Domain Name Parking Companies Gear Up for Fall - Domain parking companies tuning up services in time for fall traffic increase. It’s the doldrums of summer and that historically means a drop in internet traffic and domain parking revenue. My revenue is holding strong this summer, in part because the parking companies are doing a good job adding new features and optimization techniques in time for the fall. Here’s an update on the parking services I use: Parked – Parked continues to impress. I’ll publish ... read more ...

SwapNames.com Facilitates Domain Name Trades - New service from creator of DNHour lets domain owners trade domains. Domainer Koay Al Vin has been a busy guy the past couple months. First, he launched “Digg for domainers“, which seems to be getting some traction. Now he has a new idea, SwapNames.com, which just launched in beta. SwapNames.com facilitates trading amongst domain name owners. If you spend any time in domain name forums, you will frequently see people offering domains for trade. Trading is ... read more ...

Take Domain Name Appraisals with a Grain of Salt - Domain name owners should not get overly excited — or dejected — about an appraisal of their domain names. How much is that domain name worth? It’s a tough question, and one that domain name appraisal companies and your domainer peers would like to help you answer. I have a secret: in the late 90s I was a domain appraiser. People submitted domains to me and I wrote up evaluations of their value based on a number of factors. But I realized over time that appraising ... read more ...

Valuable Names Closes Down, Offers Domain Name Lists - ValuableNames.com shuts down membership site but offers database of valuable domain data. In May 2006 I reviewed ValuableNames.com, an exclusive membership service for finding valuable domain names. ValuableNames has a large database of domain names with Overture scores and other search data, along with information about how the domains are currently being used. For example, you might find a domain with an Ovt+Ext of 150, but the domain is currently not resolving. ... read more ...

Google Desktop Gadget Updates Domain Parking Stats - DomainersEdge releases new Google Gadget for domain parking. Are you one of those domainers who constantly checks your domain parking stats? If you use multiple parking programs, that can mean logging into several web sites throughout the day. Here’s a solution. DomainersEdge just released a new Google Gadget for Google Desktop. Once installed, Stat Gadget grabs your parking stats from Sedo, DomainSponsor, and TrafficClub. You can set it to show daily or month-to-date ... read more ...

iREIT Changes Management - Domain name company shuffles management ranks. Domain name acquisition and development company iREIT (Internet REIT) has made changes at the top. Craig Snyder, whom the company hired from Marchex last year, was promoted to CEO about a month ago, according to the company’s web site. Prior to that he was President COO. Former CEO and co-founder Bob Martin moved into another position, but recently left the company. Adam Dicker, former Executive VP with iREIT, ... read more ...

Tips for Domain Landing Pages – from NameMedia Research - Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick provides an update on domain name parking. NameMedia, the parent company of Active Audience and GoldKey, announced the results of some of their extensive landing page split-testing at the June TRAFFIC New York. These tests were performed on their own domains – presumably domains for sale at BuyDomains.com. Some of their findings: Changing 6,000 domains from a generic “shopping” theme to themes that are relevant to the category of ... read more ...

Digg for Domain Industry Launches in Beta - News aggregation site for the domain industry launches. When Domain Name Wire started over a two years ago, there were few resources for domain name news. You could get domain sales data and feature stories at DNJournal and news tidbits at the forums, but there wasn’t much else. Since that time a number of domain news resources have opened, including popular blogs such as Frank Schilling’s Seven Mile. How do you keep track of all of the news without checking ... read more ...

SedoPro Event Wrapup - Last week’s SedoPro Partner Forum in New York was a great success. Sedo knows how to treat its customers well. Last week, the domain name aftermarket and parking company treated over 50 of its SedoPro customers to a vacation at the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. Attendees paid only $149 per night, a fraction of the $500 room rate, and were treated to one heck of a time. Those invited included SedoPro customers (Sedo’s professional domain name ... read more ...

TRAFFIC: Beyond Pay-Per-Click - Representatives of several domain name companies discuss how to make more money from domain names. A panel of domain industry experts discussed domain revenue beyond pay-per-click this morning at the TRAFFIC conference in New York. Panelists included Ofer Ronen, CEO of Sendori, Jonathan Boswell, CEO of LeaseThis.com, Anthony Pepper of Startup Capital, Sahar Sarid of Recall Media Group, Rick Latona, CEO of Offshoring.com, and Joe Alagna, GM of CentralNic. The general ... read more ...

Sedo Buys GreatDomains, Adding New Features - Sedo has purchased GreatDomains; will use it as premium domain auction marketplace. Sedo announced today that it has purchased GreatDomains from VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN). At today’s SedoPro Partner Forum, Sedo detailed its plans for GreatDomains. It will turn it into a premium .com auction site. Each month there will be a 7 days premium domain auction. The first auction will be July 19. You can apply to list domains in the first auction from within your Sedo ... read more ...

SedoPro Partner Forum Kicks Off in New York - More than 50 of Sedo’s biggest customers join together for event at New York resort. More than 50 customers of domain aftermarket and domain name parking company Sedo joined together in New York yesterday afternoon to kick of the second annual SedoPro Partner Forum. The group met at the Grand Hyatt in New York City, where it boarded three party buses for the 2 hour trip to the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz, New York. The buses were stocked with cold beer ... read more ...

NameDrive Opens Park & Sell to All Members - Domain name parking service continues to innovate; adds buying and selling options. NameDrive has always been more than a domain parking service. It offers a number of ways for domain owners to monetize, develop, and sell their domains. When the service launched it offered “Park Sell”, which allowed domainers to park domains and then receive offers to purchase the domains for up to 96x monthly revenue. But the service wasn’t streamlined and there were limited ... read more ...

An Example of Pay-Per-Click Arbitrage Trickery - Google cracks down on made-for-adsense sites, but will this extend to domain parking pages? If we don’t police ourselves… The internet marketing community was abuzz this past month as Google sent notices to some of its Adsense publishers informing them that their accounts were being terminated. The crackdown was against publishers with so-called “Made for Adsense” networks. These sites include very little content — much of it “scraped” — and the ... read more ...

Two Domain Name Companies Receive Investments - .Travel registry, Communicate.com get equity infusions. Is .travel back? A couple weeks ago Domain Name Wire reported that theGlobe.com, parent company of the .travel registry, was running out of money. On May 29 Dancing Bear Investments, Inc. took out a convertible note with the company. It’s only $250,000 but gives the option to purchase up to $2,750,000 before November 25. Another domain company, Communicate.com, also received an investment. The company announced ... read more ...

Variable Pricing Hits Yahoo Search Partners - Domain name parking programs using Yahoo feeds will see revenue linked to quality. Much like Google does with variable pricing for its Adsense publishers, Yahoo is now paying a variable price per click on content site clicks. Yahoo will judge the value of a click on your site and pay you accordingly for that click. This change is being pushed out to domain parking services that use Yahoo’s feed as well. In a message to its customers today, Parked CTO Donny Simonton ... read more ...

Google Flip-flops, Auction Ads Take off - Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick updates us on domain name parking. May was a very busy month for domain monetization. Google announced early in the month that that they would no longer monetize adult domains as of June 1st. Some of the major Google-based parking companies signed-up for secondary feeds to monetize these domains. Sedo, for example, announced in May that they have signed-up with such a partner. Toward the end of the month Google reversed its decision ... read more ...

Registration Opens for 2007 Domain Roundtable - Name Intelligence event returns to Seattle in August. Registration for Name Intelligence’s 2007 Domain Roundtable is now open. This year’s conference will again take place in Seattle but this year will be in Summer (August 13-15). Early registration is $1495. The first 100 people to register at DomainRoundtable.com will receive an eNom reseller account with a $100 credit. Registrants who complete a survey save an additional $50 and there are also discounts ... read more ...

Auction.com, How.com Among Domains during TRAFFIC NYC Auction - Moniker just released an initial list of domains to be auction in June at the TRAFFIC auction in NYC. Auction.com, HorseRacing.com, and Slots.com are the three domains with the highest reserves, each slotted at over $5M. Other high-profile domains include: Base.com Scotland.com Student.com Stuff.com Cardiology.com Checkup.com Elections.com Ethanol.com Disease.com Elections.com ETHANOL.COM How.com Planet.com Secondmortgage.com Speak.com 06.com Avocados.com Ballot.com Bonuses.com Bulk.com Charters.com Coed.com Fees.com FinancialAnalyst.com 401kPlans.com Necklace.com Pen.com Text.com Over ... read more ...

Survey: NamePros Top Domain Name Forum - NamePros takes over top spot for domain forums. In a major reversal to last year’s survey, NamePros has come out on top in the 2007 Domain Name Wire survey for best domain name forum. NamePros received 55% of the vote compared to only 12% last year. DNForum, on the other hand, dropped from 43% to 35%. NamePros’ popularity shows in its user statistics. As I write there are 1,078 people discussing domain names at NamePros in thousands of threads. DNForum is ... read more ...

Parked Domain Name Parking Update - Parked service offers good landing pages, allows you to send traffic from Adwords, Yahoo. It’s been one year since I interviewed Donny Simonton of Parked.com about the then-new parking service. Donny told me about a number of ways Parked would be different from other parking services. So far the company is keeping its promises. One of the best things about Parked is its payout schedule. The company pays out twice monthly and before it even receives payment from ... read more ...

Will Marchex Dump Yahoo for Google? - Marchex hints that it is considering other domain monetization partners. Domain name company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX) generated $15.1M in revenue from its proprietary web sites last quarter. Much of that was generated from Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) advertising links. But in the company’s quarterly conference call it hinted that it may look to other advertising partners in the future. Marchex chairman and CEO Russell Horowitz: Yahoo! is our primary partner. That existing ... read more ...

The Backlash opposite Domain Parking - Leonard Holmes of ParkQuick updates us on the latest in domain name parking. April saw signs all around that Yahoo and Google are pressuring parking services to delete the accounts of poorly performing domain owners. Parked took the lead deleting suspected click-fraud accounts some time back, and their numbers seem to be improving for accounts remaining there (so much so that we are now recommending them highly).  The general trend in PPC income seems lower for ... read more ...