For a while I've been meaning to buy the domain kalmikoff.com. People had been telling me to do it for while now since I've started to pop up in articles and blogs around the web because of my involvement with skinnyCorp. About a month ago, Harper started getting on me a lot about buying it. Maybe he had a sense something bad was about to happen. I finally sit down to register the domain and sure enough it's not available. I check the WHOIS, and it's worse than I thought. It's being held for "domain tasting" or "domain kiting". What is that you may ask? Don't feel bad... I'd never heard of it either.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say on the subject:

Domain tasting, also known as domain kiting, is a practice of registrants using the five-day "grace period" at the beginning of a domain registration for ICANN-regulated generic top-level domains to test the marketability of a domain name. During this period, when a registration must be fully refunded by the domain registry, a cost-benefit analysis is conducted by the registrant on the viability of deriving income from advertisements being placed on the domain's web site.

Domains that are deemed "successes" and retained in registrant's portfolio often represent domains that were previously used and have since expired, misspellings of other popular sites, or generic terms that may receive type-in traffic. These domains are usually still active in search engines and other hyperlinks and therefore derive enough traffic such that advertising revenue exceed the cost of the registration. The registrant may also derive revenue from eventual sale of the domain, at a premium, to a third party.

How sketchy is that? Plus, the amount of ad revenue it generally takes to convince the registrant to keep the domain is $6! My particular issue, was that the one tasting the domain, kept doing it, over and over. The tricky part is that they know when someone is checking up on it. Also, I couldn't visit kalmikoff.com to see what was there because that would generate ad money which could convince the company that held the domain to keep it.

This gentle tip-toeing around my own name went on for weeks. To make things worse, in the midst of all of this, skinnyCorp kept getting really good press which was throwing my name around the internet at increasing frequency. How would I explain to my dad that our last name dot com is being used to generate ad money and if we wanted it we'd have to pony up a pretty penny?

After holding my breath and being patient for 2-3 weeks of not checking the WHOIS, and not spying on the domain, it was finally released. I scooped it up as fast as I could on Saturday morning. PHEW!

Moral of the story? Don't wait until the last minute to buy an important domain name. In fact, I'd recommend buying the domains of every important name you have. It doesn't matter what kind of financial situation you may be in... $6 to register a domain is always cheaper than $500+ to buy it off some company.