NEW YORK, NY – The wonderful power of the Internet; when things go wrong it allows a venue to vent, warn, enlighten, even bitch and moan some, if and when deemed necessary. Yet, when things go right, you get to openly commend, educate, share, etc.. Today I have the delightful opportunity to share my positive experience with Uniregistry and their relentless domain brokers there, as I believe in giving credit where credit is due. If you have been reading my updates you're … [Read more...]
Industry Gets New Organizational “Think Tank” Protecting Rights of Domainers
NEW YORK, NY - According to OnlineDomain.com, there’s a new ORG in town ready to protect the rights of domain name owners; it’s called the “Domain Name Rights Coalition” and it was founded by Mikki Barry and Kathy Kleiman, both whom have extensive backgrounds in domain policy. The organization is using the domain name, dnrc.tech which I found very interesting and immediately checked what I would have considered the ideal URL, DNRC.org, but of no surprise, it was already … [Read more...]
Someone Caught Great Deal at Flippa; How Is This Domain Venue Performing for You?
NEW YORK, NY - Someone landed a fantastic deal on Flippa this weekend. Amazingly, I lost the auction despite my accidental astronomical one-too-many zero’s high-bid. I’m not going to mention what domain it was (to avoid any politics on the issue), [all luck to the winner who got a great deal] but the domain name was a single word .com highly-commercial term with an Estibot well over $200,000.00 and it sold for about 9 percent of that. Not a .net domain selling for 9%, but … [Read more...]
Top 100 .COM Domain Names; All Time, Public Sales Listings at NameBio.com
NEW YORK, NY - The following list is the top 100 .com domain names that have sold and been reported (on record) at NameBio. It is nice to take a look at the list every once in a while to remind yourself of some of the largest sales and what these little gems of virtual real estate are worth; enjoy. All prices are in … [Read more...]
UDRP Reform Can’t Come Soon Enough…
NEW YORK, NY – There is a new trend out there and you won’t notice it by searching Google Trends. No, it’s a quietly growing trend that is not something most people know about. It’s also not something most people will fight for, but the ICA is working on a resolution, and it looks like that resolution can’t come fast enough. Because it is being used by corporate greed mongers who hadn’t thought fast enough; they would like to grow their brands and businesses by stealing what … [Read more...]
Donuts’ .Dating Registry to Benefit from Niche Dating Site Using Trump Politics
NEW YORK, NY - A niche dating website business is out there promoting the .dating URL (https://trump.dating) while suggesting trump supporters make ideal candidates for long lasting relationships. The site belongs to a group called Friends Worldwide, Inc. which has utilized niche sites such as singlesoldiers.org, countrymatch.com and this new one https://trump.dating to build its membership. From what I could find online the network could use the temporary additional … [Read more...]
Remove Other TLDs from Equation and NamesCon 2018 Still Reflects ‘Great’ Year
NEW YORK, NY - This morning I wanted to look at the live auction results for NamesCon over the last three years, what's on record at NameBio, which is here. That list showed that not only was there a slight rebound in total domain sales this year, but that the 2018 live auction netted the largest dollar amount total over the three year period. It also showed that the percentage of transactions for .com domains grew over the period with 56% being .com in 2016, 63% in 2017, … [Read more...]
Last Three Years of NamesCon Live Auction Shows Slight Rebound in Average Prices
NEW YORK, NY - Looking at the last three years of NamesCon live auction sales totals shows a slight bump in domain prices from last year. Even without 2018's leading sale, Great.com, which sold for $900,000.00, the numbers still look pretty decent. Below are the last three years of domain name sales from the live auction results, according to NameBio.com. Along with those sales and sales prices is the average sale price without each auctions top performing domain for that … [Read more...]
This Take Action Social Movement Platform Just Might Launch gTLDs into “Dot Space”
NEW YORK, NY – Every once in a while I see a real stand-out domain in the new gTLD space and that's what happened last night when I came across an organization called HARNESS, with its address (Harness.space) being utilized in a great way, and to an audience likely to not care much what-in-the-world the ending dot is; it’s the organization that matters, and its purpose. While passionate lovers of this organizations' mission won’t care either way what the new dot address … [Read more...]
CBS News Offers Readers ‘Bad Advice’ in 6 Best Practices for Choosing a Domain
NEW YORK, NY – Usually when you read an article in Google News, you expect it to give you some good advice, especially when it is a reputable news website. That’s not what happened today when Google News led me to question whether or not I was even on a real news website. Rather than focusing so much on cleaning up Facebook and Twitter, maybe Google should check their own inclusion practices. The article is on CBS News Detroit and it is called “6 Best Practices for Choosing … [Read more...]
If I Had Just Started With Domain Names Today, I Don’t Think I Would Make It
NEW YORK, NY – When I started in this industry it was the year 2000. The Internet looked very different than it does today, and people were just starting to get acquainted with Google. Search engine optimization was a lot easier to do with most people not having even heard of the term “SEO”. Back then, as a website owner, you were able to take advantage of certain techniques which could easily put you ahead of the majority. Compared to today, there was little competition … [Read more...]
How to Become a ‘Rockstar Domainer’ by Developing Your Own Domain Assets
NEW YORK – Unless you have been living in a cave for the last few years, you’ve caught wind that parking your domain names is potentially the worst thing you can do to monetize them. Today, you need to DEVELOP your domain names into real web services to earn realistic profits from them, but development is not always easy, especially if you do not know how to do any of it yourself, as it can be VERY EXPENSIVE. Development involves an ‘idea’, planning, design, development, … [Read more...]
Final Day for NameJet, Right of the Dot, NamesCon 2018 Online Auction
NEW YORK, NY – Good deals and little time is left for the NamesCon, NameJet, and Right of the Dot live auction which began in Las Vegas. Most if not all auctions end within a few hours from now which puts both the East and West coast of the United States in the game to grab some deals by this afternoon. There are a good number of domains that are still showing no reserve and have no bids, so this is an opportunity to grab some names which there will be little fighting … [Read more...]
The Abandoned Wasteland DNForum.com is for Sale; Here’s Why It Still Has Value
NEW YORK – If you have not yet heard, and I am sure that you have, once popular domain name forum, DNForum.com, The Place to Talk Domains is for sale. Ownership says they’ll have it sold this week and I would not be at all surprised to see that happen, because even if no-one at all bids on it, I did. That's right, I put in a small [worst case scenario] offer for the website, and if I wanted to steal it for the best absolute price, I wouldn’t be drawing even more attention … [Read more...]
Will People Use Alternative Domain Names Like They Do Toll Free Phone Numbers?
NEW YORK - Much like .com domain names, 1-800 toll free phone numbers with meaning in their letters such as 1-800-FLOWERS, are hard to come by these days – or even impossible to obtain, based on limited supply. Although it is indeed possible to get a 1-800 phone number today, if you’re looking for a vanity number, such as one with clear meaning in its letters, you’re much more likely to get it using an alternative such as 888. This is very much what we are seeing today … [Read more...]
From the Floor: Premium .COM ‘Dreamers’ May Find Reality of Ownership, Closer
NEW YORK, NY – If ever you considered getting that “big name” in a .com extension, there may never be a better time than right now. The domain auctions are, for the most part, a ‘wholesale market’, so most people expect auction prices to be, well - better than average. However, most would not expect the “super-great” deals we all saw at NamesCon this year (2018), which were potentially better than any year past. And talk about “Great”... its .com version (Great.com) sold for … [Read more...]
Quick Look Inside NamesCon in Las Vegas
NEW YORK - Here are a few shots from inside NamesCon Global 2018 which is in its second day. Tomorrow will be the big event when the live auction takes place from 4:00 PM – 7:00 PM Pacific. The live auction is hosted by NameJet and Monte Cahn's RightOfTheDot, with a long list of names consisting of both legacy domains such as .com, .net, .org as well as many new gTLDs such as .club, .tickets and others. To look over the domains being sold visit the NameJet list; there are … [Read more...]
It’s Here: NamesCon Officially Starts Tomorrow at the Tropicana in Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS, NV – The long anticipated NamesCon event begins tomorrow with its 11:00 am - 11:45 am "Welcome to NamesCon" photo and session. Domain enthusiasts from around the world have begun rolling in since this morning, myself included. The event is taking place at the Tropicana, which is one of the first hotels on the Las Vegas strip located on the east corner of Tropicana Boulevard. Known as the largest Domain Name Conference in the United States (maybe the world), … [Read more...]
Winners and Losers; A Look at “Digital” Domains; Prices Over Last 10 Years
NEW YORK – With each passing day we are living and working in more of a 'digital' world. One of my latest companies is called "Cars Digital Inc." It is a digital advertising agency which focuses on lead generation specifically for car dealers. That's why today we are looking at domain name price changes over time for all URLs that changed hands at least twice over the past 10 years (22,065 publicly, those on record at NameBio) that also included the word "Digital". Thanks … [Read more...]
After 18 Years of UDRP, ICA Says, Time for Discussion, Re-evaluation, Improvements
NEW YORK – Back in 1999, ICANN adopted the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) and its related Rules (the "UDRP Rules") for the resolution of certain limited kinds of domain name disputes between registrants and third parties, i.e. abusive registration of domain names, otherwise known as “cybersquatting”, which is the practice of registering a domain name in bad faith. The ICA, (“The Internet Commerce Association”) believes that although the UDRP process has largely … [Read more...]