Sedo Adds Traffic Graphics to Domain Auctions - Sedo has added graphics next to auction domains to indicate levels of traffic. The new graphics show a relative level of traffic for each domain by showing one to three bars in a column graph. A mouseover of the graphic shows the actual traffic level as calculated by Sedo. In the example above, ChessShop.eu is not parked at Sedo, so there’s no traffic graphic. UKSprite.com received over 6,000 visitors in the past thirty days, so it has three bars. Rootube.com ... read more ...

The Death of Overture - Yahoo’s new search marketing platform will eliminate Overture as a domainer’s tool. “Overture” is a well-known term to domainers. Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) purchased Overture, a pay-per-click search marketing company, and renamed it Yahoo! Search Marketing. But the moniker “overture” has stayed in the domainer lingo. More specifically, the domain industry refers to the “Overture Score” of a domain as the number of times the domain was searched for on ... read more ...

December Domain Name Parking Results - My domain name parking results continued to impress, including a TrafficClub RPM over $100. I’m not sure if everyone is experiencing an increase in revenue from parked domain names, but my results steadily improved during 2006. In December my revenue per 1,000 views (RPM) with TrafficClub was $112.28, second only to November. TrafficClub is a domain name parking aggregation service that optimizes your domains across a number of domain parking services including ... read more ...

News from a Pay-Per-Click Parking Services - As Andrew previously reported, The Boston building housing the U.S. operations of Sedo had an electrical fire on December 8th. A notice on Sedo’s web site stated that all Sedo employees escaped without serious injury. Sedo is headquartered in Germany, with servers located in several different locations. The fire did not affect any of Sedo’s web operations. A Boston television station reported that more than 50 people were injured in the fire. The 17-story building ... read more ...

Print Magazine to Serve Growing Domain Name Industry - “Domainer’s Magazine” to launch in January 2007. It’s long overdue, but the domain name industry is finally getting a print magazine. The magazine, “Domainer’s Magazine”, will launch next month. Other niche industries, such as affiliate marketing, have good publications like “Revenue Magazine” and it was only a matter of time before a publication was developed for the growing domain name industry. Domain Name Wire is familiar with some of the ... read more ...

Details Released for New York City T.R.A.F.F.I.C. Domain Name Conference - The World Association of Domain Name Developers, Inc. has released details about its upcoming New York City show. This will be the first TRAFFIC domain name conference held in New York. Previous events have been held in Florida, Las Vegas, and Silicon Valley. Being in New York, one of the focuses of this show will be advertising firms. The show will be held June 19th – 22nd, 2007 at the New York Grand Hyatt Hotel. The lineup has not been finalized yet, but this ... read more ...

Sedo’s Offices Struck by Fire - All Sedo employees are safe, but others in the building injured. The building housing the U.S. operations of Sedo, the domain name aftermarket and parking company headquartered in Germany, had an intense electrical fire last Friday in Boston. According to a notice on Sedo’s web site, all Sedo employees escaped without serious injury. The Boston employees are working remotely so customer support times may be delayed. Sedo’s Cologne office is handling much of ... read more ...

RevenueDirect Offers $5,000 Domain Parking Bonus - Promotion gives 50 cent bonus per domain parked with the service. RevenueDirect, a domain name parking service provided by Dotster, is offering a bonus of 50 cents per domain name parked with the service, up to $5,000. The deadline to enter domains into the system and get the bonus is tonight at midnight PST. In order to be eligible for the bonus, the domain must be parked with RevenueDirect for 60 days. The offer is only valid for new domains added to the system, ... read more ...

Domain Capital recapitalizes SanDiego.com - Domain Capital has refinanced the SanDiego.com domain name, providing $1M of working capital to the site. Domain name financing company Domain Capital has refinanced SanDiego.com with a transaction value of over $1M. Based on the deal’s press release, it appears that this is a recapitalization. A recapitalization basically provides working capital to the asset owner based on the value of the underlying asset. In this case, SanDiego.com, which was registered back ... read more ...

E-Commerce Times Covers Afternic, Sedo - Four major issues are addressed below: 1. Is Escrow.com a competitor to Sedo? 2. How do we define price listing caps? 3. Traffic monetization issues at Afternic 4. The challenges facing Afternic’s new owners Is Escrow.com a competitor to Afternic and Sedo? I would argue yes, on the basis of observing how large portfolio owners frequently sidestep the 10% fees of those two marketplaces by taking transactions through Escrow.com. This contributes to three quarters of domain sales ... read more ...

DOMAINfest Global – by Domainers or by DomainSponsor? - There’s a new domain conference scheduled for early February in Los Angeles. DOMAINfest Global is using the slogan “The conference for domainers. By domainers.” The cost is $395 before January 1, $795 after January 1. DomainSponsor members may receive a rebate up to 100% of the cost if your account earns at least $1,000 during the period from December 1, 2006 to January 31 2007. So is the conference really “by domainers” or is it “by DomainSponsor“? ... read more ...

TrafficClub Domain Parking RPM tops $100 - TrafficClub, the domain parking aggregation service from Moniker, delivered an RPM over $100 in November. My results from TrafficClub in November were astonishing — an RPM (revenue per thousand views) of $123.72! This is by far the highest RPM I’ve ever earned. TrafficClub automatically optimizines your domain names across a number of domain parking services, including DomainSponsor, Skenzo, and Google Adsense for Domains. DomainSponsor optimized delivered an ... read more ...

Do we need Title Insurance for Domain Names? - Title insurance would provide peace of mind when making a large domain purchase. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I read an article in Forbes (November 13, page 148) about real estate title insurance. The article was about how real estate title insurance is a joke and overpriced. But as I read in the article how titles are investigated, in dawned on me that a title check service for domain names would be helpful. Title checks and title insurance would prevent you from ... read more ...

Marchex tests domain parking service, full of heading typos - Domain company Marchex is testing a domain parking service for non-Marchex owned domains and it appears they are monetizing trademark typos and adult names. Domain company Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), famous for buying a $160M domain portfolio, is beta testing a domain parking program for non-Marchex domains. But the company isn’t doing a good job keeping trademark typos and adult names out of its beta, writes David Kesmodel. (David is an ex-WSJ.com writer who also ... read more ...

Sedo releases .mobi domain parking - Domain aftermarket and parking company Sedo has released new domain parking templates for mobile phones. The new templates allow .mobi domain owners to monetize traffic. .Mobi domains are for use on mobile devices and are attracting significant attention. At October’s TRAFFIC domain auction Flowers.mobi sold for $200,000 and Fun.mobi for $100,000, and additional sales are being announced daily. Earlier this week Yahoo announced it is creating a new ad program ... read more ...

Defining Direct Navigation, Marchex - What exactly qualifies as “direct navigation” and does it result in higher conversions than search? The domain industry typically defines direct navigation as the act of typing a common name into your web browser, such as baseball.com, when you are looking for information about baseball. This is an alternative to search, such as typing “baseball” into the Google search box. There is frequent debate about the value of traffic that comes from direct navigation ... read more ...

Pay-per-click entrance to .mobi - Yahoo moves into mobile advertising, leading the way for .mobi PPC advertising. Domain speculators usually look at potential pay-per-click advertising revenue as the starting point of valuing a domain name. But the recent launch of .mobi domains posed a quandary: how do I value a domain when there’s no standard for mobile advertising? Yahoo! may have the answer. The company announced that it has a new platform for mobile advertising. It is unclear if it will ... read more ...

TrafficClub tops $100 RPM - My RPM at TrafficClub topped $100 for October. Setting a personal best, my earnings from Moniker’s TrafficClub exceeded $100 RPM (revenue per thousand views) last month. $100.05 to be exact. This is better than 35% more than any of my previous months’ earnings! The makeup of my domain portfolio at TrafficClub changed a little as I moved out a couple underperforming domains, but most of the increase was from better performance by DomainSponsor. Here’s the ... read more ...

News from a Parking Services - October saw a number of changes at the PPC parking services, not all for the better. TrafficZ upgraded its service from version 4.0 to 4.1 on October 22 – just before the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in Hollywood, Florida. They added the ability to control keywords and menus separately. The “Keywords” item will control the search suggestion seedings, and the “Menu” item will control the menu section of your template (if it exists on that template). TrafficZ ... read more ...

DNForum hacked - DNForum, the largest internet forum about domain names, has been hacked. The hack job appears to be the work of the same group or individual that hacked SnapNames in January 2006. If you typed DNForum.com into your browser earlier this morning you saw a screen with an Iranian flag and a reference to DNJournal2005@yahoo.com (see screenshot below). The SnapNames hack incident had a similar screen including the same e-mail address. Hack attempts are unfortunately nothing ... read more ...

Pay-per-click and domain parking - A session today at the TRAFFIC conference in Florida explores PPC and if domainers can count on this revenue source in the years to come. Domain investors are heavily dependent on pay-per-click advertising revenue, so they often walk around with a feeling of insecurity. They wonder if that critical revenue stream might disappear – or decline — if advertisers decided they didn’t want their paid-search ads, primarily placed through Web giants Google and Yahoo, ... read more ...

RevenueDirect launches upgrade - Domain parking company RevenueDirect has launched a series of upgrades. RevenueDirect is Dotster’s parking solution and is one of the lesser-known domain monetization companies. The company just announced a number of upgrades to its system: -Advanced optimization – specify keywords and let the system optimize based on user behavior -Reporting – highly customizable, or set up reports to be emailed to you at a certain interval -Domain management – track your ... read more ...