Monthly Archives: October 2007

Wed 31st October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain Name Parking Companies Are Very Profitable - Domain name parking companies are willing to pay $100s per acquired customer. Ever wonder why so many domain name parking companies are popping up? It’s because this is a very profitable business. In fact, domain parking companies are willing to pay $100s to acquire customers, if these companies’ bid prices on Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) are any indication. I recently added a campaign for domain name parking in Yahoo! Search Marketing. I added the keywords “domain ... read more ...
Mon 29th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Answers to Your Questions About GoDaddy’s Auction - As GoDaddy gears up for its first Signature Auction, Domain Name Wire gets answers to your commonly asked questions. GoDaddy’s first Signature Auctions will take place November 6, 7, and 8. GoDaddy first announced the auctions in July, but has been mum since then. Last week GoDaddy released the auction list. There will 31 domains in the three day auction. At first I was a bit skeptical about the auction, and wrote a few suggestions for GoDaddy. Now that GoDaddy ... read more ...
Thu 25th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Turntable.com Turns in $45k Bid during Sedo Great Domains Auction - Turntable.com sells for $45k at Sedo auction. [Editor’s note: the numbers in this article are unofficial and were obtained during the auction. Final numbers may differ slightly.] Turntable.com was the big winner in this month’s Sedo Great Domains auction, which concluded just minutes ago. The domain sold for $45,000 after meeting its reserve at the last minute. Turntable.com received 16 bids during the auction. Close behind that was MemoryCard.com, which sold ... read more ...
Wed 24th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Whrrl or Whirrl? Both Need Naming Advice - Bad web 2.0 names abound, but this case is particularly bad. New companies get creative with naming, often times to save a thousand bucks on domain names. For example, Flickr.com dropped the ‘e’ from Flicker.com. Some would call Flickr.com a success story, but by choosing this domain they likely left money on the table. Flicker.com gets 150,000 type-in visitors a month from people looking for the popular photo sharing site. Perhaps it would have sold for more ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Mobile Ads are Worth(less) - What is a click-through on a mobile phone worth? In November 2006, Sedo announced that it would serve parked pages on .mobi domains. The parked pages are simple, text-based lists of ad links. One of the .mobi parked pages I reviewed showed ads for a credit card. If you clicked the link from your mobile phone, it took you to a credit card application that could not be viewed on most mobile phones and wouldn’t work without SSL security. In other words, the clicks ... read more ...
Tue 23rd October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Virtual Ventures Opens Up Beta - Software community no longer requires invitation code. A few weeks ago, I helped launch VirtualVentures.com at DEMOfall in San Diego. Until now, you had to have an invitation code to participate in the beta. It’s now open to anyone…you can register at www.VirtualVentures.com. We acquired the VirtualVentures.com domain name after much deliberation. We made a “short list” of about a dozen names for the site, and this one kept coming out on top. We contacted ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Dollar Drops, Domain Names Rise - U.S. dollar’s slide creates buying opportunities for domain names. I first wrote about how the “cheap” U.S. dollar was affecting domain name prices back in April 2005. I wrote about it again in February of this year. Well, the dollar keeps falling and the effect is becoming even more apparent. The Canadian dollar is now roughly on par with the U.S. dollar. People in North American are used to seeing two prices on books and magazines: A U.S. price and a slightly ... read more ...
Mon 22nd October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Parked Adds Custom Content - Domain parking services allows publishers to add custom content. Domain name parking service Parked.com is giving publishers the ability to add custom contents to their parked pages. Customers can add text, additional photos, and even videos. Custom content is key to attracting search engines to parked pages. I’ve often registered available domain names and found them in Google within a couple weeks — sometimes in the number one position. Although the search ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Gowlings Domain Name Law Portal Updated - Gowling’s domain name law resource site gets an update. If you’re looking for information about domain name law, Eric Macramalla’s Gowlings on Domains should be on your web surfing list. The site was recently updated to include information about the .asia landrush. Macramalla is a Canadian trademark lawyer with Gowling Lafleur Henderson LLP. His domain name law site is one of (if not) the most comprehensive sites about Canadian domain name law. But it also ... read more ...
Fri 19th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Cowboys.com Sells (Again) for $370,000 - After Dallas Cowboys back out of deal, Cowboys.com sells for $95,000 more. Murray Thibodeaux has had a roller coaster week. First, he “sold” his domain Cowboys.com to the Dallas Cowboys football team for $275,000 last week at the TRAFFIC auction. Then the Cowboys backed out of the deal (a big mistake). The domain was entered into the Moniker silent auction and sold for $370,000. The attention on the Cowboys football team backing out ended up increasing the ... read more ...
Thu 18th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
The Domain Name Auction Scene is a-Changin’ - SnapNames to unveil new service, GoDaddy signature auctions (finally) on tap. October has been a crazy month on the domain name auction scene. It’s not the great prices we’re seeing that make it interesting; it’s the shifting landscape of domain name auctioneers. First, Network Solutions and eNom deserted SnapNames to start their own service, NameJet. This was a big blow to SnapNames, which basically owned the expired domain market. The company was recently ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Demand Media Offers Cash For .TV Channels - .TV advertising deal shares revenue with eNom resellers. Demand Media is adding advertising to customers’ .TV channels, and eNom resellers will earn a portion of the revenues. .TV channels are social networking tools offered to registrants of .TV domains. It’s all part of Demand Media’s goal of applying social networking to domain names. As owner of the world’s second largest registrar, Demand Media uses its eNom resellers to promote the domains. Starting ... read more ...
Wed 17th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Afternic Has Glitch in Internet Explorer, DNForum Hits Parked Page - Afternic problem doesn’t affect Firefox, should be fixed soon. After a few days of not being able to access Afternic.com, I went straight to the source for an explanation. Adam Gross, Director of Product Management, Domain Marketplace for NameMedia, Inc., says there’s a cookie problem on the Afternic.com site. This only affects users of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. They’re working on the problem and should have it fixed soon. In the meantime, use Firefox ... read more ...
Tue 16th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Online Real Estate for Offline Real Estate Companies - Article discusses web sites for finding commercial real estate…and the role of domain names. National Real Estate Investor just published an article about web sites used for finding commercial real estate. It also discusses the role of a good domain name in the commercial real estate space. The article quotes me, as well as Ron Jackson of DNJournal. Andrew Allemann, editor of the Domain Name Wire news site, says a desirable domain name typically costs a few hundred ... read more ...
Mon 15th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Enron and Domain Names - In her book, Brewer says that she was dissatisfied with her job on the legal briefing team and with her colleagues, so she moved to Azurix, an Enron spinoff. There, she says, she uncovered an example of what she calls corporate espionage carried out by the company’s CEO, Rebecca Mark, and her husband, Michael Jusbasche. According to Brewer, Mark wanted to come up with a catchy Internet domain name that Azurix could use as an online trading platform for water, much as Enron had done in the field ... read more ...
Sat 13th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
GoDaddy Increases .Com Prices 12% - Registrar tacks on $1.04 to domain registration prices. The world’s largest domain name registrar, GoDaddy, has increased its base price for .com domains to $9.99, plus an ICANN fee of $.20, for a total of $10.19 for new registrations. This move is surprising. Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) increases the wholesale price of .com domain names from $6.00 to $6.42 effective October 14. GoDaddy spoke out about this change on Capitol Hill. But now that the $.42 fee increase ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Live Domain Auction Nets $7.8M, Computer.com Sells for $2.2M - 132 domains sell during Moniker’s TRAFFIC auction. Today’s live domain name auction in Hollywood, Florida, didn’t match the last live auction in New York, but was still deemed a success. 132 domains sold for a total of $7.8M, according to statistics provided by Moniker. The top sale was Computer.com, which sold for $2.2M. The domain was sold by computer retailer Tiger Direct. No other domains sold for over $1,000,000. Six figure sales included: computer.com ... read more ...
Thu 11th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Hosting.mobi Sells for $101,000 - First Sedo .mobi auction nets $850,000. After a roaring start, .mobi aftermarket sales cooled down over the past few months. But Sedo’s first .mobi premium domain name auction was a big hit, selling close to a million dollars of domains. The auction had restrictions; buyers have to develop the domains within 6 months. (I’ll follow up to see if that actually happens.) The top sale was Hosting.mobi, which fetched $101,000. Other notable sales include bank.mobi ... read more ...
Wed 10th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
SoldNames.com: Resource for Premium Domain Sales Values - Site lists top domain sales of all time. Domain investors looking for a little inspiration should visit SoldNames.com, a web site that lists the top domain name sales of all time by top level domain. The site is backed by Cybertonic, the same company behind PremiumDomains.com. For each domain, SoldNames.com lists its proprietary “premium score”, whether the domain is parked or contains a web site, the year sold, amount, and who currently owns the domain according ... read more ...
Mon 8th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Domain Name Book Canceled - Author looking for a new publisher after first one drops project. An upcoming book about the domain name industry is on hold. Writer David Kesmodel, who currently writes for The Wall Street Journal, has worked hard over the past year or so on the book, but the original publisher involved with the project canceled the book. Kesmodel’s agent is currently shopping the book to other publishers. “I’m very disappointed, but I’m hoping to find another publisher ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Top Domain Name News Stories of Sep 2007 - Here are the top 5 Domain Name Wire news stories of September, ranked by page views. #1: Auto-Generated Web Sites: The Future of Domain Parking? – In the context of a new domain service called Domain Embarking, Domain Name Wire discusses the history of automated web site generation. #2: Televisions.com Sells for Six Figures – Domain Name Wire breaks the story about the Televisions.com sale brokered by NameDrive. This is one of the biggest sales brokered by ... read more ...
Sat 6th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How to Improve Your Parking Income, Video - Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick creates domain parking video. by Leonard Holmes – If your domains have been parked with a service for at least a month, you now have an opportunity to increase your income. Take some time to examine your statistics in detail. Sort the domains by “uniques” or “landings” and look for those domains that get a lot of traffic but lower income. These are the domains that you want to try at another service. If your domains are currently ... read more ...
Fri 5th October 2007
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
NameJet Launches, Collaboration Between eNom, Network Solutions - SnapNames competitor launches, backed by Network Solutions and eNom. We first learned about Network Solutions’ planned domain name aftermarket site thanks to a trademark filing picked up by Trademork. The site is now live, and the story is bigger than anyone thought. Network Solutions has teamed up with eNom to launch NameJet. NameJet is an expired domain marketplace based on eNom’s technology but populated with premium expiring domains from Network Solutions. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
DEMOfall Conference in Review - DEMOfall includes great technologies for domainers, and a few well named companies. I spent last week in San Diego at DEMOfall launching a new product (VirtualVentures.com, which I’ll write about at a later time). For the unitiated, DEMO is the world’s premiere technology launch conference. It’s held twice yearly in the U.S. and a couple times a year in other countries. This year’s DEMOfall included some really cool technologies, from Web 2.0 businesses ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo Offers Bonuses on Domain Name Parking - Promotion pays 50% bonus on earnings increases. Domain name aftermarket and parking company Sedo launched a campaign this week that offers gift certificates based on increased domain parking revenue. The program offers up to a $1,000 gift certificate based on clients’ November 2007 parking revenue compared to September 2007. Here’s the breakdown of bonuses when comparing your upcoming November results to your September results: -Increase revenue by at least $50 ... read more ...