Top Sales From DOMAINfest Live and Extended Auctions

February 8th, 2010 Mike

Live/Extended Auction Sales Over $20k

LoanCalculator.com – $215,000

*46.com – $80,000

GolfLessons.com – $65,000

PearlEarrings.com – $50,000

Husband.com – $45,000

GolfShirts.com – $45,000

FederalAid.com – $40,000

SalaryCalculator.com – $30,000

OrganicCosmetics.com – $27,500

TabletComputer.com – $26,000

*ShoppingMalls.com – $26,770

Dating.org – $22,500

*FitnessTrainer.com – $20,888

Swoop.com – $20,000

From this list, I thought that the extended auction sale of ShoppingMalls.com was a really nice deal at just under $27k.  I was happy to see OrganicCosmetics.com in five figure range.  Interesting to note that there two domains from this list included the word ‘calculator’ and also two domains that included the word ‘golf’. I’m curious to see what happens with the FederalAid.com domain name, I wonder if the domain will be developed by the new owners.  I thought Swoop.com was a nice sale for a brandable name and dating.org brought in a good price as well.

Overall, the results look a little on the lean side, but there were plenty of good sales.  View auction results.

VeriSign Annual Revenue Growth up 8% in 2009, Domain Registration Cost to Increase in 2010

February 5th, 2010 Mike

According to GAAP Financial Results,VeriSign showed strong signs of growth through the fourth quarter of 2009.  Here are some financial highlights I found on the CNNMoney report on VeriSign:  Naming Services rang in $159 million in revenue a 9%  jump from Q4 in 2008, The company ended 2009 with approx $1.5 billion in cash/cash equivalents up $688 million from last year, VeriSign completed it’s purchase of it’s formerly leased properties including off site data center for approximately $26 million..  These are just a few of the positive highlights I saw in VeriSigns financial reports of 2009.

I am sure VeriSign execs are getting excited to see the 2010 and 2011 reports after they increase the cost to register a domain name by another 7% this year.  The cost for registrars to register a .com will be increased to $7.34, (including ICANN fee = $7.52) after July 1st.  Of course, it’s written into their contract with ICANN that they can raise prices during any year of their contract (6 years).  Last year was the first that they did not raise the price.. I guess it’s to be expected.  :shrug:

Did You Get the Memo?

February 5th, 2010 Mike

Yesterday, Sahar over at Conceptualist shared a potentially lucrative tip to domainers looking to liquidate some four letter .com domains.  Apparently, there’s an investor at Bido.com who is interested in hitting the auction scene hard over the next couple months.  The client represents a group is looking to invest up to six figures in decent quality LLLL .coms.  Sahar has always provided reliable info and good advice, I’ll be moving a few four letter .coms over at bido in the next few weeks, I’ll let you know how it goes.

Google Unveils Social Search (beta)

February 2nd, 2010 Mike

This is a really cool feature that Google will be integrating into it’s search result pages.  The idea is that users will begin to fill out their profiles at http://google.com/profiles.  Profiles should be completed with all your social networking tools, blog, etc.  After a bit of time once your profile propogates and as you continue to add news, etc. to your social networks, google will begin to pull results from social networks of connections you have chosen and adds them into your search results.  This sounds a bit confusing which is why I included the video below:

Gateway Inn of Grand Lake Understands Domain Names

February 1st, 2010 Mike

I went on an awesome ice fishing trip over the weekend to Lake Granby.  Our group stayed a couple miles down the road in the beautiful little town of Grand Lake, Colorado.  Our hotel was called Gateway Inn.  This cozy, rustic mountain lodge has some of the friendliest staff and owners I have ever dealt with in the hospitality industry.

During one conversation I had with the Lisa from Gateway Inn, she mentioned that they offer a nice discount for return visitors if they fill out a review of their experience on TripAdvisor.com.  I didn’t book the reservations or even really know where we were staying before we got there so I had no idea if they even had a website.  Curiously I asked…  and Lisa was quick to reply “Oh yes, GatewayInn.com.”  I thought to myself, ‘nice they got the .com, I wonder if they bought it from someone?’  So I told her I’m a .com guy and poked a little more.  She went on to explain proudly how they registered GatewayInn.com as soon as they knew how to, according to whois that must have been around 1999.  Lisa also informed me that they also use GatewayInn.info for their online room reservation system and how they have plans to utilize their other extension, GatewayInn.biz as a local specials page.

Small town, big Internet, smart business owners.

lake granby

WIPO Decision Rewards IHG 1500+ Domain Names

January 27th, 2010 Mike

From Out-Law.com:

“The single case, heard by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)’s arbitration centre, transferred 1,519 domain names to the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), refusing to transfer just 10 of the names. The hotels group had withdrawn claims relating to 13 other domain names.”

The case was brought against German resident, Daniel Kirchhof by multiple complainants, all of which are founded under the IHG trademark.  Since they all share the same trademark they could pursue the domains in one case against the defendant.  Of the domains in question only ten of them were found not to infringe on any IHG marks.  Mr Kirchhof apparently owns some 70k domains in his portfolio. View WIPO Ruling.

Get Your Hot Pizza Domain Names!

January 21st, 2010 Mike

There are two serious ‘Pizza’ domain names on the market right now.  Over at NamePros, Pizza.tv is for sale with a reasonable BIN.  Also, in Rick Latona’s auction catalog I noticed lot # 610 is for Pizza.us and it’s website.  I don’t see it selling this time around though, the reserve range for Pizza.us is set rather high at $30k-$40k.  Even though the script on Pizza.us is handy, considering the website ranks around 2.2 million in alexa and only has five incoming links I would almost consider it a pure domain sale.  An interesting note about the Pizza.tv sale is that the domain has standard registration fee.  Many premium .tv domains worse than pizza.tv have premium registration fees into the mid $x,xxx range.

Hmm pizza sounds good for dinner tonight.  I prefer Pizza Hut if I’m ordering delivery :)

Does NamePros Have a Pulse?

January 21st, 2010 Mike

namepros logo

We’re closing in on two days of downtime from inarguably the most active domain name forum.  This has been a recurring problem at NamePros.com for the last year or so.  The downtime causes are usually identified as a ‘data center issues’.  In any case the forum downtime is a tough pill to swallow for many domainers that spend lots of time on the forum buying and selling domains and other services.  NamePros members are some of the most loyal forum members I’ve been around and since NP is a free community, there will be relatively little complaining when it finally does go back online.

I certainly appreciate all that NamePros has to offer and hope it’s back online soon and there are no major issues.    I’ve tweeted RJ to see if he could provide us with any details on the downtime.   I’ll update this post when the site is back online or I have more info.

[edit] Around 4pm EST Jan 21st NamePros went back online.  Apparently the nameservers were held hostage at SoftLayer for some time.  Here is the thread at NP where the downtime discussion will take place.  Hopefully NP will be migrating to new servers soon.

101Domain.com – International Domain Name Registration and Web Hosting Provider

January 19th, 2010 Mike
101Domain_Logo.jpg

I am doing a brief review today of one of my excellent sponsors, a top International registrar that I have had the pleasure of working with over the last year: 101domain.com is the leader in International Domain Registration. Featuring registration and hosting services for over 950 domain extensions and in nearly every country in the world, 101domain offers the best gTLD, ccTLD and IDN registration services around. They also have very competitive pricing on all ‘top level’ domain registrations.

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) – 101domain.com is a leading provider for IDN domain name registration. 101domain.com offers IDN registrations for all top level domains and most supported ccTLD’s. IDN registration in up to 50 languages is made easy with the handy character set keyboard tool. Also, the Worldwide Domain Administration Console allows you to manage your entire domain portfolio from a single, robust domain console. Visit the 101domain.com IDN page.

Affiliate and Reseller Programs – The affiliate domain program for 101domain.com pays out 5% commission based on sales resulting directly from signups thru your banner ads and text links. 101domain.com also offers great reseller programs that feature template based reselling websites for novice domainers OR the fully integrated API reseller option for advanced web designers. Check out the101domain.com affiliates/resellers page!

101domain.com has some really great tools and services. First off, Trustee and Local Presence Services are provided for ccTLD’s that require local contact for foreign registrations. This is a great service to 101domains clients. Be sure to also check out the Bulk Lookup and Corporate Domain Selection Tool – It will help you save time and give you the opportunity to get a detailed report for all international domain names to protect your brand name worldwide.

Overall, I think that 101domain.com offers a great global service. They have been around over fifteen years and boast a huge clientele. They are a very trusted and secure registrar. I especially like the lightning fast speed of the site and the general interface, it is very user friendly. Thanks again to my great sponsor 101domain.com!

News/Celeb Leaks Via Domain Registrations

January 19th, 2010 Mike

More and more I am seeing headlines like this one I just came across…  “Did Someone at FOX Register ConanOnFOX.com Domain Name?” (link).   Another article I came across today hinges the possibility of Tim Burton remaking a version of the movie ‘Sleeping Beauty‘ called ‘Maleficent‘ on a domain registration MaleficentMovie.com by Disney.

I guess paparazzi and other media sources are starting implement scans on domain registrations to help break their ‘news’ stories first.  Speculating future happenings based on domain name registrations is not a totally new concept, but I think more people are using alerts like the one domaintools.com offers to scan domain registrations on keywords or names just for this purpose. [edit] Of course, you never know who is registering what domain names as Jamie Zoch pointed out today in his post. Many times it can be a scammer or trickster.

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