New York Times essay on Oversee.net - The New York Times has an article about Oversee.net, parent company of domain parking company DomainSponsor. David Kesmodel brought this to my attention on his blog. The New York Times just ran an article about Oversee.net. Oversee is the parent company of domain parking company DomainSponsor. The company’s revenue now eclipses $100M per year. On a related note, DomainSponsor is rolling out new features at this week’s TRAFFIC conference. The company says that ... read more ...

Submit your domains for Afternic Themed Promotions - Afternic is now accepting domain submissions for its November themed promotion. Beginning a couple months ago Afternic started offering “themed promotions” in which it offers domains within a certain category. Each domain in the promotion also has an asking price. This is nice as a buyer because you don’t have to make offers that are never responded to. (My pet peave is when I submit an offer on a domain with a minimum of, say, $500, and get a message back ... read more ...

Coverage of TRAFFIC Conference - David Kesmodel will be covering the TRAFFIC conference for Domain Name Wire next week. The buzz about next week’s TRAFFIC conference in Florida is growing. Moniker has announced a superb line up of domains for the auction and the lineup looks great. I’m happy to report that David Kesmodel will be reporting back to Domain Name Wire about the events at next week’s conference, allowing me to keep you up-to-date. (I’ll be at home taking care of my newborn). If ... read more ...

Sedo auctions entrance subsequent week - Sedo’s highly anticipated auction system will launch on October 23. Sedo’s auction system goes live next week and new details are available. As I suggested last week, the auction system will work similar to Afternic. When you receive a good offer on a domain you can trigger the reserve. This will send the domain into an auction that lasts up to 7 days. You can trigger the reserve up to 5 days after the initial offer is made. Auction domains will receive prominent ... read more ...

September Domain Parking Results - TrafficClub remains strong, SedoPro shines. As I do every month, I’m providing you with the results of my domain parking in September to help you determine where to park your domains. This month I’m adding stats from SedoPro and Dotzup to my normal TrafficClub stats. As a caveat, note that certain domains perform better with different parking services. This isn’t meant to be a scientific study of one parking service compared to another; merely a real world ... read more ...

DomainSponsor 2.5, Money from Viral Videos - DomainSponsor is getting ready to roll out some of their biggest changes to date. It seems that the new landing pages that some people are seeing are just the beginning. They are ready to launch a new DomainSponsor 2.5 platform that will include full DNS integration, referrer reports, and an improved user interface. Toward the end of the month they plan an even bigger roll-out which will include new landing pages and new customization features. Expansion internationally ... read more ...

OpenDomain.org - OpenDomain.org says it provides free use of domains, but the devil is in the details. I saw a press release today for an organization called OpenDomain.org. The press release talks about how it provides free use of domain names to organizations. While most organizations are those that provide open source software, the OpenDomain site says you can use the domains for multiple purposes AND keep any profit. The idea of profiting from use of these “open” domains ... read more ...

Sedo Buyer Certification - Sedo introduces buyer certification to cut down on deadbeat buyers. Sedo recently created a buyer certification program to make sure bidders follow through with their purchase offers. I received the following email today: Dear Andrew: In the continued effort to maintain a successful and secure marketplace, Sedo recently initiated a Buyer Certification program. Your account has automatically been updated to certified buyer status since you have engaged in successful ... read more ...

Afternic bulk upload tutorial - Here’s a quick guide to uploading all of your domains to Afternic. About a year ago I wrote about uploading your domains in bulk to Sedo and Afternic. Over the weekend I uploaded another 400 or so domains to Afternic and I documented the process. The results is a a quick tutorial on how to use Afternic’s upload system. The first thing you need to do is log in to your Afternic account. After you do this, go to www.afternic.com/pfupload.php. On this page you ... read more ...

Sedo parking changes putting some-more income in the pockets - Sedo’s better-late-than-never parking changes are benefiting domainers. It took Sedo a while to upgrade its domain parking program, but domain owners are starting to see the results. On August 17 I wrote about some of the changes to Sedo’s program, which includes new layouts, rotating graphics, and a new advertising feed. Also, Sedo has increased its payout percentage. Long rumored to be about 50%, Sedo was known for offering a lower RPM than other domain parking ... read more ...

TrafficClub RPM tops $70 - My results from Moniker’s TrafficClub hit another high in August. Last month I bragged about my RPM (revenue per thousand) on TrafficClub hitting $65.85 for July, a personal best. August saw another record with a $73.82 RPM. Part of this increase was due to an increase in traffic to one of my high RPM domains that pulls in almost $400 per thousand views. DomainSponsor continues to give good numbers. My optimized DomainSponsor hits brought in $111.10 per thousand ... read more ...

Cash(less) Parking - GoDaddy needs to retool its domain parking program. When GoDaddy released its domain parking program in June I scoffed at its terms. They want people to pay them to park domains with them? At the time they required you to pay $39.99 per month to get an 80% revenue share. The pricing has changed but still bucks the industry by requiring domainers to pay to park. The minimum fee is $3.99 per month and that affords you a 60% revenue share. For $9.99 per month you ... read more ...

Joomla! information, latest name monetization news - This month in the Name Monetizer newsletter we will take a look at Joomla! – a content management system for full-scale sites that have a lot of content. Joomla! (officially spelled sorta like “Yahoo!”) is free open source software. It runs on PHP and therefore is usually found on unix and linux hosting packages. Like other content management systems, the design of the site is completely separate from the content of the site. By applying a new “template” ... read more ...

Acquire or Die: a destiny of domain parking companies - Domain parking companies must start acquiring domain portfolios — or get out of the business. A little over two months ago Oversee.net, parent of domain parking goliath DomainSponsor, announced that it acquired a portfolio of 35,000 domains. The company said is was gearing up to acquire even more domain portfolios. Perhaps DomainSponsor has realized that it can’t stay in the business of servicing other peoples’ portfolios forever — it must own the domains ... read more ...

Monetize This: iMonetize enters domain parking optimization play - iMonetize.com has launched a number of domain services, including a domain parking optimization service that covers most major parking companies. If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you know I’m a fan of TrafficClub. TrafficClub is a domain parking service that automatically optimizes your domains across various parking services such as DomainSponsor, Adsense for Domains, and Skenzo. There’s a new player in the domain optimization space: iMonetize.com. ... read more ...

DomainFest Los Angeles - DomainSponsor is promoting a domain networking event in Los Angeles next month. Editors note: Please excuse the lack of posts over the past two days. I had a beautiful baby daughter Monday morning and am just now catching up… DomainSponsor is sponsering a domainer gathering in L.A. September 20-22. Unlike most domain conferences, this event will focus less on panels and sessions and more on networking and deals. Best of all, DomainSponsor (and potentially a couple ... read more ...

Commission Junction links - Affiliate network Commission Junction continues to make concessions on its javascript link plans. Affiliate links should be a key part of any domainer’s monetization strategy, so I sometimes write about the latest happenings in the affiliate marketing world. Several months ago Commission Junction (cj.com) announced it was doing away with standard affiliate links in favor of javascript links. Javascript links have some advantages over standard text links, especially ... read more ...

Sedo upgrades domain parking - Sedo has upgraded its ad feed, layouts, payouts, and statistics for domain parking. Sedo has one of the best known and oldest domain parking programs around, but Sedo has failed to keep up with the innovation of its competitors on this front. Just this week, however, Sedo announced sweeping changes to both its basic and SedoPro parking programs. For its regular parking program, Sedo has introduced a number of features previously only available in the Pro program. ... read more ...

Afternic redesign is a success - Afternic’s redesigned site, launched this week, is a major improvement. It’s been almost four months since I sat down with Afternic president Roger Collins at Domain Roundtable. During that meeting he discussed how Afternic was getting a complete face lift and was working on improving its backend database. This week the fruits of that labor became open to the public. My overall reaction is very positive. The new Afternic site has a crisp look and is easy to ... read more ...

AboutUs domain and web site guide - Ray King has launched AboutUs in beta mode. I first met Ray King at a search engine conference a couple years ago. King is former CEO of SnapNames. When I met him he talked about his plans for AboutUs, but kept most of the details under wraps only saying it would be an enhanced Whois. King recently launched AboutUs in beta mode. So what is it? It’s an enhanced web site and domain name guide with details about the owner, content, and related sites. (The site ... read more ...

TrafficClub RPM hits all-time high - My revenue per thousand (RPM) at TrafficClub.com in July hit a personal record. My RPM (revenue per thousand views) hit $65.85, which is extremely good for a mixed portfolio of domains and is the best I’ve ever had. My portfolio was largely unchanged from June, when I had an RPM of $54.18. Here are my stats: DomainSponsor Generic – $9.82 RPM DomainSponsor Optimized – $84.64 RPM Google Adsense for Domains – $27.41 RPM Skenzo – $76.65 RPM Of my domains that ... read more ...

Domainer assembly his Barcelona - Conference in Spain kicks off the evening of July 25. The United States hosts its share of domain name conferences each year, but meetings outside of the US are rare. Sedo hosted a UK meeting a while back and TRAFFIC plans to expand overseas. But European domainers can travel to Barcelona, Spain for a conference next week. The event will run July 25-July 27 and is presented by Afternic, Oversee.net (DomainSponsor), EuroDNS, and Renova Ltd. Some fo the topics to ... read more ...