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 8th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
DQZ.com and other Expired Domain Name Sales - DQZ.com among the leaders at NameJet over the past week. When it comes to 3-letter .COM domains, value is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Enough domain investors agree to pay within a certain range based on scarcity, observed sales, and the opportunity to resell to one another that a given LLL.com is often purchased without reference to any conceivable use or meaning. That could easily be the case with NameJet’s $12.4k sale of DQZ.com last week; ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
ROTD auction during NamesCon will sell a lot of domain names - Sell-through rate at next week’s auction is guaranteed to be high. Right of the Dot (ROTD) is hosting a live domain name auction next Tuesday during NamesCon. From the looks of it, they’re going to sell a lot of domain names. The only question is how much they’ll sell for. Already 31 domain names have pre-bids that have met their reserves (mostly on no reserve domain names). That means the auction is already at about a 30% sell-through rate on a planned inventory ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Women in Domaining earnings during NamesCon - 15 sponsors support Women in Domaining event. One of the most important social gatherings at next week’s NamesCon conference will be Women in Domaining. More women work in the domain name industry than before, but it’s still a relatively small number. It’s nice to see an event for women who work in the industry to get together. The social takes place Monday, January 12th from 7pm-9pm in the Whoisology Room. 15 companies are sponsoring the event, which is being ... read more ...
Wed 7th January 2015
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How Correctica done me demeanour smarter - Service finds errors that spell and grammar checkers don’t. When I write a post for Domain Name Wire, I act as researcher, writer and editor. That’s why you occasionally see a typo or two in articles. I review articles before posting, and always pay attention to that red squiggly underline indicating a misspelled word, but some types of errors are harder to catch. That’s why I was intrigued to learn about Knowingly, a new company launched by futurist and former ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
25 End User Domain Name Sales - End user domain names sales continued during the holidays. Sedo didn’t report domain name sales over the holidays, so this week’s end user sales report includes sales from the past three weeks. Over this period, Sedo handled 1,067 transactions for a total of $2.6 million worth of domain names. Let’s just right into the list of recent end user sales at the Sedo marketplace: (You can view previous lists like this here. If you’d like to learn how to sell your ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Existing TLD .Reise headed to a auction block - Top level domain name will be auctioned at the end of February. Innovative Auctions Ltd., the same company handling many private new top level domain name contention set auctions, is holding an auction for .REISE on February 27. What’s unique here is that .reise is an existing top level domain name that’s now available for purchase. I believe this is the second time Innovative Auctions has held auctions for already-released TLDs. Reise roughly translates to “journey” ... read more ...
Tue 6th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
ICYMI: 2014 in Review - A look back at the past year in the domain name business. Over the past week I released a podcast and five posts covering five big themes in the domain name business in 2014. I know a lot of people travel or unplug over the holidays, so here’s a summary: Consolidation continued in the domain name industry in 2014, from blockbusters like .Co selling for more than $100M to smaller deals such as Agreed Escrow. Conditions for further consolidation exist, so stay tuned ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
How to Use Sched.org to get a many out of NamesCon - Sched.org makes it easier to take advantage of NamesCon’s great keynotes and panel discussions. NamesCon starts on Sunday in Las Vegas. It’s going to be big (800+ people) and packed with content (125 speakers and panelists). With a number of concurrent sessions, planning is required to make sure you don’t miss out on the sessions that most interest you. This year, NamesCon used Sched.org to create the schedule. Attendees have received an emailed invitation to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Garry Chernoff sells Montrose.com for $75,000 - Domain name investor starts the year with a good sale. Longtime domain name investor Garry Chernoff has started 2015 with a nice sale: Montrose.com at $75,000. The domain name now shows CSC Corporate Domains, a brand domain name registrar, as registrant. Chernoff says the company approached him about the domain name. Montrose is a city in Colorado, a neighborhood in Houston and the name of a band. I went through the first 10 results on Google, and none of the sites ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
September’s .Com winners and losers - Moniker lost, PublicDomainRegistry gained. ICANN has published official registry reports from September (always three months in arrears), showing that Moniker dropped below one million .com domain names registered. The chart below shows the ten domain name registrars with the most successful .com transfers out, and then compares this against the number of successful .com transfers in. Registrars that “won” for the month will have a blue column taller than the ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Domain name registry Afilias dumps designed IPO - Registry had planned to float in November. Domain name registry Afilias has pulled plans for a $100 million initial public offering, as reported by Domain Incite this morning. A company spokesperson told Domain Incite, “The final decision to cancel the IPO was based on market conditions at the time.” Given that stock markets are at record highs, that’s a euphemism for “investors weren’t interested in our IPO”. While stock markets are doing well, the same ... read more ...
Mon 5th January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2014 in Review: Short .com domain names value large money - .Com domain names continue to sell for big bucks. Especially the short ones. This is the final in a five part series covering the top stories in the domain name industry in 2014. You can also listen to the companion podcast covering these five themes of 2014. New TLDs and domain name choice be damned — short .com domain names are still worth a lot of money. Take a look at DNJournal.com’s year-to-date sales chart and something will pop out at you. Short .com domain ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
.Club Domain Names with Colin Campbell, Jeff Sass – Podcast #14 - How .Club has soared to the top. .Club has jumped out on the leaderboard with registrations, with over 150,000 to date. That’s part of the reason the company is valued at $25.4 million in its latest funding round. On this episode, we chat with .Club founder and CEO Colin Campbell and CMO Jeff Sass about what the company is doing to make sure .Club is a success. We also discuss the current state of top level domain name rollouts. Subscribe via iTunes to listen to ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
This week’s 5 new Top Level Domain name launches - Two IDNs among this week’s TLD launches. It’s the first full week of the new year, and that means a handful of top level domain name companies are releasing domain names. On Tuesday, January 6, موقع. will hit general availability. This string is Arabic for “site”.101Domain has the domains for about $50. On Wednesday, January 7, three domains will launch in Early Access Programs. Donuts launches .world, which I suppose has similar uses to .place and .zone. Rightside ... read more ...
Fri 2nd January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
2014 in Review: Domain Name Stocks were a Bad Bet - Shares of most domain name companies were a bad bet in 2014. This is the fourth in a five part series covering the top stories in the domain name industry in 2014. You can also listen to the companion podcast covering these five themes of 2014. Investors in the SP 500 stock index saw their sixth straight year of gains in 2014. Investors in most publicly traded domain name companies weren’t so fortunate. Only two public domain name companies I track finished the ... read more ...
Thu 1st January 2015
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Expired Domain Name Report, New Year’s Day Edition - Since GoDaddy began concealing sale records as its Christmas gift to the domain industry, this week’s article discusses only expired domain auction results seen at NameJet. Although our overall picture of the expired domain market is smaller, big prices are still on display. When $10k is spent on a 5-digit numeric like 11211.com, we can be sure that the domain is bound for China. Repeating characters and patterns are especially prized by Chinese buyers. WinnersClub.com ... read more ...
Wed 31st December 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2014 in Review: Domain Theft and Phishing - A lot of people went phishing for domain names in 2014. This is the third in a five part series covering the top stories in the domain name industry in 2014. You can also listen to the companion podcast covering these five themes of 2014. It’s a lot easier to steal a million dollar domain name from most domain name registrars than it is to steal a million bucks from the bank. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that domain theft continued to be a problem in 2014. ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
Bonus podcast: The Internet of Things - An Internet of Things podcast, with a domain name bonus. On Monday I posted a 2014 Year In Review episode of the Domain Name Wire Podcast. I’m sure you’ve already listened to it by now and are clamoring for an extra podcast to listen to over the holiday. You’re in luck. This week my wife needed a last minute fill-in on her Internet of Things podcast. I was that fill-in, and we bantered about the many connected gadgets we have in our home. Why post about this ... read more ...
Tue 30th December 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
2014 in Review: New TLDs - They’re off to a fairly slow start. Will that change in 2015? This is the second in a five part series covering the top stories in the domain name industry in 2014. You can also listen to the companion podcast covering these five themes of 2014. 2014 was the Year of the New Top Level Domain Name. Hold on — Let’s qualify that. For the domain name industry, 2014 was the Year of the New Top Level Domain Name. Outside the industry? Not so much. New TLDs started ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Just Bulbs takes a 3rd gash during JustBulbs.com - After losing two UDRPs, light bulb store files federal lawsuit. If at first you don’t succeed… New York City light bulb store Just Bulbs has filed a federal lawsuit (pdf) against the owner of the JustBulbs.com domain name, marking its third attempt to get the domain name through an arbitration or legal filing. The company filed and lost a UDRP against domain name owner Greg Ricks in 2003. It then filed a case in 2013 that it also lost. Now it’s turning to the ... read more ...
Mon 29th December 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN
2014 in Review: Domain Name Industry Consolidation Continues - 2014 had its share of blockbuster acquisitions in the domain name space. This is the first in a five part series covering the top stories in the domain name industry in 2014. You can also listen to the companion podcast covering these five themes of 2014. The consolidation of domain name companies continued in 2014 and it probably won’t end there. Here are some of the transactions that were announced or completed during the year: Neustar bought .co for over $100M Endurance ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
2014 Domain Name Industry in Review – Podcast 013 - What were the major themes in the domain name business in 2014? 2014 was a crazy year for the domain name industry, and it’s just a few days from being behind us. In this week’s podcast, I’ll review five of the major stories of 2014: new top level domain names, public domain name company woes, consolidation, domain theft phishing and solid domain name sales. Also, stay tuned to Domain Name Wire this week for in-depth articles on each of these topics. Subscribe ... read more ...
 
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
Interesting motive for a city changing the domain name - City cites credibility for switching from .org to .gov. The Town of West Hartford recently changed its domain name from a .org to a .gov, and I found its rationale for doing so rather interesting. Here’s a news brief from West Hartford News: This month, the Town of West Hartford changed its domain name from westhartford.org to westhartfordct.gov. The .gov domain offers a higher level of scrutiny that only federal, state and local governments are allowed to use. ... read more ...
Sun 28th December 2014
Written by DomainNameWire in EN and tagged
TrafficZ shuts down on Wednesday - End of an era: TrafficZ to shut its doors on Wednesday. Thought Convergence sold off its primary operating businesses this year: it sold Agreed to Escrow.com and Aftermarket.com to Igloo. That left domain name parking company TrafficZ. Today, the company emailed clients informing them that the service will cease operations at 12 am on Wednesday. I’m not sure how much domain name traffic was still running through TrafficZ. Thought Convergence offered domain name ... read more ...
Wed 24th December 2014
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V-V-V-Voom! and Not Much Else (Expired Domain Report) - Hi, Paul There are always competing factors to balance. In this case, I think GoDaddy is putting too much weight on a few people who complain and neglecting both the silent majority and the larger, long-term indirect benefits to the industry as a whole — which aren’t based on the misplaced anxieties of a few customers. That’s a matter of opinion, but I hope it will be debated. Did GoDaddy undertake any industry surveys before deciding to change its policy unilaterally? From my vantage point, ... read more ...