Congratulations to Bob Mountain

Elliot Silver
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6

I want to extend congratulations to Bob Mountain on his very recent promotion to Senior Vice President of Business Development at NameMedia. The news was announced in a press release this afternoon.

Long before Afternic was an advertiser on my blog, I was a customer of NameMedia, buying 6 figures in domain names from  BuyDomains  over the course of a couple years. When Bob was first hired by NameMedia, he reached out to me to learn how I operate my business and to see how he could help grow my company’s relationship with NameMedia properties.

Bob works tirelessly for the company, and he is a presence at conferences and other events where domain investors and potential domain buyers are present. Bob’s role with the company is important because he is often the person who promotes the importance of the acquisition of good domain names to end user clients. These people then visit marketplaces such as BuyDomains and Afternic where they purchase our domain names we have listed for sale.

Congratulations to Bob on this well deserved promotion. I’ll drink a glass (bottle) of sake in his honor.

Press release below:

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NameCheap Active in SSL Business

Elliot Silver
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6

For any company doing business online with passwords, credit card information, or where other private information changes hands, having SSL security settings is a must (https). In addition, Facebook has a SSL requirement for business fan pages, so any company with a custom page lander or third party apps must have a SSL certificate.

Many domain registrars and hosting companies offer SSL upsells, and most domain investors simply skip over this to get to the payment page. SSL certificate sales are a big business for many companies.

One company that has become big in the SSL certificate space is NameCheap, which currently operates CheapSSLs.com.  According to NameCheap CEO Rick Kirkendall, although the website hasn’t reached its second birthday yet, the company is already generating over $50,000 a month in revenue from this one website, and they aren’t stopping.

NameCheap has two additional SSL certificate websites in the works, which should help boost its revenue numbers. The company acquired the exact match SSLcertificate.com about a year ago along with SSLcertificates.com. Both domain names were acquired in the aftermarket, for undisclosed sums.

Throughout his career, Rick has valued and touted exact match domain names, and these acquisitions prove that the right business plan executed on exact match domain names can be huge revenue drivers.

Mixergy Interviews Brandon Abbey of Escrow.com

Elliot Silver
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3

My high value domain purchases and sales that aren’t completed in private are finalized using Escrow.com. In January, the company announced that it had completed over $1 BILLION in transactions, and I would imagine a large percentage of those transactions have been domain names.

I just watched a Mixergy interview with Escrow.com CEO Brandon Abbey, and I think you’ll enjoy it. I couldn’t embed the interview below for some reason, so I highly recommend checking it out when you have a chance (it’s fairly long).

I also recommend checking out Mixergy for a wide range of executive interviews from a wide variety of people and companies.

Domain Companies with BBB Ratings

Elliot Silver
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7

I happened to come across a domain industry company’s Better Business Bureau rating and thought it might be interesting to see the ratings for various companies in the domain industry.

Since some companies have multiple lines of business and offerings, the ratings can be based on on-domain name components.  I believe that ratings can vary depending on the length of time the company has been in business and possibly whether it is a member of the BBB.  You can read all of the factors that go into a company rating on the BBB website.

This is a random assortment of domain industry companies:

I am sure I missed some domain name related companies, so feel free to post them below. Do you think the BBB is still looked at by consumers as much as before with ratings from companies like Yelp?

After the Sale, Are You More or Less Likely to Use Moniker?

Elliot Silver
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19

I’m sure you’ve already read the news that Moniker and Snapnames  were  acquired by KeyDrive in a private transaction. I am very surprised that neither Oversee.net nor Key Drive sent an email to Moniker / Snapnames clients, and I don’t see anything that would indicate that either company issued a press release to announce the news yet.

I have met a few employees of KeyDrive, although I don’t know a whole lot about the company, aside from some of its business assets and location. For some people, having a registrar whose European corporate “home base” will come as good news, while others may not wish to have their domain registrar located outside of the United States (keep in mind that the .com registry is of course located in Virginia).

Technical support and customer service are both important to me, and I don’t know anything about the support or service that will be given by KeyDrive. At one time, I knew I could send an email to Bari Meyerson, and she would handle any issue very quickly. That changed in recent months, and I was then required to submit everything directly to Oversee.net support.

With all of this said, I am wondering what your immediate thoughts on the sale are, and if you plan to use Moniker going forward.


Report: “Hackers Infiltrate Domain Name Auction House”

Elliot Silver
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4

I am not a user of this particular domain auction house so I didn’t receive any official notice from the company, but according to an article on Australia’s The Age, “computer hackers have penetrated the database of Australia’s biggest internet domain name auction house, possibly accessing client home addresses and encrypted credit card numbers.”

The hacking reportedly happened on Netfleet, a website that specializes in .AU domain names. Netfleet was the venue where the $129,000 USD sale of InvestmentProperty.com.au took place last year, the largest .AU domain sale at the time.

According to the article, Netfleet sent out emails to users informing them of the news. If you received the email from Netfleet, it may be a good idea to contact your credit card company to see if any unauthorized activity has occurred. You may want to see if you can change card numbers just in case.

In addition, if you happen to use the same log in information and password on other websites, you should change your passwords ASAP. It’s never a good idea to use the same password for your auction, registrar, email…etc. accounts for this reason among others.

I wish Netfleet a smooth recovery and hope this serves as a warning for other auction houses and domain platforms to ensure their websites are protected and secure.

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