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.

Mon 6th April 2015
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Inside Sedo with CEO Tobias Flaitz - Sedo CEO discusses domain name parking, selling and more. Domain name owners park nearly 5 million domain names and list 18 million + domains on Sedo. This week Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz comes on the show to talk about the past, present and future of the domain name business and Sedo. We discuss the challenges of parking (and how Sedo has turned it around), changes and trends in domain name sales and the impact new top level domains are having on the business. Tobias also discusses a startling stat ... read more ...
 
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New TLDs this week: .Flowers and .Wedding - Pick out your .flowers arrangement for the .wedding. Two top level domain names launch this week, and it’s fitting that they launch near the same time. Uniregistry launches .Flowers on Tuesday, April 7. You can pick these domains up at a number of registrars for about $20-$30. Of course, flowers are a key component of any wedding, and Minds + Machines launches .wedding on Wednesday. .Wedding domains are priced about the same as .flowers at retail, with prices in the $20-$30 range. There’s already ... read more ...
 
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.Com's winners and losers update - Rightside had a good December in terms of transfer gains. ICANN has published Verisign’s .com transaction report from December, giving us an idea of which domain name registrars are winning and losing customers through transfers. eNom had the biggest net gain from transfers, while Moniker had the biggest net outflow. Here are the top 5* net winners from December: 1. eNom +26,948 2. Uniregistrar +13,842 3. NameSilo +6,829 4. Name.com +6,044 (same company as eNom) 5. HiChina +5,699 * I’ve ignored ... read more ...
Thu 2nd April 2015
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How domain name bonds did on GoDaddy's IPO day - Competitors also get bump as GoDaddy soars. GoDaddy went public yesterday and shares immediately shot up 30%, giving the company a $4 billion market cap. In very early trading today it’s up another 3%. There are a number of similar public companies out there. I think the two closest comps are Endurance International (which owns Domain.com and a number of shared hosting companies) and Web.com. Endurance International Group (EIGI) shares were up about 4% yesterday, giving the company a $2.6 billion ... read more ...
 
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22 finish user domain name sales from final week - Car.info and Portfolio.me highlight this week’s list. Sedo’s marketplace handled 669 transactions last week for a total of $1.3 million in sales. The top public sale was Car.info, a staggering price for a .info in light of all of the new top level domains available. Yes, “car” is a great second level domain, but it’s still a surprising purchase. Be sure to tune in Monday to the Domain Name Wire Podcast, when my guest will be Sedo CEO Tobias Flaitz. We’ll discuss trends in domain name ... read more ...
Wed 1st April 2015
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March's Top 5 Stories on Domain Name Wire - A look back at March 2015 in the domain name business. Was March a slow news month? Looking over the top stories from last month, there wasn’t a lot of breaking, hard-hitting news. But there were some interesting domain name sales and other developments. Here’s a rundown of the top stories from last month: 1. 2 Things that could harm domain names – the value and importance of domain names is always under threat. 2. The most influential person in the domain name industry is… – this was ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy shares cocktail 30% during open - So far, so good for GoDaddy’s IPO. It’s not an April Fool joke — GoDaddy is off to a great start in the public markets. Shares began trading at about $26 today, 30% over where the IPO priced. The $20 pricing was itself above the expected range of $17-$19. At $26 a share, the company is being valued at about $4 billion. The nice open might be affecting shares of rival Web.com (NASDAQ: WWWW), which are up close to 3% today. Other domain name stocks are mixed. Tucows shares are up about a percent ... read more ...
 
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IBM's Softlayer strike with ICANN crack notice - Notice appears to be triggered by customer complaint. ICANN has sent a breach notice (pdf) to Everyones Internet, Ltd. dba SoftLayer, citing multiple contract infractions. Softlayer was acquired by IBM in 2013. According to the most recent .com registry report from November, Softlayer’s domain business is meaningful. It had about 90,000 .com registrations at the time. The breach appears to be triggered from a dispute about the domain name southaustralianweddings.com and maintaining registration ... read more ...
 
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.Club tops 200,000 domain name registrations - .Club domain marks big milestone. The .Club team is celebrating after crossing the 200,000 registration barrier less than a year after launch. The numbers can be attributed to a good domain, low pricing, broad distribution and aggressive marketing. Although officially #3 in the zone file rankings, I believe .Club is #2 in arms-length registrations, behind only .xyz. GoDaddy, which featured .Club on its home page for several weeks after it launched, is the number one registrar for .Club. Customers ... read more ...
 
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GoDaddy goes open today, raises $460 million - Company prices above expected range, valuing company at over $3 billion. GoDaddy will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange today under the symbol “GDDY”. The company priced at $20 per share and sold 23 million shares, raising $460 million. This was above its planned price range of $17-$19, and values the company at just over $3 billion. The initial public offering should bring a lot of attention to the domain name industry today. It will be interesting to see if it has an effect on other ... read more ...
Tue 31st March 2015
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Sedo augmenting smallest offers and commissions - Low-ball offers now must be a bit higher. Domain name marketplace Sedo is increasing the minimum offer people have to make on a domain name as well as the minimum commission sellers pay. Effective April 9, the minimum offer for most domains will increase from $60 to $90 (or EUR) or 75 GBP. Sellers will pay at least a $60 commission on all sales. The minimum offer price will likely be greeted positively by those people frustrated about getting $60 offers on their domains. I’m not sure that $90 will ... read more ...
 
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Rightside batch adult 50% this year - Shares rebound from tough 2014. 2014 was miserable for owners of Rightside stock. Its shares sank 58% from $15.82 after being spun off from Demand Media to $6.72 at the close of 2014. Ouch. 2015 is seeing a big reversal. Shares opened today at $10.11, up 50% from the January 2 open of $6.76. The fundamentals of the business don’t seem to have changed, but people are buying the stock. I suspect a lot of the sell-off in 2014 was from people who invested in Demand Media and didn’t care to own a ... read more ...
 
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Why Donuts is divulgence domain name renovation rates - By predicting and revealing renewals, Donuts hopes to get registrars and domain name investors on board. Donuts has posted an update on its renewal rates, showing an overall 68.4% rate after ten days. The update also highlights a reason Donuts predicted its renewal rates ahead of time and has continuously revealed its rates now that domains are expiring: It’s marketing. Co-founder Richard Tindal explains that renewal rates on Donuts domains are much higher than those of .com domain names registered ... read more ...
Mon 30th March 2015
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Royal Caribbean files lawsuit to constraint typos - Cruise line goes cruising for typos. Cruise company Royal Caribbean Cruises has filed an in rem lawsuit (pdf) against two typos of its RoyalCaribbean.com domain name. The two domains — RoyalCaribean.com and RoyalCarribean.com — forward to another domain name that is a lead gen site for cruises and is branded with “Royal Caribbean”. I wouldn’t be surprised if these domain names get a good bit of traffic. While writing this story I’ve confused the typo and correct version multiple times. It’s ... read more ...
 
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Tips to Sell More Domain Names with Jeff Gabriel – DNW Podcast #26 - Sell more domains with these expert tips. Want to sell more domain names? Jeff Gabriel, VP of Sales for DomainNameSales.com, has sold many domains (including some record-breakers). He shares tips for how to sell more domain names in this episode of the Domain Name Wire Podcast. Many of the tips are universal and can be used to sell more of anything, not just domains. Also: Donuts’ renewal rates, .PING and Verisign-supported study suggests .com domains perform better than new TLDs. Subscribe via ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
UPS.com expires in 9 days - UPS and other big companies have domain names expiring soon. 9 days until this domain name expires.OK, so they surely have auto renew turned on. But isn’t this cutting it close? UPS’ main domain name UPS.com, the one it uses to run its company, expires on April 8 and hasn’t been renewed yet. UPS isn’t the only big company with a domain name that expires fairly soon. As I did a couple years ago, I ran through the Fortune 100 list of companies to see which ones have domains expiring soon. ... read more ...
 
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Chehadé : It was only a misunderstanding - ICANN CEO explains domain “hogging” comments made during the Davos Annual Meeting. ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé has responded (pdf) to a letter from Internet Commerce Association (ICA) regarding domain “hogging” comments he made in a Huffington Post interview. In a video interview with Huffington Post in January, Chehadé said: “The reality is, the more there are names, the less people will actually be hogging names in order to charge a lot for them. Because if somebody took your name on dot-x, ... read more ...
 
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Interesting UDRP: FIMO.club - Potential use as a fan site for a product saves domain name for respondent. A single member World Intellectual Property Organization panel has denied a UDRP filed by Staedtler Mars GmbH for the domain name FIMO.club. Staedtler Mars GmbH sells a clay called FIMO that’s apparently popular with hobbyists. The respondent was an unauthorized distributor of the product at a different business and admits to registering a number of domain names with FIMO in them. She said she registered this domain to ... read more ...
Fri 27th March 2015
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IPC asks ICANN to hindrance argumentative .Sucks domain name hurl out - Calls it “predatory, exploitative and coercive” and points out bizarre contract with ICANN. The Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) is asking (pdf) ICANN to halt Vox Populi’s roll out of the .sucks top level domain name, calling the registry’s unique pricing “predatory, exploitative and coercive”. The group is upset that Vox Populi plans to charge $2,499 to trademark owners to register their domains while offering a much cheaper price to non-trademark holders. The registry has also ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Evaluating domain names on ValPak coupons - The majority of advertisers in a ValPak coupon mailer include a web address on their ad. The majority of coupons in this ValPak mailer included a domain name.I recently analyzed a coupon mailer I received to see if local businesses are promoting their websites in advertisements. Today I tore open a ValPak mailer to see if the results would be similar. They were, with some slight differences. Compared to the RSVP coupons, ValPak had a bit more of the national advertisers, such as Omaha Steaks. Here’s ... read more ...
 
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Optilead Ltd. intent in Reverse Domain Name Hijacking - WIPO panel determined UK company filed domain name dispute in bad faith. UK company Optilead Ltd has been found to have engaged in reverse domain name hijacking over the domain name Optilead.com. Optilead Ltd uses the domain name Optilead.co.uk for its shopping cart abandonment services. According the the World Intellectual Property Organization decision, Optilead.com was registered about 9 years before Optilead Ltd shows any trademark rights in the term Optilead. As such, panelist Alistair Payne ... read more ...
Thu 26th March 2015
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.Ping fetches $1.5M during auction, .Srl goes for $400,000 - Two two-way races for new top level domain names have been settled. Two top level domain name contention sets were settled in auctions yesterday. Golf company Ping (Karsten) won .Ping for $1,501,000. It was in contention with Radix. Thus, .Ping will become a .brand instead of a generic domain name. InternetX won the auction for .Srl at only $400,000, beating Google. Srl is a corporate identifier similar to LLC for Limited Liability Company. InternetX already runs .LTDA, a similar corporate identifier ... read more ...
Wed 25th March 2015
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Are we astounded by Donuts' renovation rates? - Latest day was 61%, but it might be too early to draw conclusions. New top level domain name mega-registry Donuts has been blogging daily renewal rate data for its first domain names released nearly 14 months ago. The most recent data show a 71% renewal rate for the 37,857 Donuts domain names that have exited the renewal grace period. This includes 14 top level domains, and the majority of these names were registered in general availability. Comparing day 4 to day 3, the renewal rate dropped to about ... read more ...
 
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Heritage Auctions usurpation submissions for summer domain name auction - Auction house will hold another exclusive auction this summer. Heritage Auctions is planning another live domain name auction for early this summer. The format will be similar to one it held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York in February. It will be limited to about 30 high value domain names, primarily .com. It will take place in June in either Dallas (where Heritage Auctions is based) or New York. The February auction brought in over $1.3 million in sales, with many of them coming post-auction. ... read more ...
Tue 24th March 2015
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Survey says .Com performs improved than new TLDs - Survey says that people more likely to click and recall .com domain names. Interbrand, ostensibly on behalf of Verisign, has released an infographic showing results from a 1,000 person survey about the power of .com. The survey shows that people click on domain names ending in .com more than those in new TLDs. Consumers were shown search results pages with similar web addresses but different domain extensions. When the new TLD was displayed first, 61% still clicked on the .com web address listed ... read more ...