Enom’s Club Drop jacks adult prices -
Enom’s Club Drop, one of the most successful expiring domain drop catchers, is hiking its fees drastically. Effective immediately:
Changes to Reverse Auction Pricing
The initial price will increase from $60.00 to $120.00. Once the auction starts, prices will drop at a faster rate in order to keep auction closing times consistent.
Changes to Minimum Entries
The minimum entry for Club Drop will increase from $10.00 to $15.00.
This is the second Enom price hike ... read more ...
Monthly Archives: July 2005
Fri 29th July 2005
Is U.S. control of a net all that bad? -
The United States has taken heat of late for announcing that it intends to maintain “control” of the internet and naming systems. Many countries had hoped to loosen the U.S.’s control.
So here’s the question. Is it really that bad if the U.S. maintains control? What’s the alternative? Generally speaking, the U.S. is the most stable country and it already has a tradition of managing the net. What if control got into the wrong hands? China would try ... read more ...
Wed 27th July 2005
No resellers for .eu domains -
According to this article, EurID has confirmed that resellers will not be allowed to sell .eu domain names. EurID is the registry for all .eu domains, which should be available for registration in 2006.
Resellers have been blamed for a number of domain hijackings. I think it’s hard enough to maintain quality standards for the hundreds of true ICANN accredited domain registrars. I love the competition and the low prices it brings, but I’m tired of registrars ... read more ...
Tue 26th July 2005
Lunch.com sells for $100,000 -
Lunch.com sold for $100,000 last week in a private transaction. Coupled with the website.com sale, it was a heck of a week for domain name sales! Other big domain sales last week include Skateboard.net for $29,250 (high for a .net!), TranslationServices.com for $25,500, and eCommercials.com for $12, 138. These three domains sold at SnapNames, which means that someone let these valuable domains expire.
I personally went on a bit of a domain buying spree over the ... read more ...
Mon 25th July 2005
Are hockey domains going to score? -
The National Hockey League is back. Does this mean opportunity for hockey-related domains?
Not if your domain is twolinepass.com, since the two line pass offsides has been eliminated.
Not if your domain is hockeytie.com, since ties have been eliminated.
Not if your domain is oversized-goalie-equipment.com, since goalie equipment will be shrinking.
But hockey back in the minds of North America can’t hurt for other hockey domains. Perhaps someone wants to buy ... read more ...
Get prepared for a good .info drop -
If you use a drop service to catch expiring domains, get ready for the list of available drops to balloon over the next few months! The .info list will be flooded with domains that people registered for FREE about this time last year. You may recall that .info registry owner Afilias started offering 25 free domains to all comers. Most of the .info domains registered were subpar, since all of the good ones were already taken. And I suspect most owners of these ... read more ...
Fri 22nd July 2005
Website.com sells for $750,000 -
Sedo just released great news–they sold Website.com for $750k! Their press release is reprinted below:
Cambridge, Mass. – July 20, 2005 – Sedo, the leading online marketplace for the buying and selling of domain names, today announced the domain name website.com was sold for $750,000—marking the highest valued domain sale of 2005. Prior and throughout the transaction process, website.com was supported by Sedo’s Premium Domain Brokerage Program, which ... read more ...
Wed 20th July 2005
PartnerCash.com sells for $110,000 -
Self-proclaimed “Domain King” Rick Schwartz sold PartnerCash.com last week for $110,000, according to DNJournal’s latest sales report. Rick Schwartz is a love-him-or-hate-him figure in the domain name world, and was recently slammed in the domain name community for scheduling a domain name conference at the same time as a “rival” conference. You can read more about Rick Schwartz in this article.
Although PartnerCash.com was the biggest reported sale of ... read more ...
Tue 19th July 2005
Domain-Sucks.com isn’t international -
A recent WIPO panel ruling shed some new light on adding “sucks” or another derogative term to a trademark.
The case is Air France and the domain AirFranceSucks.com. There are a number of reasons Air France won this case. Some of the reasons are nothing novel: the registrant wasn’t a dissatisifed customer posting complaints, and the page was used to generate revenue from pay-per-click ads. But there was something “new” in this WIPO decision. The WIPO ... read more ...
Communicate.com to IPO the FrequentTraveller.com site -
Communicate.com (OTCBB: CMNN.ob) has announced it will spinout its FreqentTraveller.com operations, with plans of raising $2.0M. Communicate.com owns 8M shares, putting its stake at about $4.0M. The total market cap for Communicate.com is just under $13M.
FrequentTraveller.com has “exclusive travel rights” to Communicate.com’s domains, including Malaysia.com, Indonesia.com, Brazil.com, Canadian.com and GreatBritain.com.
This is a very positive announcement ... read more ...
Governments to get initial dibs on .travel domain names -
According to a press release today, .travel domain names will be first offered to governments to snap up country, state, and city domains. For example, the Brazilian government will be able to register Brazil.travel before other interested entities such as tourism companies.
The full press release is here. It is partially reprinted below:
Tralliance Corporation, New York, the .travel Registry, in cooperation with the World Tourism Organization, has affirmed a priority ... read more ...
Mon 18th July 2005
sTypo product review -
There are a number of tools on the market for finding “typo” domains. I personally am not a fan of such domains, especially when it comes to buying typos of trademarks. But there are legitimate circumstances for buying typo domains, such as typos of domains you already own or typos of common words (e.g., city names).
One of the more powerful tools to enter the market is sTypo. Finding misspellings with sTypo is fairly easy. You just enter the domain and click ... read more ...
Thu 14th July 2005
Moniker offers $4.99 .Net Domains -
Moniker.com is charity $4.99 .net domain name registrations for a singular time. No banking is required. .Net is a third many renouned domain extension.
Via: domainnamewire.com
Wed 13th July 2005
Uruguay.com sells for $175,000 -
In one of the biggest reported domain name sales this year, Uruguay.com sold for $175,000 on Sedo last week, reports DNJournal. A number of quality one word domains sold during the week. Fights.com sold for $62,000 and Tractor.com sold for $45,000, both in private sales. A typo domain, CarreerBuilder.com, auctioned for $33,600 on enom. This is a steep price for a domain that could fairly easily be taken away in a WIPO dispute.
One surprise this week was a number ... read more ...
Tue 12th July 2005
ICANN releases domain hijacking report -
Looking for some light bedtime reading?
ICANN today released a report entitled “Domain Name Hijacking: Incidents, Threats, Risks, and Remedial Actions”. It’s a big topic, and ICANN made a long response to the tune of 48 pages.
The reports main findings are:
(1) Failures by registrars and resellers to adhere to the transfer policy have contributed to hijacking incidents and thefts of domain names.
(2) Registrant identity verification used in a number of registrar ... read more ...
Mon 11th July 2005
Communicate.com “frees” the domain -
I’m a believer in Communicate.com’s business model. (OTC: CMNN.ob). The company owns premium domains, like karate.com and makeup.com, and creates businesses around these. Other domains in the company’s portfolio are parked with advertisements. One thing has always bothered me, though. Communicate.com used its domain as a corporate information page. Because of this, communicate.com could never generate revenue from the domain or consider selling it!
Communicate.com ... read more ...
Thu 7th July 2005
Will Mark Cuban buy Register.com? -
Register.com once challenged NetSol.com for dominance in the domain name registration business. But it failed to adapt to changing competition, and now it is a laggard that until recently was out of compliance with SEC filing rules. It currently charges about $25 more per domain registration than its competitors. It is a profitable company, however, and is sitting on over $100M in cash.
The Motley Fool reports that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has accumulated ... read more ...
.Net pricing timebomb? -
There was a huge uproar when ICANN announced that Verisign would retain control of the .net registry a couple months ago. But there was good news–the new registry charge for .net domains would drop from $6.00 to $4.25. Some of this savings would likely be passed on to registrants. I personally applauded this price change. But I didn’t read the details of Verisigns agreement as closely as Kevin Murphy at Computer Business Review. He points out that the $4.25 ... read more ...
DNForum’s paid parking use prepared to leave beta? -
DNForum’s new paid parking service, ParkingSite.com, should be out of beta testing my mid-July. This is according to Adam Dicker, who owns DNForum. I have high hopes for this service, given that Adam typically knocks projects out of the park. I’m a bit concerned, though, since it was originally scheduled to go live a couple months ago! On message posts at DNForum, a number of beta users are still complaining about problems. When ParkingSite.com goes live, ... read more ...
Wed 6th July 2005
2-word .biz domain sells for $5k -
DNJournal just posted its weekly sales list. Sales were somewhat slower given the US holiday on July 4, but I’m especially excited by activity on secondary top level domains. Last week saw a two word .biz domain, WhitePages.biz, sell for $4,995 at Afternic. This should give the owner of YellowPages.biz some ammo in the secondary market; he or she could argue its worth at least three times the value of WhitePages.biz. There were a number of other 4-figure sales. ... read more ...
Tue 5th July 2005
Rags to Riches: A domain name story -
DNJournal has just posted a new article, Chris Chena Takes Charge: How the Whiz Kid from Paraguay Is Building A Spanish Domain Empire. Editor Ron Jackson has written another great piece–this article is one of my favorites.
Who’s Chris Chena? He’s a famous domain name owner who spent over $500k on domains just last month. Unlike some people, he focuses on quality domains only and seeks to develop each one. According to the article, Chris started out living ... read more ...
Fri 1st July 2005
US to keep pivotal internet role -
The U.S. government announced that it intends to continue playing a key role in the internet by not giving complete control over to ICANN. The U.S. government will continue to maintain the root master file that controls top level domains.
Practically, this will have little effect except to upset other nations that want ICANN to hold more power. I don’t know which is more effective–ICANN or the U.S. government. My only concern is that the U.S. Government will ... read more ...