Monthly Archives: February 2006

Tue 28th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2006 Domain Name Wire Survey results - I’ve finally released the complete results of the 2006 Domain Name Wire Survey! Here is the press release that goes out tomorrow morning: Austin, TX (PRWEB) February 28, 2006 — DomainNameWire.com has released results from its 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The survey covers a number of topics important to the domain name industry and includes responses from 582 people in over 80 countries. Survey results can be viewed at http://domainnamewire.com/survey. Some ... read more ...
Mon 27th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interview with Adam Dicker of DNForum - DNForum is the largest forum for the domain name industry. An interview with Adam Dicker shows why it is so successful. One of the biggest names in the domain community is Adam Dicker, owner of popular domain forum DNForum.com. The forum has nearly 25,000 registered members – thousands of them paid members – and is growing by the minute. I recently had the chance to talk with Adam about DNForum.com and the domain industry in general. DNW: In the 2006 Domain Name ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dotster Article – quotes Domain Name Wire - An article in Sunday’s The Columbian discusses Dotster and its mission to become a top 5 registrar. The article, which includes quotes from yours truly, discusses Dotster’s recent domain happy hour and how the company hopes to use marketing techniques like this to grow its market share. Dotster was one of the original discount registars when it launched in 2000. I recall reading about the company on a message board in early 2000. People were going nuts discussing ... read more ...
Sun 26th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Buy.com giving divided giveaway GoDaddy domains - Buy.com is offering a free domain name with every purchase. Would you like a free domain name with your Harry Potter DVD? Buy.com is offering free domain names from GoDaddy with just about any purchase. Whether it be a $9.99 CD or a $2,000 TV, all you have to do is check a box that says: “FREE Go Daddy Domain! Check here and click “Buy Now” Receive a free domain from GoDaddy.com worth up to $8.95 with the purchase of this item from Buy.com. If you choose ... read more ...
Fri 24th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: No some-more new domains - The majority of the domain community doesn’t want ICANN to approve new domains. [Editors note: this is the tenth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] Only 45% of respondents in our survey were in favor of additional top level domains (e.g. .biz, .info). Perhaps the community is tired of seeing top level domains “diluted” by new extensions. This theory is reinforced ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Swiss supervision claims domains - The government of Switzerland is trying to get its hands on three domain names owned by a Swiss citizen. The government claims to have a right to three specific URLs – www.schweiz.ch, www.suisse.ch and www.svizzera.ch (all translate to the country’s name) and wants to use the domains for it www.ch.ch site. Switzerland is going to WIPO to try to get the domains. This seems to be a clear case of reverse domain name hijacking. The owner of the domains, Stefan C. ... read more ...
Thu 23rd February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VoIPService.com going, going… - Just a day after after SatellitePhone.com grabbed a $50k bid on Afternic, VoIPService.com has met its reserve of $25,000. The domain will sell to the highest bidder within the next 7 days. This domain had been in Afternic’s Showcase Domains section for a while. It’s good to see domains in the showcase sell. Another domain from the showcase, hepamasks.com, has also met its reserve. It’s interesting to see two domains in “closing soon” at Afternic with ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afternic sale for $50,000 pending - SatellitePhone.com has met its $50,000 reserve on Afternic. With just under 6 days remaining, SatellitePhone.com is about to sell at domain exchange Afternic. The domain has a “buy now” price of $90,000. The market for satellite phones is booming. Overture shows 36,907 searches for the term in January and the top bid on Overture is $5.33. In other domain sales news, DNJournal has released its latest sales data. NHS.com took top honors this week after selling ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain Name Wire cracks tip 100,000 - Domain Name Wire is now one of the top 100,000 sites on the web, according to Alexa. To some sites it’s no big deal, and I hope the site keeps climbing, but Domain Name Wire has finally broken into the “5 digit” range in Alexa’s web rankings. At the time of posting, the site is currently number 97,318. Traffic to the site is rapidly increasing. In January DNW rang up about 25,000 uniques and over 60,000 page views. This month should easily clear that hurdle. Many ... read more ...
Wed 22nd February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
eNom ups Club Drop prices again - eNom’s Club Drop service increased its minimum bid again. It seems like if eNom didn’t increase its expired domain prices a couple times a year we’d start to worry if they were OK. Today they announced that the mininum bid for all domains will increase to $30 tomorrow. Currently, you can bid less than $30 but you have to bid $30 to enter into a competitive auction. Frequently, you could bid $20 for a domain and win. But no longer. eNom also announced special ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Wall Street Journal essay on Drop Catching - The Wall Street Journal published a new article about domain names today. In section B page 1 of today’s Wall Street Journal is an article titled “Drop Catchers Buy and Sell Web Names Others Let Slip”. I have yet to find a free online version of this article at the time of writing. (You can get two weeks free to WSJ Online to see the article immediately here.)The domain community has been talking about this article on the horizon for the past week. The article ... read more ...
Tue 21st February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: Do not palm control of internet to general body - Only 38% of respondents to our survey approve of transferring control of the internet and domain name system to an international body. [Editors note: this is the ninth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] Even though 83% of respondents to the 2006 Domain Name Wire Survey were from outside the US, only 38% thought it a good idea to transfer control of the internet to an international ... read more ...
Mon 20th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain mid-market continues to thrive - Sales of domains in the $2k-$10k range continue to explode. It’s an area of the domain name aftermarket that I refer to as the mid-market: domains that sell for a couple grand but don’t quite hit 5-figures. Although you read about all of the big 5 and 6-figure domain sales, the mid-market is actually where most of the activity takes place. Take this past week on Afternic. The exchange completed the sales of a number of quality domains that escaped the eyes of ... read more ...
Sun 19th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Lettuce.com escapes my bid - Lettuce.com sold for $4,002 on TDNAM, much to my disappointment. An auction for Lettuce.com ended Thursday at $4,002 on GoDaddy’s TDNAM. Why does this disappoint me? Because I wanted to win the auction! Thursday evening I was perusing TDNAM and saw that Lettuce.com was closing within an hour and was only $1,000 at the time. I had a 5:30AM wake up call the next morning for travel so I knew I couldn’t stay up the entire time waiting to bid at the last second. ... read more ...
Thu 16th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Roundtable bonus formula and information - One of the domain industry’s most important conferences, Domain Roundtable, is just a couple months away. The Domain Roundtable conference is organized by Name Intelligence, known for running the Whois.sc service. Details Dates: April 19-21, 2006 Location: Bellevue, WA (Seattle Area) Web site: domainroundtable.com Domain Name Wire readers are eligible for an exclusive discount until March 10! Just enter your VIP code drt2006@domainnamewire.com when you register. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New Wall Street Journal essay to cover domain dump catching - The Wall Street Journal is writing a new article about the domain name industry – this one about expired domain drop catching. According to a post at DNForum by someone who said he was interviewed for the story, The Wall Street Journal is writing another article about the domain name industry. This article will cover drop catching and the expired domain business. Hopefully the paper will interview not only successful individuals and companies on the buy side but ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: Domain Name Owners reject ICANN/VeriSign Settlement - Survey shows only 25% of domain owners support agreement. [Editors note: this is the eighth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] Opposition to the proposed VeriSign agreement with ICANN is growing. A number of registrars released formal opposition remarks yesterday. Results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey echo these sentiments. Of the 582 survey respondents in 81 ... read more ...
Wed 15th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afternic sells 2 minute .net - LV.net has sold on Afternic for $10,000. Afternic recently completed the sale of LV.net for $10,000. Sales of two letter domains are extremely rare given the small number of two letter combinations and restrictions for availability when there are conflicts with country code domains (e.g. .de). Soon we might see sales of single letter domains, such as B.com. LV.net isn’t the only two letter domain to sell in recent weeks. According to DNJournal BB.org sold for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo bolstering US presence - Sedo is sending its founder to its U.S. office to help the company attack the North American market. Sedo founder and CEO Tim Schumacher is relocating from Europe to Boston to help the company increase its presence in North America. Sedo established itself as the king of domains in Europe and is viewed similarly in the US, although there’s a lot more domain aftermarket competition in the US, where Afternic and GoDaddy’s TDNAM have a share of the market. The ... read more ...
Tue 14th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
$1 Domains during Dotster! - Dotster is hosting a “domain name happy hour” at 4PM EST today. During this happy hour domains will only cost $1 each. But it is unclear what the limits are for this special offer. Visit Dotster at 4PM EST today to get in on the action! Update 4:29PM EST: Dotster is running slow. My guess is a lot of people are pinging it and some people probably created scripts to bulk register. Note that there is a limit of 1 $1 domain per order and 5 orders per person. Update ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expiring Domain Market in 2006 - The expired domain market made a big splash in 2005 and this looks to continue in 2006. [Editors note: this is the seventh in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] 2005 was the year of the exclusive drop agreement. Instead of domains expiring and dropping for all expired domains services to have a fair shake at catching, most large registrars now have exclusive agreements to ... read more ...
Mon 13th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Best sites to buy and sell domain names - Forums continue to be good venues for buying and selling domain names. [Editors note: this is the sixth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] Where do domainers go to buy and sell domain names? Forums such as DNForum continue to be hot for domain name transactions. People frequently sell domains within minutes of posting them on forums (but usually at a wholesale price). In ... read more ...
Fri 10th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pair of good .info domains sell - Two high quality .info domains have sold at Afternic. Afternic seller “BudgetNames”, from whom I bought Fax.info, has sold Income.info and Ads.info to buyer “PerfectNames”. Ads.info sold for $5,100 and Income.info for $2,800. These are great domains and reasonable prices. Do not underestimate the value of a good keyword domain for search engine optimization! Afternic has sold some other good quality non-.coms recently, including Zoom.us ($1,000), BestPractice.org ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: NameDrive tip Domain Parking Service - Newcomer NameDrive took top honors in the 2006 Domain Name Wire Survey. [Editors note: this is the fifth in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] NameDrive took 14% of the vote for the most popular domain parking service, edging out top players like Sedo and DomainSponsor. NameDrive has a great user interface, a number of attractive pay-per-click templates, and almost instantaneous ... read more ...
Thu 9th February 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Book to tell a Sex.com story - Freelance Journalist Kieren McCarthy has signed a publishing deal for an upcoming book “Sex.com”. Everyone in the domain name business knows the basics of the Sex.com domain. A domain name so valuable that it was stolen from the rightful owner who, when finally found guilty of the theft, fled the country to avoid paying a $65M judgement. Perhaps the Sex.com saga has come to an end as the domain was sold for about $12M last month. I’m picturing a book written ... read more ...