If you weren’t aware we opened up the 9rules Network for Round 4 and there is only about 9 hours left to get your site submitted for consideration to join our Community. This round has already turned out to be our largest (correction: last round we got 509 submissions, but as of this writing we are at 506) so its exciting to see 9rules continue to grow.

So if you haven’t submitted your site yet and would like to join the Community then please do so or if you know of a site that you think would be a good fit for us then encourage them to submit their site.

After this round we will be releasing some new features for the whole Community (this includes non-9rules readers) to enjoy and there are some interesting design decisions that we had to make that we will surely write about. Till then, I thank everyone who continues to read our sites and I personally look forward to reading many more.

Originally posted on May 17, 2006 @ 2:58 pm

Note: If you want to see other examples of Arno at work checkout Kartooner and Adactio.

Last week I am sitting in my chair stressing like crazy because I am trying to figure out how to pay for Mike’s love for cars, Colin’s love for milk (inside joke) and Tyme’s love for…ummmm…toys, when suddenly an email comes across my desk from a Mr. Arno Zimmerman. I never heard of the man in my life, but you know when a guy like Arno Zimmerman talks to you, you have to listen. So I read the email which said:

Dear Mr Scrivens,

My sincere apologies for writing to you unannounced. My name is Arno Zimmerman and I am CEO of an Internet domain name acquisitions agency based here in Los Angeles, California.

My agency is currently engaged by a well-known Hollywood studio. The studio is producing a new religious movie called The Nine Rules. Although I cannot give you full information about the movie, I am authorized to tell you that the movie is about Moses’ early years before he was given the Ten Commandments. The story tells of his early experiences and the first nine rules that he was given by God. The movie has an all star cast, including Brad Pitt in the title role, and will be released in the fall.

My client is therefore very keen to purchase the rights to the domain name 9rules.com from you.

I am sure that you will understand that I cannot provide you with much in the way of information about our client at this time. However I can assure you that they are sincere in their offer, and that they are keen to conclude this purchase quickly.

I would be interested to learn how much you would require for this transfer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zimmerman
CEO and Internet domain name acquisitions

Hot damn, I’m about to make some money. Sell off a domain and I still own ninerules.com, which I could sell to him if he wanted it. Of course there are some logistical problems such as backlinks and all that type of stuff, but maybe I could work out some .htaccess agreement. I could think of a new name and 9rules would kind of have to start over again, but with 7 digits sitting in our account that wouldn’t be too much of a problem. God bless Arno.

Let me do some research on this man. Damn, can’t Google his name or company. Fair enough, let me check out this movie that he speaks of that comes out this summer. Can’t find shit on imdb and the last photo of Brad Pitt looks like this:

No beard or anything, so obivously the movie is done, Brad shaved the beard and the movie studio is just keeping it underwraps. Fair enough and I think it’s time to reply to Arno.

I would gladly consider the sale of the domain, but a major issue is that my company, 9rules, Inc. uses the domain obviously for our own business purposes so I would have to say that we are looking at something more than just a transfer of a domain. This would require us to come up with a new name for the company amongst other things.

I’m always interested in listening to whatever offer you are willing to put on the table, but I do admit it would take a considerable sum for me to part with the domain. And honestly the lack of information about your company makes me hesitant to further this conversation. I understand why you cannot release details of your client as to prevent me from contacting them directly, but some further information about you and your company would put me at ease a bit more.

Alright Arno, throw me a number so we can get to work here. Has to be 7 digits or I walk to another studio.

Many thanks for your prompt reply. I can understand how cautious you must be in circumstances such as this. Hopefully I can allay your concerns.

My company, Zimmerman’s has been working with our studio clients here in the States since my wife and I moved from London, England to Encino, California some months ago. We have been working with several major film studios and we are currently engaged by a number of Hollywood studios as we specialize in the acquisition of domain names for the film industry.

Recent years have seen a decline in the number of religious movies being made in Hollywood. As I mentioned in my previous email, The Nine Rules tells the story of the young Moses . The Nine Rules will inject new life in the genre and will star a number of popular actors of today.

Moses will be played by Brad Pitt who has grown a beard especially for the part. Natalie Portman has been cast as Esther, a young servant girl with whom Moses falls in love. In the climax of the movie, Moses must choose whether he is to marry Esther or to go walking in the mountains (where he meets the burning bush and is given the tablets containing the Ten Commandments). While the story of Esther and Moses is not told in the Bible, the writers hope that this aspect of The Nine Rules story will present a more rounded character for Moses than has been seen in previous movies. The Nine Rules is adventure, romance and religious epic all rolled into one movie.

Being the CEO of an Internet based organization yourself, I am sure that you will know of the increasing difficulty in acquiring original domain names. I also fully understand that your organization uses this domain name for your business purposes.

I can assure you that my clients are sincere in their offer, and that they are keen to conclude this purchase quickly. I would be interested to learn how much you would require for this transfer of ownership.

Seems like a great story and the logic behind using the religion genre makes total sense to me. Maybe our Religious Community would like to get involved. Okay, I guess it’s on me to throw a number out there so here we go.

Hope you enjoyed your Easter Sunday. I have given this a ton of thought and these are the issues that arise with the selling of the domain:

• 3 years worth of backlinks will not be easy to build back up again.
• A name and brand go behind 9rules and therefore starting over from scratch is not an eviable position to be in.

Since our company has already received a number of inquiries for investment I can not part with the domain for less than $1.7M and understand I must throw a number out since you were reluctant to put one on the table. I am more than happy to listen to any counteroffers.

Alrighty then Arno, let’s see what you got.

Many thanks for your prompt and considered reply. Under normal circumstances your proposal of $1.7 million would have been perfectly acceptable and we would have been happy to agree to your terms. However I have some unfortunate news.

My agency has been informed today that in light of the sensitive situation in the Middle East, the direction of The Nine Rules project has been changed and a new script has been written.

The movie will now not be about a biblical Moses, but will instead tell the story of a young man growing up in the mountains of Mexico. In this new story, Manuel (Moses) falls in love with a young senorita, but despite his love for her, he must travel into the mountains accompanied only by his donkeys. The new movie will be called The Nine Mules.

I am very sorry that we were not able to conclude our business and I will be sending you and your associates VIP tickets to the opening night of The Nine Mules (traditional Mexican costume optiotional) in compensation.

So I can’t make my partners happy because of some mules? Ain’t that a bitch.

Originally posted on April 17, 2006 @ 1:20 pm

UPDATE: Mike puts me to shame with his more thorough entry. Scope it.

You may or may not have noticed that we launched with a new site on Tuesday. You can read a little bit about it over at the 9rules blog. I know one of the bigger issues that will come up is the color selection. Mike will be writing an entry at Business Logs shortly to discuss his design choices, but I wanted to ask the Whitespace readers what you see with the site that could be done better? It’s definitely not in its finished form, but from a functionality perspective we think it is better than the previous version and so we have launched it.

Hope everyone enjoys their weekend.

Originally posted on November 4, 2005 @ 1:20 pm

The 9rules Team has been having mini-meetings with regards to the direction we should take the 9rules Network homepage. We love the current homepage, but once I explain the problem you will see that it has to change. We think we came up with a pretty good solution and Mike and Colin are working hard at getting it done, however with me being the curious type I would love to hear what you think could be done with the page.

The Problem

The current homepage works well with a limited number of sites and only one language, but our group of English sites continues to grow and soon we are announcing Spanish sites into the network. We don’t want a list of 100 sites (the list is too big already) and we want the user of the homepage to have an option of whether they want English only, Spanish only or a mix.

Your ideas also have to keep in mind that new languages will be introduced in the future and more and more sites are jumping on board. Also giving everyone equal face time on the homepage is very important.

Hopefully you can see the challenge this presents, but it’s a fun challenge indeed. If you had to do what we are doing how would you go about it? Our solution was to stop looking at the page as a homepage and more of a web application.

Originally posted on September 7, 2005 @ 2:38 pm

Many people have been wondering when the next round of submissions would be taking place for entry into the 9rules Network and I am happy to announce that we will open them up this Friday starting at 12:00 AM Eastern time. Once again we will only have the window for submissions open for 24 hours so if you are interested in joining make sure to get your entry in between 12:00AM and 11:59PM on July 1st.

We are looking for all types of content-based websites and if your site is different from what we currently offer our readers then even better.

There have been a couple of great discussions concerning the 9rules Network, but the best one to date was started by Matthew Pennell. The entry and the comments go into great detail as to what the network is about and how everyone is starting to view it. If you would like an inside perspective on how things are going for members then you might be interested in Darice’s perspective.

Unforuntately, after the last round was over I missed emailing some of the people who submitted their sites to explain why their site was not accepted into the Network. If you are one of those people do not hesitate to email me at scrivs{AT}9rules.com to let me know of my oversight. I have no excuses for this happening and would like to correct it as soon as possible.

UPDATE: The submission page.

Originally posted on June 27, 2005 @ 10:49 am