Premium Domains In Fort Lauderdale
April 16, 1 CommentI just received a note from Oversee talking about DOMAINfest Fort Lauderdale.
They have created a pre-bidding system and provided a sample of their domains (which are extremely high quality). I’m not going to list them all here, so I’ve hand picked a few from their catalog:
I’d be more than happy to own any of them! Happy bidding.
PETA Wants Sex.com
March 17, No Comments
PETA has announced their desire to acquire sex.com. Executive Vice President has written this letter to Dom Partners LLC stating:
“Visitors to the newly revamped Sex.com site could watch our sexy Super Bowl ads like “Veggie Love” (about how a vegan diet can enhance your time between the sheets) or watch Alicia Silverstone’s naked testimonial—living proof that a vegan diet does a body good.
They could gaze on sultry ads featuring gorgeous vegetarians, like Pamela Anderson and Owain Yeoman, or join the action and participate in one of our Sexiest Vegetarian contests. They could also read about the many vegan foods that are natural aphrodisiacs.”
Based purely on the above photo, I think that its a great idea; lets see Sex.com and PETA hook up.
Godaddy Registers Its 40 Millionth Domain
March 11, No CommentsOver the years I’ve seen registrars come and go. One registrar that I really admire, is Godaddy. Bob Parsons has led the industry for many years and the recent stats published by Godaddy are simply amazing.
“GoDaddy now holds a near 50 percent market share of all active new domains registered in the world and is more than three times the size of its closest competitor.”
“Over the next twenty-five years, I see the Internet growing exponentially,” said Parsons. “Think about it, whether you are communicating, learning or conducting business, being on the Internet is where it’s all happening. I’d say if you aren’t online with your business, you really aren’t in the game.”
Congrats Bob.
Poker.org Sells For $1 Million
February 18, 1 CommentIts been reported that Sedo has brokered a deal selling poker.org to PokerCompany.com for the sum of $1 million.
Other .org auctions include engineering.org for $198k which happened in 2003 and date.org for $150k in 2006.
10 Interesting Facts From The Tucows Q4 Earnings
February 17, No CommentsA few snippets of interest came out of the 2009 earnings call for TCX. For the record, neither I, nor any company I’m associated with own any shares in TCX.
1. Revenue for the fourth quarter increased 6.1%
2. New registrations up more than 10%
3. For 2009 as a whole, domain service revenue grew almost 10% compared to 2008.
4. YummyNames, (their domain portfolio group) also had another strong quarter with revenue up 78% year-over-year.
5. In 2009 YummyNames revenue grew by 35% compared to 2008 with $250,000 of sales in the last quarter.
6. “the number of individual name transactions which has grown more than tenfold to over 150 in the fourth quarter of 2009 from just 14 in the fourth quarter of 2008 with the average price remaining relatively constant.”
7. “Gross margin for the YummyNames, our domain portfolio services category, increased by $649,000 to $1.3 million from $680,000 for the same quarter of fiscal 2008. This increase was due to the strong domain name sales that Elliott described earlier which grew by 945,000 compared to the fourth quarter of 2008.
8. (Following on from point 7) “These increases were partially offset by a decrease of 296,000 in the delivery of third-party advertisements on parked pages.”
9. “Gross margin from our OpenSRS service which includes domain services, email services and other wholesale services was $4 million or 24% of net sales compared to $4.5 million or 27% of net sales for the fourth quarter of 2008. This decrease primarily resulted from the declining email revenue as well as the impact of the registry price increases and the success we have been seeing from our strategy to grow revenue from higher volume, lower priced customers.”
10. “There is a much greater willingness or a much greater recognition that the right thing to do when you are starting a business on the internet is often to spend $500-5,000 and get an excellent name instead of trying to drop a vowel or be cute with some exotic CCTLD when naming a business. That is happening on the demand side. It is tough to say how that will ramp up. I think that I am hoping for growth and would be just fine if that business was roughly flattish.”
Here are the numbers for the bean counters (don’t get too excited). Feel free to post a comment and tell us what you think.
The Hidden Cost Behind Domain Name Portfolios
February 16, 4 CommentsA few weeks ago I received an email from someone who had a large portfolio of domain names for sale. This isn’t unusual, but what can be frustrating is seeing the same mistakes and unrealistic expectations, over and over again.
Consequently, I thought there are some interesting lessons for newcomers to the domaining industry, so I thought I’d share them. For confidentiality reasons I’m not going to reveal any information that could identify the seller or their domains. I have also “rounded out” the numbers below:
Parking Revenue: US$3993 per month
Price: 20 months parking revenue
The knee-jerk reaction for many people will be “$4k a month of parking revenue” is pretty good. From my perspective, it was “What’s the COST to me to keep this portfolio going?” After reviewing the documentation, I saw there were 3,300 domains. Of course, what was omitted from the documents was the COST to renew these domains. I know from experience, it costs about $17 per year for EACH of these domain names (they are ccTLDs). So you do the math…
Registration Fees: $56,200 per year
Parking Income: $47,916 per year
LOSS: -$8,284
Doesn’t look so good anymore does it? Now that is assuming that you are buying the portfolio for parking (not development or splitting it up for domain sales etc..).
The reason I’m pointing this out, is that there are many domains for sale at the moment and many newcomers (both investors and bloggers) to the industry.
If you are just starting out, domain investing can be time consuming and hard work. Don’t fall into the trap of buying up big straight away, you will almost certainly lose your $$$.
Godaddy Girl Crashes In NASCAR – Video
February 14, 1 CommentDanica Patrick was involved in a 12-car crash in Daytona. The accident wasn’t her fault; it occurred after Colin Braun and Josh Wise clashed.
Skysports reports that Patrick said after the race “It’s important to have realistic expectations”. “There’s going to be spikes in performance, I don’t doubt that. But there’s also going to be tough days. And [Saturday], I would say, was more of a tough day.”
Generic & Keyword Auction – Domains Up To $36.65 A Click!
February 11, 4 CommentsJust awhile ago I just received an email from the guys at Oversee regarding the Snapnames auction at Domainer Mardi Gras.
At first I thought….I’m already overloaded with conferences and auctions … do I really have the time to look at this? Honestly …. I couldn’t resist sneaking a peak and I’m glad I did. Why? Because these names are actually a lot better than some of the domains put up for auction recently.
Take a look at these .coms:
DatingOnline
DiscountDrugstore
OnlineDiscounts
DomainStats
HomeRefinancing
DownloadSoftware
CleanMyCredit
SpamProof
Lawsuits
ChocolateBars
OrganicFoodStores
ForexInvestments
Manufactures
PokerLessons
PublicGolfCourses
PorterhouseSteaks
Toasts
ActingLessons
SaturdayNight
SilverEarrings
WoodShutters
Not bad eh? 
So, let me save you some time right now…. Home Refinancing gets $36.65 a CLICK! HELLO!!!!! Download Software gets $1.11 per click and has a local search volume in the USA of 6,120,000 EXACT matches !! Dating Online is another one at $4.73 a click with 22,200 EXACT matches.
You can bid online for these right now! Best of luck.
Heads Up Affiliates & Developers – eBay Changes Links!
February 11, 2 Comments
eBay has quietly announced a change to its RSS feed.
For those that use the eBay Partner Network, use 3rd party software or have developed their own software (such as myself), you will quickly realise that your RSS links dont work!
If you are using 3rd party software (that builds stores for instance), you will have to contact the vendor directly.
So, having spent a few hours this afternoon updating various servers, websites etc.. I’m done. How about you?
25 Years Of .Com – This .Net Is Older….
February 8, 2 CommentsLets not let the facts get in the way of a good story about the Internet. While symbolics.com might be the oldest currently registered dot com, its not the oldest currently registered domain.
As I pointed out years ago, nordu.net has a creation date of 01-jan-1985.
For those that don’t know, nordu.net is used by Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as their research and academic backbone. The interesting thing about this domain is that it was registered before you could actually register domains, which officially began on 15 Jan 1985 as per RFC921.
For those Americans reading this; sorry guys, the Europeans beat you to it. 
Now lets get back to celebrating how great Verisign is and their price rise to $7.34 in July 2010.
