to my expense AND by direct experience.

Last month I registered a few interesting .com domains. This was my very first experience as a domainer. I believed those domains were linguistically “well designed” and because monetizing such domains was entirely new to me, I simply decided to put them up for a quick sale. I offered them on eBay as well as (innocently) on several forums, such as domainsocial.com, idomainsite.com and acorndomains.co.uk.

I immediately noticed that those forums had very promptly promoted my offer on the web under their own forum banner, thus promoting themselves in the first place. Ok.
I am still so ignorant and so unaware about the whole situation that I believed it was maybe (even if I thought that it was ‘overzealous” on their part) a good thing to advertise my sale offer in such fashion. WRONG!

A week later, and after further educating myself, I decided to Cash Park my domains instead of selling them. It’s only then that I realized my naïve mistake and how unethical and gruesome this whole business can be. In the first instance, by displaying my sale offer under their own banner, all these forums, including some small fry like ectio.com and freelawusa.com, had effectively “taken” and “occupied” the only web space originally available that Google would allow me to park my individual domains! Thus preventing me from ever making money by parking my well sponsored domains. Can this story get worse? Of course or it wouldn’t be worth a thread! Hold and behold, in the same lap of time I noticed that by entering in Google search 2 of my non-ever (but formerly on sale) parked domains, some unexpected “ghostly portals” suddenly appeared! Actually 4 different portals were displayed for my very 2 inactive domains.

Today, my domains are securely but uselessly parked. And when I traced back those
ghostly portals’ tracks from their original presence on the web, what I found instead was
2 forum banners still hanging: domainsocial and idomainsite.

Can this story get EVEN WORST? YES! Last night I tried several times to logon into domainsocial (from my Thailand IP of course) to post this thread but strangely enough I couldn’t even get access to the forum from Google search. A few moments later, no more than 10-20 seconds, my computer received a virus that entirely disabled my Windows OS! Coincidence? NO! Unbelievable? YES!

It goes without saying that ICANN has already been notified of such “tricky” manipulation with all verifiable details and track records to support my allegation.

I wonder now what Zach has to say now about all this?

[zach]

Hi

Could you clarify a few things?

What do you mean by forums advertising under their own banner?
What ghostly portals are you refering to?

If you are refering to your domain name appearing in google, but under a domain forum, this could be because google crawled the forums and idenified the forums as relevant to the terms.

[investica2008]

Thanks Zack for your reply.
From now on, call me The Web Fool.
I want to answer your (honest) thread reply.
I didn't know how to take "sceenshots' to prove my point (infortunatly).
But most importantly is that from name.com where I registered those 2 main domains of mine (dotbizniche & nichepremium), came suddendly from "nowhere" already built portals. Which I referred as "ghost portals'. Very much visible on google search and obviouly without me ever creating them in the first place.
I am a web fool now, but I am yours if you can clarify this with me.

:whistle:

[byallnames]

Hi Investica2008,

Many registrars put up a generic page with ads and park your domain there for you. Perhaps this is what you mean by "ghostly portal"? Your domain name is actually using their the registrar's nameserver, and this is why it happens. If this is true in your case, all you have to do to use your domain name is get a web hoster. Then, you would simply need to change the nameservers to your web hoster's nameservers.

All the best,
byallnames

[investica2008]

Byallnames....Thank you for your reply. Now it all make more sense to me!

[byallnames]

You're welcome Investica2008. I'm glad I could help!

[itssri]

Hi Chris,

There you see, you are unduly worried. Do you remember, I had said that you need to have total control over DNS management, but that also means that you should set up your host servers etc. properly. Since these domains are on name.com, it is a very easy process there.

- Just go to your control panel.
- Tick the domains you want Google Apps enabled.
- Click on the activate button at the bottom.
- The page will refresh and you will see a notice at the top saying Google Apps has been activated.
- Now in the domain list, there is a [Enable] button in the Google Apps column, clicking on it will take you to Google Apps Dashboard, where it is all self explanatory.

I have your live.com ID. One of these days, I will come on MSN messenger and help you out, if you have any problem.

Regards,

[investica2008]

Thank you very kindly again my "web" friend Sri for all your good advices and support. Finally everything has been clarified and is clear to my mind. All my misunderstandings, skeptisism and doubts have been erased. I must confess my great lack of experience in this rather complex web business. I am ready to learn more with greater confidence from now on. As a matter of fact name.com automatically creates those portals as your "future page" everytime you register a domain name. Those "ghostly" portals did actually exist, but I had no explaination for them and actually thought my domains could have been hijacked. Ignorance is really the source of all (my) stupidity.

I am sure we will have better and more meaningful web experiences to share together in the future.