No, seriously – take a video of yourself shooting an elephant in the dark as well as the subsequent slaughtering and throw it up on YouTube. Then, advertise said video all over Twitter. Once you start to receive any backlash, double-down on your position that said elephant killing was the right thing to do.

I’m sure this storyline is beginning to sound familiar to you. When GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons did all of the above things back in March, many wondered how it would affect the company. The outrage was overwhelming.

Not only did people threaten to pull their sites from GoDaddy’s services, but other companies attempted to cash-in on Parson’s faux pas. NameCheap offered domain transfers for special prices, even donating 25% of their revenue to Save The Elephants. They tweeted that they raised over $20,000 for the charity. Venovix followed suit, offering to donate revenue generated from domain switches to the International Elephant Foundation. This promotion was cleverly titled “NoDaddy.”

And man did Parsons piss off PETA.

It appears, however, that all the outrage and publicized domain switching hasn’t really translated into people leaving GoDaddy. On the contrary, new figures show that they have raised domain registrations 8% and their sales rate 4% following the elephant shooting.

Flippa has released an infographic for their first “State of the Website Economy” report. To see that full infographic, check out their blog post. The pertinent GoDaddy part of the report is this:

There was an uproar and threats of GoDaddy boycotts from across the globe when Bob Parsons shot an elephant in Zimbabwe, but the event failed to resonate in the long-term as website creators continue to use GoDaddy. In fact, their share of registrations seems to have increased since the shooting, and their share of website sales hasn’t diminished when looked at relative to the rest of the website market. We doubt the event even factored into GoDaddy’s $2.25 billion sale to private equity firms last month!

Earlier this month, GoDaddy sold itself to three private equity firms for $2.25 billion. Parsons said that it “isn’t a sale. It’s a partnership that’s reinvesting in Go Daddy.”

Parson, the wonderful well of Twitter activity, tweeted about his role in the restructured GoDaddy. In response to a user asking about the future of his video blog, Parson replied with this tweet –

His latest tweet comes from Wednesday. I wonder what PETA will have to say about this one –

Do you think Parsons was right or wrong to kill the elephant? Comment here.

Clearly there are people standing up for both sides of the argument. PETA has been the most vocal opponent, and much of the piece is for all intents and purposes attacking that organization. It’s not just animal rights activists that were outraged by the elephant killing, however. Many people claimed they were pulling their sites from GoDaddy domains, and some of GoDaddy’s competitors took advantage of this by offering special deals (with donations to elephant-related causes) for switching to their respective services.

Parsons has staunchly defended his actions from the beginning, in the press, on Twitter, and even in unrelated GoDaddy press releases (which were about donations to Hope for Haiti), though interestingly enough, GoDaddy never put out much in the way of damage control following the outcry over the video – no press releases directly about the incident, though the video was later heavily edited to give it a completely different tone. More on Parsons’ defense here, and in the NRA article.

The video has even drawn parody on YouTube:

Regardless of where you stand on Parsons’ elephant-killing ways, it seems clear that the whole thing has done little to help GoDaddy in terms of PR, which is why I find it fascinating that Parsons keeps bringing it back up, rather than letting the story disappear into the past. It seemed like they were finally focusing their PR on charitable donations, but Parsons recently tweeted the following, bringing the elephant back into spotlight:

WARNING: GRAPHIC ELEPHANT BUTCHER IMAGES BELOW

It gets more interesting, when you look at the actual article and find a different video with more footage from the elephant outing. There’s no AC/DC soundtrack in this one like there was in the other one before it was edited, though I have to wonder if this one has been edited as well. Before editing, the other one also showed many villagers wearing GoDaddy hats. This seems to be lacking in this video as well. It’s not embeddable (if you have a link to embeddable version, let us know, but you can see the video in its entirety in the article here), but here are a few screenshots. Please note that all captions are from the actual video. We did not add these.

Since tweeting the link to the story, Parsons also tweeted a link to a new GoDaddy video where he talks about how to make good decisions.

Is Parsons helping or hurting GoDaddy’s image by continuing to bring up the elephant? Tell us what you think.

The move comes after an investigative report from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) that found more than 70 percent of all endangered species products listed for sale on the Internet occur in the United States.

The amount of trade tracked in the U.S. was nearly 10 times the trade tracked in the next two leading countries, the United Kingdom and China.

Elephant ivory dominated the investigation, comprising 73 percent of all product listings tracked. African and Asian elephants are protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act and the international Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species.

"We feel this is the best way to protect the endangered and protected species from which a significant portion of ivory products are derived," eBay said on its company blog Tuesday.

According to the IFAW over 4,000 elephant ivory listings were uncovered during its investigation, with most of the sales taking place on eBay’s U.S. site. In one case, a user purchased a pair of elephant tusks off eBay for more than $21,000.

"IFAW congratulates eBay on this very important step to protect elephants. With these findings and eBay’s leadership, there is no doubt left that all Internet dealers need to take responsibility for their impact on endangered species by enacting and enforcing a ban on all online wildlife trade," said Barbara Cartwright, IFAW Campaigns Manager.