Domain Name Sales Hoaxes & the New York Times, Fox and CNN

The dot-com gold rush may be over, but that does not stop people from claiming that they sold their domain names for $100,000 to $1,000,000 for the free publicity. And the New York Times, Fox and CNN are apparently willing to give valuable free publicity to those claiming to have sold domain names for $100,000 to $1,000,000. Domain name expert, Dr. Steve Baba, explains how this hoax works below and explains additional domain name hoaxes and scams in his free ebook on www.Seemly.com.

(PRWEB) April 3, 2004 --The dot-com gold rush may be over, but that does not stop people from claiming that they sold their domain names for $100,000 to $1,000,000 for the free publicity. And the New York Times, Fox and CNN are apparently willing to give valuable free publicity to those claiming to have sold domain names for $100,000 to $1,000,000.

Domain name expert, Dr. Steve Baba, explains how this hoax works below and explains additional domain name hoaxes and scams in his free ebook on www.Seemly.com.

Domain name speculators owning a good domain name worth about $10,000 usually run this hoax or scam. The press may be gullible enough to repeat claims that a $10,000 domain is worth millions, but they are not gullible to repeat claims that a $10 domain is worth millions.

A press release is then written falsely claiming the name has sold for say $1,000,000. While the New York Times frowns on their own reporters, such as Jayson Blair, making up quotes, the press is generally willing to quote anyone from cops to serial killers to be impartial.    

The impartiality" of the press works in most situations because there are two or more sides to most issues. But if someone falsely claims to have sold a name for $1,000,000, nobody, besides the seller and the imaginary buyer/coconspirator knows otherwise, and nobody has an interest to say otherwise even if they are suspicious of the claims.

With the publicity, thousands of people visit the hyped website. Hucksters who lie to the press, often also lie to their customers. The most unscrupulous sites have a pornography website with an inexpensive trial offer that automatically rebill, where the fine print in the terms of service makes it impossible or difficult to avoid being rebilled. Some other $100,000" domain names redirect to a pay per click search engines or other questionable affiliate programs.    

If a real business pays $100,000 to $1,000,000 for a domain name, one would generally expect the business to spend at least as much if not ten times as much on the business. When all there is a redirect to an affiliate site, or a site that a high school student could design, one should be suspicious.    

Dr. Steve Baba has written a free book on domain names that is available at www.Seemly.com, for free. The ebook is a PDF file of approximately 240K.