September 12, 2008, 5:33 pm By Steve Friess Paul Pilger is still waiting for the call, but he's starting to get the feeling he won't ever get it.

When Senator John McCain introduced an obscure first-term governor to the nation as his running mate on Aug. 29, Mr. Pilger was feeling "fairly smart." Way, way back in February he had done some amateur political analysis and decided that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was a good fit for the then-Republican nominee-in-waiting.

So he hopped online and registered McCainPalin2008.com. Also, he snapped up McCain-Palin2008.com and McCain-Palin08.com as well as the dot-org, dot-net and dot-info versions of all three constructions.

After the Aug. 29 announcement, Mr. Pilger assumed he had something the McCain campaign would want.

"I'm actually surprised that nobody from the campaign has contacted me or even a third-party person," said Mr. Pilger, 41, a McCain supporter who works for a software manufacturer. "As the time ticks away, so does the monetary value."

Mr. Pilger's not the only whose Palin prescience hasn't paid off thus far. Taxicab driver Russell Wright of Logan, Utah, snapped up PresidentPalin.com, VicePresidentPalin.com and PresidentSarahPalin.com a week before the selection because Mr. Wright's daughter, a political science major at Utah State University, predicted it. Electronics technician Raymond Patterson, 51, of Corpus Christi, Texas, registered SaraPalin.com - a deliberate but likely common misspelling - two days before the announcement. And eBay auctioneers trying to sell Palin-related domains for prices as high as $100,000 and as low as 99 cents are garnering virtually no bidding.

"It surprises me that no one has gotten a hold of me and said 'We want them,' " Mr. Wright said. "We would've already made a deal."

Yet it's not a shock to political consultants who say the value of these variant domain names is limited because a presidential campaign is more likely to stick to one obvious dot-com name and not alter it at the late stage of running-mate selection.

"The reason nobody contacted these people is because the McCain campaign is going to use and brand JohnMcCain.com," said Kari Chisholm, president of Mandate Media who runs the online efforts for several Democratic candidates. "The only value in these other names is the traffic you get of people guessing the site, which is nominal. Most people find the website through Google searches anyway."

Still, Mr. Chisholm was surprised that it appears GovernorPalin does not own her own name, SarahPalin.com. If she did, he reasoned, going to SarahPalin.com would bounce visitors to JohnMcCain.com, much as JoeBiden.com now redirects to BarackObama.com. Instead, SarahPalin.com visitors find a blank page with an error message.

"It's very surprising and it doesn't say good things about the competence of her staff," Mr. Chisholm said. "You should always have the domain that is your own name no matter how low a public official you are because that's the best one, the most recognizable. And you should grab all variations. I'm working with Jeff Merkley, who is running for Senate in Oregon. People consistently misspell his last name. We tried to capture all of them and redirect them back to the main site."

The McCain campaign did not return calls seeking comment.

Because registering domains is easy and inexpensive at about $10 a year, none of this has prevented people from placing online bets on Governor Palin's future in the hopes of a payoff.

John Weymouth of Moorpark, Calif., for instance, had registered PalinRomney2012.com and RomneyPalin.com before the vice presidential pick had finished declaring herself a hockey mom for the first time.

"I was watching her speak and I liked her already," Mr. Weymouth sai.d "I sent an e-mail to my wife. We're both big Mitt Romney supporters and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be interesting if they ran together someday?' "

Mr. Wright says he's planning to put his domains on eBay for $50,000.

But the experience of Luke Freudenberg of Wolfeboro, N.H., suggests that's foolhardy. Last December, Mr. Fruedenberg and two friends spent $975 to buy up up 100 political domain names including 16 variations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the eventual Democratic ticket. When the Delaware senator was tapped by Senator Obama, Mr. Freudenberg and his friends - McCain supporters - celebrated. Then they waited and, when the Obama camp didn't call, they put the names up on eBay with a starting bid of $100,000.

They got 10,000 views for the offering but not a single bid. More recently, they lowered the price to $1,000. Still, no takers. (Sounds sort of like the governor's jet that Ms. Palin put up on eBay that didn't sell.)

The next step, he said, is to send a registered letter to the Obama campaign to see if there's any interest.

"I've had worse ideas and spent more money, it was kind of fun for a while," said Mr. Freudenberg, 29, who owns a waterfront construction company. "We're hoping somebody will pick up on it. If not, we can direct it toward any page we want to."