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.

Wed 5th February 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Rightside Announces They Have Over 40 Registrars On Board To Carry Their New gTLD’s - Rightside™, the domain name services business of Demand Media (NYSE: DMD), today announced new partnerships with many of the world’s leading registrars to bring its portfolio of new Top Level Domains (TLDs) to market. More than 40 registrars – including GoDaddy, Web.com, 11 and Host Europe, and Rightside affiliates eNom and Name.com have signed registrar agreements with Rightside Registry, creating an expansive and global distribution network. This agreement allows each registrar partner the ... read more ...
 
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Liu.com Leads NameJet Reported Sales in Jan 2014 - NameJet reports $836,000 in reported sales for January. It was another strong month for short names as 34 out of the 83 reported names were 6 characters or less, including the top 7 sales. January sales above $2,000: <![CDATA[]]>  Looking at the names sold MyCupid.com was one I liked for the dating niche. With the new rules you have to be quick to verify your auction wins so that they propagate how you want. This name actually has been suspended and needs to be verified, ... read more ...
Tue 4th February 2014
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ICANN’s Sweetheart Of A Contract To PowerAuctions Covers All Costs & Gives Them 10′s Of Million In Upside - On 13 September 2013, ICANN entered into what may well be the most lucrative contract ever granted in ICANN’s history with Power Auctions LLC to conduct its Last Resort Auctions for new gTLD strings with more than one applicant. Under the ICANN rules if there is more than one applicant for a particular domain name extension or string otherwise known as a new gTLD,(including those strings found by panels to be confusingly similar) the winner will be decided by a Last Resort Auction held by ICANN. However ... read more ...
 
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Are The Days Of Outrageously Expensive Super Bowl Commercials Over ? - Avi Dan  wrote a piece for Forbes on whether the days of big money ads on Super Bowl Sunday are over. Of course looking at a game that was a blowout makes those people who had an ad running in the fourth quarter cringe. They paid the big bucks for a much smaller audience. Dan wrote in his piece: The CMOs of Audi, Intuit , T-Mobile, Chobani, Kia, Sprint, Heinz, Honda, Chrysler, Microsoft ,Jaguar, Danon, SodaStream, and Go Daddy among others, might just have had an even worse day than Peyton Manning You ... read more ...
 
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Afternic/GoDaddy Sell $1.95 Million In Domain Names - Afternic/GoDaddy released its sales report for the week of 1/27/14 – 2/2/14 All sales for the week totalled $1,954,130. The top .com sale was lead by Crafting.com for $51,500, with the top non-com sale lead by Picnic.co Random.co each for $9,999. Below is the complete report: Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Seddo Transactions Total $1.1 Million - Over the past week, 728 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $11 Million 47% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Highlights of public sales are: ·         Top .coms: btb.com at 38,350 USD ·         Top ccTLD: sandwich.co at 18,000 USD ·         Top “other” TLD: singular.net at 13,400 USD   <![CDATA[]]> Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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European Commission Weights In On ICANN Last Resort Auction & They Are Not Happy - The European Commission filed a comment on the recently updated ICANN’s New gTLD Auction Rules. To summarize the European Commission is “deeply concerned about the implications that the Auction Rules in the gTLD program may have for the protection of public policy interests, competition, openness and innovation.” “ICANN should implement Auction Rules that are consistent with its Bylaws, its non-for profit status, the objectives of the new gTLD Program and the Applicant Guidebook to promote ... read more ...
 
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UDRP Filed On Y8.Net; EntourageMovie.com; EntourageFilm.com - A few interesting UDRP filed today. Web Entertainment, LLC filed a UDRP on the domain name y8.net Y8.net is a gaming site, so is Y8.com which is owned under privacy. UDRP filed on Two character domain names are pretty rare so we will keep on our eye on this one. ON another note if your a fan of the HBO series Entourage you may know that they started the filming of the Entourage movie last month, and today a UDRP was filed on two domain names,  EntourageMovie.com and EntourageFilm.com EntourageMovie.com ... read more ...
 
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Who Won The Super Bowl Of Search ? - Vanessa Fox wrote piece on MarketingLand.com that took a look at the Super Bowl of Search. In the article she started out with how long they have been covering the Super Bowl ads and their correlation to search.  “It’s year number six of tracking how Super Bowl ads compelled us to search and just how well advertisers take advantage of all that searching.” From the article: So what can we learn from Super Bowl advertisers this year? Keep it simple: No, even simpler than that. Different hashtags ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy BodyBuilder Ad Needed To Hit The Weights Harder - Go Daddy and their Super Bowl ad did not fare too well on Sunday.  According to the Admeter on USA Today the bodybuilder ad finished in the bottom five. Whas11.com reported that the ad was the lowest rated amongst pre-released ads at 49.7 out of 100. The day the ad came out Michael Berkens said he did not like the ad on the Domain Sherpa show, he did not think the ad was effective. As it turned out Michael was right as most did not like the ad, it just did not resonate with many. For those that ... read more ...
Mon 3rd February 2014
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Who Does Search Arbitrage Benefit ? - Dan Monarko of Flying Cork Media took a look at the practice of search arbitrage, who it benefits  and what they do to protect their clients. Search Arbitrage is the practice of purchasing a keyword on one search engine (i.e. Google) while directing the person searching to another engine (i.e. Ask.com, about.com, info.com) for the same or similar more expensive term and profiting from the price discrepancy. In layman’s terms these “search engines” are paying for a click to get a click and ... read more ...
 
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Sandwich.co Sells For 18K After The .Com Sells For $137,500 - The domain name sandwich.co sold on Sedo today for $18,000 USD. Yahoo sold the domain name Sandwich.com for $137,500 back in November 2013 also on Sedo. The buyer of Sandwich.co is Sandwich Company of Los Angeles, California. The buyer of Sandwich.com seems to be a different party. The purchase price of the .co is over 13% of the .com. Congrats to the buyer and seller. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Auctions Jan Market Report led by Spokes.com - Go Daddy Auctions Market Report January 2014 Go Daddy sold 4386 less domains in January vs the previous month. In total there were 35, 209 sales in January vs 39,595 in December. Last January Go Daddy sold 35,156 in January. The top sale was spokes.com at $40,000 currently resolving to a parked page and was registered in 1995. As usual Online was the most popular keyword, this has been a trend for many months. (click to enlarge) ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Domain Investors: Registrar Easy-Domains.co.uk Doesn’t Like You - In a press release issued today by domain name registrar Easy-Domains.co.uk, entitled  “The new gLTDs mean a new Internet” (yes the title is wrong and should have been gTLD’s) which talk about the new domain extension, the registrar throws domain investors under the bus. The press release starts off: “If you run a business or organisation (SIC) online, you will recognise (SIC) the feeling you get when someone else has snapped up the domain name you need. This is especially true if you already ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Super Bowl Ad Winners; Twitter Hash Tags: Losers Domain Names, Facebook - As most of you, I just finished watching the Seattle blowout tonight in the Super Bowl and on the advertising front I’m going to declare Twitter Hash Tags the big winner and domain names and Facebook as the big losers. No matter what television commercials you loved or hated you had to notice the lack of domain names, the total absence of Facebook URL’s and the overwhelming amount of commercials which had a Tweeter Hash tag as its go to point of reference. Even Godaddy, which sells domain name ... read more ...
Sun 2nd February 2014
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Here’s Why ‘The Internet Of Things’ Will Be Huge, And Drive Tremendous Value For People And Businesses - Business Insider has put out a detailed report on the Internet of Things. From the article detailing the report: Estimates for Internet of Things or IoT market value are massive, since by definition the IoT will be a diffuse layer of devices, sensors, and computing power that overlays entire consumer, business-to-business, and government industries. The IoT will account for an increasingly huge number of connections: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018. That year, it will be roughly ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
DomainNameSales.com Average Sale $15K; Set Min Commission during $175 - In an announcement today on DomainNameSales.com, they are setting a $175 minium commission on all domain sales starting on February 15th. However since the average sale is $15,000 according to the release the minimum commission shouldn’t be a big deal. Here is the announcement: “”Firstly, in regard to DNS, The DNS platform is unique because it lets you self-broker your sales, and negotiate via the DNS iPhone app. You can set buy-it-now prices on all of your low value (under $1500) domain names ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Tightens Security After @N Debacle - In another move related to the social engineering that took place at Go Daddy and allegedly Paypal (Paypal stands by the position they did not give the hijacker anything and that it was a failed attempt) Go Daddy is now changing their security practices. In a tweet on Saturday there was an exchage from the former owner of @N and Go Daddy, he is also a former Go Daddy client as he tweeted yesterday that he has moved his names to Namecheap. @N_is_stolen Will do. We now require 8 card digits, lock after ... read more ...
Sat 1st February 2014
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2013 Turkish Domain Name Market Study - AlanAdlari.com put out their 2013 Turkish Domain Report Top 3 keywords for sales were Game,News and Ticket. The most popular lengths for domains that sold were in the 7 to 11 character range. (click to enlarge) ... read more ...
 
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Coupons.com files for $100million IPO - Last week it was Care.com going public and soaring in its first day of trading and now another category killer .com, Coupons.com has filed to go public. When looking at both of these companies “.COM” is a part of the name, they are not Care Inc or Coupons Inc and use the .com extension. With all the talk lately of new gtlds and branding themselves it is important to note that .com started this trend with the extension as part of the company name. Tech Crunch wrote on the coming IPO The march ... read more ...
 
Written by The Domains in EN
Facebook’s Game of The Year Bought Its Domain For $2,500 on Sedo & Isn’t Using It - Facebook published its 2013 Games of the Year list in the 1st week of December. The game gets 100 million active monthly users. The company that makes the game, Pretty Simple SA out of Paris France, bought the matching domain name of the Game of the Year CriminalCase.com for $2,500 on Sedo a year ago. The domain name CriminalCase.com however remains parked today and has an Alexa rank of 9 Million. The registrant of the domain is still showing as  Sedo with  transferservice@sedo.com as the registrant’s ... read more ...
 
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Tnooz “Travel domains going for (not exactly) a song” - Linda Fox wrote a piece today on Tnooz.com about Tour.com being put up for sale for $3million. In the past three years, according to information from domain specialist Sedo, a number of premium travel domain sales have taken place: Jerusalem.com – $510,000 Visitstockholm.com – $70,000 wellnessfinder.com – Euro 300,000 sommerhus.dk (Danish summer house rentals) – Euro 87,500 gruppenreisen.de (group travel in German) – Euro 59,500 hoteles.es  (hotels in Spanish) – Euro 275,000 xinjian.com ... read more ...
Fri 31st January 2014
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TLD Holdings Raises Over $33 Million, Names Tucows CEO To Board and Will Change the Name - Top Level Domain Holdings (TLDH) is a publicly traded company on the London AIM, the company came out with a press release today which details a lot of things going on for the company.  It placed shares at 12pence and surprisingly traded up after the placement. Elliot Noss the CEO of Tucows will join the board, and they are doing a name change to Minds + Machines Limited Top Level Domain Holdings Limited (“TLDH”, the “Company” or “Group”) announced today they raised  £21 million (approximately ... read more ...
 
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Go Daddy Owns it Role in a Twitter @N Case – Paypal Does Not - Go Daddy admits that it was at fault in the @N case. Paypal denied any fault. ItWorld covered the story that has been going on for a few days with regards to Naoki Hiroshima, his Twitter handle @N and his Go Daddy account. The story has been covered inside the domain world and out and now comes an acknowledgement from Go Daddy and a denial from Paypal. — GoDaddy has acknowledged that one of its employees fell victim to a social engineering attack allowing a hacker to take over a customer’s domain ... read more ...
 
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Zynga Purchases Natural Motion for $527 Million – Stock adult after hours on earnings - It was a busy day for game maker Zynga, the company reported earnings and laid of 15 % of their workforce. Then they announced the acquisition of Natural Motion for $527 million. Tech Crunch covered the Natural Motion acquisition : Zynga has long been famous (or infamous?) for its data-driven approach to game design. The company never focused on building strong character IP, or intellectual property, in favor of releasing games that had been thoroughly funnel-tested. But now that founding CEO Mark ... read more ...