Yahoo is wrong aim for Typo-Squatting Critics - Yahoo has been sued for placing ads on typo-squatting ads, but Yahoo is the wrong target. The Washington Post is reporting about a lawsuit against Yahoo for placing text ads in adware and on typo domains. More than likely Yahoo is unaware that its ads are being syndicated in adware. These ads are probably displayed in full-screen pop-ups that publishers are sending through adware against Yahoo’s wishes. I have a clear opinion on the topic of typo domains and Yahoo. ... read more ...

80% Payouts from Parking Dots, Matt Bentley Interview - Things have been a little slow in the lull between the Domain Roundtable conference and the TRAFFIC conference in Las Vegas. Changes are afoot in the domain industry, and some of the changes at Sedo and Parking Dots are highlighted in the latest issue of Domain Parking News. Parking Dots was an exception to an April slowdown in parking revenue based on the numbers that I reviewed. It seems like Google-based services were hit harder than Overture-based services. ... read more ...

TrafficClub RPM hits $58 - My paid parking results with TrafficClub hit $58 per 1,000 views in April. I’m the first to point out that no one domain parking solution is perfect for a domain portfolio. ParkQuick.com, which writes an entry monthly at DomainNameWire, does an excellent job reviewing the top choices. At Domain Roundtable last month I had dinner with the team from DomainSponsor, which is highly regarded in the parking space. Then there’s NameDrive, which has managed to capture ... read more ...

Business 2.0 on SmartName - The May 2006 issue of Business 2.0 has an article called “Tricking Out Those Parked Domains”. The article (page 152) is about making parked domain names look more like real web pages. It features Ari Goldberger’s SmartName parking service and quotes PPCIncome’s Howard Hoffman. (Goldberger is a prominent domain name attorney who runs Esqwire.com.) I can’t find the article online yet, but it will likely be syndicated over the next couple weeks. A quick ... read more ...

Wall Street Journal – eNom bought, Domain Parking - Monday’s Wall Street Journal has yet another domain name article. I just finished writing a post about a domain name parking article in Business 2.0. I opened up the Marketplace section of The Wall Street Journal and what did I see…another article about domain parking. This one is also about adding content and juicing up domain parking pages. It discusses FlashGames.com, a parking page that generates $150,000 a year. (Anyone notice that it’s basically a ... read more ...

ICANNWiki – Great apparatus for a domainer community - ICANNWiki has the latest info about the domain industry with a particular focus on key players. I caught up with Ray King, former CEO of SnapNames, last week at Domain Roundtable. I first met Ray at a search engine optimization conference in New York a little over a year ago. Ray is working on a new venture called AboutUs. While he gets AboutUs off the ground he has co-created ICANNWiki, a wiki specific to the domain name industry. Ray doesn’t make half-baked ... read more ...

Conversation with Roger Collins of Afternic - Domain exchange Afternic is steadily improving its solid domain trading platform. I had the opportunity to sit down with Roger Collins, president of domain exchange Afternic, during Domain Roundtable in Seattle last week. Afternic is one of the two major domain name brokerages and competes mainly against Sedo. Collins said Afternic is working on a couple site enhancements. One is a complete facelift and graphical design. The other is something that I’ve griped ... read more ...

Domain Monetization during Domain Roundtable - To park or not to park, that is the question. The “Domain Monetization” session at Domain Roundtable featured a common question: should I park my domains or develop them? The answer, according to almost all 9 panelists, is “it depends”. Most panelists straddled the fence and suggested developing select domains but parking most of them. Ron Sheridan of Domain Sponsor said that 95% of domains can be parked and auto-optimized by technology, but the other 5% ... read more ...

Open Source Parking - Open Source Parking aims to cut Microsoft’s perceived server share. I came across an interesting site called OpenSourceParking.com today. OpenSourceParking urges domain name owners to park their domains on open source servers as opposed to Microsoft Server. According to the site, GoDaddy’s recent move from open source servers to Microsoft-based servers created a 5% swing in Microsoft’s perceived share of the server market (at Apache’s loss). As the site ... read more ...

Communicate.com announces record revenues - Domain name and e-commerce company Communicate.com (OTCBB: CMNN.ob) announced record revenues for fiscal year 2005. Communicate.com, owner of premium domain names including Perfume.com, Body.com, Brazil.com, and Boxing.com, announced record revenues for its 2005 fiscal year. The company’s revenue grew to almost $5.8M from $3.5M in the prior year. Revenue from advertising and parked domains increased about and approached $1M. eCommerce sales, such as those on ... read more ...

TrafficClub RPM tops $50 - My TrafficClub domain name parking results from March 2006 were the best ever. As I always do at the beginning of the month, I am dislosing my paid parking results with TrafficClub. TrafficClub is a unique domain name parking service that automatically optimizes your domain names over several different parking services. TrafficClub targets each domain to the services that maximize its RPM (revenue per 1,000 views) and sends you a consolidated payment each month. My ... read more ...

2006 GeoDomain Expo - Associated Cities is holding a geographic domain names conference June 2 3. The conference, called “2006 GeoDomain Expo”, will focus on issues facing domain name and web site owners of geographic domain names. Associated Cities has members owning various high profile city .com domains. The Associated Cities network includes domains such as Atlanta.com, Houston.com, and NYC.com. The conference is June 2 and 3 in Chicago, IL. More information about the conference ... read more ...

CMNN launches Body.com - Domain name and e-commerce company Communicate.com has launched Body.com. The site at www.Body.com is going through some launch pains but offers products in nutrition, fashion, frangrance, fitness, and beauty categories. Communicate.com (OTCBB: CMNN) owns some of the world’s best domain names. It’s holdings include Cricket.com, Perfume.com, Karate.com, Malaysia.com, Brazil.com, and many other spectacular domains. It has high-quality domain parking pages for ... read more ...

More ICANN during Domain Roundtable - CEO and President of ICANN to keynote Domain Roundtable conference. In addition to Vint Cerf, Domain Roundtable has rounded up another ICANN representative for next month’s conference. ICANN CEO and President Dr. Paul Twomey will deliver a keynote on Wednesday, April 19. Because he was announced after the ICANN vote about the VeriSign settlement, I hope he’s taking this opportunity to inform the domain community about what’s going on behind closed doors. ... read more ...

The arise and tumble of Pool.com - A new article in The Ottawa Citizen features Pool.com and the challenges it faces. The article covers Pool.com and its rise from nowhere in 2003. But it also discusses a grave threat to its business — and one I’ve mentioned numerous times — both exclusive drop agreements with registrars and VeriSign’s potential to take over the entire drop business. The article quotes a domainer suggesting that it’s not Pool’s fault that it is falling by the wayside. ... read more ...

GoldKey parking use acquired - Paid domain parking business GoldKey has been acquired. According to an e-mail sent by Theo Antoniou of GoldKey, Domain Services LLC has acquired the GoldKey parking service. Domain Services LLC is a subsidiary of YesDirect which also owns BuyDomains. GoldKey made a splash in 2005 with two features. First, it uses a Yahoo! ad feed as opposed to Google Adsense (which most other domain parking providers use). Second, it introduced search engine optimization to ... read more ...

Domain Roundtable adds financial sessions - In a sign of the domain market’s maturation, next month’s Domain Roundtable conference will include finance-related sessions. According to a release by Name Intelligence, organizer of the conference: On Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 9:45am, Ari Bayme of Milbank Roy Co., an international investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions, strategic advisory and financing, will be hosting “Convergence Success Story: The Wall Street Perspective on Acquiring ... read more ...

Showdown in Seattle - Vint Cerf will be one of the most controversial figures at Domain Roundtable 2006 in Seattle next month. How will attendees, who are sure to be almost unanimously opposed to ICANN’s deal with Verisign, going to react to the ICANN chairman’s appearance? Cerf is delivering a keynote at 8:30am PST on April 20. It’s not designed to be a QA session, but Cerf is sure to address the agreement with Verisign. If he doesn’t, the crowd will make him (if they are awake ... read more ...

TrafficClub Feb Results - February was a short month, but the TrafficClub parking service gave me one of my best months yet. As I do every month, here are my updated results with TrafficClub’s paid domain parking service. TrafficClub split tests your domains across several domain parking services and automatically distributes traffic for each domain to optimize revenue. The big story this month is how adding Skenzo’s service to the offering makes a big difference. Skenzo took a domain ... read more ...

Rapid domain growth with XSitePro - Make more money from your domain name portfolio. Everyone knows that domain parking is just the first stage of monetizing domain names. It takes one minute to park a domain name. But revenue to parked domains is limited. Traffic to your domains needs to increase if you want to earn more money. To increase traffic to your domains you need to provide real content that attracts both search engines and people. But doing this takes time. Park a page in a minute or ... read more ...

Interview with Adam Dicker of DNForum - DNForum is the largest forum for the domain name industry. An interview with Adam Dicker shows why it is so successful. One of the biggest names in the domain community is Adam Dicker, owner of popular domain forum DNForum.com. The forum has nearly 25,000 registered members – thousands of them paid members – and is growing by the minute. I recently had the chance to talk with Adam about DNForum.com and the domain industry in general. DNW: In the 2006 Domain Name ... read more ...

New Wall Street Journal essay to cover domain dump catching - The Wall Street Journal is writing a new article about the domain name industry – this one about expired domain drop catching. According to a post at DNForum by someone who said he was interviewed for the story, The Wall Street Journal is writing another article about the domain name industry. This article will cover drop catching and the expired domain business. Hopefully the paper will interview not only successful individuals and companies on the buy side but ... read more ...

Domain Roundtable bonus formula and information - One of the domain industry’s most important conferences, Domain Roundtable, is just a couple months away. The Domain Roundtable conference is organized by Name Intelligence, known for running the Whois.sc service. Details Dates: April 19-21, 2006 Location: Bellevue, WA (Seattle Area) Web site: domainroundtable.com Domain Name Wire readers are eligible for an exclusive discount until March 10! Just enter your VIP code drt2006@domainnamewire.com when you register. ... read more ...