Name.Com Gives To Charity – Verizon Wins $33M

As an entrepreneur and someone who donates to a wide variety of charities, I can’t help but notice when companies do things that are right. In fact, I go out of my way to support such companies, which is why I’m posting this.

Name.com just had a promotion where $.50 from every .ORG registered until 12/31/08 was donated to Kiva.org.  On top of that, they were selling .orgs for a crazy $6.49 – which means you should buy them anyway. In case you didn’t know, Kiva lends money to entrepreneurs in the developing world, empowering them to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s the “teach the man to fish” approach using micro-transactions.

Earlier today I came across another headline – Verizon Wins $33 Million in Suit Over Domain Names. Apparently, “the default judgment of $50,000 for each of 663 addresses registered by the Internet company, OnlineNic, was issued last Friday by United States District Judge Jeremy D. Fogel in San Jose, Calif. Judge Fogel froze OnlineNic’s assets and ordered the transfer to Verizon of all identical or confusingly similar addresses. Verizon sought as much as $66.3 million in damages over names that included myverizonwireless.com, iphoneverizonplans.com and verizon-cellular.com.”

So, it got me thinking. What about donating a large chunk of that to charity? Of course I don’t know how much of the $33M will go in legal expenses. The point is (assuming they get the money) that Verizon have scored $33M. What about doing something good with a % of that?

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.