New TV Show For Domain Investment – Episode 1 [HD Video]

It give us great pleasure to announce the very first episode of Domainer Income TV.

The show is unlike anything you have seen before. Its run by professional domain investors who are raising standards and are bringing a new level of education and transparency to the marketplace.

Given the scale of tv series, the show will be run on its own dedicated site at http://www.DomainerIncome.TV (yes, we are putting a .TV domain to good use).

Domainer Income TV could not have happened without our team who worked tirelessly to put this together, especially Tristan on Pre Production, Aaron on Post Production, the musical genius of Sebastian our Composer and Eric with our great Set Design.

Most of all we would like to thank all the people who will appear in the series and those behind the scenes that made the interviews possible. All of these people have given up their valuable time to help educate and grow, the domain investment industry.

Episode 1

Our first guest is Oversee CEO and President Jeff Kupietzky. Oversee owns over 950,000 domain names making it one of the largest owners of Internet Real Estate in the world.

Mobile Support

For those on mobile devices, we have FULL browser support for:

* iPhone/iPod Touch / iPad
* Andriod
* Touch-Based Blackberry
* Nokia S60 series and above

If you have any of these devices, you are going to love the new site – it has been designed and optimized especially for mobile browsing! So head on over to Domainer Income TV and check it out!

Sedo: “Unintended Consequence” For Traffic Aggregators

A few minutes ago we heard back from Sedo in relation to our story yesterday. As such we are posting their feedback in full below:

“We can confirm that Google is one of Sedo’s advertising partners, but cannot confirm that they are the source of the change.“

When asked about the effect of the decision on traffic aggregators, Sedo responded:

“As an unintended consequence, it might make things a little more complicated for traffic aggregators.  However, with these changes, it’s a great time for customers to re-evaluate things to make sure aggregators add value for them.  Some may opt for a stronger focus on increasing the domain sales portion (alongside their parking revenue).“

So what do you think? Is this a measure to:

1. Shut out aggregators, or at least make things more difficult for them?

2. Get “quality traffic” to their parking pages?

3. Reduce click fraud (thanks to Acro for the comment yesterday).

What are your thoughts on this? Post a comment and let us know!

Sedo Flags Possible Changes In Advertising Provisions

Early this morning I received an email from Sedo regarding possible changes to the way their “primary advertising provider” monetizes Sedo parking pages.

I’m going to take a wild guess here (I could be wrong) and say that “primary advertising provider” is code for Google, although Sedo does not mention the name of their “primary advertising provider” anywhere in the email.

Here is a brief extract:

“Based on current discussions it is possible that our ad provider will cease its provision of advertising to URL-parked pages and in consequence only support DNS parked domains.

This step is considered by the online advertising provider in response to advertiser feedback and would affect all URL-parking customers at all parking companies worldwide that share this advertising provider.

This change could happen in the near future (potentially as early as the fourth quarter of 2010) and we wanted you to have this information in advance to take into account for your internal planning.“

What’s The Issue?

Let me cut through the spin and give you some context:

1. Traffic aggregators such as Park Logic, KeyRPM & Above use URL forwarding (amongst other techniques) to send traffic to multiple parking companies. URL forwarding allows them to quickly point the domain somewhere else, and therefore identify who is paying the most for a particular keyword. This is essentially an arbitrage opportunity. The problem for both the advertisers and parking companies, is that it makes their traffic numbers (and therefore their revenue line) less predictable.

2. There is certainly “no love lost” between parking companies, traffic aggregators and ad companies like Google. Yahoo. All of them take a slice of the parking pie!

What Does This Mean For Me?

Given the current environment, its a bit of a strange strategy for a “primary advertising provider” to undertake. It seems like its a demand, eg: “you are either with us or against us”.

Here is the bottom line, if you use traffic aggregators, you better make sure they support changing DNS (nameservers), so that you can still use parking companies that rely on the Google advertising feed (such as Sedo). For those that use KeyRPM or Park Logic, you are fine (they support changing nameservers) and I confirmed this with both companies today.

For the record, I have tried to contact Sedo for a comment and will update this post if/when I hear back.

Great Sales At DOMAINfest

Its 1:07am and I’m looking through our domain sales database. What really stands out this week is the great prices at DOMAINfest New York. There were some REALLY good sales there!

Take newyorkapartments.com for $65k. That is a bargain! For those interested in search, it gets 90,500 exact match searches at $2.39 a click! When you factor in all the variations and long tail keywords, I can see that one being a goldmine. Develop it, sell it to a realestate agent – the options are endless.

There are so many other sales to choose from, check out the results and see for yourself!

Facebook Places: A Goldmine For Geo, ccTLDs & Developers

A few hours ago Facebook announced “Places”. This enables you to learn about where your friends are. For example, if you are having a coffee at your local cafe, you can let your friends know where you are and they can join you.

Take note GEO domain developers! If you own a geo .com or a ccTLD you will want to integrate this into your website. It will enable your visitors to:

1. Share where they are with their friends.

2. Find out where your friends are (nearby and further away).

3. Tag photos and status updates with places.

Here is a short video of the Facebook Places Launch. Enjoy!

Law Targets People Posing As Local Businesses

The phrase “local search” has been on the tongues of many web site developers, domainers and Internet marketers. Depending on who you talk to, it means different things to different people.

Unfortunately a small number of unethical people are trying to “scam the system” and are polluting local search results with fake businesses. This short term view isn’t sustainable and forces the hand of search engines and now governments to take action.

The Minnesota State Government has passed one such law, preventing out-of-state Internet marketers from posing as local small businesses by, for example, running search engine ads indicating that their business is based in Minnesota. For more information check out the full story in Kikabinks Internet Marketing blog.

Simon Johnson Appointed To auDA Names Policy Panel

A few minutes ago we received confirmation from auDA that Simon Johnson had been appointed to the Names Policy Panel.

The purpose of the panel is to:

1. Review the policy framework underlying the allocation and use of domain names in the .au domain space
2. Provide recommendations to the auDA board about what changes should be made to the policy framework.

The Panel is expected to commence work in September 2010. If you have any specifics that you would like Simon to raise, feel free to leave a comment on contact us directly. Please also note that there will be a public consultation in December 2010.

DNSSEC – A False Sense Of Security?

Its just been announced that Australia will plan to deploy DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions) in .au. Given that there is an election on in Australia, its received very little media coverage.

Here is an extract from an auDA Announcement: (DNSSEC) “facilitates the digital signing of internet communications, helping to ensure the integrity and authenticity of transmitted data.”

Wow – sounds good eh? To the average person on the street (think of your parents here), they might look at this and say – “Wow I’m protected”. That’s great news. But the REAL story is very different. Ask any Senior IT Security person three questions about DNSSEC:

1. How does it protect me from having my $$$ (say in Internet Banking) being siphoned off by malicious software such as Zeus? The answer is that it doesn’t. This malicious activity occurs in a persons web browser.

2. Does DNSSEC ensure my data is kept confidential when its transmitted over the Internet? Again, the answer is no. What DNSSEC does do, is ensure that when you look up a domain name, the request coming back to your computer hasn’t been tampered with. Of course, once it arrives at your computer it can be tampered with there!

3. What is the likelihood that I am going to fall victim to a man-in-the-middle attack or cache poisoning attack? These are things that DNSSEC allegedly prevents. The answer is that is almost nil. Having said that, some people see man-in-the-middle attacks on the the DNS, as a sleeping timebomb waiting to go off. Given the inherently insecure nature of the Internet, I have to agree.

So why are we doing this? Its just one layer of defense against DNS vulnerabilities. Its not the great “silver bullet” that people make it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, its great that people are doing something (better than nothing) – but this is like putting a bandaid over a wound that needs major surgery. You are not addressing the CAUSE of the problem.

What Does DNSSEC Mean For Domain Investors

At the moment, not a lot. There is no “mandate” for people or companies to start digitally signing anything. What we will see is pressure put on registries, registrars and large corporates to start getting the infrastructure in place to faciliate DNSSEC.

Its something to keep an eye on.

Domainer Income To Launch Domain Investment TV Show

The big news is that next week we will be launching our new show on domain name investment – Domainer Income TV.

We have had some very talented people working on this project for months.

One thing I can promise you is that its going to be VERY different from anything you have seen before.

Stay tuned.

Demand Media Files For IPO – Isn’t Profitable… Yet

Demand Media’s IPO prospectus indicates the company isn’t yet profitable. In 2009 Demand Media made a loss of $21.9 million on revenues of $198 million. In the first half of 2010, the company made a loss of $6 million on revenues of $108 million.

Check out the detailed coverage over at Kikabink News.