Domain Magnate

New cover story on dnjournal about Dan Pulcrano, who owns such names as LosAngeles.com, SanFrancisco.com and Philadelphia.com

Changing of the Guard: How Dan Pulcrano Became The Point Man in the Historic March From Old Media to the New World Online

If you are a domain owner you are involved in something much bigger than the domain business- you are in the media business. The success that domain owners are enjoying today is a direct result of a historic upheaval in the media business that is shifting advertising expenditures away from traditional outlets and onto the Internet.

As one of the few publishers that have successfully navigated the treacherous straights between print media and the new world online, Boulevards New Media founder and CEO Dan Pulcrano gave us a unique opportunity to take you beyond domains for an inside look at the larger forces currently shaping our industry. Forces that are precipitating the fall of old media empires offline and the rise of new ones on the web - a seismic shift hat has put owners of high quality domains in the catbird seat.

Of the six billion people on our planet, only a few dozen had the foresight in the mid 1990’s to start acquiring domain names with the idea that they could become valuable in the future. Those very rare individuals were almost universally regarded as fools who were flushing perfectly good money down the drain. Fast forward barely a decade ahead and yesterday’s fools have become today’s visionaries. read more »

This is a complete guide on domain scammers that shows how to recognize and avoid scammers while trading domains.

There are several popular scamming schemes:

1. Scammer sells stolen domains

How it works:

Scammer trying to sell quickly a stolen domain for a bargain price.

A domain can be stolen by hacking into the a email address associated with it - like yahoo, or hotmail; or by means of social engineering, e.g. if a scammer contacts the registrar support and pretends to be the owner of the domain who forgot the password. Stealing passwords is also possible through keyloggers and trojans installed on the domain owner’s computer.

How to avoid having a domain stolen?

- don’t use free email addresses in your domain contact details. Most people still do this and it puts their valuable domain assets as higher risk. Instead use an email address from your own domain.
- install and run an antivirus and antispyware software, update it frequently and run scans. Here is a good guide on cleaning your computer from spyware and viruses.
- always use strong passwords, random letters and numbers that are near each other on the keyboard. Use different passwords for everything and a password manager to keep track of them. Roboform is recommended. Change the passwords once in a while.
- keep your whois contacts and registrar information up to date read more »