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.

Thu 7th January 2016
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Here is How To Bid in The Live Namescon/ RightoftheDot.com Auction - I understand this might be a little confusing but I’m trying to lay out how you can bid on the  domain names in the RightoftheDot.com auction at Namescon, while the live domain name auction underway on Monday January 11th starting at 2PM PST So there are over 400 domain names in the auction, but only 125 or so will make the cut for the live auction on January 11, 2016 stating at 2:00 PM PST at NamesCon at the New Tropicana Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, NV. There is almost $7 Million dollars in pre-bids ... read more ...
 
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ICM Releases 2 Character Domains In .XXX - ICM Registry, the registry operator for .XXX, .PORN, .ADULT and .SEX, announces the launch of 2 character domains in .XXX. The press release also came with a bold statement: “””In dollar amounts, we have likely sold more in premium names than any registry launched in recent times.””” ICM is also claiming “a growing interest from the Chinese market and a general increase in awareness of all our TLDs leave the outlook for brands, adult companies, and domain investors very strong in 2016.” ICM ... read more ...
 
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.Ski Registry Removes All Reserves From The ROTD/Namescon Auction - The .Ski registry, which has some great one letter domain names like i.ski an e.ski and some natural hacks like water.ski and jet.ski has removed all reserve prices from the domain names being auctioned in the RightoftheDot.com domain auction being held at Namescon. All the domain names are now available for bidding in auction at No Reserve. Many of these domain names already have bids at Namejet.com in pre-bidding. Therefore the high bids have now become the winning bid. The live Namescon auction ... read more ...
Wed 6th January 2016
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Norwegian Paper Covers BY.com In Namescon Auction: Now Has $602K Pre-bid - Verdens Gang whose website is VG.no  a Norwegian tabloid newspaper and was the second largest newspaper in Norway just published a story about By.com which is in the RightoftheDot.com auction at Namescon.  By.com, as of publication of this postm has a high bid in pre-bidding on Namejet.com of $602,000 The original story that was written in  Norwegian is here. The Google translated version of the story into English is here. Its a very interesting story about the owner of the domain IT entrepreneur ... read more ...
 
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Sedo Transactions for Two Weeks Total Just $2 Million; 56% are BIN - Sedo reported 648 transactions for the past two weeks totaling $2 Million Dollars 56% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Going forward  Sedo is following Namejet.com and only reporting sales of 2K or more in any currency. The highest sale of the two weeks goes to Need.me which sold for $25,000 Highlights of public sales were: · Top .com: niuguanjia.com at 10,000 USD · Top ccTLD: need.me at 25,000 USD · Top “other” TLD: fdp.org at 9,888 USD Domain name Price Currency .COMs niuguanjia.com ... read more ...
Tue 5th January 2016
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Rightside Adds Short New gTLD's With Normal Renewals To ROTD/Namescon Auction - Rightside® (Nasdaq:NAME), today announced that it will be participating in the RightoftheDot.com domain name auction as part of the Namescon conference that will be held next Monday, January 11th at 2PM EST. All domain names carry a normal renewal fee for the relevant extension, None carry a premium renewal fee. In keeping with the recent boom of 1, 2, and 3-character second-level domain sales, Rightside has added the premium domains: q.sale ll.sale nn.sale 123.sale 9.video viral.video z.pub 1.market 28.market xyz.market xyz.news xyz.live All ... read more ...
 
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The Number of .Com Domains Top 124 Million For The First Time - According to Verisign the number of the .Com domain names has crossed the 124 million mark for the first time today.   As of Dec. 31, 2014, the base of registered names in .com equaled 115.6 million names. We are running a poll on the right hand side of our site on how many .com domain names you think will be registered as of January 1, 2017 please feel free to vote and for bragging rights you can put your exact picks in the comments of this post. ... read more ...
 
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Efty Launches For-Sale Landing Page Theme Gallery - Leading domain name management and investment platform Efty announced today that it has launched a first-of-its-kind service, offering a For-Sale landing page theme gallery for domain owners using the software. The theme gallery, which launched earlier today with five designs, allows domain name investors to host a selection of top-notch For-Sale landing pages that have been fashioned for optimal visitor-to-lead conversion and to sell their domain names through direct navigation without paying a ... read more ...
 
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Namejet.com Has Record Breaking Month Reporting Almost $3 Million In Sales - Namejet.com reported its sales for December 2015, selling 383 sales at $2k and above for a total of $2,964,861, nearly double their previous record breaking month of November, 2015. Namejet only reports on sales of $2,000 or more. 23 of the top 40 domain names were for three letter .com (LLL.com) domains, of the remaining 17 domains in the top 40, 5 were two letter .net domains (LL.net) and 4 more were four number domains .com domains (NNNN.com) With the RightoftheDot.com auction from Namescon being ... read more ...
Mon 4th January 2016
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1st Reverse Domain Hijacking Finding of The Year & Bretzel Ditsch GmbH Of Germany is Guilty - Bretzel Ditsch GmbH from Mainz, Germany, represented by Horak Attorneys, Germany was found guilty of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking on the domain name Ditsch.com which was registered on June 28, 1998. To the best of our knowledge this is the first RDNH finding of 2016 (although the decision was entered on December 24th but just published by WIPO today) At some point the Bretzel Ditsch was offered the domain name for EUR 10,000 but they declined and started this UDRP. The original decision was written ... read more ...
 
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Reserve Dropped On 8 Domains In The ROTD Auction: All Have Bids, Which Are Now The High Bid - We have more news on the RightoftheDot.com auction being held a week from today at Namescon at 2PM PST. An owner of 8 domain names in the auction, all of which already have bids in pre-bidding at Namejet.com has removed the reserve price. By removing the reserve prices, the domains are being offered at NO Reserve. Since all of the domain name have bids and the reserves have removed, the high bids are now the winning bids. Here are the domain names which are all open for pre-bidding on NameJet.com certifiedplanners.com metrocard.com doctorlove.com greatadventure.com nannycams.com funtimes.com SouthAmerica.com toytrucks.com Of ... read more ...
Sun 3rd January 2016
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We Are Sorry To Report That Domain Investor Anthony J. McDermott Passed Away - Unfortunately the new year has started out with some very bad news as we learned that Anthony McDermott, who was a domain investor and one of  the early leaders in the legal internet vertical passed away on December 23rd, 2015 Anthony was the founder and president of SWI Digital, Inc., “a Full Service Multimedia and Lead Generation Company primarily focused in the legal space. At the time I knew Anthony he was based on Ft. Lauderdale and had a large office with a lot of employees signing up lawyers ... read more ...
Sat 2nd January 2016
Written by The Domains in EN and tagged
Quick Poll: How Many .Com's Will Be Registered By 1/1/17? - So the final count for the number of registered domain names for January 1, 2016 is 123,963,640 according to Verisign. As of Dec. 31, 2014, the number of .Com registrations were 115.6 million names. So the number of .Com’s increased some 7 Million in 2015 or over 7%. The question is how many .Com will be registered by next year, 1/1/17? This year we all know we had a short period of time where millions of .Com’s that were previously unregistered got registered by people in China. 2015 was a very ... read more ...
Fri 1st January 2016
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Google Finally Acquires Alphabetinc.com - Google finally acquired a domain name you thought it would have gotten well before its run on buying  Alphabet domains, Alphabetinc.com. As we have been reporting Google since launching abc.xyz as the website for its holding company Alphabet, Inc has been acquiring all letter of the Alphabet they could get and now owns 20 of the possible 26 (actually 25 domains since a.com is reserved by IANA/ICANN). As we known Alphabet.com is owned by BMW which still has shown no indication it is willing to sell ... read more ...
Thu 31st December 2015
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Happy New Year - Everyone here at TheDomains.com would like to wish you a Happy and healthy new year. Things will be changing around here, after 8 years Michael will be able to do something other than be on a computer 24/7. The first post on TheDomains was here on December 4, 2007. Since that first post there have been over 9,100 posts, over 93,000 comments and close to 9 million views. I want to thank Michael for everything he has done for the industry and for the opportunity to work with him for 2 years here on ... read more ...
Wed 30th December 2015
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15 Year Old Domain StinkySocks.com Saved In UDRP - The Trimount Company, Inc DBA StinkySocks Hockey (“Complainant”), of Massachusetts, just lost its attempt to grab the domain name stinkysocks.com in a UDRP rather than just pay the domain holder the $6,500 he was asking for the domain. The domain was registered on February 2, 2000. The Complainant trademark was registered over 15 years later on September 22, 2015 and at that the trademark was for the term “STINKYSOCKS HOCKEY” Ho Hyun Nahm, Esq. was the sole Panelist who rules in favor of ... read more ...
 
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Owner of MakeAmericaGreatAgain.com Wants "$2 Million At Least" - Back in August we wrote about the domain name MakeAmericaGreatAgain.com which is has become Donald Trump’s famous tag line of the his 2016 Presidential run. At the time we noted that although “The Donald filed a trademark on the term back in November 2012, the trademark was filed for opposition in 2013 and not finally granted until July, 14th 2015. The domain name MakeAmericaGreatAgain.com was first registered in 2009 under the domain name registrar 1and1.com, however the domain name MakeAmericaGreatAgain.com ... read more ...
Mon 28th December 2015
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Tuscany.com; Erotica.com; Penis.com Added At No Reserve To ROTD/Namescon Auction - Some amazing domain names were added to the RightoftheDot.com domain auction being held at Namescon late last week all at NO Reserve by CheapDomains.com, including one that has an Estibot value of over $5 Million Dollars. That domain name is Penis.com, one of the premier “adult” domains but which is one of those adult words you can say on broadcast television. Penis.com of course can be used as a medical site. Let’s remember that of the top-selling domain names of all time several are adult ... read more ...
Sun 27th December 2015
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Google Buys More "Letter" .Com's: Now owns 19 of Them; Maybe usually 6 Left - Google bought several more “letter”.com’s yesterday picking up abcdefghijkl.com abcdefghijklm.com abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxy.com All registered in 2004. Since turning the domain world on its head buying abc.xyz Google now owns: ABCDEFGHI.COM ABCDEFGHIJ.COM ABCDEFGHIJK.COM ABCDEFGHIJKL.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLM.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMN.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQR.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTU.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUV.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWX.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXY.COM ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ.COM Google ... read more ...
Thu 24th December 2015
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The ROTD Domain Auction At Namescon Tops $5.5 Million In Bids - The RightoftheDot.com domain name auction being held live/online on January 11, 2016 has now topped $5.5 Million in Pre-bidding on Namejet.com In all there are 325 domain names with at least one bid and about 250 of those have more than one bid. About 125 domain names will be in the live auction with the rest staying opened for bidding on Namejet.com until January 21st. There are 12 domain names with a high bid in the 6 figures or higher. 43 domain names have a bid in the five figures or higher. Moreover ... read more ...
 
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Dot Space reaches a 100,000 Registration Mark - Dot Space becomes the next Radix extension to reach the 100,000 registration milestone. Consistently in the Top 10 fastest growing gTLDs in registration and usage (namestat.org) Radix made note of several sales that have taken place in the $3,000 to $10,000 annual price range. Names include: city.space, event.space, black.space, from.space, market.space, gay.space, dna.space, media.space, digital,space, pop.space, insure.space, beauty.space, ocean.space, and one.space. Some great live websites include: http://foyr.space/http://gototech.space/http://www.wxi.space/http://www.deadsea.space/http://www.gyana.space/https://our.clean.space/ The ... read more ...
Tue 22nd December 2015
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Sedo Weekly Transactions Total $1.4 million led by v5.com - Over the past week, 580 transactions took place on Sedo’s marketplace and via SedoMLS, totaling $1.4m. 60% of total sales were the result of Buy Now listings. Sedo will no longer be reporting sales under 2,000 which I am sure will disappoint some. Here was the quote:  Please note inclusive of this report and going forward the minimum price displayed will be 2,000 $/€/£.   Highlights of public sales are: Top .com: v5.com at 130,000 USD Top ccTLD: fahrradtasche.de at 9,500 EUR Top “other” ... read more ...
Mon 21st December 2015
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Google Adds abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx.com to the Collection Of Alphabet Domains - Google has just added another “Alphabet” domain name to its collection buying the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwx.com. The domain name was most recently  owned by the The Giardino Law Firm, Inc of San Antonio and by a domainer in Tennessee before that. The domain has an original creation date of 2003. The domain name is another Google acquisition since acquiring abc.xyz for its Corporate parent Alphabet. Google acquired the domain name abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz.com as part of its Alphabet ... read more ...
Sun 20th December 2015
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Did a Other Shoe Just Drop? Chinese are Buying English Word Domains Too - Raymond published a post today on TheDomains.com,  on the sales report from the first ever live domain auction at the Chinese Domain Festival and China Digital Asset Investment Summit which generated some 150 million RMB in sales. The official exchange rate is 1 RMB is equal to $.15 USD so the live auction generated $22.5 Million in sales. For me the biggest news out of the auction is that the Chinese appear now to be buying English words, not just letters, numbers and Chinese words. Here are a ... read more ...
 
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Chinese Live Auction Nets over 150 Million RMB ($23.1 mil) - The first ever Chinese Domain Festival and China Digital Asset Investment Summit live auction concluded with 150 million RMB in sales. The full list is below with all amounts in Chinese RMB, 1 RMB = .1542 USD. Auction No. | Domain Name | Price in RMB 1 | 1212.com | 1,800,000 2 | zhu.com | 2,200,000 3 | 1117.com | 850,000 4 | qc.cn | 1,500,000 5 | wrj.com | 610,000 6 | beijing.cc | 260,000 7 | cheyou.com.cn, chongwu.com.cn, piaowu.com.cn | 160,000 8 | 828.com | 4,400,000 9 | weitou.com | 500,000 10 ... read more ...