.....but why do you label Sebastien Lahtinen as "domainer hating"? What are your reasons?
It's good to hear from you Dave, I've so missed our little sparring sessions.
Maybe "domainer hating" was too strong a description but several very informed members I talked to confirm that he's certainly no fan of domainers. The main point that I was making is that for the very reasons that have been comprehensively discussed, let's face it, Reza is a rank 100-1 outsider. If he stands any possible chance of winning, he needs the entire domainer Nominet members to give him their number ones and NOT award any twos or threes.
I guess that I mainly based my opinion of Seb on an exchange I had with him a couple of years back. When I'm pitching a domain, before doing any other research, THE very first thing I do is to pitch the owners of the .org.uk version of the domain.
I pitched BroadbandBritain.co.uk to Seb one of his companies NetConnex owns the .org.uk version. His "full and final" version for my domain was £50 (fifty pounds) because that "represented a decent profit for me". Oh how I love it when people tell me what profit they perceive I'm making!
On an aside, web designers are probably the very worst buyers for domains. They send me stupid emails saying, "I'll give you ten pounds as that represents a 100% markup for you". I replied to one recently "you make percentage markups that I can only dream of. A typical website costs you around 16 pence to design, 12p for the electricity for your Apple Macbook and 4 pence pro rata contribution towards your DreamWeaver licence."
And by the way, I've never been away Dave. I just feel that it's a better use of my time to spend any spare few hours pitching to end-users resulting in a few thousand pounds worth of sales than speding a few hours on the board and getting embroiled in petty arguments that aren't going to make me a single penny. Sorry if that sounds mercenary but I've got an expensive ex-wife to keep up, an even more expensive girlfriend, private school fees and a mansion in Spain with two swimming pools (indoor and outdoor) whose air conditioning bill alone in the summer runs at two grand a month!