John Mauriello From Moniker Talks Domain Valuation

John Mauriello is a Domain Sales Specialist at Moniker.

• 57 domains sold twice between 2004 and 2005
• The value increased an average of 288% over 230 days
• More than 200 domains sold twice between 2004 and 2006
• Notable sales such as fund.com for $9M

Just like real estate, domain names are considered a commodity. They are considered property by most governments and ICANN.

Domains are usually categorized according to:

• Domains you’ll monetize
• Domains you’ll never sell
• Domains you’ll sell for a profit.

Comparable public and private sales: eg: dnsalesprice.com.

Appraisal of domain and or business – moniker does both

Earnings multiples

• Domains 5-7 times earnings, portfolios 2-5 times earnings
• Businesses (domains with assets)

Other Types of Considerations

• Direct impact on branding and marketing
• Which target audiences are better than the primary brand. eg: underwear.com
• Is the buyer coming to you before or after launching. Example: ireport.com vs cnn.com/ireport.

Registrar sues auDA for deleting domain name

Domain Directors, an associated company of Instra Corporation, an auDA (Australian Domain Name Administrator) and ICANN accredited registrar, yesterday commenced legal proceedings in the Supreme Court of Queensland against auDA, the Australian domain name policy and regulatory body.

Last week, auDA unilaterally cancelled Domain Director’s domain name registration for auregistry.com.au. Domain Directors have owned and used the domain name auregistry.com.au for the past eight years.

Tony Lentino, the CEO of Domain Directors, said this afternoon:

I am shocked at auDA’s actions.  auDA brought down one of my long standing websites.  auDA wrote the policy, made the complaint to itself, and acted as judge and jury, and then deleted my DNS entry without informing me.  With auDA governing the system, no Australian domain name is safe.

Originally, auDA informed Domain Directors that a third party had made a complaint about the auregistry.com.au domain name, but after the lawsuit was commences, the lawyers for  auDA’s informed Domain Directors that in fact, no complaint had been made.

John Swinson, partner of Mallesons Stephen Jaques which is representing Domain Directors, says that the dispute will be heard in the Supreme Court of Queensland on Friday, 21 November.

Domain Directors is an international registrar and provides an extensive range of over 200 country code Top Level Domain name extensions across Europe, America, and the Asia Pacific regions.

About Domain Directors

Domain Directors is a global supplier in the Domain Name and ENUM industry, with its head office in Melbourne, and offices in New Zealand and China.

For more information about Domain Directors, and its associated company, Instra Corporation, please visit http://www.instra.com

For Media Enquiries, please contact: med...@instra.com

— ends —

Note: I received the above Press Release a few hours ago; I’m not in a position to check the facts around this case right now, but I’ll be asking auDA for comment this afternoon.

Ryan Steel From aeiou.com Talks Search Engine Optimization

Here are some of the key points:

What It Takes To Succeed In The Search Engines

• Unique content
• Onsite optimisation
• Link building

What Domains Should Be Developed For The Search Engines?

• Base keywords
• Age of domain
• Availability of traffic
• Existing back links

Scaling From 10 to 10,000 Domains

• You should have a “roll your own mentality”
• Every development has to pay rent
• Use rapid development

Let Your Network Work For You

• Each development adds value to your network
• Increased product value

Ryan also covered some of the well known tools such as Google Adwords Traffic Estimator, Google Keyword Suggestion Tool, SEO Book Keyword Tool.

Summary

• Development cost money – Rapid development allows you to test the waters
• SEO requires patience – 2-3 months
• Investing in your domain to increase its value

Ron James from NamePros Talks Web Development

It was great to see Ron at TRAFFIC DownUnder. Here are a few key points from his presentation on website development.

Development Goals

• Add value to your domain name property
• Earn more revenue than you would by parking
• SEO / Increase traffic
• Establish a legitimate use – reduce the threat of UDRP
• Independence from Google and Yahoo
• Control your own destiny

Planning Your Development

• What is your goal?
• Building your website is about building your business

Use Off The Shelf Products

• For example: ning.com – case study: thechocolatelife.com
• shop.jam.com – online store

Mini Site Development

• whypark.com
• imodo.com
• evolanding.com
• steadyniche.com

Fundamentals

• Know your limits
• Start with one focus
• If you can’t beat them, buy them
• Partner with those that can take you to the next level

Craig Rowe from WhyPark Talks About Domain Content

Craig Rowe is the President of WhyPark and is speaking on the topic of “Content is King”.

Benefits Of Content Development

• Creates a theme for search engines
• Acquired unsolicited inbound links and proactively build new links
• Provides a good user experience leading to return visits

What To Consider Before Developing

• What will be the ROI
• What is your long term goal with your portfolio?
• How much personal time should I allocate
• How informative of a user experience do I want to provide?

Disadvantages of Affiliate Content

• Always linked to merchant
• Promoting merchants rather than your own brand
• Little flexability over how content is displayed

Case Study: airlinerewards.com

• Added 70 unique articles through it by Whypark
• 50 incoming links in the past 2 months.
• Indexed within 30 days

One of the most valuable tips I thought was to wait 90-180 days to see results. Don’t expect them overnight.

John Berryhill on Domain Legal Issues – D2S1 – Live from Traffic DownUnder 2008

John needs no introduction. Here are the key messages from his speech:

Names added and subsequently deleted during the 5 day AGP declined from 17.6M in June 2008 to 2.8M in July 2008. Of the 2.8M AGP deletes in July, approx 2.6M were subject to the registrar-level transaction fee defined by the provision.

On the UDRP side of things. We have markel.com, decal.com, signsupnow.com, hero.com, my-life.com. Obviously decal is for stickers. In my-life the complainant didn’t have a business, he was launching one next year.

• Domain name is a dictionary term being used for a generic purpose
• Domain name registration pre-dates acquisition of trademark
• No “idiot defense” if complainant is represented by counsel.
• UDRP panelists have reached a tolerance limit for bad claims.

One significant point John made is that UDRP decisions factor in archive.org results. As such its recommended:

• Determine whether your PPC provider permits archives
• Periodically allow crawls
• Store a snapshot whenever you receive an inquiry
• Be aware of the active content issue.

At the end John elluded to the issue that archive.org can serve up content by filename. As such, it might be possible to change old content that has already been archived!

Divyank Turkhia – Owning Your Own Registrar – D2S1 – Live from Traffic DownUnder 2008

Divyank Turkhia is the President Directi. The presentation is quite fast paced, so I’ll try to keep up with the most valuable information.

What’s the wholesale price including ICANN fees?

• .com $7.06
• .net $5.18
• .org $6.95
• .biz $6.62
• .info $6.95
• .name $6.20

Registrar Landscape

• 75% of all registrars have < 5000 domain names each.

Risks Of Not Owning Your Own Registrar

• Juristiction risks. eg: Kentucky, cost of litigation.
• Probability of law suit
• False spam and AUP violation complaints
• Domain renewal risks
• Fraudulent legal notices sent to registrars.

Important Point: Every registrar gets a 45 day auto-renew grace period (AGP).

Privacy of Information

• Not based on Privacy laws of the registrars juristiction, but based on processes set by the registrar

Primary Advantages Of Owning Your Own Registrar

• Maximum security and privacy
• Access to all registry promotion programs
• Domains at cost
• Ultimate control and complete autonomy
• Participation in new TLD launches (landrush and sunrise)
• Ability to make use of a domain during the entire AGP period. Increases liquidity and reduces cost.
• Registrar level transfer locks

Kellie Peterson – Domain Metrics – D2S1 – Live from Traffic DownUnder 2008

Kellie is the Director of Marketing & Operations, Name.com. She launched right into her slides with a very softly spoken voice. This was a great presentation that managed to steer everyone back to the focus on making $$$. Well done.

What Metrics Matter To You

• Are you a monetizer?
• Are you a flipper?
• Are you a developer?
• Are you a premium domain investor?

When Buying

This is what should matter to you:

• Traffic
• Revenue
• Traffic Origin
• Multiple / Price
• Resale – if there are 3 people in the world who can legally buy your domain, its a harder road.

When Monetizing

• Traffic
• R/EPC
• RPM
• Rev

When Selling

• Revenue history
• Comparables
• Replacabiity – What is your replacement cost? eg: if you sell pizza.com, its harder to replace on a category killer.
• ROI

What Else Matters?

• Venue – exposure
• Inventory
• Sell thru rates – What is the likelihood of getting a domain name sold?
• Average sales price. This depends on the place you sell it at.

The Case Against Metrics

• iReport.com – Ricks domain.
• Floral-Elegance.net – One that makes Kellie about $2 a month
• TiltRotor.com – Name.com brokered the deal for 5 figures $$$
• OpenSocial.org – Hand registered est June 2007, no traffic, stats, revenue. Google wanted the domain and a Name.com client had it.

• End user sales (non premium)

Summary

• Metrics will always matter.
• Metrics will matter to investors
• Metrics will not matter to end users.

Sean Stafford on Data Mining – D2S1 – Live from Traffic DownUnder 2008

Sean Stafford is the author of DomainGraduate and CEO, Elvate LLC.

Key points:

• Data mining is crucial.
• Be prepared to spend a lot of time at the PC
• Find keywords from your portfolio (that people search on). Add a .com and run it through whois.
• Use google adwords.

Buying From Others

• If buying from a Domainer, ask for screenshots
• Verify traffic if possible
• View trends and seasons. eg: the US election & Christmas. Be conscious of the fact it will drop.
• Don’t pass great deals, but don’t be too eager to spend money
• Types of traffic will dictate multiple

Remember Traffic Sources

• Links
• Type-in
• Typo
• Spam/Bot
• Traffic Bleed

Common Mistakes

• Relying on Google frequency to be a benchmark for domain value.
• Do your due diligence and get to know your parking provider.

Squeeze Revenue

• Pop-ups
• Email monetization
• Traffic splitting. eg: Sean owned tube.com.mx – half Mexican and half US traffic. Half were looking for tubes and others were looking for youtube videos. Some parking providers will enable you to split the traffic. This enables you to maximize revenue.
• Mini-site development. If you aren’t getting the return, throw up a 1-2 page site in wordpress and integrate a few ads.

In summary, whatever you do, change it up.

Dinner and Drinks at TRAFFIC DownUnder 2008

Find out what happens after dark when the beautiful people get together. Well the ones I can show you anyway.

www.flickr.com Domainer Income’s Traffic DownUnder 2008 photoset