Let’s say you spend a bunch of money running an ad campaign, build a useful website specifically for that ad, set up an SSL certificate so the site is nice and safe and when somebody types PlanWithEase.com into there address bar after seeing the ad, the visitor is presented with an "Unsafe Site" message?

What are you going to do? Leave like I did? I bet a good deal would and often DO!

So why is a site being promoted by a large company like ING Group, Inc (ing.com) not considered safe?

Because the cNAME record is wrong! In the end, this is a simple cNAME record issue and not really an SSL problem but the error is one that often times are made by companies.

PlanWithEase.com is one way people type in a domain name.

www.PlanWithEase.com is another.

PlanWithEase.com and www.PlanWithEase.com are two different domain names really. www. is a sub domain and not resolving BOTH domains to the same location is a problem. It is a bigger problem if your domain name without www. doesn’t resolve, because your site will likely not resolve either!

Since in this case the site uses an SSL certificate, the certificate is set up as a "Wild Card" and hence the * before the domain name: *.planwithease.com

Using the wild card is smart as it covers all sub domains, but it doesn’t cover the domain without a sub domain! The problem, the SSL is NOT including the domain name WITHOUT the www. . Since the wild card is set up for sub domains, PlanWithEase.com does not have a sub domain and is not included in the SSL. If cName records were correct, then when somebody simply typed in the address bar PlanWithEase.com, the domain name would automatically "redirect" to www.PlanWithEasy.com! The domain with the sub domain also happens to be covered by the SSL certificate and the error type message would not be displayed.

cNAME records are often done with your hosting provider or domain name registrar. You should be able to set up a redirect in your hosting account, to send non www. domain traffic to the www. domain or vice versa.

The above image is because the site uses an SSL, but if they didn’t, the users entering in the domain name without www. would simply get an error that the domain name does not resolve. Lost traffic, lost trust and lost customers are often the result of this very easy to fix error.

It is always risky to post an article like this because I am going off of only data that I can find on the net.  I have sent an email to the seller and have not heard back yet but I am pretty confident with my findings to post this…. With that being said, Sedo.com has brokered the sale of ThinkPoint.com for $25,000 USD and was this weeks highest reported .com domain name sale at Sedo.

In doing a little digging (because that is what I like to do), I happened to notice ThinkPoint.com was also listed for sale on Afternic.com. This is not uncommon for domain owners to list with both Afternic.com and Sedo.com. One thing that is a little different, is more people seem to price domain names listed on Afternic and NOT on Sedo.

Using Google Cache feature because the domain has since been removed, I found the listing for ThinkPoint.com on Afternic.com from about 1 month ago (1-21-2010) and the domain name was listed with a $3,000 Buy It Now! There have been NO changes in whois for years, until the recent sale at Sedo, so I am confident in saying this $3K BIN is accurate.

So the domain sold for $25K and not $3K, WTF? I would have to assume the buyer discovered the domain name listed on Sedo, because the domain was parked with Sedo. At that point, the interested party likely made an offer via the "this domain may be for sale" link and a counter offer type deal took place or the buyer simply made the $25K offer at the point of contact.

So what is the moral of the story?

1.) Sometimes it pays NOT to list a price for a domain name. If the buyer stumbled across the listing on Afternic.com with the Buy It Now for $3,000 USD, they would of saved ohhh about… $22,000 USD.

2.) Do some Research when buying a domain name, it may be listed in more places than one and may also hold a price or a different price than the first place you saw it.

3.) It is likely the interested party will visit the domain name Directly when they are interested in it!

4.) Luck is important and appears to have been on the Sellers side this time!

It is not everyday a domain name created 18 years ago, drops into PendingDelete status but today is one of those rare days! The four letter, triple repeating domain name SSSI.com (sssi.com) was registered with the domain registrar Joker.com and the past owner failed to renew the domain name and has followed the drop process.

It has become a lot more rare seeing high quality and early registered domain names hitting the PendingDelete status due to so many partnerships with domain registrars and domain auction services like SnapNames.com and NameJet.com . Although many registrars are partnered with auction services, higher valued domain name do hit PD for several different reasons. Sometimes it is an error with software, the domain slips through the cracks, the old owner request it not go to auction (an option I am aware of at least at Network Solutions) non-paying bidders during an auction, no partnership etc.

If you would like to get into the action of potentially owning SSSI.com, you have to place a backorder TODAY at the three major dropcatching services, SnapNames.com, NameJet.com or Pool.com . If I were a betting man, SnapNames would be the one I would expect to grab it during the drop which happens between 1 pm to 2:15 pm Central Time. Each dropcatching service has specific times to place backorders by, so the earlier you head over and place your BO, the better.

Keep in mind that PendingDelete status domain name will lose the original creation date and will show the date the domain name is reregistered. The creation date for SSSI.com will change from 12-18-1991 to likely today’s date, 2-23-2010 when the domain is grabbed the second it drops today from the registry. I personally think that domain age does have some value and some SEO advantages, which this domain will lose. Plus it loses some history technically.

The value of the domain name itself, will not be effected because it expired and went PendingDelete, but again it does lose some of its value IMO because of the releasing from the registry for the first time in 18 years.