Author Archives: The Domains

About The Domains

Michael Berkens, Esq. is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheDomains.com. Michael is also the co-founder of Worldwide Media Inc. which sold around 70K domain to Godaddy.com in December 2015 and now owns around 5K domain names . Michael is also a Director of RightoftheDot.com which is a consultant in the new gTLD space and a broker of super premium domains. Michael was also one of the 5 Judges selected for the the Verisign 30th Anniversary .Com contest this year.

Fri 28th February 2014
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NiceNic releases Feb Chinese Auction Results – 126.CN sells for $110,432 - Nicenic.net put out a post today about some recent Chinese names that sold at auction. These were names that were not reserved by CNNIC. The first number is the sale price in Chinese Yuan,  for the top 10 sales I converted to US Dollars. The conversion rate of roughly 1Chinese Yuan = .1624 USD 126.cn      680,000       $110,432 rose.cn     480,000      $77,952 ku.cn         234,000      $38,001 Lz.cn          222,000      $36,053 Lx.com.cn    188,000 $30,531 173.cn      ... read more ...
 
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If You Pre-Ordered One Of These .Sexy Domains Don’t Blame Uniregistry Blame Your Registrar - So a lot of people seem to be disappointed not getting the .Sexy domain name they pre-ordered. Including myself. While many names seemed to be reserved by the registry over 6,500 domains were blocked by the ICANN collision report. Each new gTLD had the option of either launching now, subject to its turn and not allowing registrations of any domain name contained on the collision list for each new gTLD string or waiting to launch  until the ICANN made a final determination regarding how to handle ... read more ...
 
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.Wiki Will Be CentralNic’s First New gTLD to launch, followed by .XYZ - CentralNic’s first new gTLD to launch will be .wiki, which takes a term that is synonymous with online collaboration and high quality websites, and makes it available for the use of companies, developers, communities and hobbyists alike. The first .wiki domains will be available to trademark holders on 3 March when it starts it Sunrise Period, and to others from 8 May. This will be followed by .XYZ priced below .com domain names and and designed to be appropriate for any website in any language. The ... read more ...
 
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Mt. Gox Files For Bankruptcy Protection Loses 850,000 Bitcoins, 750,000 Of Customers - Mt.Gox the largest Bitcoin exchanged filed for bankruptcy protection overnight claiming it has outstanding debt of about $63.6 million. The company disclosed that it had lost 850,000 units of Bitcoin, including 750,000 belonging to customers worth about $477 million, based on current exchange rates.   Mt. Gox, at one point handled more than 80% of trades in the virtual currency. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
Thu 27th February 2014
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Marchex’s Archeo Clarifies 4th Q Sales -   Last week we reported on Marchex earnings which included its Archeo division sold a total of 262 domain names in the 4th Quarter that yielded $1.6 million. At the time we noted that the average sales price of  domain names in 4Q was just over $6,100 per domain name which was well below the average price the company sold its domains in the third quarter of 2013. Today we received some additional and clairfy information from Rod Diefendorf COO, of Archeo on the sales “”Each quarter our team ... read more ...
 
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AO.com Founder Now Worth $900 Million Purchased The Domain For Around $600K Last Year - Earlier today we wrote about AO.com going public making the founder a very wealthy guy. George Kirikos just found out that the domain was recently acquired by the company in March 2013 for approximately £391,000, which based on the exchange rate of £1.5205 the domain sold for just about $600,000. George notes that on Page 104 of the AO.com prospectus, they bought 2 domains for £391,000 total, and given the dates, that was mostly for AO.com.  The other domain they acquired at the time was  AO.co.uk Prior ... read more ...
 
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The French Really Are Different: .Paris Announces 100 Pioneer Domain Names - The city of Paris released today the names of 100 Pioneers (Les pionniers ambassadeurs) for the new gTLD .Paris. For 6 months, these Pioneers will be the only ones using .Paris domain names, and will participate in all events around the launch of .Paris. The 100 pioneers were selected by a Jury which used several criteria mentioned in the call for proposals Pioneers : • The candidate must have an original project. A pioneer can not simply propose a redirection of its .Paris domain name to a .fr ... read more ...
 
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AO.com Goes Public In London; Founder Is Now Worth Over $915 Million - The dailymail.co.uk, ran an interesting rags to riches story about a about a 40 year old former kitchen sales businessman who had no business schooling started AO.com which just went public in London. “John Roberts, 40, founder of online appliance retailer AO.com, set up the company after realizing that the long supply chain for ‘white goods’ such as dishwashers and fridges was adding needless costs.” “This week AO.com smashed expectations for its stock market debut with a 33% rise that ... read more ...
 
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While Most of a domain attention debates new gtlds, 4.CN is lighting it adult offered numeric domains - While most of the domain world is talking about new gtlds and registration numbers, 4.CN is selling some nice numeric .com domains for big numbers. The Chinese New Year was on January 31st this year, that caused a lull in selling on 4.CN the first half of February.  Over the last week things have picked up with some of the biggest sales ever in the history of the site. 920.com which sold on 2-26-14 is the number 5 sale all time. Here is a look at the numeric sales over the last week and change: 920.com  ... read more ...
 
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Say Hello To The Next Hit New gTLD .Tips, Breaks Out With Over 8K Registrations - .Tips went into General Availability today and from the zone file it appear the new gTLD has surpassed 8,000 registrations. Based on its numbers .Tips is already the 4th most popular new gTLD. .Tips to me is in the same category as .Guru which has more than 38,000 registration and the soon to be released .Ninja and the later to come .Expert The domains are priced at $25 at Godaddy making Donuts there registration fee of $185K back on day 1 not counting Sunrise and EAP registrations which are included ... read more ...
 
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Buyer Of FYI.TV Is A&E Network & It’s Rebranding Their Bio Network To FYI.TV - About a month ago we interviewed  Kevin Lawrence is a successful entrepreneur, developer, and .TV investor who at the time had just sold the domain name FYI.TV for $30,000 making it the highest reported .TV sale of 2014. Tonight Kevin reported to us that the buyer is A E Network who is using the domain name FYI.TV to re-brand its Bio network. The Hollywoodreporter.com confirms that  A E Networks is rebranding Bio as lifestyle network FYI and will launch in June 2014 “Known as “for your inspiration” ... read more ...
 
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Verisign Answers ICANN’s Name Collision Study With Its Own Blog Post - The report “centers on the technique of “controlled interruption,” initially described in a public preview shared by Jeff Schmidt last month.” “With that technique, domain names that are currently on one of ICANN’s second-level domain (SLD) block lists can be registered and delegated for regular use, provided that they first go through a trial period where they’re mapped to a designated “test” address.  ” “The staged introduction of new SLDs is intended to provide operators ... read more ...
 
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Endurance Reports: Revenue Up 17% in 4th Q 78% In 2013 - Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. (EIGI),  which owns Dotster.com,  Domain.com and most recently acquired Direct, along with many hosting company’s,  reported financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2013. Fourth Quarter Highlights Revenue increased 17% to $136.4 million compared to $117.0 million for the fourth quarter of 2012. Adjusted EBITDA increased 40% to $46.2 million compared to $33.1 million for the fourth quarter of 2012. Net loss attributable ... read more ...
Wed 26th February 2014
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ICANN Publishes Study On Mitigating Risks of DNS Collisions & Opens Comment Period - An independent report commissioned by ICANN, Mitigating the Risk of DNS Namespace Collisions, has offered a set of concrete recommendations on how to mitigate potential risks of domain name collisions A name collision occurs when an attempt to resolve a name used in a private name space results in a query to the public Domain Name System (DNS). “This report takes an in-depth look at the collision issue and the potential risks and impacts, and gives us some very clear advice aimed at how to help ... read more ...
 
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NameCheap.com Says Its Has 20% Of All .Sexy & .Tattoo Registrations - NameCheap.com has around 20% of all .Sexy and .Tattoo registrations. Based on the last zone file update, .Sexy and .Tattoo has around 2,700 domain name registered. NameCheap.com has registered 423 .sexy and 130 .Tattoo domain names as of the publication for a total of 553 domains or around 20% of the last zone update. To be clear, the NameCheap.com numbers are as of publication while the total registrations for .Sexy and .Tattoo are as of the last Zone update. Anyway you slice it with over 40 domain ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media Fall Under $5 A Share Down 10% - Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) released its earnings for the 4th Quarter of 2013 as well 2013 numbers and the market apparently didn’t like them. Demand Media, Inc. is hovering around $5 a share down about 10% from the closing price last night hitting an intraday low of $4.95 Demand has a 52 week high of $9.75 At its current price, Demand’s market cap is $459 Million dollars. Demand Media, Inc, is intending to spin off its registrar, registry and new gTLD business into a new public company Rightside.       Google+Michael ... read more ...
 
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30 Minutes To Go & 9 Domain Reach Reserve In Sedo .Club Auction - The Sedo auction of .Club new gTLD domain names closes at noon EST about 30 minutes from time of publication and 10 domains have hit reserve. There are bids on all 25 domain names in the auction:   <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Godaddy Partners With Spree To Provide “The Easiest, Most Flexible E-commerce Platform For Small Business” - GoDaddy, today announced its partnership with Spree Commerce, a leading open source platform for e-commerce. The goal of the partnership is to provide the easiest, most flexible and extensible e-commerce platform for small businesses. This is a key step in GoDaddy’s continued commitment to democratize technology for small businesses, enabling them to succeed online. “Many of our customers do not have the technical expertise to build a successful online store, yet they all want to serve their ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transaction For The Week Total On $1M With Only 5 Domain Selling For 5 Figures - Over the past week, 667 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1 million 48% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: ·         Top .coms: copella.com at 20,000 USD ·         Top ccTLD: apuestas.cl at 7,500 EUR ·         Top “other” TLD: evolution.org at 2,999 USD As you can see below of the reported transactions only 5 domains sold for $10K or more. <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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.Ar Domains (Argentina) Go From Being Free To Around $25 A Year On Mar 5th - According to the Buenosairesherald.com, .Ar domain names, which is the Country Code (ccTLD) for Argentina will go from being free to costing  “less than” 200 Argentina Pesos ($25.42 based on today’s official exchange rate) a year starting on March 5th. The change from free to less than 200 pesos applies to new registrations and any renewals of .Ar domain names starting on March 5th. The national director of the internet domain registries Gabriel Brenta is quoted by the Herald as saying “What ... read more ...
 
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Demand Media’s Parking Revenue/Domain Sales Down 33% In 2013 & They Are Confused On gTLD Numbers - In the earnings call yesterday Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) had some interesting details about the financials they released for the 4th quarter of 2013 and for the full year 2013 and some interesting statements which demonstrate they are somewhat confused by the new gTLD numbers. First for the results: “In aftermarket services revenue, which represents premium domain sales and advertising revenue from our Owned Operated third-party park domains of approximately $8 million and decreased 33% year-over-year ... read more ...
 
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From The You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Category, Flippa.us sells on Flippa.com - Sometimes you just really have to say Wait ! What ? Flippa.us sold yesterday on Flippa.com for $39. There was one bid and the description seems to be a bit off. The name speaks for itself – Flippa.US – All other domains have been bought out, this is the only one available. Don’t miss out + 4 AWESOME BIN BONUS WEBSITES!   Features:  Premium Tablets Domain: Flippa.US Over 33 THOUSAND UNIQUE SEARCHES for the keywords “flippa”. It’s HUGE, TARGETED TRAFFIC! Highly Valuable Domain Brandable ... read more ...
 
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Here Are The .Sexy Brands: Google, Chrysler; BWM; Godaddy; Rolex; Microsoft; Durex; Viagra - I just looked over the zone file for .Sexy to discover the brand holders that registered .Sexy domains. For one  observation there are plenty of URS to come in .Sexy domains registered today. Godaddy which doesn’t carry .sexy domain names, got Godaddy.sexy. The best brand registration in the extension in our opinion was viagra.sexy The brand that seemed to get the most .sexy domains was Chrysler followed by Google There is no registration for Google.sexy the domain is on the collision block list. Here ... read more ...
Tue 25th February 2014
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Demand Reports: Registrar Revenue Increases 12% in 4Q and 10% Year-over-Year - Demand Media, Inc. (DMD) reported its financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2013. Q4 2013 Financial Summary: Total revenue ex-TAC declined 3% year-over-year, with 12% year-over-year growth in Registrar revenue offset by an 11% decline in Content Media revenue ex-TAC. Excluding the acquisitions of Society6 and Name.com, total revenue ex-TAC decreased 15%. Registrar revenue grew 12% year-over-year, primarily due to the addition of Name.com, which was acquired ... read more ...
 
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Network Solutions and .50 .TV Domains - Network Solutions needs to pay better attention to their Adwords campaigns or they are trying a bait and switch. When someone did a search for renew dot tv on Google, the search returned the following info. When you click through no option to get a .tv ... read more ...