Author Archives: DomainNameWire

About DomainNameWire

Domain Name Wire is a blog that deals with the domain name sector. The blog covers a range of domain related topics ranging from issues concerning expiring domains, monetization, domain registries and registrars, ICANN, policy, law etc. The blog began in March, 2005, after Mr. Allemann had dropped out of meetings to become involved in domain portfolio company, iREIT. The project began as a hobby to keep him involved in the domaining business, and then became his full-time business.

Tue 18th August 2015
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Web.com breached, 93k credit label sum competence be compromised - Large domain name registrar discloses security breach. Web.com announced today that a security breach might have disclosed credit card information of 93,000 of its customers. The company owns Network Solutions and Register.com. Although most domain name investors use lower-cost registrars, many have accounts with these registrars for expired domain names. The registrars don’t necessarily have your credit card information, though, as domains won at NameJet are paid through NameJet. Update: See FAQs ... read more ...
 
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eNom joins Sedo Fast Transfer network - eNom clients can now sell their domain names through SedoMLS. Sedo has added eNom to its SedoMLS system in a partnership that opens open millions more potential domains to be sold through Sedo’s sales distribution platform. The deal enables eNom account holders and resellers to list their domains with SedoMLS. These domain listings are then syndicated across Sedo’s network of partners, allowing customers to buy them through partners’ checkout processes and have them instantly transferred. The ... read more ...
 
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How Legal Robot picked the name and bought LegalRobot.com - An end user explains how they picked their name and domain name. This is the first of what I hope to be many profiles of companies that have purchased domain names on the aftermarket. This series will help people understand the naming process companies go through, how companies view domain names and domain sellers, and what the purchase process is like in the buyer’s view. Today we’ll look at Legal Robot, a new service from Agnito Labs, which purchased LegalRobot.com for $1,200. DNW: What is ... read more ...
 
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This week's new TLDs: A large week for Donuts, Radix - Donuts releases 5 domains in GA and 3 in early access and Radix preps its “big” one. It feels like 2014 again this week, as Donuts releases a slew of new top level domain names to the marketplace. On Wednesday it will release .dog, .theater, .taxi, .hockey and .run at regular pricing as Early Access concludes. It will also begin the early access for .movie, .coupons and .soccer. It’s also a big week for Radix as it begins a seven day early access period for .online. The company is targeting ... read more ...
Mon 17th August 2015
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Donuts: Verisign perplexing to intimidate, brag competitors with .XYZ lawsuit - New top level domain company issues statement after court finds in its favor. A judge in U.S. District Court in Washington state has denied Verisign’s request for reconsideration in a subpoena battle involving competitor Donuts. Donuts says Verisign is trying to intimated and bully competitors through similar subpoenas. Verisign subpoenaed Donuts as a non-party in the .com registry’s lawsuit against .XYZ and Daniel Negari. Donuts fought back, asking the court to quash the subpoena. The judge ... read more ...
 
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Make Money Online with Eric Borgos – DNW Podcast #46 - Lessons from a guy who has sold over $3 million in domain names. Eric Borgos developed one of his best domain names, Bored.com, and sold the site for $4.5 million. He went on to sell over $3 million of domain names after that. On today’s show, he’ll explain how he developed his sites, what has worked…and what hasn’t. Eric will also explain why he bought two bricks-and-mortar flower shops site unseen, and about the toy he created that was sold at Toys”R”Us. He will also discuss his new ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Back to school…for your domain name portfolio - It’s a great time to take action for your domain name portfolio. Your Facebook newsfeed will fill up with lots of “Back to School” posts over the next few weeks as millions of students head back to the classroom. I’ve always thought of the beginning of a new school year as a time to start fresh. A new backpack, new books…a clean start. It’s a great time to take a fresh look at your domain name portfolio, too. Here’s are thing I’m going to do over the next few weeks: 1. Run a PL for ... read more ...
Fri 14th August 2015
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Expired Domain Name Sales Review - Joseph Peterson reviews the past week of expired domain name sales. A French fur trader freezing his fingers to collect beaver pelts up in 19th-century Canada and I might see eye to eye. His days are spent in isolation touring rivers and ponds, recovering his catch, and re-setting the traps. Mine are spent staring into a frigid screen, recovering auction results, and re-setting backorders for next week’s data. Sometimes the traps misfire, as they did this week, and my beaver haul is half as ... read more ...
 
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Verisign sues CentralNic and .XYZ over .Theatre, .Protection and .Security - Company upset that Verisign was dropped as registry services provider in favor of CentralNic. Earlier this week I noted a lawsuit Verisign filed in Virginia against .XYZ and Daniel Negari. Thanks to a request by the defendants to remove the case to federal district court, I now have a copy of the lawsuit (large PDF). As it turns out, Verisign originally sued Key Brand Entertainment, applicant for .Theatre, and CentralNic back in March in Circuit Court in Fairfax County. The basis of the lawsuit was ... read more ...
Thu 13th August 2015
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Recapping July's NameJet domain name sales - Joseph Peterson reviews last month’s sales on NameJet. NameJet had seen 9 domains surpass $100k, going as high as $175.5k – but nothing remotely like July’s $550,050 sale of SX.com. Yes, VVV.com was its 4th highest sale back in April (now 5th); and RingTones.com placed 7th in June (now 8th). Yet SX.com more than triples the auction house’s all-time record. Of course, 2-letter .COMs are known to retail in the 7 figures with increasing regularity. So it might be thought that NameJet’s ... read more ...
 
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Sedo highlights registries during dmexco - Sedo is partnering with registries and registrars to reach European audience at dmexco. A flyer promoting the Sedo booth that will be handed out at dmexco.Sedo is once again highlighting top level domain name options at the biggest digital marketing conference in Europe. dmexco takes place next month in Cologne, Germany. Last year Sedo offered frozen yogurt at the event, with the kicker that attendees had to order toppings based on TLD names. Sedo is offering the frozen yogurt again this year, but ... read more ...
 
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Google Alphabet news causes CentralNic shares to burst 50% - Shares in .xyz services company are up big this week. Shares in domain name registry company CentralNic have jumped about 50% since Monday afternoon. The company thinks this is due to Google’s selection of the domain name abc.xyz for its new company Alphabet. CentralNic is the backend registry provider for .xyz domain names. Shares on the London AIM (CNIC) traded for about 40 pence on Monday afternoon, and have shot up to 61 pence at the time of writing. CentralNic issued a statement this morning: The ... read more ...
Wed 12th August 2015
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See .XYZ CEO Daniel Negari on Bloomberg - Bloomberg features .xyz and how Google’s big announcement has affected it. .XYZ and its CEO Daniel Negari are riding the wave of Alphabet, Google’s new parent company. The company’s official website is abc.xyz, representing the first and last three letters of the alphabet. Negari was on Bloomberg earlier today discussing the spike in registrations his company has seen since the Alphabet announcement. The video also features commentary from GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving about the availability of ... read more ...
 
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Juice sequence among finish user domain name buyers - A look at recent end user domain name purchases at Sedo. JuiceLand is a popular juice and smoothie bar here in Austin. It has 13 local locations and one in Brooklyn. But it’s been hampered by the domain name JuiceLandAustin.com. No more…the company just paid $20,000 to acquire JuiceLand.com. JuiceLand is just one of the end users that bought domain names through Sedo over the past week. Other buyers include a software company, a fabric company and a new food delivery service called BiteHop. Here’s ... read more ...
 
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Fight over APE.com lands in court - Domain name is at the center of a family business dispute. The domain name Ape.com is the subject of a lawsuit just filed in U.S. District Court in Florida – Key West Division. The dispute is a weird one, and it sounds like the Scheu family doesn’t get together for Thanksgiving. Scheu Scheu, Inc. filed the lawsuit (pdf) against husband and wife Casey Scheu and Veronica Scheu, as well as the company Ape.com LLC. They threw in Network Solutions for good measure. I’m assuming that Scheu Scheu ... read more ...
 
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Bid.tv domain handed over in UDRP - Domain name expired after company was put in administration. The former bid.tv, before the company failed.National Arbitration Forum panelist Neil Anthony Brown has ordered the domain name Bid.tv transferred. The story of this domain name is interesting. It was used by UK company Sit-Up Ltd (trading as Bid Shopping) for many years. That company was put in administration (similar to Chapter 11 bankruptcy) last year. Earlier this year, an entity called Bid Shopping Limited acquired the intellectual ... read more ...
Tue 11th August 2015
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Trump and Bible trending in .com domain name registrations - Donald Trump is making money…for domain name registrars. Domain name registrations related to Donald Trump, the bible and Cuba were trending last month. According to .com registry Verisign, the following keywords showed the biggest increase in registrations from June to July in .com: 1. owned 2. Cuba 3. savings 4. prices 5. Trump 6. SUV 7. economy 8. scope 9. bible 10. frog I understand some of these terms, but frog? There was a big spike of “frog” related domains registered on July 22 for ... read more ...
 
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Verisign's lawsuit opposite .XYZ continues, pesters Donuts & ICANN as well - Lawsuit marches on, creating legal headaches for many of Verisign’s competitors. Why did Verisign sue .XYZ for disparaging .com and allegedly falsely inflating the company’s success? It’s pretty clear that Verisign thinks new top level domain names pose a threat to .Com, otherwise it wouldn’t have bothered. This goes beyond .XYZ. The lawsuit is surely costing Verisign and .XYZ a lot of money, something that the former has plenty of thanks to its monopoly on selling .com domain names. This ... read more ...
 
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Google, ABC.xyz, and a flourishing recognition of new domain names - Awareness is growing, one domain at a time. When new top level domain names started rolling out over a year ago, basically no one outside of the insular domain name business had heard of them. They started with zero awareness. The good thing about that is there’s only one way to go: Up. New TLD companies hoped that upward trajectory would happen much faster than it has. Sure, a couple brands have started using .brand. Some sites have switched to new TLDs; others have bought them and forwarded them ... read more ...
 
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Successful domain financier releases "Make Money Online" book - Eric Borgos tells his interesting story. You can learn a lot from it. I’ve long been a fan of Eric Borgos, even though I had never spoken with him until yesterday. I’ve been a fan because he’s extremely frank and revealing. He blogs about his successes and failures, but focuses more on the failures. He even publishes his annual revenue and net income numbers from his businesses. This sort of candid analysis and transparency is unheard of in the domain name industry. Eric has sold millions of ... read more ...
Mon 10th August 2015
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Google is now partial of Alphabet, uses ABC.xyz - Alphabet uses .xyz domain name. Google announced a new holding company called Alphabet today, and it’s using the domain name ABC.xyz. This is a huge win for Daniel Negari’s .xyz, and new top level domains in general. Google will be part of Alphabet, but some of the company’s more long term bets will be separate companies operating under Alphabet. Reading Larry Page’s intro note on ABC.xyz, I couldn’t help but compare it to Hooli.xyz, the fictitious company from HBO’s Silicon Valley that ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy adding 435 TLDs to domain name aftermarket - Registrar expanding number of domains that can be sold in its aftermarket. GoDaddy is vastly expanding the number of top level domain names that can be sold on its aftermarket starting tomorrow. The company will add the capability to sell domains under 435 top level domains. 230 will be gTLDs that were previously blocked from listing and the rest are country code domain names. Customers will be able to list domains directly on GoDaddy Auctions or through Afternic. For now, Afternic syndication to ... read more ...
 
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4 Domain Selling Mistakes with Alan Dunn – DNW Podcast #45 - Learn from mistakes and be a better domain investor. All domain name investors make mistakes. Do you learn from them? On this week’s episode, NameCorp founder Alan Dunn discusses four common mistakes people make when selling domain names. Alan has sold many domains over the years, both his own domain names and acting as a broker. Learn from the mistakes he has made and has observed others making, so you can avoid leaving money on the table or missing a great opportunity to sell your domains. Subscribe ... read more ...
 
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Domain name business will LOL tomorrow, though Facebook says LOL is dead - Facebook says LOL is dead, but the domain name comes out tomorrow. Get ready to LOL tomorrow. Uniregistry will launch the .lol top level domain name in general availability on Tuesday. Annual registration costs appear to be about $30 retail, but many registrars are offering discounted first year registrations. I’ve made it a point to never type LOL in a message, because, c’mon, do you ever really laugh out loud when IM’ing with someone? I’m not the only one. Facebook has posted some research ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Back from Vacation - I’m back from summer vacation, and now it’s time to gear up for fall. I’m back from a two week vacation in Seattle. There are a lot of domain companies in Seattle, and if you’re feeling left out that I didn’t visit you…this was a true vacation. I negotiated a couple hours of blogging time with my family each day, but company visits would have been asking too much. Instead, we spent our time camping, touring the Theo chocolate factory, visiting parks, etc. An exception was a trip to DomainSherpa ... read more ...