Domain Industry News

Marchex News & Potential Impact on Domain Investors

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In the largest-scale Web site launch of its kind, Marchex, Inc. today announced that it has launched more than 100,000 of its local and vertical Web sites, publishing more than one billion Web pages of content, features and functionality for consumers looking for local services and information online, along with highly targeted local advertising inventory.

It would be very cool if they used an automated program to generate this unique content. This would open up an opportunity for domain investors with similar names to put our names on their platform and share the revenue. I know my names like FloridaRadiologists.com would have a higher CTR if contact information for actual radiologists in Florida was presented instead of the random Florida links, completely unrelated to radiology, that now show when you visit.

Back on June 1st, in an article about the Domain Distribution Network that was created by Fabulous, Frank Schilling noted:

Folks, this is a game-changer. Ask your registrar, if they are opted into this system.. Or better yet, get your own registrar.. Because based on what I’m seeing here, nothing is going to expire anymore in future and your names are going to become much more valuable — Heck .. many of your best names are probably still sitting in the available pool right now, unregistered!! Go!

What sells?
Any product or service with cityname: Delawarehomedecoration.com, toledoplasticsurgery.com, fargoplumbers.com, losangelestrashremoval.com (this style of regional name is the hottest seller)

Since I have been a buyer of these types of names for some time, I have noticed a definite decrease in the amount of names like these that are available. Many people may have purchased the names simply to resell on the DDN, however, if Marchex were to open this opportunity up to individual domain investors, everyone would be a winner:

Example: Direct navigator is looking for the phone numbers of a few radiologists in Florida.
Direct Navigator —-> Types in FloridaRadiologists.com into his browser and finds a doctor in his area.
Marchex —> Paid for the click, shared with domain owner
Domain Owner —-> Paid for the click
Doctor —-> Receives phone call from potential patient

To me, it looks like a win/win situation for everyone. Perhaps other parking companies will become more than just parking companies and solve how to do this across all parked domain names. This will change the game for certain.

My Experience with SnapNames Seller Program (beta)

Up until about a month ago, I was never an active SnapNames user. At most, I may have been involved in five auctions over the course of three years, but I heard (and observed) some great sales that occurred on their platform. When I was made aware of a new beta test allowing ordinary people (like me) to auction names on SN, I was immediately intrigued. I wondered whether they would have more success selling my names than I had listing them in various forums and emailing my contacts. I decided to list a small group of decent names, and I didn’t set a reserve. I also listed one “premium” name, and I set a small reserve of $500. If it sold for the reserve price, I would take a loss, but domain investing is a gamble, so I rolled the dice.

To my surprise, a great number of my names sold! In fact, I had listed a group of them on another forum for $25/each to clear out some inventory less than two months before. My premium name sold for over $4,500 and had a bidding battle at the end. All in all, I have done two rounds of testing at SN, and here are the stats:

1) My sales rate on the domain names I submitted was 63%. Of the 30 names I submitted, 19 of them sold.

2) Of the 19 that sold, 63% of those sold for more than the $60 dollar reserve price.

In my opinion, at the present time, the only downsides to this program are the high rate of commission, currently 20%, and also the length of time it takes to disperse funds, sometimes up to a month. As I understand it, there aren’t any discounts on high value names, but a representative from SN may comment and confirm this or hopefully correct my error! All in all, the higher commission fee is worth it for the amount of names that were sold.

From what I heard, the manual process of reporting the auctions is going to become an automated process at the end of this month, which will allow me to view the names that are in auction and the number of bids. This is much easier than emailing the folks at SN – although to their credit, they always responded to me in a timely manner with the details I needed.

I just authorized a group of 60 names to be auctioned, and I will give an update once the auctions have finished. Based on the first two rounds of testing, I think they have a winning program!

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