DNJournal

Why CDN.net Sold for 6 Figures

I was somewhat surprised that the CDN.net domain name sold for $185,000, as reported by DN Journal. The seller was Frank Schilling’s Name Administration, and the buyer appears to be Ditlev Bredahl of a company called OnApp, according to  the Whois record from March 13.

I mentioned my surprise about the sale at dinner last night with a business friend, and he thought the price was reasonable. He is more familiar with the CDN acronym than I, and he briefly explained why he felt it had significant value.

Among plenty of other things, CDN stands for Content Delivery Network(s), and I found the video below, which features Mr. Bredahl speaking about the technology. The article in which this video appears also does a good job of explaining the CDN landscape.

DNSalePrice Relaunches with Upgrades

Knowing public domain sales prices is one of the keys in making good business decisions when it comes to buying and selling domain names, and it’s also helpful in negotiations. This type of inteligence can be difficult to ascertain, especially when it comes to sales that are just a few thousand dollars or less, which wouldn’t be reported on sites like DNJournal.

One of my favorite domain tools is DNSalePrice because they have a ton of domain sales data from a variety of sources. It’s a no-frills site with a ton of information and quite a few search options. The site was launched in 2006 following endorsements from Ron Jackson, Matt Bentley and other early leaders in the domain industry.

To provide data that is consistently reliable and trustworthy, the site typically uses only data from the major domain channels such as Sedo, Moniker, Afternic, GoDaddy, DNJournal, and a few other trusted sources. Earlier this week, I learned that DnSalePrice recently complete a substantial update, with the additional of $83 million in domain sales from 2010.

DnSalePrice is the largest repository of domain sales and includes over $700 million in domain sales records from 1995 through the present. It’s great to be able to track domain sales that are difficult to find elsewhere and can be helpful in negotiations – both buying and selling, when I find a favorable comp.

DnSalePrice was developed by Richard Wixom, a software architect who has extensive experience in both database and web development. Richard splits his time between domain investing, software consulting, has wife and three sons.

It’s great to have such a useful (free) resource.

Cisco Agrees to Buy Tandberg for $3 Billion

TandbergBack in January of 2007, the domain name Tandberg.com was purchased for $1,500,000. The domain sale led the DNJournal weekly sales chart, and it was one of the five largest publicly recorded domain sales of the year. The domain name was sold by Tandberg Data to another company from Norway known as Tandberg, a maker of video conferencing hardware.

Tandberg ASA had to pay $1.5 million to secure the domain name since it was being used by another company operating on it legitimately. Before buying Tandberg.com, Tandberg ASA operated on the Norwegian ccTLD extenion, and they used Tandberg.no as their URL, which they still use today.

This morning, it was reported that Cisco agreed to purchase Tandberg for $3 Billion. While it’s hard to speculate whether the domain name had any impact on the company that employs 1,500 people, with headquarters in Oslo and New York, it certainly made it easier for people to find them online.

The purchase price marks an 11% premium over the value of the shares of Tandberg stock prior to the announcement.

Thoughts at the End of the Week

As the week is coming to a close, I wanted to write a little bit about a few things that I thought about this past week. I bet some of you are thinking the same thing, and I welcome your thoughts in the comment section as always.

I booked my flight to New Orleans for Domainer Mardi Gras in February. For those of you from New York, Jet Blue is offering round trip tickets for around $229 after taxes – not a bad deal at all.

I wish DN Journal accepted comments. There are so many great articles and news stories posted by Ron, and it would be great if we had the ability to discuss some of them on site. I bet this would surely be a big traffic driver and would be interesting to many.

It really annoys me when bloggers and other news outlets have a comment section and don’t approve them – or they only approve the favorable comments. I wonder if these people are naive enough to think that nobody notices this – or if they simply don’t want to feel put down by people that disagree with what they are saying.

I don’t think people should develop domain names simply because others are doing it. The reason I develop mini sites is that I am a full time domain investor, and this is a way to build/add value to my domain assets in a down market. The reason I fully develop geodomains – and will be developing Torah.com (very soon) is to build businesses on them so. Anyone can sell a good domain name, but not everyone can build and manage a business. I want to challenge myself while building a revenue stream for the future, and this is an ongoing process.

If you are going to make it as a domain investor, you need to look outside of the typical domain “hang outs.” Check out webmaster forums, browse SEO websites, read up on new technology, and think about things differently than others.

I believe there are many good potential domain deals in the high end of the industry, but most of the low hanging fruit under six figures has been picked, and there aren’t nearly as many deals to be had in that area. You need to have steel stones to invest in 6 figure + domain names these days without a development/business plan, and you need a back up plan if your primary plan is to flip them.

    5 Newsletters for Domain Investors

    There are a number of great newsletters to which I think every domain investor should subscribe, and I listed 10 of the most important ones below. Not all of the newsletters contain sales listings, but all of them contain important domain-related information. Whether you are new to the domain investment industry or a seasoned veteran, the newsletters below are the best of the best.

    10 Favorite Domain Investment Newsletters (in no particular order)

    DNJournal Newsletter – Domain industry updates, including notifications about the weekly domain sales report and special reports on DN Journal.

    Domain Name Wire Newsletter – Domain industry news updates and special reports on Domain Name Wire.

     

    WIPO Domain Name Decisions – Recent UDRP decisions made by the World Intellectual Property Organizations, with links to each decision.

    National Arbitration Forum Monthly Newsletter – Monthly email with NAF updates and recent decision summaries. You must email them to subscribe.

    Domaining.com Daily Email – Links to the ten most popular articles written by domain bloggers and news providers.

    Do you receive another domain newsletter that you think provides great information? Please feel free to drop a link   and let us know domain investors should subscribe.

    Domain Name Security Offerings

    With domain theft in the news again, it’s time to take a quick look at some security offerings of popular domain name registrars. The security measures below may not be the only security features offered by registrars, so if I missed something, please let me know:

    Name.comNameSafe VIP service offering a security USB key fobs for accounts. Domain owners who have the keyfob need to use it in order to log in to their account, preventing anyone without the security key from accessing account-level actions (such as a domain transfer). Name.com is the first ICANN accredited registrar to offer this type of security service. Cost: $19.95 per account per year.

    MonikerMaxLock is an added layer of protection customers can purchase to safeguard their domain names at Moniker. With MaxLock, the customer provides Moniker with a government-issued form of identification (passport, license, military ID…etc) and two security questions, which cannot be retrieved online. Any account or domain changes must be completed through the Moniker security team. Cost: $19.95 per domain name per year or $124.99 per portfolio per year.

    FabulousChallenge/Response security and the Fabulous Security Key are both security offerings of Fabulous. Challenge/Response is a security feature that allows the account owner to supply answers to a preset list of questions, in order to verify the identity of the user before being granted account access. The security key is a USB device that provides additional levels of security to sensitive areas of a domain owner’s account.

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