SEATTLE, WA - In the shadow of the impending launch of Meta’s new Twitter competitor, Threads, another rival of the microblogging social media platform – Bluesky – announced on Wednesday that it has acquired $8 million in new funding in addition to implementing a new change to their business model- selling custom domains in a bid to keep the service ad-free for its user base. In a blog post, Bluesky noted that they had raised additional seed funding following its … [Read more...]
NYT: “Dot-org Symbolizes Neither Quality Nor Trust; False Association with Credibility”
PALM BEACH, NY - Wow, the New York Times has taken a firm and unique approach to the news and industry buzz surrounding the sale of the .ORG registry to private equity firm, Ethos Capital. Bash the domain in a hitpiece to level the playing-field in what it calls the domains' opportunity to be used by a host of bad actors, all whom reap the benefits of dot-org’s "false association with credibility." In an opinion piece published yesterday by Sam Wineburg and Nadav Ziv, an … [Read more...]
Investor Land Grab Opportunity Arises from Donuts Registry with Reduced Price gTLDs
PALM BEACH, FL –An interesting opportunity has arisen from new domain name registry company Donuts Inc., which operates roughly 240 new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Although I am less than a huge fan of new gTLDs, there are industry veterans who do in fact use them in certain scenarios of ‘super premiums’, and you’ll have an opportunity to filter through a list of over 1.1 million names (previously on hold) now being released in a price-drop by the … [Read more...]
One Less Way to Monetize Your Domains As Chitika Network Plans Shut Down April 30th
WEST PALM BEACH – A popular alternative to Google Adsense has announced it will be shutting its virtual doors on April 30th 2019. Chitika, an online advertising network that grew quickly in popularity after hitting the market in 2004 is shutting down. On Wednesday, April 17, the company sent all publishers an email announcing the pending shut-down: After 15+ years in business and millions of publisher relationships, Chitika is hereby shutting down and closing its business. … [Read more...]
A Domain Resellers Best Benefit Might Be In Domain “Savings”, Not Sales “Revenue”
NEW YORK, NY – In early 2005 I became a reseller for Wild West Domains Inc., a subsidiary of the GoDaddy, signing up for their Reseller opportunity, and at that time, their “Super Reseller” opportunity. The difference between the two was that the Super Reseller provided the ability to “resell” the “reseller” opportunity and put companies underneath you, earning a small portion of your acquired re-sellers sales, sort of like a sub-affiliate or MLM (multi-level-marketing) … [Read more...]
Lights Out for Broadway Ticket, GEO Domain Site NewYork.com Over Legal Dispute
NEW YORK, NY – While researching some GEO domain names last night I discovered that NewYork.com has now disappeared. It was a huge site I was quite familiar with as I had some past affiliate dealings with them, but today it appears its gone offline and parked at Godaddy.com. This was initially very hard to believe as last time I visited the site it seemed bustling with traffic and activity similar to its New York City streets in which it ‘virtually’ represented. This … [Read more...]
What’s Next? Could Eminent Domain Be Used to Steal Your GEO Domain Name?
NEW YORK, NY – This will be a controversial subject for many if not all domain name owners, however, in light of the France.com domain seizure, every Geographic domain name ‘taking’ could be imminent. Sound insane? Read on. While researching how in the world this atrocity could have happened to the owner of France.com, (Jean-Noel Frydman), as a GEO domain name owner, I wanted to research the possibility of this happening to others, myself included. Since I’m in the … [Read more...]
Domains and Divorce, Are You Prepared for Your Domain Assets to Come Under Fire?
WEST PALM BEACH, FL – This is a very personal post today with thoughts you might find surprising, however, one thing that readers of my site will always get is honesty, good, bad, or ugly; you’re going to have the opportunity to read through the details of my experience on the web – with whatever it may be – and those who read these articles have come to expect and respect my honesty and thoughts where sharing my real world experience on the Internet and within circles of … [Read more...]
Internet Sales Tax Law Could Change This June; Decision on South Dakota v. Wayfair
NEW YORK - The U.S. Supreme Court will make a critical decision in the coming weeks that could give states the right to tax small businesses on the Internet. What is being decided is whether or not a decision from 1992 should be upheld in a new case, which prevents States form being able to tax, audit or regulate businesses and individuals that do not reside in their state (Ex: online businesses, who are located elsewhere but do transact business in a state). If the … [Read more...]
Ad Revenue Down? Here’s the Latest Things That Could Be Affecting Your Revenue
NEW YORK – You might say that declining ad revenue is becoming a typical part of the business; if you feel like you are constantly trying to find new ways to build both revenue and traffic on your domains while increasing the number of channels and ad networks you rely on, you’re far from alone. Publisher revenues are being squeezed across the board, and while sometimes you might even feel that the more web traffic you build, the less it pays out – you’re probably correct in … [Read more...]
Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) for “CEOs” – ln Layman’s Terms
NEW YORK, NY - About twelve years ago when “search engine optimization” was beginning to get popular, a competing news publisher invited me to lunch at his restaurant to brainstorm about collaborating. It never materialized, but while there and after getting to know each other for a little while, he then turned to me, changed his posture in his chair a bit, sort of gathered his thoughts, and asked me straight out, “sell me on search engine optimization”, “what is it” and “how … [Read more...]
US Fortune 500 Businesses, Their Domain Name Characteristics, and Secure Status
NEW YORK, NY - Each year Fortune Magazine publishes a list of the largest companies in the United States by revenue. Below is the list for 2016. Also below, are some interesting characteristics of their domain name choices including whether or not these companies are prepared for SSLs on their corporate websites. 494 are using .com domain names, 4 use .nets, 1 .org, and 1 .xyz. 494 (98.8%) have chosen the ".com" extension for their domain name. 235 (47%) are running … [Read more...]
Digital Advertising Revenue Hits $19.6B in Q1 2017, Highest Q1 Earnings on Record
NEW YORK, NY – The first quarter of 2017 marked the highest ever Q1 earnings for digital advertising in the U.S., hitting $19.6 billion, according to the latest IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report released today by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and prepared by PwC US. Climbing 23 percent, or $3.7 billion, from the same period just a year ago, these earnings represent the second-highest quarter of all time, and follow on the heels the industry’s strongest … [Read more...]
Google to Become Judge, Jury and Executioner on Ad Placement
NEW YORK, NY - There are a number of domainers out there that live and die by the sword – that is, the ad placement sword, where they cut and slice up deep rich (or some even thin) content pages with just the right mix of ads, images and content to keep users entertained while the clicks keep coming in. This is how the developer-focused domainer drives revenue on their blogs and net properties, especially since domain parking revenue dried up. That last thing domainers … [Read more...]
Basically: How to Make a Good Website from a Domain Name; Layman’s Terms
NEW YORK, NY - Sometimes a simple explanation of how to do something can go a very long way. That is what we are doing this evening, we're going over how the heck to build a website from a simple domain name address. The basics; in layman's terms. First. The first thing you want to do with your project is to pick a good domain name. You want to pick a domain name with keywords related to whatever it is that you are building. For instance, if you were building a … [Read more...]