Dotster gears adult for subsequent happy hour - Dotster is offering domain names for $1 this Thursday. Domain Registrar Dotster is having another “Domain Name Happy Hour” this Thursday at 4PM EST. The first 1,000 visitors to Dotsters web site will receive a coupon for a $1 domain. Eligible domains are .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info. Also this Thursday Dotster will also start offering 5 free domains with the purchase of any web hosting package. To receive your five free domains enter coupon code 5ForFree ... read more ...

Conversation with Dot VN - Dot VN, registration provider of Viatnamese .vn domain names, is going public. I met Gary Thompson, Director at Dot VN, at Domain Roundtable a couple weeks ago in Seattle. Because relatively few are familiar with the company, I thought it worthwhile to get the 411 from Thompson. DNW: .Vn is not as well known as some other ccTLDs. Please tell us a bit about the history of .Vn and your company. Dot VN, Inc. is an International Corporation, with offices located in ... read more ...

Forbes essay about GoDaddy - Forbes published an article about GoDaddy and the prospects of domain registrars. The article is a good summary and points out that registrars make very little money on domain registrations. The article focuses on another revenue source — revenue from parked domains. In this case it’s domains registered at GoDaddy that the owners aren’t doing anything with. These domains resolve to GoDaddy parking pages fed by Google ads. The article quotes Dotster chairman ... read more ...

Dotster Happy Hour this Wednesday - Dotster is offering two domains for $2 this Wednesday. The next Dotster happy hour will be this Wednesday starting at 4PM Easter/3 PM Central. The offer will be buy one .com, .net., .org, .us or .biz for $2 and get a .info for free. That’s one regular domain and one .info for $2 total. Dotster is also offering domain registration for $.99 with the purchase of any non-domain item of $6.99 or more. This is similar to the offer GoDaddy’ helped popularize (domains ... read more ...

GoDaddy skeleton IPO - As I speculated last December, domain registrar GoDaddy appears to be gearing up for an initial public offering. News reports today, including this one at MarketWatch, suggest that GoDaddy could be valued at a quarter billion dollars when it hits the markets. Analysts estimate that GoDaddy’s revenue jumped from under $1M in 2000 to over $75M in 2004 — that’s quite a growth rate! It will be interesting to see how the company changes during this process. GoDaddy ... read more ...

1.3M .eu domains purebred (and counting) - As of Sunday evening almost 1.3M .eu domain names have been registered. The pace of registrations is slowing dramatically with fewer than 300,000 registered over the past 48 hours. Many of the initial 1,000,000 registrations were “pre-orders” from drop catching services like Pool. It’s safe to say that most of the good domains are now locked up. It will be interesting to watch for the first action on the domain aftermarkets for .eu domains. I wouldn’t be ... read more ...

Registrar blunder could have led to 1000s of hijacked domain names - An error by domain registrar DiscountDomainRegistry.com could have led to compromised financial data and 1000s of domain name hijackings. A bug on the registrar’s web site exposed financial and personal information of 1000s of customers. Depending on the information exposed, it’s possible that someone could have logged into user accounts and stolen valuable domain names. It’s hard enough doing your part as a domain name owner to keep your domain names safe. ... read more ...

Over 1M .eu domains registered - People registered over 1,000,000 .eu domain names during the first day of open registration. The EURid web site shows 1,089,012 active domain names as of this writing. 702,684 domains were registered within the first 4 hours. The first five domain names registered this morning were dekoration.eu, buchung.eu, tankstellen.eu, exhibitionist.eu, and eurorechner.eu. What countries are registering the most domains? Germany is in first place with 286,062. This isn’t ... read more ...

Network Solutions strike by DOS, ISP problems - Domain name registrar Network Solutions has faced two web site outages in the past week. The first outage, about a week ago, was the result of a denial of service attack. The second outage, which occurred Tuesday morning, was the result of an internet outage at Savvis. Domain names registered at various registrars function fine when the main registrar’s web site goes down, but users are unable to make changes to their domains (e.g. nameservers, Whois). You can ... read more ...

New Dotster Happy Hour - Dotster is having another happy hour– this time for hosting. Dotster is having another happy hour this Wednesday at 4PM EST. Instead of selling cheap domains, this happy hour will offer the first 1,000 people a coupon for $1 per month webhosting. The special rate will be good for one year on the package that is usually $8.95/month, so you’ll save almost $100. Most people won’t be as attracted to this offer as the special domain rates, but this seems like a ... read more ...

RegisterFly $4 domain banking code - Domain Registrar RegisterFly is offering $4 domain transfers and other discounts. RegisterFly says it became the 8th fastest growing registrar last week and is offering the transfer special to celebrate. You must enter coupon code “FLY6PROMO” to get the special rate. This rate is good for 24 hours. RegisterFly is also offering new .com registrations for $6.99. Use coupon code “COMSPECIAL” at checkout. Offer is good for 24 hours. .Info domains are only ... read more ...

Dotster $.50 domains Wednesday - Domain Name Wire has learned that Dotster’s second happy hour will offer domains for 50 cents. That’s even better than the last offer of $1. The first 1,000 people will receive a coupon for a $.50 .com, .net, or .org domain. This is different from last time when the discount was taken immediately at checkout and you could claim up to 5 domains at the special price (in 5 separate orders). The former process resulted in a server meltdown. I have conflicting messages ... read more ...

New Dotster happy hour Wednesday! - Dotster is holding another “domain happy hour” this Wednesday. [UPDATE: See this new post. I have learned that domains will cost only $.50, but there are limits. There is also confusion about the time.Read more.] Details of the promotion are not yet available, but last time Dotster held a happy hour it sold domains for $1 each. Unfortunately the first happy hour jammed Dotster’s servers and made it almost impossible to register domains. At the conclusion ... read more ...

Dotster Article – quotes Domain Name Wire - An article in Sunday’s The Columbian discusses Dotster and its mission to become a top 5 registrar. The article, which includes quotes from yours truly, discusses Dotster’s recent domain happy hour and how the company hopes to use marketing techniques like this to grow its market share. Dotster was one of the original discount registars when it launched in 2000. I recall reading about the company on a message board in early 2000. People were going nuts discussing ... read more ...

Buy.com giving divided giveaway GoDaddy domains - Buy.com is offering a free domain name with every purchase. Would you like a free domain name with your Harry Potter DVD? Buy.com is offering free domain names from GoDaddy with just about any purchase. Whether it be a $9.99 CD or a $2,000 TV, all you have to do is check a box that says: “FREE Go Daddy Domain! Check here and click “Buy Now” Receive a free domain from GoDaddy.com worth up to $8.95 with the purchase of this item from Buy.com. If you choose ... read more ...

$1 Domains during Dotster! - Dotster is hosting a “domain name happy hour” at 4PM EST today. During this happy hour domains will only cost $1 each. But it is unclear what the limits are for this special offer. Visit Dotster at 4PM EST today to get in on the action! Update 4:29PM EST: Dotster is running slow. My guess is a lot of people are pinging it and some people probably created scripts to bulk register. Note that there is a limit of 1 $1 domain per order and 5 orders per person. Update ... read more ...

GoDaddy ad authorized for Super Bowl - GoDaddy’s 14th ad submission has been accepted by ABC. GoDaddy has already received more attention for its Super Bowl ad struggle this year than it will likely get from running the actual commercial, but alas ABC has accepted the latest GoDaddy ad submission. GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons sent out an email today with the following note: “Why January eNews in February? We were waiting for some exciting news and wanted you to be the first to know: We’re thrilled to ... read more ...

Survey: GoDaddy tip registrar, eNom tops for large players - GoDaddy cleaned up in the 2006 Domain Name Wire Survey, but eNom was most popular among the biggest domain name owners. [Editors note: this is the second in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] GoDaddy is the world’s biggest domain name registrar- and for good reason. It initially attracted customers to its low prices but offers great additional services and good account security ... read more ...

Survey: Price, Security tip considerations when selecting registrar - Domain Name Wire’s survey of 582 domain name owners reveals that price and security are the top criteria for choosing a domain registrar. [Editors note: this is the first in a series of posts with results from the 2006 Domain Name Wire survey. The complete results of the survey will be posted soon.] Domain registrars are at the center of the domain name community. Without them domains cannot be registered, transferred, and hosted. So what do domainers care about ... read more ...

Business 2.0: GoDaddy wins Smartest Ad Campaign - Domain registrar GoDaddy made Business 2.0’s 2006 Smart List. The list is in the January/February issue of Business 2.0. The magazine selected GoDaddy as the winner of the “Smartest Ad Campaign”: “Cynics scoffed when the then-unknown Web hosting provider agreed to pay $4.8 million to air a 30-second spot twice during the Super Bowl. GoDaddy’s ad, a spoof of Janet Jackson’s “wadrobe malfunction,” ran during the first quarter, but Fox pulled it before ... read more ...

Brandweek to GoDaddy: Enough is Enough - Branding publication Brandweek has had enough of GoDaddy’s silly Super Bowl advertising antics. GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons knows how to play the media. He’s received millions of dollars worth of free publicity for his commercials. Not because they’re good commercials, but because they’re just edgy enough to get banned from the Super Bowl. He did it last year and is repeating the magic again this year. He claims that his advertising submissions for this month’s ... read more ...