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.

Thu 25th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Sedo responds about Autism.rocks sale - Company explains why the customer ended up paying a marketplace commission rather than for escrow. Earlier this week Sedo announced that it handled a $100,000 transaction for Autism.rocks. It’s a big price for a domain under a new top level domain name. Both the buyer and seller are involved with advocacy for people with autism. It was made more interesting by the seller’s allegation that Sedo steered him to a full transaction at a 15% commission rather than just an escrow at 3%. You can read ... read more ...
 
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Auction for qiche.com domain name closes during $2 million + - An auction for “Car” in Mandarin Pinyin has closed for a staggering amount. An auction for qiche.com, which means “car” in Mandarin Pinyin, has closed for more than $2 million on Chinese domain trading platform eName. The auction closed just after 10 am EDT today with 485 bids and a final price of 12.85 million yaun. That’s equivalent to 2.07 million USD. There were 485 bids in the auction, and it was extended multiple times thanks to bids being placed within the final five minutes of ... read more ...
Wed 24th June 2015
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How an Austin health organisation uses .Clinic - A local medical group uses a .clinic domain. Austin Regional Clinic displays a new .clinic domain name on this promotional banner.I was driving home from the office yesterday when I saw a huge banner on the side of an Austin Regional Clinic building. I did a double take when I noticed this domain name: ARC.clinic. For the most part, I think this is a good use of a new top level domain name: 1. The group’s official website is AustinRegionalClinic.com, which is pretty long to put on one line in a ... read more ...
 
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End user domain name sales including a new TLD for $100k - $100,000 Autism.rocks domain name sale rocks domain investing world. The number of domain names on my weekly Sedo End User sales lists are not always proportional to the number of domain names that sold in the week, nor proportional to the number of end user sales. Some weeks have a lot of domains likely sold to end users that are still in escrow. Other weeks, it’s hard to connect the dots directly between the buyer and the domain. This week is a case in point. Sedo handled 545 transactions, which ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
3,000 comments submitted about whois remoteness proposal - People upset about non-consensus proposal to forbid whois privacy on sites conducting commerce. About 3,000 people and groups have submitted comments to ICANN during its comment period on privacy and proxy services. An ICANN working group proposed a number of requirements on privacy and proxy services. The proposal that is drawing the most comments is just a minority proposal at this time: a prohibition on using privacy services for sites that conduct commerce. The proposed prohibition on using privacy ... read more ...
 
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Famous Four Speaks: inexpensive domains, code insurance and more - New top level domain name operator explains its cheap pricing strategy and new “brand protection” tier. Famous Four Media’s recent top level domain name launches have quickly catapulted to the leaderboards, with domains such as .science and .party growing to hundreds of thousands of registrations. The secret: the registry offered marketing incentives enabling registrars to price these really low, so people were able to pick the domains up anywhere from $0-$1. I asked Andy Churley, Chief Marketing ... read more ...
Tue 23rd June 2015
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Whoa: Autism.Rocks sells for $100,000 [Updated] - A shocking sale in a new top level domain name. The domain name Autism.Rocks has sold for a staggering $100,000. And there may be a good reason this domain name sold for so much. The new owner is listed as Sanjay Shah in Dubai. Shah started the charity Autism Rocks, which can be found online at AutismRocks.com. Shah’s young son has autism. Based on news reports, Shah has been a very successful trader. The seller is associated with another autism charity, We Rock for Autism. I talked to him today, ... read more ...
 
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Afilias wins auction for .Promo tip turn domain name - Domain name is second to sell through Innovative Auctions’ Top Level Auction service. Domain name registry Afilias has won rights to the top level domain name .Promo in an auction organized by Innovative Auctions. Phenomena Group Oy was the only applicant with ICANN for the .promo domain name, but the company decided it made more sense to sell the domain name to another party rather than run it itself. Innovative Auctions sold the domain name through its Top Level Auction offering, a service ... read more ...
 
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Verisign admits: It is formidable to brand fascinating domain names that are available - Patent says it’s hard to find available domains, marketing says most domain lookups are successful. When do your company’s intellectual property efforts contradict your marketing efforts? The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just issued patent number 9,065,794 (pdf) to Verisign for “Systems and methods for providing domain name suggestions”. The patent describes ways of finding domain names based on user preferences and external data sources. I’m struck by a statement in the patent: A distinctive, ... read more ...
 
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Symantec sells .Security and .Protection domains to XYZ - Symantec now left with two .brand domain names. Security software firm Symantec has sold its two non-brand top level domain names to XYZ, the company behind the .xyz top level domain name. XYZ says the .security domain name can be used for anything from private security to building security to internet security, with domains like ComputerSoftware.security and DowntownLosAngeles.Security. The company notes that a lot of security companies use the term protection in their brand names and slogans. Protection ... read more ...
 
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DropCatch offers name-your-own-price bulk backorders - Service lets customers place backorders for as little as $15. Expired domain name service DropCatch.com has launched a beta test of a discount club for customers who backorder a lot of domain names. DropCatch’s standard minimum price is $59 for a backorder. Under the new program, bulk customers can bid anywhere from $15-$58. If more than one bulk customer places an order and DropCatch catches it, the highest initial bid wins out. There are no auctions. There’s a bit of a catch: bulk bids below ... read more ...
 
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Google Domains is renewing domain names for free - Select customers who turn on auto renew by July 11 get a free one year renewal. Google Domains, Google’s newish domain name registration service, is renewing domain names for free. The company sent an email to some of its customers today, offering to renew their domain names free for a year if they turn on auto renew. The offer only applies to domain names registered before June 21, so you can’t register domain names today and get two years for one. However, for domains registered prior to that ... read more ...
Mon 22nd June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This permit image email reminds me of new domain names - Reserved plates being released, just like reserved domains… I received an email a few days ago from MyPlates, the company that administers the personalized (vanity) license plate program for Texas. Notice a similarity to what a lot of new top level domain name companies are doing? Here’s what the email said: Reserved Texas license plate messages up for grabs! Today we are releasing a number of previously reserved license plate messages for immediate sale! Some of these messages have previously ... read more ...
 
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Selling domains on Flippa with Kevin Fink – DNW Podcast #38 - Learn about the Flippa marketplace and its acquisition of Domain Holdings. Learn the best way to get started selling domain names on Flippa in this week’s podcast. Kevin Fink, Director of Domains for Flippa, also discusses what the company’s acquisition of domain name brokerage Domain Holdings means for Flippa users, and what Flippa is doing to improve the integrity of its marketplace. Also: Domains for $1.50 or less, WordPress Foundation files a cybersquatting lawsuit, CentralNic scores more ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DOMAINfest.Asia to be hold in Macau in September - Domain name conference heads to China in a few months. I’ve been a bit confused by NamesCon’s strategy with DOMAINfest after acquiring the brand. The one day add-ons to existing domain name conferences haven’t made much sense to me. But now DOMAINfest is hosting a complete conference, this time in Macau, China. DOMAINfest.Asia is being staged by the NamesCon, Simon Cousins’ Allegravita and .Asia. Allegravita has been staging events in Macau for over ten years, and Cousins tells me he hopes ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week: .Irish and .Bank - Two new top level domain names enter general availability this week. Two new top level domain names enter general availability this week, although one won’t be generally available to the public. .Bank domain names become available on Wednesday, June 24. Most readers won’t be able to register them, though. It’s a restricted domain name for banks and savings associations. DomainNameWire.bank isn’t an option. Most big market domain name registrars aren’t carrying the domain for this reason. .Irish ... read more ...
Fri 19th June 2015
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Cheap domain names are spammers' favorites - New report shows that spammers love some of the cheap new domain name options. Spammers churn through a lot of domain names. As soon as deliverability sinks with one, they move on to the next. That might explain this chart in Architelos’ June NameSentry Abuse Report: The bulk of improper use of new top level domain names is spam, and this chart shows which new TLDs are being abused the most. See a pattern here? All of the big ones are cheap domains. In fact, all of the domains on this chart can ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired Domain Name Report - Joseph Peterson provides and in-depth review of the past week in the expired domain name market. And now for something completely different … Instead of a Chinese domain like the $62k giant that towered over the previous week’s expired auctions – evidence of what’s newest and most energetic in today’s domain market – this week NameJet presents us with something old fashioned. Insurance1.com was the top result, weighing in at a lighter $5.2k. Many years ago, registrants were prone ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Horrible domain name alert: QuiQui.me - Good luck pronouncing this domain name without an explanation. A San Francisco startup hopes to start delivering pharmacy items by drone soon. But finding the company via word-of-mouth (or even on the app store) might be a bit challenging. The company’s name is pronounced Quickie, but it is using the domain name QuiQui.me. Qui is pronounced two different two different ways in the same name. That means company representatives are going to have to do a lot of explaining when they tell people about ... read more ...
 
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WordPress Foundation sues owners of WordPress domain names - Group goes after company promoting WordPress assistance with domain names that include “WordPress”. WordPress Foundation, the charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg for the WordPress open source project, has sued the owner of TheWordPressHelpers.com and other domains. The lawsuit alleges that Edward Jeffrey Yablon and PC-VIP, Inc. are infringing WordPress’ trademarks and that the use of the domain names constitutes cybersquatting. The defendants own a number of WordPress related ... read more ...
Thu 18th June 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Another pointer of a 3 minute .com domain name boom… - Sedo Great Domains mailer shows only three letter .com domain names. DNJournal’s sales charts have been dominated by three letter domain names lately. The domain names are hot, and they’re very liquid. As an owner of a three letter .com, I get up to a half dozen emails on some days asking if it’s for sale. People have resorted to including a price in the subject line (most recently hitting $35,000). Domain marketplaces are trying to capitalize on this as well, and this ensures that DNJournal’s ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Here are some artistic Donald Trump for President domain names - Verisign and domain name registrars are laughing all the way to the bank. There’s nothing like another Donald Trump run for president to spur people to register Trump-related domain names! I count 182 .com Trump domain name registrations from his announcement on Tuesday until this morning. What would Donald Trump do with Obamacare? Try Trumpcare(.com)! It’s all part of Trumpenomics(.com). Who will Trump pick as a running mate? Try: TrumpPalin2016.com JebandTrump.com Trump-Winfrey.com/TrumpOprah.com Every ... read more ...
 
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Domain names…in a wild - Group creates tumblr to chronicle the use of creative domain names. I’ve often come across cool uses of domain names on the side of trucks, on billboards, or while watching TV. For example, a couple years ago I saw Mow.co on the side of a lawn mowing company’s truck (see picture). Domain Name Association (DNA) has started a new site to capture some of these creative uses, chronicling them on a tumblr at InTheWild.domains. While DNA’s main objective is to grow use of new top level domains, ... read more ...
Wed 17th June 2015
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Monsanto buys domain name for a new code (and other finish user purchases) - Monsanto buys a new brand name .com and a handful of new TLDs are snapped up by end users. Monsanto recently applied for a trademark on Trecepta, and this past week it bought the matching .com domain name for just $850. Even more peculiar, the domain name was registered last month. Did someone spot the trademark application and register the domain name? Was there some sort of threat that limited the purchase price to $850? The Monsanto purchase was just one of many end user sales at Sedo, which turned ... read more ...
 
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.News reward list slimmed down, here are 37k that didn't make a cut - Rightside slims down premium list for .News, and some good domains will be available at regular prices. Rightside’s upcoming .News top level domain name launch should be one to watch. .News works with many terms, giving it big potential for second level domain name registrations. Retail pricing is also a reasonable $20-$30. I’ve commented before about how Rightside has managed to capture just about every good domain in its TLDs and stick a premium on them. The company is taking a different tack ... read more ...