A ticker that constantly scrolls on your the top of your browser showing domain names for sale or at auction at sites including:

Sedo

Afternic

DNForum

Pool

NamePros

SitePoint

If you are interested on a domain you see scrolling, you can just click on it and it will take you the site, so you can place a bid.

The  ticker is free, works with Internet Explorer and Firefox,  and you can download yours at:

http://www.dnticker.com   …

If never ceases to amaze me that Madison Avenue doesn’t get the fact that web advertising can be the most well tracked advertising they can buy, much more so than television and radio.

On the face of it I’m a television advertisers dream. I watch 5-6 hours of television every day. In actuality I’m an advertiser’s nightmare. I haven’t seen a commercial in three years. I have DirecTV, Hi Def, and TiVo System. I don’t watch any shows live (except for football, usually flipping around there too), and fast forward through all the commercials. Even if I’m home at 8pm and want to watch a show, I wait until 8:15 to start so I can get through the show without seeing any commercials.

Here’s the best part, within the past two years we were selected and served as a Nielsen Household. So “American Idol” got credit for us watching, so did “24″, so did “Desperate Housewives”, as did all the shows we watch. But we never watched a commercial. Not a one.

How much value did the advertisers get from us? Nothing, None, Zip, Zero.

They paid for our eyeballs but we weren’t watching

How about all the people that go to the bathroom or get a snack or make a quick call during the commercials. How about people that actually have a conversation with someone in the room about what they just saw, or get up to have a smoke.

How many people just keep the television on for noise, barely paying attention to the program much less the commercials?

What percentage of the viewers of a particular show actually sees the commercials? No one knows that. They certainly can’t tell you have many people bought a Ford because of the ad someone just saw or went to a dealer showroom to even look.

How about radio, they try to measure how many people are listening to a radio station. One common method is for selected listener’s to keep a log of what they listen to, when and for how long each day.…

There’s a lot of domains out there.

Here’s the math:

Today according to pool.com there are 56,250 domains dropping.

Over at Namejet.com there are over 7,000 names in pre-release for Networksolutions.com, Enom.com and its registrar partners. Backorder a name, if your the only one who does, you get it for $70.

At Snapnames.com there are 8,697 domains exclusive to Snapnames going, starting at $59 and up to $99 if your the only one who orders the name you get it.

At TDNAM.com there are approximately 10,000 expired domains registered by the Godaddy.com group of registrars, going at auction, starting at $10, plus registration fees.

That is 86,000 expired and dropping names TODAY.

Don’t like any of those, tomorrow there will be another set of approximately the same amount. Then the next day and the day after that. Everyday including Christmas and New Years 365 days a year.  TDNAM.com has almost 115,000 expired names in the next ten days.

Our company used to go through the dropping domains list every day. 365 days a year for years and years.

Today we no longer have the time to do it (or the energy).

I know we are not alone. Many of the big domain owners stopped going through these lists a while ago.

That leaves room for you. A lot of room.

Go to work …

I spent seven hours at the huge Art Basel Show in Miami yesterday. I saw the obligatory canvases painted completely white (25k+), Black (65K+) and a very pretty green color priced, at a no doubt what is a steal, at $335,000.

Also on display were the white canvas with simply words like “die collector scum”, and “meat is death”. I also got to see the back doors of what appeared to be a 60′s volkswagen bus placed on the wall, a bunch of clothes on the floor and more hanging from the ceiling which looked like what happened when grandma’s clothes line broke. There was a cardboard box open flat hanging on the wall with some tape hanging from it, no price was listed, guess if you can’t afford the box you shouldn’t ask the price.

My personal favorite was (picture attached) of one of the first apple computers with a sneaker on top of it.

I did inquire about the price for all you tech guys (after all it is almost Christmas) but sad to say you had to buy the whole collection of some 50 sneakers with various items attached to them, one sneaker had a wine bottle when the foot should have been.

Of course there were the “die piggy piggy die die” (those who have seen “Mickey Blue Eyes” will understand), type of paintings, all priced in at least in the five figures most in the six.

I had a nice conversation with a dealer which was asking 2.3 Million for a very pretty oil, who told me a client had purchased a similar painting a few years ago for 2 Million and now was worth $3 Million. He also told me he was having a good show and sold a painting for over 3 million yesterday.

So after my time at Art Basel, i left empty handed but with the clear knowledge that in comparison, domains are cheap. Dirt Cheap.

Let me be clear here, domains are not just a “good buy” or a “good value” or “fairly priced in today’s market”, but they are downright cheap.

Let’s take our friend who purchased the painting for 2 million and sold it for 3 million three years later. Fair enough. Investing those funds at 8% would give you $160,000 of return a year, non-compounded, so if you hold a painting for 3 years and sell for 3 million your did alright but you would have had a return of half as much at 8%.…

One such place is dailydomaindrop.com. Five days a week they publish a list of between 50-100 domains that have recently dropped and are available for registration. For $60 a month you become a premium member and get access to their list which is published Sunday-Thursday at 8pm EST.

All the domains on the list are available at the time of publication, but as you would suspect most are taken within minutes of publication. Your not going to find any six figure names on the list, but you will definitely see many names well worth registering. You can register any name you see on the list, using any registrar you want. In addition to the $60 per month membership fee, you have to pay dailydomaindrop.com $2 for each domain you register, via paypal. The $2 charge is by the honor system meaning you won’t get a bill for each registration, you just need to send it to them as you register domains.

As an alternative you can join for $20 a year as a regular member and you will get the same list 16 hours later. You still have to pay $2 per domain registered, but don’t expect to find too many names still available from the previous night.

If you only register 1 domain a day off their list then your looking at something like $4.50 paid to them plus your registration cost of say $8 or around $12.50 a name.

Cheap.

For more information or to join visit

http://www.dailydomaindrop.com/AboutUs.html#membership…

Every day we receive many offers from retail customers looking to purchase domains. The vast majority of these folk still don’t grasp the concept that a domain is worth anymore than the registration fee.

Most people compare domains to real estate. I view domains more like commodities and collectibles. A commodity is something that has limited amounts and demand for them. A collectible is something that is something prized, either one of a kind or very limited in number.  Like commodities and collectibles, domain’s value, in large part, come from the fact that all of these resources are finite.  Market value is based on supply and demand. Not to say that they are not an infinite combination of letters and numbers that one can use as a domain, or using a non .com extensions, but there are certainly a finite amount of short generic .com’s.  The shorter and more generic the domain, the more valuable it becomes.

With regards to real estate,  although there are certainly very unique properties, the vast majority of real estate is not that special. Take a tract home in a community of thousands of others. You miss out on buying one of them there are 50 more for sale pretty much just like it.  A condo in a building of 500 units.  You miss out on buying one there is another just like it on the floor above or below.  They are not that unique.  Maybe that is why the real estate market has collapsed.

Yet during the same time, commodities have skyrocketed. Oil, gold, copper, silver all way up this year and over the last several years. World demand is high. There will be fluctuations in price, but the long term outlook is that commodities will be only more expensive in the coming years. There is just too many people in the world, countries going through enormous growth, more development, more need.

Domains are similarly poised. The growth of the Internet is certain, domains are needed for sites, blogs, traffic. Not just in the good old USA, but all over the world and the only universal domain is a .com

Stuff.com, there is only one of those in the world.

You can go to a flea market and pick up an oil painting for $50, yet this week in Miami over 35,000 people will gather for “Art Basel” which is expected to generate sales over 500 million dollars in just 4 days.…