DomainTools Blog

The time has come to draw a name out of our Reverse Whois contest entries via SantasFavoriteWhois.com. And the winner is…Paul Goldstone! His entry read, “Dear Santa, please send me a free reverse lookup report. There’s a cookie in it for you!” Congratulations, Paul!

Honorable mentions go to the following contestants who submitted some great entries:

****#1 (Bob)****

Dear Santa.

I would really appreciate it if you’d give me a Reverse Whois Report (from those nice people at Domains Tools) for Christmas. It would be a big help in maintaining my domain portfolio. You can send it to me over the internet, so you wouldn’t have to make a stop at my house. I’m sure you get enough milk and cookies everywhere else and could use one less stop.

I’ve been very good this year. As I’m sure you know, I’ve been fair and honest in my business dealings and kind to people and dogs.

Thank you for your consideration, Santa.

Your Friend -

Bob

P.S. – I’d prefer a 3 or 4 character dot com, but I know it’s too much to ask for. Maybe having the Reverse Whois Report will help me get one.

P.P.S. – Please be careful of airplanes when you’re flying around.

P.P.P.S. – Please give my best wishes for a Merry Christmas to Mrs. Clause, the reindeer and all the elves.

****#2 (Neil)****

It’s that fun time of year to start another give away!

We’ve been working with Santa to provide a FREE Reverse Whois Report to one lucky DomainTools fan…

Find out all the details by visiting Santa’s Favorite Whois site.

P.S. You have until January 1st, 2012  to enter the give away by contacting Santa@SantasFavoriteWhois.com about your wish to win the report.

Good Luck and Happy Holidays from DomainTools!

Time to announce our DomainTools binoculars contest winners!!!

Chosen at random by our lovely employees Kirsten, Tim P. and Brian, the winners of the Domain Monitoring Tool contest (aka DomainTools Binoculars giveaway) are:

Batfan, Sara Freixa and WebsiteToSell.com — Congratulations!

To claim your new binoculars, please email monica@domaintools.com.

Thank you to all who participated in our Fun Friday giveaway!

You’ve probably noticed that in our recent conference pictures, little red DomainTools binoculars keep popping up — and for good reason. They’ve been a hit! We started giving these away at a few of the conferences we’ve attended this year, including Domain Rountable, INTA and the SMX Search Marketing Expo. The response from exhibitors and attendees at these conferences has been incredibly entertaining.

The collection of comments we’ve been receiving range from “My kids would LOVE these!” and “You guys have the coolest swag out of all the exhibitors” to “these are so fun – and they actually work?!” and “Is it okay if I take…uhm…two or three?”. Top comment prize goes to an individual at INTA that came back late on the last day of the exhibit and said, “I came back to this hall specifically for these binoculars!”. Surprisingly, we even had inquiries about our binoculars even after our conferences had come and gone!

So, without further adieu, for those who have been asking us how they can get their hands on a pair of DomainTools binoculars…this is your chance!

Here’s how you can enter to win a pair of DomainTools binoculars (so you can monitor your domains and those of our competitors, of course!):

1. Comment on this blog (along with your email address) or on our Facebook page saying “I want those DomainTools binoculars” by Sunday, June 26, 2011.

2. We’ll draw 3 winners at random (the old fashioned way) and we’ll announce the winner on Monday, June 27, 2011.

That’s it! Good luck!

FreeCreditReport.com is a website that focuses on reporting credit ratings directly to consumers. Their primary audience is consumers that watch TV. I have seen these commercials so much that it makes me wonder, what the conversion rate is on their website and why they are so successful? Their recent commercial states that they have served over 20 Million customers so far. I thought I would examine their success and break it down for everyone to learn from.

One of my biggest things I preach about domain names is that the word “Free” or “Cheap” in front of a category converts MUCH better. Imagine a consumer reaching for his wallet, he is about to pay for something. Instead of hitting confirm on the purchase page, he decides to do a quick Google search for “Cheap” and the thing he is about to buy. The money is about to fall out of the consumers wallet. This is why Free and Cheap convert so well. If I could go back to 1996 I would be buying Free and Cheap domain names. But then again I would be buying a lot of things if I had a time machine. The Internet is still very young and a lot of people understand the power of the “Free” keyword. But over the next decade it will become even more well known. I can see college professors teaching entire courses on the power of “Free” and “Cheap” as a marketing tool. Compete estimates that they have 4,743,218 in U.S. visitors per month. I would estimate higher. People are not finding the site because of traditional SEO or SEM, they have found a brand they can market offline and it converts really well. There is a call to action, run to your computer and get something for Free. I think we will see a lot more commercials in the future that advertise free things.

A very interesting side note is that FreeCreditReport.com is owned by Experian and that Experian is an official ICANN accredited registrar.