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I’m Done with Tivo And You Should be Too

Posted by Scott on 8th June, 2009 | 9 comments

Oh Tivo, how our love affair was so long and while it lasted it was pretty good.  But guess what: while your hardware/software is nice, your corporation blows, and DirecTV HD DVR is, while not perfect, so much better than you.

I bought a Tivo HD for a family member in December.  She didn’t like it.  I returned it to Amazon.  Tivo has been charging me $12.95/mo ever since for serivce on a unit I didn’t even own.  I cancelled in January but they kept charging me and they claim to not have a record of the cancellation then.  I called again today to cancel and was told that there would be an early termination fee.  How nice, an early termination fee on a box I don’t own.

Sounds like a cell phone company. But while cell phone companies sell a phone at a deep discount in exchange for a 12 month commitment to recoup their costs and make a profit,  Tivo just wants to piggy back on the ETF concept as a money making scheme.  Even cell phone companies don’t charge you an ETF or monthly service fee on hardware that you return!

I’m done with you Tivo.  I’m replacing my two Tivo’s with DirecTV HD DVR’s.  The new standalone HD Tivo blows: it’s sluggish (the HR10-250 was half decent, but is for DirecTV only).  I’ve got news for you scammer corps out there that use ETF fees to rip off consumers: your days are numbered.

Popularity: 5%

So Just What is it That You Do, Anyway?

Posted by Scott on 4th June, 2009 | 11 comments

I get this question from time to time, usually from other adults who aren’t Internet savvy and have absolutely no idea how it is that I earn a living from “some websites”.  “So you make websites for people?”… is usually the question I hear.  Kids are even more dumbfounded and think that what I do is magic.

The problem, I believe, is that people don’t understand the sheer numbers involved.  The basic premise is the creation of a website that people want to look at, and earning money from people when they do (either when they click on advertiser links, or view advertiser ads, or buy stuff direct).  That’s all well and good, but because visitors aren’t easily visualized, people don’t “get” how a few people visiting a website can translate into big money.

A visualization is in order.  Every month, 2 Million people visit our ResellerRatings, Dealighted, and TechIMO websites.  Here’s 1 million people:

That’s a lot.  Double that crowd to get the monthly visitors to our sites.

Or thought of another way, the combined populations of San Francisco, CA [800,000] and Dallas, TX [1,200,000] (every single resident of those cities combined), visit our sites each and every month.

San Francisco, CA -800,000 people

Dallas, TX - 1.2 Million People

What’s more, we don’t just get random people, we get targeted, highly sought after people.  People who are interested in shopping and buying consumer electronics and computer hardware.  People who earn high incomes and/or are well educated.  Advertisers pay us money to reach those people, whether via fees based on the number of times an ad is viewed (CPMs) or a fee per click on an advertiser’s link (CPCs), or a percentage revenue share when we refer people to buy stuff (CPA).

So what do I do? 

I create reasons for people to visit our sites.  I create ways to compel people to visit our sites and to come back frequently.  I manage and build technology that makes our sites useful and worth visiting.  I create ways to make money from those people when they do visit our sites.  And I manage people who work with me to help do these things.

How do I make money doing this? 

The sheer number and quality of people who visit, a clever business model to make money from them when they visit, and websites that don’t cost a lot to operate.

How have I been able to do this so well?

A lot of work, a lot of lists, a lot of good ideas to identify needs and meet consumer demand (and testing bad ideas), years of implementing those ideas, a lot of skill, and a bit of luck.  Read my blog and archives to get tips!

Maybe this will help you respond next time someone asks you what you do, or scoffs at your website or blog as not being a “real business”, and you can tell them that the Internet definitely did not blow up in the 2001 bubble like the media reported.

Popularity: 6%

Changes in Email Etiquette

Posted by Scott on 17th May, 2009 | 11 comments

Recently I’ve been noticing some changes in basic email etiquette that I thought were interesting.  I’m a grandpa when it comes to the Internet, since I was launching sites in 1994 when the Internet was still very new.  Back then, most emails began with “Hi Dave,”, and ended with “Thanks, Scott”.  Since then, I’ve been in the habit of adding that “Thanks, Scott” at the bottom of every single email for the past 15 years, but I’ve noticed that the recent Internet newcomers who probably text more often than they email, don’t sign their emails at all - no name at the bottom.  It makes sense — I already know who the email is from when I see the from: name/address in my email client so what’s the point of being so formal with the name at the bottom?

A while back, I stopped signing emails “Scott” and switched to “S” - I just got tired of typing “Scott”, and I don’t use an auto signature.  But now I think I’m going to just stop signing my name altogether to friends/family/colleagues and only keep it on there for professional work emails.

I’ve also noticed that when you email or reply to a new professional/work contact, it’s customary to begin the email as “Hi Name,” on at least the first 2 or 3 emails.  Then, you can drop the “Hi Name,” and just begin your email without it to be less formal.  It’s funny, maybe I’m just noticing that etiquette, but I definitely like to drop the “Hi Name,” as early as possible because I just find it redundant and stuffy.

So if you sign every email you write to friends, family, everyone, consider saving yourself the time and omitting that ending signature. They know who the email is from before they even open it, and if they haven’t figured out who it’s from by the time they read down to your name, they have bigger problems :).

Popularity: 10%

A Different View on H1N1 Swine Flu

Posted by Scott on 4th May, 2009 | 11 comments

There are two groups in the h1n1 swine flu issue.  Group A is panicking, flooding the ER’s, thinking they have the swine flu, fearing death, or avoiding all human contact.  Group B says the media is overhyping this, they are citing the 50M killed in 1918 compared to the 200 killed in 2009 by h1n1, they are ridiculing people who wear masks in public or on airplanes (plenty of evidence of this on twitter), and otherwise dismissing this virus as a joke, a non-event.

Neither Group A (the panickers) or Group B (the naysayers, the denialsists) is right.  Here’s why:

-A(H1N1) Swine Flu has killed 20 people, sickened 900 in 18 countries, and is being transmitted human to human.  For the first time ever, the World Health Organization raised their pandemic alert to 5 of 6 last week.  This has the potential to become a widespread pandemic, unlike bird flu, unlike SARS.  This isn’t like anything else most people alive today have experienced before.

-Even though there have been 900 confirmed cases worldwide, there are most certainly many more people who have a mild or moderate illness and that haven’t gone to a doctor or hospital so the number is definitely not 900.

-This thing went global 1 week ago, yet people are already calling the end game score.  Can you call a football game after 4 plays?  No.  The 1918 flu took 2 years to finish doing its damage of 50M deaths, not 1 week.  Experts say it is still far too early to draw any conclusions about how bad (or not) this virus will be and no conclusions should be drawn after 1 week.

-Some people are already in poor health, or have underlying disease like asthma or other respiratory issues, or they may be pregnant, very young, or very old, or they might be cancer patients on chemo with weakened immune systems.  To them, this is a very big deal to have a new highly contagious virus out there, whether it’s worse than the flu or not, so those people might be the ones out there wearing masks and very rightly so.  To them, this could mean pneumonia, bronchitis, trouble breathing, and weeks of illness, not just a couple days in bed.  Next time you think about laughing at or mocking someone wearing a mask and labeling them as a hypochondriac or a paranoid crazy, think about this.  Personally, I appreciate people who wear masks — if they happen to be infected, it’s less likely that the’ll cough or sneeze on me.

I’m really annoyed by these people who seem to take nothing seriously and just want to mock and judge others:

mathowie: Oh paranoid man wearing the surgical mask on our cross-countryflight, I’ll miss you most of all…

1 day ago from Birdhouse · Reply · View Tweet

koreyb: Only one swine flu mask on my flight home. Lol. No one wanted to sit next to him.

about 3 hours ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet

 

 And then there’s the opposite view:

tonymaro: One passenger on the flight wore a mask. Is he the smart one?

about 9 hours ago from TwitterBerry · Reply · View Tweet

-There are 300,000,000 people in this country.  226 cases of h1n1 in the U.S. as of today is not many.  Therefore, the odds that you’ll be infected if you take a flight or hang out around other people today are low.  That said, viruses spread exponentially and take months to reach their peak spread.  If the infection continues to spread, you’re more and more likely to be infected by someone as more and more people get the virus.  If you have mild sniffles and go to the ER, you’re overtaxing our already overburdened medical system and exposing yourself to other infectious disesase.  But if you have any underlying risk factors or other disease, and you have a fever/cough/etc then you should definitely call your doctor.

-The media overhypes everything.  That isn’t new.  The media performs a valuable service to us: alerting us to important issues.  The media’s volume shouldn’t sway our opinion. We must investigate, research, look to experts, and make our own decisions.  Just because  media speaks loudly about an issue, we can’t then assume that that issue must be BS.  Some threats that the media alerts us about are actually threats.  Not all hyped threats are harmless.

The bottom line is that we shouldn’t be panicking about this but at the same time we shouldn’t be calling the results of this possible pandemic after 1 week.  Neither is correct.  To all armchair medical experts: keep your conclusions to yourself, please, and restrict yourself to spreading facts from mainstream experts rather than spreading misinformation and your own hype.  We should all become part of the solution to slow the spread of the disease: extra gel/handwashing, if you’re sick STAY HOME, wear an N95 mask if getting sick would be very bad for you (the CDC actually recommends masks in areas where transmission of A(H1N1) has been confirmed).

Everyone has to decide on their own how to handle this, based on their own tolerance for risk, their own assessment of the risk, and their own personal situation.

Popularity: 12%

Takeaways from Adspace 2009 Conference

Posted by Scott on 25th April, 2009 | 7 comments

Adspace is a new publisher-oriented conference operated as part of Ad Tech in San Francisco.  I was there on Wednesday.  It had panel sessions focusing on monetization, Adsense, affiliate marketing.  If you missed it, there are others coming up in Chicago (Sept) and New York (Nov).

I really like attending these conferences.  I like the different environment for one thing, and I sit in the conference sessions with my laptop open, and my mind open, listening to concepts and thinking about new ideas, and refreshing old ideas.  While there, I got emails from two industry partners telling me that they were attending Adtech — I didn’t know they were there, and we were able to setup impromptu meetings.  The way I look at it, if any of the discussions or meetings spark even one idea that’s worth more than the conference fee + my time, then it was worth it, and 9 times out of 10 that’s the case.

Adsense Updates and Microsoft PubCenter via Yieldbuild

Google unveiled a couple of Adsense changes.  Google is testing category level blocking, not just individual URL blocking, so you can block undesirable advertisers.  You also may have heard about their behavioral targeting program dubbed by Google as Interest Based Targeting (IBT).  IBT works by anonymously following a user as they go from a sports car site to a basketweaving site and instead of showing the user a contextual basketweaving ad, they show a sports car ad (knowing that the user likes sports cars).  This IBT feature is being slowly rolled out to publishers - you may or may not be benefiting from it as yet.  I heard conflicting info as to how well it lifts CTR’s and CPM’s — the Google rep said that it lifts CPM’s substantially while another non-Google speaker said it was only mildly effective.  I tend to believe the Google rep in this case because he has direct knowledge, and I have seen the positive effects of behavioral targeting elsewhere.

Both Yieldbuild and Pubmatic were discussed.  These sites work to generate the most revenue for your pages by automatically testing different ad formats and ad networks.  Yieldbuild claims “up to a 200%” revenue increase.  The downside of these is that you have to give them your username/password for Adsense and your other ad networks to work.  Even just a/b testing alternate Adsense colors/formats is worthwhile: we found a significant improvement using red color Adsense links over blue, on our sites.

One cool note about Yieldbuild, is that they give you access to Microsoft PubCenter ads, before PubCenter has officially launched to publishers.  Early anecdotal reports indicate that PubCenter might outperform Adsense:

“Our tipster says that he receiving from four times more in revenue Microsoft than Google AdSense. And the money isn’t the only advantage PubCenter has over AdSense. The advertisement themselves are are higher quality than Google’s ads, he says, and equally as targeted towards the content.” –techcrunch.com

We began testing Yieldbuild on our sites today and will report back with any results.

Site Performance

Chris Raimondi of FreePatentsOnline.com gave a talk about site performance.  What was particularly interesting is that he provided actual numbers to relate website sluggishness with traffic losses.  Here’s the low down:

• 100ms delay (1/10th second) = -1% sales (Amazon)
• 400ms delay (2/5th second) = -5-9% traffic (Yahoo)
• 500ms delay (1/2 second) = -20% fewer searches (Google — Marissa Mayer)

A half a second delay loading your pages could mean 20% less traffic, folks!  So what can you do?

-Enable gzip on your pages. Gzip compression happens behind the scenes on the fly automatically to shrink your page sizes. Test to see if your URLs are gzipped. If they aren’t, contact your host or server admin to enable it.  Don’t just test one URL and make sure your js and css pages are gzipped too, not just php or html.

-Get YSlow for Firebug/Firefox and figure out what is taking the most time on your pages to load.

-Get Smushit for Firefox to compress images

-If you run a database driven dynamic site with PHP, figure out how to implement caching with something like Cache Lite.  Having your scripts load the same data from the db on every page view is inefficient even if you use MySQL query caching.

Audience Segmentation

This tip is really best suited for large sites, perhaps with at least 1 Million monthly page views.  If you’re using Adsense, chances are, advertisers are using site-targeting to run ads on your site specifically.  But unless you use Adsense channels to segment your users by interest or by demographic, and then make those channels available in your Adsense panel for site-targeting, advertisers are only able to run site-wide site-targeted campaigns.  Plenty of Fish founder Markus Frind realized that he needed to segment his 2B monthly page views by demographic — so, he setup Adsense channels by demographic: women, men, men 50-60, etc–he has a couple dozen channels setup.  That allowed advertisers to pinpoint their reach and target segments that would work best for their campaigns, and he saw his Adsense revenue shoot up.

If you run a forum, for instance, you could setup a different Adsense channel for each forum.  This would let advertisers target users on your tech forum site that were interested in monitors only, or printers only, etc, by running site-targeted ads in your monitors forum channel or printers forum channel.  This should allow you to command higher CPM’s.  The same is true for a site with different article categories, segment by category.  If you have profile data on your users (location, age), you can segment by those.

Popularity: 13%

Yelp Allows Merchant Replies

Posted by Scott on 10th April, 2009 | 1 comment

  4/10/2009: “The balance of power on Yelp is about to get a shake-up. The San Francisco consumer review Web site blasted out an email to its Elite Squad today with the news: business owners will be allowed to publicly post their response to Yelp reviews in as early as a week.”

-SFweekly.com

Is this big news?  For Yelp and Yelp businesses, yes.  I hate to state the obvious but once again, like with Merchant Circle, Yelp is behind the times here.  ResellerRatings has been allowing merchants to post public comments in replies to reviews for more than a decade.  There must be a balance between consumers and merchants.  Both sides should be fairly represented.

Popularity: 14%

MerchantCircle.com Encourages Companies To Delete Bad Reviews

Posted by Scott on 28th March, 2009 | 14 comments

Straight from their blog. (heard about this at Sugarrae.com)

“Other sites give complete control to customers and their reviews. We give complete control to you, the business owner. Don’t like a review? Delete it.” -MerchantCircle.com

Wow. That about says it all. Yeah, other sites, like ResellerRatings.com, do give complete control to customers and their reviews and that’s a very good thing because it means that ResellerRatings actually has value. ResellerRatings doesn’t neglect merchants, however: we offer tools to let them contact customers to resolve complaints (since customers can edit their review at any time if they become satisfied), to post public reply comments, be notified when customers post reviews, and a whole host of other ethical tools and options. ResellerRatings NEVER removes a review upon request or pressure from a merchant. To do so would create a joke of a website, one that serves no purpose other than to stroke the ego of merchants. Reviews are only removed from ResellerRatings if they were submitted by non-customers or other similar reasons as listed in our public TOS, not because a merchant asks.

Yet, ResellerRatings is very important to merchants, because we rank very high (usually page 1) when you do Google searches for merchant names or merchant names + the word rating or reviews. So it’s win win for us and our policies. ResellerRatings helps consumers, and it encourages merchants to sign up and participate in order to satisfy any customer issues, even though 70% of the reviews at ResellerRatings are positive. There’s no need to compromise ethics on a ratings site and indeed wreck the site’s usefulness, to earn the business of merchants.

Popularity: 19%

CNN is Fearmongering Suckage

Posted by Scott on 12th March, 2009 | 10 comments

I used to like CNN and really, it’s actually a great resource for major breaking news.  For all other times, they suck.  Take today for instance. The market is up for the 3rd day in a row.  The dow is up over 9.5% in the past 3 sessions.  Our devastated economy may be in the early stages of a recovery.  Is CNN reporting this on the home page in big bold letters?  Nope.  Not one mention until you scroll down to the business section and see a tiny link to “A three-peat for Wall Street’s bulls”.  Apparently, “Mom patrols U.S. border from her den” is more important. But on days when the market is down, it’s front page news.

CNN homepage 3pm PT 3/12/2009:

Compare that to Marketwatch.com homepage 3pm 3/12/2009:

And the Wall Street Journal homepage 3pm 3/12/2009:

I’m tired of all this economy fearmongering by mainstream news like CNN.  Yes we’re in a recession.  Yes foreclosures are a mess etc.  But companies are still making money. Most people still have jobs.  The only people who should be spending less money out there are those who lost their jobs or their homes.  Everyone else should be spending, focusing on their unchanged incomes, but they’re not, because they only hear about bad news on wonderful sources like CNN and the good news is lost, so they fear, they hunker down, and they drive our economy further into the toilet.  News moves this market and the media has a huge role to play in boosting both consumer and investor confidence that yes, we can repair, recover, move forward and grow again.

Most investors out there are not pros.  They are John and Jane Q. Public with their 401k’s.  They need reassurance and confidence.  If they held $100,000 in stock last year and sold last week, they might have $46,000 now.  If they held through today’s 3 day rally, they’d have $51,000 today.  Everyone needs to gauge their risk tolerance and their asset allocation, being well diversified, make sure they have enough cash etc, but sell low and buy high is not a good strategy.  Selling when CNN gives you bad news and buying when CNN gives you good news is not a good strategy.  Be greedy when others are fearful!

Popularity: 19%

Wikimedia = $192,000/day in donations?

Posted by Scott on 28th December, 2008 | 41 comments

I was on a Wikipedia page today and saw a huge “Please read this message from Jimmy Wales” banner at the top of the page.  His letter (dated 12/24/08) asks for donations to Wikimedia to support the site, and explained how they hoped to raise $6M to cover their annual expenses.

The Wikipedia donations page states that they’ve earned $4.5M of that $6M so far, but after analyzing donations that they’ve received just over a 30 minute period this afternoon (about $4,000, with many donors giving $100 USD!) and extrapolating that data out to one day, it looks like they’re currently getting $192,000/day in donations, or $70M/year. At $192k/day, they’ll hit their $6M goal in 8 more days.

Wales explains that, like a “national park or school, [he] doesn’t believe advertising should have a place at Wikipedia.”

“Do I like Wikipedia? Yes.  Is it valuable?  Yes.  Is it some kind of altruistic gift to humanity, or a public resource like a national park?  No.   Wikipedia is a community-built, privately owned, Internet resource.  Capitalism works.  Why not apply it to Wikipedia, if even in a very controlled way accepting limited ads from specific ad partners, and earn tens or hundreds of millions?  Why ask for charity?

If Wikipedia costs $6M to operate, and ads could generate $100M/year (probably far more actually), then why not take that $94M surplus and give it to social programs, schools, etc — pay to put Wikipedia kiosks in every school and library.  Become an organization that spreads charity and funds other programs, rather than just a charity that sucks resources to operate itself.  Wikipedia could do far more good in the world that way.

So here’s my takeaway from this:  a) if they’re doing $192k/day in donations, maybe this charity model will actually work for Wikipedia better than advertising, as a gimmick, if that donation rate continues, and b) Should other sites that help people consider a donate model — are you using a donate model and is it working?

I just don’t buy the whole donation thing.  Maybe it’s working for Wikipedia ever since they launched this new “give us money” campaign on 12/24, but it sure wasn’t working for them before that, and I can’t imagine that donations will prove to be a viable model as the only revenue model over the long term for any entity.   Maybe 1% of your users will donate, and if you get as many users as Wikipedia, that’s a lot.   But for most businesses, ads will squeeze $ out of the other 99%.

Popularity: 33%

Is Your Domain Safe? Better Check the Fine Print.

Posted by Scott on 27th November, 2008 | 30 comments

My company owns several high value, high traffic domains, but I’m not a domainer, so domain registrars and their policies and prices are about as fun and interesting to me as watching paint dry.  As long as the registrar does its job and leaves me alone, I’m happy.

What would happen, though, if the registrar decided to one day hijack and suspend one of my domains, for some arbitrary reason, under authority granted to itself by a little known fine-print policy in its registration agreement?  Could they do that?  Could traffic to my domain cease for days or weeks, destroying one of my businesses in the process and leaving me with little recourse without a protracted court battle?  Could my multi-million dollar domain be arbitrarily canceled and then registered by a domainer? The answer to all of the above: YES and it has happened again, and again, and again.

It’s important to take a close look at your domain registrar and make sure that you’re comfortable with how they do business, even if you’ve never had a problem with your registrar in the past.  It’s like data backups: you might not have had data loss in the past, but you backup anyway knowing that data loss can occur and would be catastrophic.  Failing to research and select the right registrar could be just as devastating.

While at a session at Pubcon in Vegas a couple weeks ago, someone in the audience mentioned that they have their domains at Godaddy, a bunch of people gasped, and the moderator expressed concerns over Godaddy’s policies and practices.  That got my attention — all of my domains were at Godaddy.  I chose them because they were (are) the largest registrar, and because I had many problems with NSI and register.com in the past.  I’ve never kept my ear to the ground about Godaddy because I just never cared: they’ve been fine so far.  But since the conference, I’ve come to learn that GoDaddy has a history of suspending people’s domains arbitrarily, and that there are a lot of complaints out there, which prompted me to reevaluate whether or not they were the best choice for our domains.

When it comes down to it, what was most important to me in evaluating registrars was 1) the general buzz out there, complaints and praise, and 2) the legalease fine-print of each registrar’s domain registration policies.  Ultimately, I need to know that my domains are safe from both hijacking by an outside party, and safe from service interruptions due to the registrar itself.

Top rated registrars, via a domainnamewire.com survey:

Registrars by size, 11/15/2008, registrarstats.com:

Were my domains safe at Godaddy?  Should I switch registrars?  To find out, I compared the fine print in the registration TOS agreements from several of the top registrars, Godaddy, Register.com, eNom, Networksolutions, 1&1, and Moniker. Here are the highlights from those agreements that you must read.  I’m not a lawyer.  The “translation” comments below are simply my business opinion and my own interpretation that I used in my decision making process, and my comments should not be construed as legal advice:

register.com: “You acknowledge and agree that Register.com may suspend, cancel, transfer or modify your use of the Services at any time, for any reason, in Register.com’s sole discretion and without notice to you. You also acknowledge and agree that Register.com shall not be liable to you or to any third party for any such modification, suspension or discontinuance of the Services.”

Translation: Nasty — Register.com can suspend your domain in their sole discretion for any reason at any time with no notice to you and they are not contractually liable to you or anyone in doing so.

godaddy.com: “You agree that, in addition to other events set forth in this Agreement, (i) Your ability to use any of the services provided by Go Daddy is subject to cancellation or suspension in the event there is an unresolved breach of this agreement and/or suspension or cancellation is required by any policy now in effect or adopted later by ICANN, and (ii) Your registration of any domain names shall be subject to suspension, cancellation or transfer pursuant to any ICANN adopted specification or policy, or pursuant to any Go Daddy procedure not inconsistent with an ICANN adopted specification or policy;”

“You agree that Your failure to comply completely with the terms and conditions of this agreement and any Go Daddy rule or policy may be considered by Go Daddy to be a material breach of this Agreement and that Go Daddy may provide You with notice of such breach either in writing or electronically (i.e. email). In the event You do not provide Go Daddy with material evidence that You have not breached Your obligations to Go Daddy within ten (10) business days, Go Daddy may terminate its relationship with You and take any remedial action available to Go Daddy under the applicable laws. “

“Go Daddy’s failure to act upon or notify You of any event, which may constitute a breach, shall not relieve You from or excuse You of the fact that You have committed a breach.”

“You also agree that if Go Daddy is notified that a complaint has been filed with a governmental, administrative or judicial body, regarding a domain name registered by You using Go Daddy, that Go Daddy, in its sole discretion, may take whatever action Go Daddy deems necessary regarding further modification, assignment of and/or control of the domain name deemed necessary to comply with the actions or requirements of the governmental, administrative or judicial body until such time as the dispute is settled. In this event You agree to hold Go Daddy harmless for any action taken by Go Daddy.”

Translation: Godaddy can suspend or cancel your domain, in their sole discretion, if someone files a complaint against your domain and if Godaddy believes that the suspension or cancellation is necessary.  Godaddy can cancel or suspend your domain if they say you breached the agreement, even if you disagree, if you do not resolve that breach in 10 days.  If Godaddy fails to notify you of any breach, it’s not their fault and it doesn’t excuse you from the alleged breach.  Thus, you have 10 days to tell them that you didn’t breach, even though you may not have received any notice from them about that breach.  A breach could be as simple as not updating a phone number in the whois record, but it could really be anything they want.

enom.com: “We and your Primary Service Provider may reject your domain name registration application or elect to discontinue providing Service(s) to you for any reason within 30 days of a Service initiation or a Service renewal. Outside of this period, we and your Primary Service Provider may terminate or suspend the Service(s) at any time for cause, which, without limitation, includes registration of prohibited domain name(s), abuse of the Services, payment irregularities, serious allegations of illegal conduct, or if your use of the Services involves us in a violation of any Internet Service Provider’s (”ISP’s”) acceptable use policies, including the transmission of unsolicited bulk email.”

“You acknowledge that providing inaccurate information or failing to update information promptly will constitute a material breach of this Agreement and will be sufficient basis for suspension or termination of Services to you. You further agree that your failure to respond for over ten (10) calendar days to inquiries by us concerning the accuracy of account and WHOIS contact information shall constitute a material breach of this Agreement and will be sufficient basis for suspension or termination of Service(s) to you.”

Translation: eNom uses slightly less aggressive language than other registrars. They say that they can suspend your domain for cause (as opposed to any reason in its sole discretion).  That said, there are many “causes” defined, including if you send spam, and they will make the “cause” determination themselves and your domain could be suspended while you are disputing their claims for days, weeks, months.

networksolutions.com: “10.Termination.  b. By Us. We may terminate this Agreement or any part of the Network Solutions services at any time in the event you breach any obligation hereunder, fail to respond within ten (10) calendar days to an inquiry from us concerning the accuracy or completeness of the information referred to in Section 4 of this Agreement, if we determine in our sole discretion that you have violated the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy, which is located on our Web site at http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/aup.jsp and is incorporated herein and made part of this Agreement by reference, or upon thirty (30) days prior written notice if we terminate or significantly alter a product or service offering.”

“9. Revocation. You agree that we may suspend, cancel or transfer your services, including, but not limited to, domain name registration services in order to: (i) correct mistakes made by us, another registrar or the registry in registering your chosen domain name: (ii) to resolve a dispute under our domain name dispute policy: or (iii) to remedy an unauthorized change in the domain name account.”

“3. Network Solutions Right To Disclose Your Contact Information and Terminate the Private Registration Service. You acknowledge and agree that Network Solutions has the absolute right and power, as it deems necessary in its sole discretion, without providing notice and without any liability to you whatsoever, to (a) reveal to third parties the contact information provided by you to Network Solutions in connection with the account for the applicable domain name, (b) populate the public WHOIS database with the registrant’s name, primary postal address, e-mail address and/or telephone number as provided by you to Network Solutions, or (c) terminate your subscription to our Private Registration Service:

(i)                  if any third party claims that the domain name violates or infringes a third party’s trademark, trade name or other legal rights, whether or not such claim is valid;

(ii)                 (iii) if any third party threatens legal action against Network Solutions that is related in any way, directly or indirectly, to the domain name, or claims that you are using the domain name registration in a manner that violates any law, rule or regulation, or is otherwise illegal or violative of a third party’s legal rights.”

Translation: Network Solutions can suspend your domain if you breach their agreement (in their opinion), or if you don’t respond to them in 10 days.  They can also reveal your contact info and identity to anyone, if any 3^rd party makes a claim or threatens legal action (so much for private registration).

1&1: “2.2.7. 1&1 may suspend performance under or terminate this Agreement, cease transmission of data associated with your domain name, permanently remove Your Data from the 1&1 Equipment, and take any other actions it deems necessary, in its sole discretion, immediately and without notice, to comply with the UDRP or relevant Laws if it is informed or otherwise believes, in its sole discretion, that your domain name violates the intellectual property rights of any third party or is otherwise the subject of a dispute.”

Translation: This TOS is foul and to the point.  1&1 Can suspend your domain at its sole discretion if it believes that your domain name violates the rights of any 3^rd party or if it is the subject of a dispute.

Moniker: “The Registered Name Holder shall agree that its registration of the Registered Name shall be subject to suspension, cancellation, or transfer pursuant to any ICANN adopted specification or policy, or pursuant to any registrar or registry procedure not inconsistent with an ICANN adopted specification or policy, (1) to correct mistakes by Registrar or the Registry Operator in registering the name or (2) for the resolution of disputes concerning the Registered Name.”

“Furthermore, you agree that we may suspend, cancel or transfer your domain name registration services in order to: (i) correct mistakes made by us or the registry in registering your chosen domain name, or (ii) to resolve a dispute under our dispute policy. We will not refund any fees paid by you if we terminate your services.”

“We, in our sole discretion, reserve the right to refuse to register your chosen domain name or register you for other Moniker service(s), or to delete your domain name within the first thirty (30) calendar days from receipt of your payment for such services”

Translation: I was surprised to find that relative newcomer Moniker has the most business-friendly terms compared to the others.  Moniker can refuse to register your domain or delete it within 30 days after you register it.  But after that, they will only suspend or cancel your domain to correct mistakes made by them or by the registry when the domain was registered, or as a resolution to a domain dispute (i.e. if a recognized legal authority, such as an ICANN authorized arbitrator, orders them to transfer your domain to a 3^rd party after a dispute is not resolved in your favor). 

I have never used Moniker in the past, but after reading all of these agreements, their agreement appears to offer the least risk to business owners, in terms of the arbitrary power that a registrar has to suspend or cancel your domain and put you out of business, essentially whenever they feel like it.  The biggest risks to your domain are: a) the registrar doing something dumb or arbitrary to suspend your domain, b) someone else hijacking your domain, and c) the registrar going out of business.  After reading complaints at nodaddy.com and in forums like webmaster world (about how Godaddy canceled a domain in reaction to a mere complaint by Myspace), while also reading lots of praise about Moniker with few complaints and taking into account Moniker’s reasonably large market share as well, I decided to move our important domains to Moniker.  Most registrars appear to do a decent job at domain locking to prevent 3rd party hijacking, but you really have to take a close look at each registrar’s TOS and the stability and size of their overall market share to evaluate the risk to your prized domain, and I do not like the TOS of any of the above registrars except Moniker.

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