One of the best methods a private company can use to hire and retain good companies is to offer stock incentives. When the company later goes public, the employees are typically rewarded for their efforts. This gives people incentive to work for the company and stay working even in difficult times.

Last week, Demand Media stock (DMD)  hit a low price of $7.12/share. This morning, the company announced a $25 million share repurchase program. In announcing the news, company CEO Richard Rosenblatt stated, “This share repurchase program reflects confidence in our business and our commitment to maximize shareholder value.”

This is how the company explained the program in the press release:

Under the program, Demand Media is authorized to repurchase up to $25 million of its outstanding shares from time to time on the open market or in negotiated transactions. The timing and amounts of any purchases will be based on share price, market conditions and other factors. The program does not require the Company to purchase any specific number of shares and may be suspended or discontinued at management’s discretion at any time without prior notice.

The part about “in negotiated transactions” makes me wonder if this will allow the company to purchase shares directly from employees who own company stock.

One might imagine employees are nervous about the precipitous decline in stock price since the company went public and managed to reach a price of $27.38/share just a few months prior.  By repurchasing shares from employees, the company could allay some of their fears and reward them for their hard work over the past months and years.

I am certainly not the most knowledgable about this type of thing, but if I were a DMD employee with stock, I would be nervous about the value of my stock, especially given the state of the economy. If you aren’t aware, Demand Media owns domain registrar Enom as well as NameJet.

WhenI visited  DeletingTonight.com, I immediately thought of the saying, “one man’s trash is another’s treasure.” A Facebook friend posted a link to the site on her wall, and I thought that this was a great idea and has some serious potential with some additional work.

Owned and operated by Tasha Kidd, DeletingTonight.com currently lists her inventory of soon to be deleted domain names that are for sale inexpensively. The first to agree to buy the name before it deletes gets it with the next year renewal paid. Instead of making no money on domain names she plans to drop, Kidd is selling some of them.

At the present time, it only appears that Kidd’s names are for sale, but I can see some potential for the site. If she permitted others to list their dropping names on the site and then connected via API with Freshdrop and/or DropDay, it could be a very good opportunity for others to pick up names inexpensively, without having to compete at auction.

Yes, you are buying names the owner doesn’t want to renew, but it may be a deal for both parties.  Domain owners would get some compensation for names they otherwise wouldn’t keep and buyers would get some good deals. I think it’s a pretty good idea.

I received an email from Abdu Tarabichi this morning announcing the launch of Domainsville.com, a new website aimed at helping domain investors. Tarabichi is also the founder of DNKB.org (Domain Name Knowledge Base), and he has frequently sent me helpful suggestions for my blog.

According to a post on the Domainsville blog this morning,

“Domainsville.com is a portal that combines all the resources you need to navigate the domain industry.   Read more useful articles, and locate fresh and functional promo codes to save on your next domain order.   Plan way ahead of time for the next event with our comprehensive listing of domain conferences, meet-ups, webinars, and live auctions directly from your Domainsville dashboard.   Signed-in users can customize, edit, or remove information widgets as they desire.   For example, if you do business with select domain registrars, eliminate the clutter by hiding promo codes from all other companies.”

There are a number of websites catering to the needs of domain investors, so it will be interesting to see how Tarabichi differentiates this from other websites. I wish him luck with his new venture.