Ed Russell

Ed Russell has been active in the domain industry since 2004. In August 2005, he was a founding member of the NameDrive domain monetisation platform. Since its launch, Ed has been instrumental in NameDrive’s rise through the ranks to their current position of strength in the international domain market. Under his direction, ND now host over one million domains worldwide and have gained recognition as one of the premier parking companies.

Petros Christodoulou

Petros began domaining back in 2004 from his home in the Czech Republic. He is currently contracted as a buyer broker by large companies, being paid to identify large portfolios.

In 2005 he joined DNForum and is a regular contributor and Exclusive Lifetime member.

In 2007, Petros created OVT Matcher, a domaining tool that allows you to scan huge lists of domain names for the Overture scores in January, February and March 2007.

Simon Johnson

Simon has a long history in IT and the Internet. Back in the late 1980′s he was using BBS’s on a 300 baud modem reading messages from around the world on Fidonet. He first started using the Internet in 1989 along with a growing number of people who were accessing it via Unix boxes and clunky old VAX mainframes.

While at University studying Computing and Management (before the web took off), he recalls using gopher and downloading shareware via FTP from sites such as simtel20 at White Sands Missile Range and from archie.au in Australia. In 1993 he saw Mosaic released, which later became Netscape.

In 1994 Simon registered the domain name (inform.com.au) while working for a company in developing a proprietary graphical online service, similar to that of Compuserve. Back then there was no Melbourne IT, ICANN didn’t exist and there were no industry bodies such as auDA. The registration was done in part, by calling up Robert Elz at Melbourne University. This was because “inform” was a dictionary word, and under “Roberts rules”, couldn’t be registered. After calling, emailing, printing and faxing paperwork, the domain was eventually registered.

In 1995, Simon had an idea about creating a national ISP. This led him to acquire the domain name isp.com.au along with a contract to operate as an ISP using the infrastructure of Labtam (who later became Access One and then OzEmail). ISP became one of Australia’s first ISP’s with points of presence in every state and territory.

In early 1997 he built a niche search engine and portal around one of his domains which he later sold in 2002 for an undisclosed amount. After taking a few years off, Simon wrote a best selling book in the category of Internet safety and became a regular contributor to Australian Personal Computing magazine.

Since then, Simon has worked for many large regional and global companies in the areas of Information Security, Fraud Prevention and Operational Risk. He has also managed large portfolios of domain names on behalf of these companies.

After spending many years developing his own strategies and proprietary tools for domaining, Simon co-founded Domainer Income in 2007.

Adam Dicker

Adam Dicker bought his first domain name in 1996. He is currently the owner of dnforum.com and blogs at adamdicker.com

Timeline

•    2002 – Executive VP of High Impact Sites Inc.
•    2003 – Purchased DNForum from Greg Ricks.
•    2006 – Joined iREIT as Executive VP and a member of the Board of Advisors.
•    2007 – Appointed as “VP Domain Aftermarket” at Godaddy.

Frank Schilling

Frank Schilling is one of the largest domain investors in the world and was one of the first people to administer large portfolios of domain names for companies. In 2002, he interviewed with Tech TV and spoke about people who invest in high-value domain names and how the process works for future development of a domaining company.

Frank also assisted in expanding the domain auction houses as he continued to bid and invest in domain names. He is also responsible for patenting the Generic Top Level Domain Rerouting System.

Other achievements include:

2003 – Financed the first ICANN accredited registrar in the Caribbean and later joined as a member of ICANN.

2006 – Cofounded the Internet Commerce Association.

Frank currently maintains his blog at Seven Mile and runs his company, Name Administration Inc. BVI (NAmedia) from the Cayman Islands.

Yun Ye

Yun Ye is the founder of noname.com and Ultimate Search. At only 32 years old, Yun Ye sold his entire portfolio to Marchex for over $160 million. This investment strategy later became known as the Marchex Model. With a Masters degree in computer programming Yun Ye knew the smart thing to do was to scoop up domain names in the tens of thousands when owners would allow them to expire.

The first business Yun Ye created was noname.com directly out of graduate school. He lived in the San Francisco area. Working closely with his wife Jin Lu, the two worked their domain venture together. Years later after Yun Ye purchased tens of thousands of domain names he created the business Ultimate Search for people looking for domain names. Yun’s entire portfolio was sold for millions years ago.

Yun Ye has lived in San Francisco, Vancouver, British Columbia, Hong Kong, and the Virgin Islands. Today, his whereabouts are unknown.

Sahar Sarid

Sahar Sarid was born in Israel and currently lives in South Florida in the USA.

He began in the domain name industry by posting an advertisement in a chat room asking for someone to loan him some money to buy domain names. Jeff Bhavnanie responded by sending him $3,000 and the two have been business partners ever since.

Sahar is the co-founder of Recall Media Group and blogs at Conceptualist.com.

Lawrence Ng

In 2000, when the bubble had burst and everyone thought the Internet and technology realm was over Lawrence Ng and college friend, Fred Hsu, started Oversee.com. The company makes today over $200 million in yearly revenue. The company owns approximately 600,000 domain names and monetizes over 2 million more for other domain owners. Some people would spend a lifetime trying to build an empire that was created in just a few years by a man under the age of 30.

Lawrence Ng moved to the United States when he was only three years old. His parents never gave him an allowance and he always had to find creative ways to make money when he needed it. His drive to succeed and his thirst for knowledge led him to New York City’s Pace University while he worked four different jobs. He also interned at Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney which gave him the financial knowledge he uses today.

1998 Ng moved to Los Angeles and he and his friend took a job with Starpath, a company that collapsed during the .com crash. At this job he learned a lot about technology and Internet traffic and he and Fred decided to use their expertise in online advertising.

Without any funding, Ng and Fred started Oversee.com which today is one of the biggest domain and marketing services website today. They have had private equity firms invest millions of dollars in them. They have also been featured in the New York Times and more.

Kevin Ham

Kevin Ham is known as the man who owns the Internet because his empire is worth over $300 million dollars and it is growing rapidly. He has built his empire by purchasing up as many domain names as possible and building them with pay-per-click advertising ads and affiliates. This method has proven to be a huge success for him when he purchases a domain name for as little as $8 and generates $10,000 a year from people clicking on the ads.

Another benefit that Kevin Ham is taking advantage of is misspellings and typos in the web browser. This has been his biggest success. When people type in a .com and they misspell the .com and spell it .cm then they are routed to sites that he owns. That’s right. Kevin Ham purchased as many .cm sites that he possibly could and he is generating a ton of money from people accidentally typing in the wrong names. Many companies believe he is violating an infringement but he disagrees, saying that he is not targeting trademarked companies but he is targeting all of the misspelled names.

Technologies are changing today though and websites and search engines are getting smarter and when people do type in the words spelled incorrectly then the software companies are beginning to fix the errors. This will mean an end to the world of money making schemes for misspelled words for Kevin Ham but it doesn’t take away the hundreds of thousands of domain names he owns on the Internet also.

Kevin Ham went to med school and graduated as a doctor in 1998 and he has been quietly buying domain names he feels are worth money. He began making around $10,000 a month which soon increased to $40,000 a month. He decided to put being a doctor off because he had a new baby on the way and needed the money.

When the tech crash occurred in 2,000 Ham bought up as many domains as he possibly could and there were thousands of companies crashing and domains expiring. This proved to be the most successful endeavor he did which was what really launched him into success.

Today, Ham spends thousands of dollars on domain names that he believes are catchy that he thinks people will type directly into the browser and skip the search engine entirely. The amount of domains that Ham owns across the Internet and the fact that he is generating thousands of dollars from the websites currently in use today, he is considered to be the man who owns the Internet.