Hybrid Domainer

With possible buyout coming, Go Daddy does away with $1 auctions

For those not familiar with Go Daddy auctions, when an expiring name gets no bid at its starting price of $12 it moves to what is called "Closeouts." Now you do not have to even have a membership to Go Daddy Auctions to participate in closeout auctions.

The names start at $11, you have 24 hours to buy it now at that price. The price then goes to $10 if no one bought it at $11, again for 24 hours, then $9 for another 24 hours and then $5 for another 24 hours and finally $1 for 24 hours.

Earlier today after spending hours there I had come across many at $1.  It looks like now the lowest price is $5 with no price decline to $5.

When I logged into my account it looked like Go Daddy was going to show me a message but there was an error and the page did not load.

An email would have been nice.  So for those who waited and looked for $1 closeouts, they are now only going as low as $5.

The order being $11,$10,$9,$8 (new),$5

Sedo and Afternic homepages leave a lot to be desired

Sedo and Afternic are the two most prominent domain marketplaces.  Its where many who know nothing or very little about the domain market go to look for a purchase.

These sites should be displaying names on the front page imo. Taking up the majority of the homepage with recent sales, auctions and a place for people to promote their names for a fee.

When someone goes there and sees a vibrant aftermarket, it should give a better representation of the value of domain names.

Sedo does have a spot at the bottom of the page but its not good enough.  A feature listing on the home page costs $39 for 30 days.  The spot is a rotating spot.  There are only five spots.  There should be 25, think of the additional money for Sedo, and the better exposure for the seller.

Afternic shows no domains on their front page. This is just not the right move imo.

Increase the awareness of the names. Make it easier for end users to see more names right away.

Again IMO

Namecheap giving you a chance to win $5000 in cash

Do you have a Twitter account ? Go here and check it out http://www.namecheap.com/contest/namecheap-rocks.aspx

If no one tweets the message with the required elements after 7 hours, the LAST person who tweeted wins!

To sweeten the deal, we are giving away $500 per week for eight weeks. Winner will be chosen at random from the qualifying tweets during that week. So, if your chances at $5000 might feel far away, you still have a chance to win a substantial cash prize from Namecheap!

Namecheap Rocks! We're Giving You a Chance to Win $5000 in Cash!

This Twitter contest is like no other. We want you to tell your friends how much you love Namecheap. The last (wo)man standing will win $5000!

 

Disclosure: This is not a paid post and Namecheap has never advertised on this blog. We do have a Namecheap account and have 20 names registered there. This post is made because it seems like our readers would like a chance to win $5000

BtoB online covers marketers debate on new Gtlds

BtoBonline.com has come out with article about the debate between marketers on the new gtlds.

Although most marketers have declined to comment publicly about their intentions, a handful, including Canon Inc. and Hitachi have disclosed preliminary plans to use top-level domains; Canon will use .canon, and Hitatchi will use .hitachi.

Behind the scenes, other marketers are exploring their options. Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services, a domain name management company, said it has been in touch with about 200 global brands that are contemplating various strategies with .brand domain names. The company said about 35% of these companies are b2b marketers.

Read the whole story HERE

Interesting thread: The coming bear market for Geo domains ?

In a thread getting a lot of interest on Namepros.com, a poster has called a major bear market for Geo domains due to the new Gtld being passed.

Seems a little presumptive with a lot of info still to come.

Read the thread here :http://www.namepros.com/domain-name-discussion/720489-major-bear-market-expected-geo-domains.html

Peter Thiel on why he would not have started Paypal if he knew then what he knows now

In an interview with CapLinked.com (which Thiel is an investor in) Peter Thiel stated "My general analysis of my PayPal experience is that if I knew then everything I know now about the payments space, I would never have started the company. It would be too intimidating. There were a lot of extremely difficult challenges we didn’t expect in advance. In that crucible, I saw how truly transformative breakthrough technologies can be. And then there’s the macro-reality of economic growth, which holds that things only get better the more a society innovates."

The interview also talks about his investment in Facebook and is worth a read.

http://blog.caplinked.com/?p=411

five letter.com sales for the week

Five letter.com sales reported to Dn Journal- Mon. June 13, 2011 - Sun. June 19, 2011

eCats.com $25,000

xCite.com $18,000

ProFm.com $14,400

AtNow.com $9,000

Keepz.com $9,000

Haipu.com $8,640

Actsi.com $5,188

Junyo.com $4,888

Luved.com $4,500

Acltd.com $3,588

Edfun.com $3,300

HrCam.com $3,288

Urown.com $3,000

Custy.com $2,880

Banci.com $2,232

Kobid.com $2,232

Gutao.com $2,115

Klood.com $2,000

5 character.com sales

Shop5.com $10,000

nfc4g.com $2,100

Mach7.com $2,088

Disclosure: We actively buy and sell five letter.com domains, sales report is for information purposes only and to track the activity in the five letter.com space. 

Lately getting a lot of emails to purchase 5 letter.com names.  We are not an end user for these names and are not looking to pay anything close to an end user price for these names. Thank you

Evan Williams lists five reasons why domains are getting less important

Evan Williams is one of the founders of Twitter. He also co-founded Pyra Labs, the creator of Blogger.

He listed five reasons why domains are getting less important.

1) Google

There was as time when you knew your friend's and family member's phone numbers. There may have been a time when you knew the addresses of people you emailed a lot. And there was a time when I knew how to get across town without using my navigator. Software has taken over these jobs from our brains, because it's better at it. Domain names are like phone numbers and email addresses—unique identifies that allow computers to disambiguate from the more natural (but likely non-unique) handles our brains like. (Put aside that domain names are actually the human readable system for IP addresses. They're still computery.)

If you start typing "bob" into the To: field in your email client, it will give you some choices of the Bob's you've emailed before, which is almost always good guess. If it's wrong, you go look up the address and then probably copy+paste it in without really paying attention to what it is.

A lot of people use Google this same way. The first time how saw how often people got to Yahoo by typing yahoo.com into Google, I was shocked. And as this famous comment thread shows—where thousands of Facebook users showed up to a blog post talking about Facebook logins and got confused because typing "facebook login" into Google was how they got there—Google is how normal people get around the web. This probably wouldn't be true if Google wasn't so damn fast. But it is. It's the auto-complete of the web. Well, one of them...

Read the other four here: http://evhead.com/2011/06/five-reasons-domains-are-less-important.html

Will the small domainer be overwhelmed

Obviously the biggest domain story of 2011 is that ICANN has finally approved their new gTLD program.

Now it will be some time before any new tld hits the market, most likely 2014. The exception to this is .xxx which got approved on its own.

ICM registry, the .XXX registry, has announced the preliminary timeline for launch of .XXX.

The registration process will take place in 3 big steps:
Sunrise: as from September 2011
Sunrise A : - The members of the adult industry from within the sponsored community (holders of a pornographic website or people operating within the adult sector industry) and the registered trademarks holders or intellectual property rights owners.*
- The members of the pornographic industry who don’t own a registered trademark but who already have an identical domain name under another extension. They will have to ask the equivalent of their domain name under .XXX.
Sunrise B: block of .XXX domain name by trademark owners from outside the sponsored community
Landrush : registration for all the members of the sponsored community. *
General Availability should begin in November.**

So there will be a flood of new tlds on the market, along with data that time spent on apps outpaced the web for the first time.

According to new statistics from analytics firm Flurry, the average mobile user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet. That's 81 minutes per day for mobile apps versus 74 minutes per day spent surfing the Web (both desktop and mobile). You can read that whole story here.

So will the small domainer be overwhelmed with too many things going on at once ? I think they will be overwhelmed.  Not enough money to keep up with every new tld, not enough time to read everything that comes out.  In addition to reading you have to know the agenda of the writer. Someone like Michael Berkens, has great interest in the new gTLD program. He plans on providing a consulting service to them at www.rightofthedot.com.  In no way should you not read his blog, but know he has a vested interest. 

The .com will be a stronger king speech you will read and hear a lot too. IMO dilution is dilution.

For example: Let's say you live in a town with 500 other residents.  You own the only restaurant. Everyone believes you are a great cook and the service and staff is the best. You serve 500 dinners a night.

Now someone comes along and opens a taco stand, it is nowhere near your quality. But a few people decide to check it out one night and a few continue to try it each night.  So now you are serving 490 dinners while the taco stand serves 10.  You are still king of the town, but you have been diluted.  Spin it anyway you like. But if you had all 500 dinners a night and now serve between 450 to 490 you are diluted.

The small domainer needs to focus now more than ever.  Schilling, Berkens, Ham etc... can afford to take chances and lose money. The small domainer cannot.  So start really looking at your portfolio get rid of the junk. 

Best of luck to everyone.

ABCTeacher.com auction closes at $3805 on Go Daddy

The bidding was fast and furious as the bids kept going back and forth.  You only have to increase the bid by $5, so it makes sense if someone was bidding $3500 another $5 won't make them go away.

ABCTeacher.com expiring auction had 179 bids and sold for $3805.  The domain is 12 years old and according to Go Daddy, had estimated monthly traffic of 2744 hits.  Of course Go Daddy promises no guarantee of future traffic on any domain.