One of the benefits of using Protrada is the ability to create websites. Although I have not created a website with Protrada, there are many people who have.
This isn’t the first time that Morgan has worked with Protrada’s Troy Rushton. In April, when Troy spoke at the National Achievers Conference in San Jose, Morgan was instrumental in creating the presentation.
I’m going to give out an award honoring your favorite account manager, account executive, or account representative at a domain industry company. Please post your nomination in the comment section below, and I’ll post a poll early next week where you can vote for your favorite, with the winner receiving $500 cash from me. I’ll offer all the details in the post next week with the poll.
The person you nominate can work for a domain registrar, domain monetization company, aftermarket sales company, domain financing company, or other domain industry focused company. The person can not be the owner of the company, but he or she has to be someone with whom you work on a regular basis and who represents the company at events and/or handles accounts of domain investors.
There are a number of great account people that work with domain investors, and I want to honor the best of the best. One nomination per person.
I just received a press release announcing that BankAds, a company I previously covered, “has signed an exclusive agreement to acquire CreditCards.net.” Yesterday, the company announced its acquisition of OnlineBanks.com, but I think CreditCards.net is far superior to this domain name.
BankAds co-founder Sean Sullivan stated, “the re-launched CreditCards.net property is going to be the cornerstone for our credit card advertising business within BankAds.” Terms of the CreditCards.net acquisition were not disclosed by either party.
BankAds will be operating in a very competitive space, and it will give potential clients an idea about how they can expect to perform with their own sites. Many of the major credit card issuers have high ranking websites, and even Google has a credit card portal. In addition, the well-funded CreditCards.com is a major competitor (organically and paid). It was reported that CreditCards.com was acquired by Bankrate for $145 million in 2010.
CreditCards.net has been owned by Acme Media, LLC, a New York City-based company operated by Keith Levenson. Acme Media owns and operates a number of domain names and websites including Rio.com, HomeImprovement.com, Vibrator.com, Devices.com, among many others. I have very high regard for Keith and his business.
Congratulations to Sean and Keith on the announcement.
I have some nice news to report this afternoon. Bari Meyerson, my former Account Executive at Moniker, has been hired by Enom as a Senior Business Development Manager.
I received an email from Bari today confirming the news, and it looks like she’s happy about the move. “I’m very excited about joining the Demand Media ‘family.’ Demand Media has a solid foundation of providing quality services and together we have an excellent opportunity to grow the business.”
Having a trusted account manager at a domain registrar is reassuring to me, and I am excited that Bari moved to a company where I have an account and do business. As a result of this hire, I plan to transfer a group of names over to Enom.
Congratulations to Bari and Enom on this smart hire.
News release from Enom is below:
Bari Meyerson who left her Sr. Account Manager position in December 2011 at Moniker, has accepted a new business development position with Seattle based registrar Enom.
In her new role, Bari will be responsible for growing/managing Enom’s existing domainer client base as well as targeting domain investors. In addition, Bari will be focused on identifying strategic opportunities around domain parking, premium names, and value-added services.
During Bari’s 5 years at Moniker, she managed a portfolio of their top 500 registrar clients and assisted in the domain sales of Scores.com, Poker.ca and Dating.com.
There’s an article that was posted on TheNextWeb.com this morning about domain industry veteran Divyank Turakhia, and I believe it may be of interest to you. The article is about his company Directi and its Media.net property, which has seen huge growth since its launch at the end of 2010. The company is aiming to take market share away from Google’s contextual advertising business (Adsense).
I thought it was interesting to see that “Directi is now a holding worth $350 million (“or maybe more”) and expects to employ roughly 1,000 people by the end of 2012.” The article continues and mentions that about half of Directi’s employees are working for Media.net, which is remarkable considering its only been in business for a couple of years.
Other businesses in the Directi portfolio that domain investors may be familiar with include Skenzo, Logic Boxes, DomainAdvertising.com, among others. Andrew Allemann, publisher of Domain Name Wire, also works for Directi in its Austin office.
Ironically, I received a couple of emails from Media.net sales staff (including one last week) asking me about opportunities to supplant Adsense on two of my websites. I have not tried them yet, but it is something I would consider using them if I thought the opportunity was right.
The article is well worth reading when you have a chance.
After months of private beta testing, Escrow.com just publicly launched its long awaited broker product. The video above explains how it works, but essentially, it allows a domain broker to seamlessly and privately originate a deal between a buyer and seller, with Escrow.com acting as the intermediary.
Andrew Rosener of Media Options, a successful independent domain broker, has been testing out the product for a while and shared some insight with me:
“The Escrow.com broker tool has been critical in our business since we started using it and helping Escrow.com to develop it around our needs. It has truly been tailor fitted to what a broker needs in order to help both a buyer and seller complete a transaction seamlessly and transparently, or in some cases privately when either buyer or sell does not want their identity to be known by the other party. The broker tool allows us to hand hold individuals who are not familiar with the online escrow process and may be seeing Escrow.com for the first time. We’ve been able to much more efficiently close deals with less man power and less emails between parties in order to explain the escrow procedures.”
One benefit that might cause some additional discussion is that the broker can set one purchase price for the buyer and a lower price for the seller, allowing him to keep the commission amount private. Instead of working on behalf of a buyer or seller, the broker could be working more as a middleman and could possibly make a far greater profit on a deal than if it were transparent. However, at the end of the day the cost of this transaction is actually lowered, since in the past the broker would have to pay two escrow fees, one on the buy and one on the sell.
For instance, a broker may be able to acquire a name for $10,000 and immediately sell it for $25,000. The broker would be able to agree to buy the name from the owner for $10,000 while the buyer is agreeing to the deal at $25,000. The broker would earn $15,000 on the deal, minus the Escrow.com fee. There are a number of people that buy and flip names, and this shortens the timeframe on transactions.
The broker product was just launched today. To start a transaction, visit Escrow.com and log in, click “Start a transaction,” select domain name, and choose your roll as “broker.”
I have some nice news to report this afternoon. Bari Meyerson, my 
There’s an article that was posted on 