Monthly Archives: May 2006

Wed 31st May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Registration now Free - Domain Name Wire has launched FreeDN.com, your source for free domain registrations. FreeDN provides users with free domain registrations at Dotster, a leading domain registrar. Here’s how it works: 1. Sign up for a free account at FreeDN.com. 2. Complete various advertiser offers to earn points. Many of these offers are completely free, such as completing a survey or signing up for a free trial. Others have small fees but are typically much cheaper than domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Ws domains collect adult steam - A number of .ws domains have sold in recent weeks. .Ws, which is the country code for Western Somoa, has never caught on despite a major marketing campaign to rebrand it as an abbreviation for “web site”. But occasionally the domains sell for a respectable price — typically below the equivalent .biz or .info. According to DNJournal, Blogs.ws sold for $1,600 at Sedo this past week. This is music to my ears since I own blogs.info and weblogs.ws. A number ... read more ...
Tue 30th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SedoPro launches to public - Sedo, one of the largest domain exchanges and domain parking companies, has launched its SedoPro parking service to the public. Sedo has been testing the system for a while on an invitation-only basis. Sedo’s regular parking pages can’t compare to SedoPro. Among the cool features of SedoPro: -View high and low performing domains -See geographic origin of traffic -See where traffic is coming from (referrers) -Add “Page Elements” including custom links, search ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Are we serious? - “Are you Serious?” That’s a question I have for a lot of domain name sellers. I came across a thread at DNForum in November of last year started by the site’s owner, Adam Dicker. He was complaining about a big he placed on Sedo and the rediculous counter offer he received: Bid Thread for godfather.com: 2005-11-10 Desired Price: Make Offer 2005-11-10 Your Offer: 4,000 EUR 2005-11-10 Seller´s Counter Offer: 1,000,000 EUR This stuck out to me, especially ... read more ...
Fri 26th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Nintendo goes on Wii registration spree - Nintendo has snapped up a number of Wii-domains for the upcoming launch of its newest video game system. Moments after announcing the name of its next generation video game system, speculators began snapping up any domain they could think of that included “Wii”. Dozens of speculators posted Wii-domains for sale at DNForum the same day of the announcement. But it looks like Nintendo was smart and snagged a bunch of domains for itself. An article at computerandvideogames.com ... read more ...
Thu 25th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameDrive offers World Cup Contest - Domain parking company NameDrive is offering up to triple your parking earnings during the World Cup of football (that’s soccer to most of us). You can tell that a company isn’t from the United States when it centers a big promotion around the World Cup of Football, a.k.a. soccer. NameDrive’s contest allows its customers to earn up to 3x their earnings in June by joining a World Cup bracket. The best performer in the bracket wins 3x their parking revenue for ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Stats from parked domains - SiteParker has released aggregate stats about parked domains that reveal some interesting user behaviors. Domain parking company SiteParker has released data from over 1,000,000 visits to 15,000 domains in the first quarter of the year. I haven’t seen domain parking companies releasing stats like this before, so kudos to SiteParker. The stats reveal that there are 1.3 page views per unique visitor to parked domains. If we assume that people only click on to one ... read more ...
Wed 24th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.eu delegate recover information - EURid has released details about the release of domains applied for (and rejected) during the sunrise period. After taking a lot of flack for the number of .eu domains that went to investors rather than individuals and businesses, .eu is training to limit this sort of activity during the secondary release. Instead of releasing an entire list of domains to become available, EURid is listing the availability dates in the Sunrise .EU Whois database. People will have ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Vertigo.com sells for $50,000 - Afternic has sold Vertigo.com for $50,000. The domain had received previous bids of up to $10,500, but on May 19 Vertigo Software decided to seal a deal and bid $50k. Vertigo Software is a Microsoft-based development and consulting company. This is just one of many high profile domain names that sold over the past week. You may have heard that The Tribune Company bought ForSaleByOwner.com. It’s a full web site, but the domain name ForSaleByOwner.com sold for ... read more ...
Tue 23rd May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Typo.com - Forbes.com has an interesting story about the domain market that interviews iREIT. Sadly, the headline of the article, Typo.com, is grossly negligent. The article mentions typo domains for a sentence or two, but the rest is about acquiring great generic domain names and the value of these names in the broader marketplace. Fortunately, iREIT President Marc Ostrofsky was given the chance to define cybersquatter: Let me defining cyber-squatting, since I’ve been called ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Learning some-more about Parked.com domain parking - Parked.com is grabbing attention as a new alternative in the crowded field of domain parking. I recently asked Donny Simonton, CIO of Parked.com, a few questions about what makes the service different from the competition. (The parking service was created by directNIC.) 1. It seems like a new parking service opens its doors every week. How will Parked.com stand out from the crowd? Unlike some of the new companies that are coming out we have been in the parking ... read more ...
Mon 22nd May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
WirelessPhone.com ends soon - An auction for WirelessPhone.com sits at $52,500 with under a day to go. Domain market Afternic has been marketing the domain in a special 30 day auction. The auction ends tomorrow afternoon. The domain scores a very nice 1,826 in Overture with its extension. With stats like these this domain should easily top $100k when it closes, but so far has garnered only 2 bids (it started at $50k). Anyone eyeing this domain will wait until the last minute so as not to bring ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New York wants to umpire domain names - In a move that flies in the face of established international guidelines, the New York Senate is pushing through a bill that would forbid registering the name of a living person with the purpose of selling the domain to that person. The New York Senate’s bill is called “domain names cyber piracy protections act” and is championed by State Senator Betty Little (S2306). Generally speaking, registering a person’s name solely to sell the domain to that person ... read more ...
Thu 18th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Pulling behind a sheets on GoDaddy - I have to disagree with the writer of this piece in this Domain Name Wire article. Not Parsons, I think Parsons is the ultimate Underdog here. Look what he’s built. He’s built a great one stop shop to get the services needed to make it simple. I’m a Realtor in Southern Ca. I have found his company’s services a perfect solution for my needs. I’ve had my .com’s registered there, ever since I wanted to create my own Website. I didn’t know how to do it, but I was savvy enough ... read more ...
Wed 17th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Give parking companies a possibility to optimize - Domainers should test domains with parking companies for at least a month to achieve valuable results. When I first started parking a couple dozen names at Parked.com a couple weeks ago I was dissapointed with the RPM. But my results have improved dramatically over the past few days as the parking service has had a chance to optimize my domains based on user traffic. For example, take a look at BoyGeorgeDJ.com. At first it showed links related to music in general ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Diamond.com sells for $7.5M - Diamond.com and related intellectual property was purchased by internet jeweler Ice.com for $7.5M. This major deal is unique because the price of the domain and intellectual property were separate from Ice.com’s purchase of Diamond.com’s inventory and hard assets. The inventory was sold for $2M, bringing the total transaction value to $9.5M. You could argue that the domain itself didn’t sell for $7.5M since the domain came with significant goodwill. Nevertheless, ... read more ...
Tue 16th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Tel approved - .Tel sponsor Telnic says ICANN has approved the new TLD. On the surface this is one of the worst new domain names to be approved — let alone suggested. As I wrote last month: This idea makes sense for one group only: the registry that will make money selling the domains (oh yeah, and the registars getting in on the action). Why would we want something like .tel? You can do the same thing with .name or .com. The .tel extension doesn’t even enable the goal of the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Registry Support doesn’t know when to stop - One of the biggest domain scammers, Domain Registry Services, will eventually run into the law. Domain Registry Services is known for sending out misleading notices such as: FINAL NOTICE OF DOMAIN EXTENSION. yourdomain.us “has now become available for registration. Consequently the possibility of conflicting domain name registrations may occur.” REGARDING: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY NOTIFICATION PROCESS and IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE UNITED STATES LEGAL CODE and You are ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sacrificing parking income for destiny profits - Communicate.com’s latest earnings report shows that the company is banking on the long term value of developing its domains. Communication.com (OTCBB: CMNN.ob) announced its latest quarterly earnings. The company went into the red for Q1, compared with a profit of $133k in the same quarter a year earlier. But investors need not panic. Communication.com President David Jeffs said: We made some planned changes in Q1 that have adversely affected our near-term results, ... read more ...
Fri 12th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parked.com domain name parking - Newcomer Parked.com has great landing pages and pays twice each month. It seems like every week a new domain parking company enters the market. (And we’re just a week or two away from Sedo launching its SedoPro service, which many domainers are anxiously awaiting.) But Parked.com might give other parking services a run for their money. Some of Parked.com’s features will at least push the competitive edge so that other parking companies have to improve their ... read more ...
Thu 11th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.XXX gets X’d - ICANN has voted to not appove an application for establishing a .xxx domain name. .XXX has been a firestorm of controversy since its backers made another attempt to etablish the domain. The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article yesterday about the saga of the domain extension. The challenges to the domain cover a number of issues, including US “control” of ICANN and the role of the US government in ICANN policy making. From CNET: ICANN’s board on Wednesday ... read more ...
Wed 10th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
New USA Today and Wall Street Journal articles - Another day, another series of domain name article is major publications. The front page of today’s The Wall Street Journal covers the .xxx debate. It’s a fascinating story discussing the US Department of Commerce role in influencing decisions about the controversial domain name. USA Today has a story titled “Domain names become premium Web real estate“. It discusses Amy Schrier, who sold Blue.com for $500,000. She bought the domain for $65,000 in 2002. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dotster gears adult for subsequent happy hour - Dotster is offering domain names for $1 this Thursday. Domain Registrar Dotster is having another “Domain Name Happy Hour” this Thursday at 4PM EST. The first 1,000 visitors to Dotsters web site will receive a coupon for a $1 domain. Eligible domains are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info. Also this Thursday Dotster will also start offering 5 free domains with the purchase of any web hosting package. To receive your five free domains enter coupon code 5ForFree ... read more ...
Tue 9th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Jawpain.com – Small business, good domain - A good domain name is critical for a small business–but you rarely see small businesses using good domains. Your local car wash might be austin-h20-carwash.com. Your dry cleaners might be mikesdrycleaning.net. These names aren’t memorable and have little value to customers. But here’s a story about a small business with a great domain — and how this domain name was incredibly helpful to me over the past weekend. A couple weeks ago I had my wisdom teeth extracted. ... read more ...
Mon 8th May 2006
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DirectMailMarketing.com cashes in $17,750 - SnapNames auctions off a three word domain for $17,750. An auction for DirectMailMarketing.com has closed for $17,750 at SnapNames. Payment is pending. This is a high price for a three word domain, although “Direct Mail” has pay-per-click bids over $5.00 at Overture. I’ve often questioned if the bidding frenzy at SnapNames is pushing some domains over market value, although an auction is a good definition of a perfect market. Recent attention to the expired ... read more ...