I know that it has been ages since I have posted here and I would like to personally apologize for being such a closed book in 2011. So far 2011 has been an exciting year for me and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes. Here is what I have been up to:

Domaining. I am still involved in both buying and selling domains, but have been putting far less time into this venture. So far in 2011 I have been lucky enough to close a handful of mid $x,xxx (one was a 310 x return), so I have largely kept away from selling on forums. Two of these sales originated from my own custom landing pages (see SettlementExperts for an example). From here on, I will largely be a passive domain as I shift from a high-quantity, but low-profit focus to low-quantity, but high-profit sales.

GeekGold.com. In December 2010 I launched the website GeekGold.com with the purpose of sharing everything I appreciate regarding geek culture and technology. This quickly turned into a computer hardware-focused website and will probably stay that way. GeekGold has experienced rapid growth with the following number of unique visitors in recent months:

• January 2011: 397
• February 2011: 2078
• March 2011: 7307
• April 2011 (through April 25): 4615

In the near future, GeekGold will be undergoing a complete redesign as I am quite unhappy with how “bloggy” it looks right now.

MotherboardNews.com. Less than one month ago I realized that GeekGold was very much shifting from general hardware news to motherboard news. As a domainer I knew that I could have had a better domain so after much consideration I decided to use a recently acquired domain and MotherboardNews.com was born (I had also bought Mobo.org as an end-user, but decided against using it).

After spending a little over a week working on the design (WordPress + Thesis), I finally launched at the end of March. Similar to GeekGold, MotherboardNews has experienced very-welcomed growth with nearly 2000 uniques so far in April and over 8000 pageviews.

ColeMason.com. While this has been an ongoing project for a while, I finally have my professional website up and running. I am still actively looking for a full-time job in London, Ontario so I am hoping that this website will help me land a great position at a great firm.

So there you have it, 2011 has been a busy year for me, but I am very happy with how things have gone so far and I am eagerly anticipating what will happen in the remaining eight months.

Well, the time has come for me to raise some funds by flushing out a few of my better quality domains. For this reason, I have decided to list 8 domains in a featured auction over at Boxcar.com.

If you are a domain investor or know someone looking for quality domains, please head over to Boxcar and check out my auction!

It has been a while since I have written a telecom piece, but a recent experience with Rogers has left me with the desire to write an organized rant. Before I begin, I would like to say that all of the Rogers representatives I dealt with on the phone and in person were friendly, understanding, and easy to talk with. Because of this, I never had to raise my voice or get outwardly angry in any way.

Potentially breaking news here. It looks like Francois Carrillo has just released a new domain escrow service – eCop.com! This doesn’t look like just any escrow service though, it provides flexibility among multiples parties and multiple scenarios all at an extremely low cost! Straight-up sales look like they cost $20 per action required by eCop (ie. $20 for possession + $20 for payment disbursement) or $25 for a non-possession-based escrow.

The coolest part of the new service is the flexibility in options. Leasing, swapping and complex sales can all occur with low fees of just $20 per action!

I am sure more details will be released soon as I only noticed the new site based on a banner at the bottom of Cax.com.

Congrats to Francois on another potentially great product!

Well, Bido has been back for a couple of weeks now. The media coverage was initially strong and the Bido team was consistently discussing their return publicly in forums and on their blog. For some reason, things have changed – everyone is quiet again. I understand the team is (hopefully) busy making changes, but the core audience/members would like to be kept in the loop. Here are a few of my observations from the last few days.

The Bido Blog. This was one of the features that Jarred initially discussed upon the return of Bido. The blog represents and outlet for the Bido staff to discuss new features, domains in auction and more. Posts were occurring every few days, but there has since been an 11-day silence.

Auction setup delay. In the past, Bido auctions were generally setup (after getting the votes needed) within a few hours and never more than 24 hours after the final vote was cast. I had a few domains get the required votes 3 days ago and have heard nothing. Perhaps the team is working on a revised auction schedule, but I haven’t heard anything.

Social interaction. Jarred has always done a great job addressing individual questions at the various domaining forums, but has remained silent over the past week. Also, the Bido Twitter accounts have remained largely inactive over the last week.

In 2009 and early 2010 I was one of the biggest Bido cheerleaders out there, but Bido will have to continue to improve to retain my attention. I sincerely hope that the lack of information over the last 10 days is due to some major changes, but it’s just hard not to think the worst.

Anyone else have any recent experiences or interactions to share?

UPDATE: My Bido auctions are now being setup so clearly their is some action going on. Hopefully Jarred posts to the Bido blog in the near future.