Monthly Archives: February 2007

Wed 28th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Responds to Deletion Over Invalid Email Address - GoDaddy’s Director of Domain Services explains its actions in the case of FamilyAlbum.com Yesterday I reported about how GoDaddy deleted the domain registration for a domain due to invalid Whois information. This invalid information was limited to the e-mail address used; the phone number and mailing address was correct. Today, GoDaddy Director of Domain Services Camille Ede responded to a number of my questions concerning the actions it took. 1) What is your ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TrafficClub Loses DomainSponsor, Google - Domain parking optimization service cuts relationship with two large parking companies. TrafficClub, the domain name parking service I use for most of my domains, has dropped support for DomainSponsor and Google Adsense for Domains. That means that all of my domains are now being routed to Skenzo. This removes the main benefit of TrafficClub, which is having your domains auto-optimized across a number of different platforms. However, TrafficClub is providing access ... read more ...
Tue 27th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Deletes Domain Name for Inaccurate Email Address - Owner of FamilyAlbum.com finds his domain was re-registered by another GoDaddy customer. The (previous) owner of FamilyAlbum.com was surprised to find that he no longer owned the domain, which had not expired. He contacted GoDaddy to task what happened and received the following response: Dear Tim, On 12/19/2006 we received a third party complaint of invalid domain contact information in the Whois database for this domain. Whenever we receive a complaint, we are ... read more ...
Mon 26th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Launches Discount Club - Domain Registrar GoDaddy launches discount membership club. The world’s largest domain name registrar, GoDaddy, has launched a membership club called Discount Domain Club that offers reduced pricing. The club costs $89.95 per year and provides a number of discounted services. The fee might make sense for you if you are a GoDaddy customer who owns many domain names, or someone trying to consolidate domains that would prefer the security of GoDaddy compared to, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Conference Sold Out, Auction List Released - Next month’s TRAFFIC domain name conference is sold out and Moniker has released the auction list for its live auction. Want to attend next month’s TRAFFIC conference in Las Vegas? It’s too late; the conference is sold out. But people not attending will still be able to bid in the live and silent domain name auctions by paying an absentee fee. The $499 fee applies toward the purchase price of any domains you buy. Moniker just released the complete list of ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Governor Eliot Spitzer Goes After EliotSpitzer.Com - Former Attorney General, known for going after Wall Street, is now making a challenge for his name. Wall Street learned not to mess with Eliot Spitzer when he was attorney general (he is know governor of New York). An entrepreneur in New Jersey is about to learn about the wrath of Spitzer. Rogers Cadenhead, who recently won a UDRP decision for his domain name WarGames.com, dug up dirt about this case. The respondent is Eric Keller, a New Jersey online candy retailer ... read more ...
Thu 22nd February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Where will a Domain Name Market Head from Here? - Pay-per-click, type-in traffic, social media, and valuation will all affect the domain name industry — but how? I’m in San Francisco this week and had the chance to meet up with a long time domain veteran yesterday for drinks. We discussed some of the big players in the domain market these days and if the rewards justify the risks. He brought up some good points, which I’ve meshed with some running themes in the domain name market. Here are some things to ... read more ...
Wed 21st February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Exchange Rates Affect Domain Name Values - Falling U.S. dollar makes domain names cheaper to those outside the United States. Domain name sale prices seem to go up and up, but that’s not necessarily the case. The cost of buying domains may have decreased for people in countries with currencies appreciating against the dollar (and that’s just about everywhere). I first wrote about this issue in April 2005. At that time, the Euro was roughly 40% higher than five years prior compared to the U.S. dollar. ... read more ...
Tue 20th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
John Wants His Domain Name - The domain name John.com is in fierce bidding at Sedo. What about John? The generic domain name John.com has received 17 bids at domain aftermarket Sedo and has met its reserve. The auction will end February 23. You can expect this one to go much higher in the coming days. John.com isn’t the only name attracting attention at Sedo right now. Foto.pro is at $3,800 with four bidders and less than a day to go. .Pro domains rarely sell for that much. Other .pro ... read more ...
Mon 19th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Dotster Settles with Neiman Marcus over Typosquatting - Domain registrar Dotster has settled a lawsuit brought by Neiman Marcus. David Steele, an attorney with Christie, Parker Hale LLP that represented Neiman Marcus, said Neiman Marcus has settled with domain registrar Dotster over typosquatting charges. The lawsuit, made public in June 2006, alleged that Dotster was “tasting” typo domains during the registrar grace period for five days. Dotster would then keep the domains that generated enough traffic to warrant ... read more ...
Fri 16th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Moniker Releases Partial Domain Name Auction List - Moniker has released information about some of the premium domains to be auctioned at next month’s TRAFFIC conference in Las Vegas. The next live domain name auction from Moniker will take place during the TRAFFIC conference March 5-8 at the Venetian in Las Vegas, Nevada. Moniker issued a press release listing some of the names that will be available. The list includes: Text.com, Smoking.com, Ethanol.com, FreshFood.com, Greeting.com, Minnesota.org, MoviePreviews.com, ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo strike by DDoS Attack, Adds New Listing Feature - Domain aftermarket and parking service Sedo was hit be a distributed denial of service attack on February 12 and 13. The DDoS attack hit many sites parked on Sedo’s nameservers. The attack prevented access to most of Sedo’s Name Server-parked domain names for about 45 minutes on February 12 until Sedo was able to block the attack with the help of its hosting provider. The attack continued on February 13 for 12 minutes. Sedo is compensating its customers accordingly. ... read more ...
Thu 15th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameBio Launches Domain Appraisal Game - Sales database site livens up the numbers with entertaining valuation game. NameBio.com, a searchable database of domain name sales, recently launched a new domain name appraisal game. Here’s how it works: you are presented with ten different domain names. For each one you are given 15 seconds to guess how much the domain name sold for. After guessing for each domain you see the actual sales prices and are awarded points and a rank. Here’s how I did: At ... read more ...
Wed 14th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s Tax Time for Domain Name Owners - Domain names are uncharted territory for the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Tax time creates headaches for domain name owners, especially those with large portfolios. Sure, we know we need to report parking income on our tax returns, but how do we account for purchases, registrations, and sales? If you ask your CPA you’ll probably get a blank stare. CPA Sandra K. Brooks has released a new guide called “The Domain Tax Guide, 2007 Edition”. I just finished ... read more ...
Tue 13th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TRAFFIC Domain Name Auction to be Open to Public - The next TRAFFIC conference live domain name auction will be open for bidding by non-attendees. TRAFFIC Las Vegas is only weeks away. This year’s Las Vegas event will be March 5-8 at The Venetian. The highlight of the show will once again be Moniker’s live domain name auction. Moniker’s last TRAFFIC auction cleared $5M in domain name sales. Moniker also sold $2M worth of domains at the Internext conference in Las Vegas last month. Moniker tried something ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s Time to Fix Domain Name Authorization Codes - Domain authorization codes, which are required to transfer domains between domain name registrars, should be easier to obtain. It’s been only a few months since domain authorization codes were instituted for popular domains like .com and .net. These codes, alternatively called domain keys, transfer codes, etc., are required to transfer domains between registrars. Here’s how it works. Say you want to transfer domains between registrars, such as from GoDaddy to ... read more ...
Mon 12th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ManHunt.com Sells for $72,222 - Domain aftermarket Afternic has completed a number of big transactions over the past week, including ManHunt.com for $72,222. The ManHunt.com sale represents one of Afternic’s biggest transactions in 2007. The whois record for ManHunt.com shows Domain Capital, the domain name financing company. This means the company is either financing the transaction or it purchased the domain. Although ManHunt.com is the big story, Afternic completed a number of other big sales. ... read more ...
Thu 8th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Adam Dicker Keeps Pig.com, Keith Urban Goes After KeithUrban.com - Common sense prevails in Pig.com case; Keith Urban is misguided in KeithUrban.com case. This week Rogers Cadenhead won his UDRP with MGM over the domain name WarGames.com. Although I believe the decision was correct, there were some gray areas that at least gave MGM some inkling of rational for filing the complaint. But that’s not always the case. Take the recent case of Pig.com, owned by DNForum owner Adam Dicker. A company called New Pig Corporation, which ... read more ...
Wed 7th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Network Solutions Acquired - Domain registrar Network Solutions has been acquired by a private equity firm. Private equity firm General Atlantic announced that it is acquiring domain registrar Network Solutions from Najafi Companies (formerly Pivotal Private Equity). Since this is a private equity deal you should not expect major changes to the operations of Network Solutions (as compared to an acquisition by a competitor). According to TechCrunch, rumors are swirling that the deal is worth ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
MGM Loses Bid for WarGames.com - MGM loses UDRP decision to Rogers Cadenhead, owner of WarGames.com. Last month I analyzed MGM’s UDRP attempt to get the domain name WarGames.com from registrant Rogers Cadenhead. Cadenhead just contacted me to let me know he won the arbitration. The three member arbitration panel decided that Cadenhead proved that he planned to open a site at the domain that sold war games (not related to the trademark for the movie): The picture that emerges from this material ... read more ...
Tue 6th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Selling Domains 101: Part 5, End User Sales - This is part 5 in Domain Name Wire’s “Selling Domains 101” series. If former carpet salesman Roy Edward Messer would have sold his domain name Vodka.com to another domain name investor, how much would it have sold for? Surely it wouldn’t have been as much as Cameras.com, which sold at auction last year for $1.5M. Any domain name buyer would hedge his bets on a domain related to an expensive electronics item with high pay-per-click prices than on an alcholic ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
January Domain Name Parking Results - 2007 started off strong for domain name parking revenue. I’m a bit perplexed about how to report my domain name parking statistics for January. Compared to December 2006, my revenue was up. Also, my results with DomainSponsor and Skenzo on TrafficClub were very high. But something weird happened to my Google Adsense for Domains stats on January 1. The number of page views suddenly skyrocketed. My Google revenue was up a bit (about double), but not nearly enough ... read more ...
Mon 5th February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
A new GoldKey, Bye Bye ParkingSite, other news - Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick updates us on the latest in domain name parking. GoldKey is launching their new, renovated site in February. It was supposed to launch 2/1, but was delayed because of some last minute issues, according to Scott Briggs, Program Manager for parking at NameMedia. He is now hoping that the site launches 2/5. According to Scott, the new site incorporates many of the tools that have been available only to ActiveAudience members. ActiveAudience ... read more ...
Fri 2nd February 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
VeriSign Says Domain Name Price Hikes Coming - VeriSign says it will hike prices on .com, .net domains in 2007. The domain name industry knew it was coming, but VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) CEO Stratton Sclavos dropped the bomb during the company’s earnings call on Wednesday. During the 33rd minute of the call, Sclavos responded to an analyst’s question about possible price hikes for .com domains: “As it relates to .com, I think our expectation is that we’ll have some action here in the first-half of the year,” ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
CNET Surveys Registrars about GoDaddy Suspension - CNET sent surveys to 12 registrars asking them about their policies for suspending domains. Last week GoDaddy changed the DNS on a customer’s domain name at the request of MySpace. MySpace complained that the site in question was displaying the usernames and passwords of its users. It turns out that this same file of usernames and passwords was available at numerous sites on the internet and could be found with a simple Google search. (I suspect GoDaddy was not ... read more ...