Hand Registration Contest - March 2019 - DOT COM only

[BrandCougar]

Let's see who can acquire the best .COM hand registration during the month of March? "Best" will be determined by your peers. You have to create it during the month of March 2019. As long as it says created 03-2019 it could have been a name born before that died and lost its age. Let me be clear, for this March contest the name has to be a new DOT COM hand reg that you own.

Here are the rules of this DOT COM HAND REG MARCH 2019 contest:

1. Hand registration during the month of March 2019.
2. You may submit up to 7 domain names. (Each name submitted must have it's OWN Reply post).
3. So if you want to submit 7 names, submit SEVEN separate Reply posts.
4. I am excluding myself from entering the contest, since I am facilitating the event!
5. The Top 20 Finalist will be selected the following way .---> (10) "Likes" entries with the most "Likes" in the thread and (10) Wildcard entries selected by a team of 5 panelist from the NamePros community. The 5 panelist will be announced after month end to avoid mid-month lobbying. Additionally, the 5 panelist (Wildcard pickers) will be be non-participants in the contest to avoid a conflict of interest and will be respected NPros members that have a wealth of experience in domaining. The panelist members will be a familiar lot.
6. The WINNER will be selected by your peers via a TOP 20 POLL from the Top 20 Finalist mentioned above.
7. The TOP 20 POLL will occur at the end of the month. This will be a 72 hour poll.
8. We welcome EVERYONE to participate in selecting the WINNER from the Top 20 Finalist list.
9. In the event of a TIE during with winner polling, the tie-breaker will go to the WINNER with the earlier submission posted to this thread. (a plan to avoid any misunderstand should a tie occur)


TOP 20 Finalist

• Finalist Pick 10 - those 10 names with the most "likes" make it to the Top 20 (user involvement).
• Finalist Pick 10 - those 10 names that a panel selects make it to the Top 20 (panel involvement).
• Top 20 Poll - this involves everyone, but only for a 72 hour window at month end (ALL involvement).

What do you win?

• Number one, props and recognition here at Namepros.
• I will personally pay $20 JACKPOT (via PayPal) to the WINNER.
• Anyone wishing to contribute an additional $0.30 to the Jackpot - contact me via PM - and I will add your contribution on top of the $20 Jackpot I have committed (let's see how large a Jackpot we can build).

* Sponsors welcome. Send me a PM.



JACKPOT UPDATE:

* We have had (9) NP members generously contribute additional funds to the JACKPOT.
* The JACKPOT is now at $200 Total + 1 Efty Growth subscription

 

[Ramesh Kumar G]

#5 CoFinancier.com

 

[DomainFQ.com]

#2 GlobalFinancialApp.com

 

[BrandCougar]

*** SPOTLIGHT ***

The "Spotlight" program appears to be popular. Glad everyone is enjoying them.

While reviewing the current Contest Summary by "Likes" Report earlier this week, I noticed a few Participants had more than one Entry in the Top 50 ranking. It appears they have an eye for finding solid Hand Regs and the audience is posting "Likes" to those Entries. Congrats!

This got me thinking that I should start a "Spotlight" program in this thread, so we could learn a little bit about their domaining journey and ask them to share a few insights with us..

This will be our 9th Spotlight post and our guest this morning is: @handpicked


I think you will like the "Spotlight" program this month as each individual shares a bit about their domaining background, the sites & tools they use, the current industry sectors they see as promising, along with a little advise for those new to the business.

It's a mini-interview series of 4-5 direct questions and I hope you enjoy this piece. (see below).

-Cougar


----------------------------------------------

Q & A with @handpicked


1) What year did you register your 1st domain? How long have you been an active domainer?
I'm not a full time domainer, I am actually a factory worker (Engineer) like the one depicted in the legendary 'modern times' movie. I regged a dot org name in 2015 and sold it for 250$, again regged one more dot org in 2016 and sold for 250$. This arouse my interest but I never gave it a shot full time. Now once again I am trying to make something of it by having a branding blog myself called BrandProdigy dot com which I am designing/coding it myself.

2) What is your preferred Registrar for Hand Registering domains?
I do not own a large portfolio. For the (50+) names I own and also names for my blogs, I have used a combination of:

• Uniregistry (easy one click checkout and search trust),
• Bigrock (accepts my country's currency, has local presence here),
• Bluehost for ccTLD (accepts my country's currency, has local presence and linking to their hosting is easy as essentially they are hosting guru's),
• Namecheap (recent addition, respect their consistent low pricing and performance),
• Namesilo (new discovery, I registered BrandProdigy with them).

3) What are your preferred Topics / Industry Sectors that you see as promising?
Branding. I see lots of potential in the technology, lifestyle and health sector. It's highly speculative, it's said that 66% of all business is disrupted in the past 15 years (techcrunch), many of them shut shop and a whole lot of them have sprouted with a different skin.

4) What sales channel(s), platform(s), or sales landing page site(s) do you use?
GD auctions and outbound, now at NP too.

5) Any suggestions for someone new to domaining?
I'm not an expert, but to air my opinion, I feel domaining is a good business when done well. Nothing to be scared of, more so, one can network with amazing people on the way. It's like photography. Some of your snaps click while others suck, but, some photographers make it big. Learn the craft from experts here at NP and strike right. strike hard. don't discount. You win. And one last word don't spam for heaven's sake..

----------------------------------------------

 

[crodomainhub]

CBD//fueled//com​

 

[private123]

4th entry
Dot com

 

[BrandCougar]

THANK YOU!!! (TWICE IN ONE DAY)


More good news to share with the group...

This afternoon we had (drum roll please) another NP member contribute to the Winner's Jackpot ($20.00).

The Jackpot is now at $79.00.

I am beginning to think we might hit a $XXX Jackpot this month.

Will the Jackpot hit $100 this month?

This contest continues to gain recognition and the Entries continue to roll in. The added $$ contributed to the Jackpot helps to bring additional eye-balls to the contest... and with more participation... there is a larger group of individuals providing "Likes" for the Entries as part of our audience voting.

Nothing more exciting than to get a NamePros Alert indicating that one of your submissions has been recognized. Some of your Entries have received quite a few "Likes". Congrats!

To celebrate our latest Jackpot increase - please recognize 1-2 Entries tonight via a "Like". Make someone's day with a well deserved NamePros Alert.

Have a good one!

-Cougar

 

[cabotower]

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

LionRent//com

 

[BrandCougar]

THANK YOU!!! (AGAIN)


More good news to share with the group...

This morning we received an additional boost to the Winner's Jackpot by @FEDOMAIN.com ($10.00 on top of the $25 provided earlier).

The Jackpot is now at $89.00.

Please check out his site at: FEDOMAIN.com


I don't know about you, but I am starting to believe that a $XXX Jackpot is just around the corner.

Will the Jackpot hit $100 this month?


A little bird is telling me... it just might happen.

Have a great day!

-Cougar

 

[efizi]

K/a/r/G/a/r/a/g/e.com

 

[Joseph CA]

dotAlphabet (.com)​

 

[EbookLover]

@BrandCougar

I hate to bring this up because I know you must be spending a lot of time doing this. I mean you must be going though the thread, collecting entries and counting likes of each and every entry manually, right? Or are you automating this somehow?

Anyway, I have a suggestion.

As it stands now, people have to scroll through the whole thread just to find entries to vote on.

Instead of posting a PDF file, I think what might be more helpful to both voters and entrants, is to post the weekly list of domain entries in your OP with links to the entry's post so that it is easier for people to find the domains entered and vote for them.

Or even better you could post a link to a Google Spreadsheet with the list and links instead.

The point is, this it makes it easier for voters to quickly see the domains in one place instead of sifting through the whole thread. If they want to vote for a domain, they just click the link to it and vote.

I think this will increase likes/vote because it's very possible that after so many pages, voters might leave the thread, which puts newer entries at a disadvantage.

It also helps those entries who might be getting lost in the sea of posts because they aren't using a logo or styled text to market their name.

I know that the reason I am personally using logos is because it helps in visibility (and also conceptualizing the intended use case of the name) but not everyone wants to do that. But they should not lose out because of it since the whole point of the contest is the name, not the logo. Forbidding logos would not solve the problem because you'd still have a plethora of posts to sift through to find the entries.

Anyway, just a suggestion because I think, for how popular this thread is, the amount of total likes/votes could be improved.

PS: What would be even more helpful is if the list I suggested above would be updated frequently (possible through Google spreadsheet with multiple admins), but that would probably require a helper or 2. I would help but being that I am an entrant already that may be looked upon as not proper.

PPS: Might also be best if the google spreadsheet only lists the name. # of likes is too time consuming and can also sway votes (it's true, a good many people vote according to popularity or unpopularity, even domainers).

Sorry for the long post, but I think it may be helpful for future contests, at least.

Anyway, thanks for all the time you're spending on the contest.

 

[OnlineDomainShop]

YouHadMe//com - Currently Listed on SH , Also approved on BP for 5999$

 

[EbookLover]

---

 

[BrandCougar]

BINGO!!

This afternoon we received an additional contribution by another NP member ($11.00).

The Jackpot is now at $100.00.


This just keeps getting better by the day. A shout out to @BrandsOpen for helping to bump us to the $XXX level.

And there's more... a little bird is telling me... there is also something else in the makings. Another update announcement will be posted this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

-Cougar

 

[BRANDERX]

BINGO!!

This afternoon we received an additional contribution by another NP member ($11.00).

The Jackpot is now at $100.00.


This just keeps getting better by the day. A shout out to @BrandsOpen for helping to bump us to the $XXX level.

And there's more... a little bird is telling me... there is also something else in the makings. Another update announcement will be posted this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

-Cougar

Show attachment 113343

Amazing!

Kinda disappointing we haven't heard from any registrar so far?!?!?

 

[BrandCougar]

@BrandCougar

I hate to bring this up because I know you must be spending a lot of time doing this. I mean you must be going though the thread, collecting entries and counting likes of each and every entry manually, right? Or are you automating this somehow?

Anyway, I have a suggestion.

As it stands now, people have to scroll through the whole thread just to find entries to vote on.

Instead of posting a PDF file, I think what might be more helpful to both voters and entrants, is to post the weekly list of domain entries in your OP with links to the entry's post so that it is easier for people to find the domains entered and vote for them.

Or even better you could post a link to a Google Spreadsheet with the list and links instead.

The point is, this it makes it easier for voters to quickly see the domains in one place instead of sifting through the whole thread. If they want to vote for a domain, they just click the link to it and vote.

I think this will increase likes/vote because it's very possible that after so many pages, voters might leave the thread, which puts newer entries at a disadvantage.

It also helps those entries who might be getting lost in the sea of posts because they aren't using a logo or styled text to market their name.

I know that the reason I am personally using logos is because it helps in visibility (and also conceptualizing the intended use case of the name) but not everyone wants to do that. But they should not lose out because of it since the whole point of the contest is the name, not the logo. Forbidding logos would not solve the problem because you'd still have a plethora of posts to sift through to find the entries.

Anyway, just a suggestion because I think, for how popular this thread is, the amount of total likes/votes could be improved.

PS: What would be even more helpful is if the list I suggested above would be updated frequently (possible through Google spreadsheet with multiple admins), but that would probably require a helper or 2. I would help but being that I am an entrant already that may be looked upon as not proper.

PPS: Might also be best if the google spreadsheet only lists the name. # of likes is too time consuming and can also sway votes (it's true, a good many people vote according to popularity or unpopularity, even domainers).

Sorry for the long post, but I think it may be helpful for future contests, at least.

Anyway, thanks for all the time you're spending on the contest.

@EbookLover -

Thanks for participating in the contest. And also thanks for your detailed list of suggestions.

"Likes" Counting - Yes, you are correct. Glad to share. It is a manual process to count "Likes" each time I provide a Summary Report. Not an issue when there are only 2-5 pages to sift through, but becomes a bit more labor intensive as participation grew. I wish there were an API or toolkit in NamePros for thread OP's to be able to perform a simple data pull or subtotaling for "Likes", "Dislikes", "Thanks", "Post #", etc per thread. To my knowledge, such a feature does not currently exist.

Screen Shot / PDF - the reason I am using screen shots, supplemented with a PDF file, is to avoid the domain entries from being indexed by Google. Many participants use image files when posting their entries for the same reason. The concern most voiced is that domain owners don't want to be in a sale negotiation only to have a potential buyer toss in their face a NamePros link as a negotiating tactic. The reason for using PDF is to provide the information for the community, but also to avoid scraping and re-purposing abuse.

Forbidding Logos - on this one I can be clear - not going to happen. The creativity and color of the images being posted in the thread are outstanding! They add character, color, and entertainment to the thread. Additionally (and I am a bit passionate about this one) I am not inclined to add additional and unnecessary limitations to the contest. I agree with your point - that forbidding logos would not solve the problem. In my view it would turn the contest viewing to stale and boring (1990's style blogging). There are several highly skilled designers participating in the contest and submitting their entries - I would choke if they all disappeared and would rather go back to watching Gilligan's Island on B&W TV.

OP Index - it's an idea I think has merit and, I agree, a quick jump list would help with "Likes" voting. I originally added the "Post #" column on the Summary Chart to help, but I do agree that was a short term fix and not a long term solution. This idea would provide an efficiency boost to the contest - so I am inclined to implement the suggestion. (but before doing so I would want to ensure whatever is implemented is not going to re-introduce the Google scraping concern mentioned above - I need to think this through)


Thanks again for taking the time to offer several excellent suggestions for participation & voting improvements. I agree - ease of "Likes" voting and tallying the totals becomes more challenging and time consuming as the thread expands and entry volume increases.

A bit of "growing pains" is emerging in our processes. And the topics you shared are worth spending time finding solutions.

Regards,

-Cougar

 

[EbookLover]

Thanks for reading my post & responding in detail.

These problems are not simple to solve for various reasons, including the fact that the forum script (XenForo) was not designed for contests. A quick search found there are competition add-ons for XenForo.

Maybe if these competitions become popular enough, NP would be willing to buy/implement a contest add-on .

BTW, I also forgot the fact that you need to check whois on every domain entry to make sure it was in fact regged in the month it is supposed to be regged.

Lots of work!

 

[private123]

Last entry ( travel site)
Dot com

 

[awwalmb]

 

[Fadi H]

Last entry :

J O B U W . com

 

[Abdel]

 

[legendarynames]

#2

NursultanProperties.com

(The capital of Kazakhzstan was renamed from Astana to Nursultan)

 

[BrandCougar]

Thanks for reading my post & responding in detail.

These problems are not simple to solve for various reasons, including the fact that the forum script (XenForo) was not designed for contests. A quick search found there are competition add-ons for XenForo.

Maybe if these competitions become popular enough, NP would be willing to buy/implement a contest add-on .

BTW, I also forgot the fact that you need to check whois on every domain entry to make sure it was in fact regged in the month it is supposed to be regged.

Lots of work!

@EbookLover -

A quick follow up...

Whois X-Check - You are correct. I am manually x-checking each submission via Whois to verify that the Creation Date for the domain entry is within the month of March 2019. The domain then lands on the Qualified Entry column on my spreadsheet. For each domain entry that does not qualify, I shoot the member a DM about the oversight, indicate the reason the name did not qualify, and respectfully ask them to Edit/Remove their submission from the thread to avoid confusion. Everyone has been terrific and responsive when notified. Thankfully a couple participants have pitched in and and have been shooting me DM's to let me know when they find a new submission that is out of the date range. This has been very helpful. I very much appreciate having a 2nd set of eyes to ensure the contest integrity. THANK YOU! <--- to those who have been silently helping with the monitoring & ensuring integrity.

OP Index - Good news - I did some tests this morning and may have found a solution to help make the "Likes" voting more user friendly and efficient for everyone. I want to do a bit more testing on my own before giving it a test run publicly on the contest thread. Additionally, I am a big fan of Pilot Testing something before going live with it, so will be sending a "Beta" version of the new approach to @EbookLover and a couple others to shake out the kinks and get their feedback.. I am hopeful to go LIVE with the new approach by early next week so it will be available for month end. The "Likes" will continue to be set and stored on the NamePros platform, but if this works the way I intend it to, you all will have a much simpler interface to find and provide those beautiful "Likes".


Thanks everyone for being so positive, supportive, and making this a fun contest.

-Cougar

 

[efizi]

C/r/e/a/f/i/c/i/e/n/t.com

A cross between the words "creative or creativity" and "efficient".