Monthly Archives: May 2007

Thu 31st May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How Much is a Three Letter Domain Name Worth? - Prices range from a couple thousand to millions. I was just scrolling through Sedo’s auction page and came across a listing for a three letter domain, Pat.com, which has a bid of $62,000 with its reserve met. Sedo sold a number of three character domains over the past couple weeks at a wide variety of prices. A quick search at NameBio shows that recent .com three character domain sales range from a couple thousand dollars up to millions depending on a number of ... read more ...
Wed 30th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Registration Opens for 2007 Domain Roundtable - Name Intelligence event returns to Seattle in August. Registration for Name Intelligence’s 2007 Domain Roundtable is now open. This year’s conference will again take place in Seattle but this year will be in Summer (August 13-15). Early registration is $1495. The first 100 people to register at DomainRoundtable.com will receive an eNom reseller account with a $100 credit. Registrants who complete a survey save an additional $50 and there are also discounts ... read more ...
Tue 29th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
It’s Official: GoDaddy to Take Over RegisterFly’s Domains - GoDaddy to manage over 850,000 domains registered at RegisterFly. GoDaddy, the world’s largest registrar with over 20M domains under management, is picking up another 850,000 registrations. The company inked an agreement with ICANN and RegisterFly to take over management of the domains previously registered at RegisterFly. Ever since RegisterFly came under fire several months ago and lost its ICANN accreditation, domain owners have found it difficult to transfer ... read more ...
Mon 28th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
New York Times Covers Domain Name Industry - Article features NameMedia, parent company of BuyDomains. “THINK you have a good handle on the Internet economy? Try this one. What Internet business has raised $120 million in financing in the last year, owns 725,000 Web sites, and has as its chief executive the former head of Primedia and International Data Group?” asks an article in today’s New York Times. The answer is NameMedia, the domain name holding company that also owns domain resellers BuyDomains ... read more ...
Fri 25th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Auction.com, How.com Among Domains during TRAFFIC NYC Auction - Moniker just released an initial list of domains to be auction in June at the TRAFFIC auction in NYC. Auction.com, HorseRacing.com, and Slots.com are the three domains with the highest reserves, each slotted at over $5M. Other high-profile domains include: Base.com Scotland.com Student.com Stuff.com Cardiology.com Checkup.com Elections.com Ethanol.com Disease.com Elections.com ETHANOL.COM How.com Planet.com Secondmortgage.com Speak.com 06.com Avocados.com Ballot.com Bonuses.com Bulk.com Charters.com Coed.com Fees.com FinancialAnalyst.com 401kPlans.com Necklace.com Pen.com Text.com Over ... read more ...
Wed 23rd May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Los Angeles Angels Lose Fight for Angels.com Domain Name - Angels lose UDRP for Angels.com. The Los Angeles Angels Major League Baseball team has lost its fight for Angels.com. The organization filed for a UDRP in February claiming rights to the trademark “Angels” and that the current registrant was using it in bad faith. The Angels filed for arbitration after the owner of the domain, Lee Dongyeon of South Korea, offered to sell it for $300,000 to an unidentified agent. Dongyeon purchased the domain for roughly $25,000 ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Launches TDNAM .Mobi Site - Domain auction fans can access TDNAM and bid on domains from their mobile phones. It’s only fitting that a domain registrar is making good use of the .mobi domain name. If registrars don’t use .mobi themselves, why should anyone else? GoDaddy recently launched a mobile version of its popular The Domain Name Aftermarket service, a site that offers expired domains and third party domains for sale. The company describes TDNAM.mobi: Manage your Domain Name Aftermarket ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
.Net Still Second Choice For Domain Registrants - 73% of survey respondents say they’d register .net if .com was taken. Finding good .com domains is getting harder and harder. Respondents to Domain Name Wire’s 2007 survey were asked “If a .com is taken, what’s your second choice of a TLD?”. For the second year in a row, .net came out on top with 73% of the vote. Last year .net took 63% of the vote. The rank order from last year stayed the same, although .org slipped a bit: 1. .Net 73% 2. .Info 17% 3. ... read more ...
Tue 22nd May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Business 2.0 Profiles Domain Name Moguls - Paul Sloan’s latest Business 2.0 article features last TRAFFIC auction and the people behind the current boom. In a rare interview, Business 2.0 extends its coverage of the domain name market by profiling Kevin Ham. Kevin Ham was early in the domain dropping business and he’s also the person responsible for the .cm typo wildcard. The story starts with a scene from the latest TRAFFIC domain name auction in Las Vegas: Kevin Ham leans forward, sits up tall, closes ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ICANN Seeks Escrow Provider for Whois Data - ICANN is seeking a company to escrow registrant data for domain names. When domain registrar RegisterFly’s crooked activities finally caught up to it, thousands of domain owners were left in no man’s land. They had difficulty transferring their domains to other registrars. Data about owners was lost and it became difficult for domain owners to get control of their domains. Last week ICANN posted a request for proposal for an escrow agent to hold registrant data ... read more ...
Mon 21st May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Satisfaction with ICANN Wanes - ICANN, the global coordinator of the Internet’s domain name system, is losing popularity. Approval of ICANN has waned in the past year, according to the 2007 Domain Name Wire survey. Only 24% of survey respondents approve of ICANN, down from 33% last year. A number of factors lead to ICANN’s drop in approval ratings. New contracts with registries that allow for price hikes are extremely unpopular with domain name owners. The domain name community is also ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will .Travel Registry Fail? - First RegisterFly died. Will the .Travel registry fail next? A fiasco ensued when domain registrar RegisterFly died. ICANN is learning its lesson. But now an entire domain registry is on the verge of death. The good news is it’s only the .travel registry, which no one really cares about anyway. Noted .travel critic Edward Hasbrouck, who has complained about the way the .travel domain was awarded and structured, writes about registry Tralliance’s parent company, ... read more ...
Fri 18th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Poker.de sells for 695,000 EUR - Domain sells during DOMAINfest auction in Amsterdam. Oversee.net’s DOMAINfest conference held its first live auction, and Poker.de went home the big winner. The domain sold for 695,000 Euros (approximately $940,000 USD). This may be the highest price ever paid for a country code domain name. .De is the country code for Germany. It’s the second most registered domain behind .com. Earlier this month the domain name Poker.com reportedly received two or more offers ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Geo Domain Names Rise in Value - Geographic domain names are enjoying the rising tide of localization. I’m writing today from the Atlanta suburb of Buckhead. Buckhead is the world’s most expensive neighborhood. Well, in domain name terms, that is. The domain name Buckhead.com sold for $250,000 this year. $250,000 seems like what someone would pay for a city name, not a neighborhood. But geographic domain names continue to ride the rising tide of localization. How many times you have you ... read more ...
Thu 17th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: Biggest Threats to Domain Name Industry - Changes in pay-per-click market, new registry contracts threaten industry. The domain name industry is worried about changes in the pay-per-click market and new registry contracts that allow for wholesale domain name price increases, according to the 2007 Domain Name Wire survey. 36% of respondents rated “changes in the pay-per-click market” as the top concern when asked “What do you think is the biggest issue facing the domain name market in 2007?” Domain ... read more ...
Wed 16th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: NamePros Top Domain Name Forum - NamePros takes over top spot for domain forums. In a major reversal to last year’s survey, NamePros has come out on top in the 2007 Domain Name Wire survey for best domain name forum. NamePros received 55% of the vote compared to only 12% last year. DNForum, on the other hand, dropped from 43% to 35%. NamePros’ popularity shows in its user statistics. As I write there are 1,078 people discussing domain names at NamePros in thousands of threads. DNForum is ... read more ...
Tue 15th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Porn.com Sells for $9.5M Cash - Moniker brokers largest publicly reported all-cash domain sale ever. Moniker has brokered the sale of the domain name Porn.com for $9.5M in cash. This is the largest all-cash domain sale ever reported. The most expensive domain name ever sold is also in the adult entertainment industry – sex.com. Sex.com sold for approximately $12M, but that price included equity. There’s a big difference between a cash domain sale and equity sale. For example, Business.com ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Survey: SnapNames Still Tops for Expired Domains - SnapNames is the most popular expired domain marketplace with 47% of the vote. You probably don’t need a survey to tell you which expired domain service is most popular. Just look at the 100 biggest domain sales of 2006: 15 of them are from SnapNames, including Jasmin.com at $310,250. Competitor Pool’s highest sale was $19,500. SnapNames has cornered the market on expired domain names by striking exclusive agreements with registrars such as Network Solutions ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Communicate.com Reports Record Quarterly Profit - Domain name company sees higher e-commerce revenue. Communicate.com (OTCBB: CMNN.ob), a domain name company that owns valuable domains such as Boxing.com and Perfume.com, reported record quarterly revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2007. The company makes money primarily through its e-commerce sites such as Perfume.com and Karate.com as well as PPC income from domains such as Call.com. Retail sites are now generating over $15,000 per day although margins remain ... read more ...
Mon 14th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How Gateway and Google Are Infringing Your Trademark - Some of the world’s biggest companies are also the web’s biggest typosquatters. I’ve written several times about how Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is one of the world’s biggest typosquatters. The company sues people who register typos of its brands, but when users type a non-existent web address into many Internet Explorer browsers they are sent to a Microsoft search page. This page includes sponsored links, from which Microsoft earns money. But Microsoft is ... read more ...
Thu 10th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Internet Real Estate Group Buys Patents.com - Company short-circuits auction, buys Patents.com for undisclosed amount. A few weeks ago I wrote about an “auction” for Patents.com, which I expected to bring in $1M+. The sellers ended up striking a deal with Internet Real Estate Group (formerly DealJam), and details of the sale were not disclosed. Internet Real Estate Group (IREG) owns some of the world’s greatest domain names, including Software.com, Sweepstakes.com, Phone.com, and Shop.com. The company ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parked Domain Name Parking Update - Parked service offers good landing pages, allows you to send traffic from Adwords, Yahoo. It’s been one year since I interviewed Donny Simonton of Parked.com about the then-new parking service. Donny told me about a number of ways Parked would be different from other parking services. So far the company is keeping its promises. One of the best things about Parked is its payout schedule. The company pays out twice monthly and before it even receives payment from ... read more ...
Wed 9th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Will Marchex Dump Yahoo for Google? - Marchex hints that it is considering other domain monetization partners. Domain name company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) generated $15.1M in revenue from its proprietary web sites last quarter. Much of that was generated from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) advertising links. But in the company’s quarterly conference call it hinted that it may look to other advertising partners in the future. Marchex chairman and CEO Russell Horowitz: Yahoo! is our primary partner. That existing ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
e-Commerce Times: Buy a Domain, Not a Keyword - Matt Bentley has a good article about buying domains to augment paid search campaigns. People in the domain circle have been talking about the value of domains names as opposed to paid search campaigns for years, but the internet community is starting to pick up on this concept. E-Commerce Times just published an article by Matt Bentley about why companies should buy domain names to augment their paid search campaigns. Domain prices are soaring as companies figure ... read more ...
Tue 8th May 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameBio Hits 20,000 Domain Sales - Domain sales database now includes 20,000 records. NameBio, a database site of domain name sales, now has over 20,000 domain sales records worth over $225M in its database. The site launched just over 6 months ago but has rapidly innovated to make searching for historical domain sales easy. I use sites like NameBio and DNSalePrice to help decide how much I should offer when buying a domain name. Before placing an offer on an expensive domain it’s worth searching ... read more ...