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Leverage the .CO Godaddy Super Bowl Commercial to Sell Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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12

Godaddy Super Bowl CommercialAccording to a post on the .CO Registry’s blog, Godaddy will use at least one of its Super Bowl commercials to inform consumers about .CO on the massive stage that is the Super Bowl. Each year, millions of people across the world watch the Super Bowl, and advertising on it was one of the primary ways Godaddy first became a household name.

One can assume that when the Godaddy Super Bowl commercial mentioning (or featuring) .CO domain names airs, a lot of people will be interested in learning more about .CO domain names. They will visit Godaddy.com, and they will search for their favorite .CO domain names, hoping to register them.

Since there are now over 600,000 .CO domain names registered, I would imagine most people will find their coveted .CO domain names previously registered by others. Many of these domain names are probably owned by domain investors, and some of those names may actually be for sale, although consumers most likely wouldn’t know that or wouldn’t know to look.

It might be a very smart idea for you to list your .CO domain names for sale on Godaddy’s sales platform, where your name may be seen if a visitor searches for it or for something similar. The sales commission rate is very high at 30%, but when you consider the potential exposure, it’s not so bad.

Update: WikiLeaks.org Not Online, Neither is WikiLeaks.com

Elliot Silver
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First it appeared that Godaddy (or Wikia, Inc.) was monetizing WikiLeaks.com traffic that was intended for WikiLeaks.org website by placing sponsored links on the standard coming soon landing page.

Next, it appeared that Godaddy had taken down all of the sponsored links on the WikiLeaks.com landing page, perhaps in response to complaints about it monetizing the traffic. Some people still felt this wasn’t the right thing to do and thought that Godaddy should not have WikiLeaks.com resolve at all.

Now, the day after the DNS was removed from WikiLeaks.org, effectively taking it offline (until it moved offshore to WikiLeaks.ch), it appears that WikiLeaks.com has nothing on its website. The current WikiLeaks.com website says “Sorry this site is not currently available.”

WikiLeaks.com Update: GoDaddy Does The Right Thing

Elliot Silver
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25

I wrote an article last Sunday  about the WikiLeaks.com domain name. It’s owned by a company called Wikia, Inc. and it recently had a coming soon landing page with pay per click advertising links. Every time someone clicked on one of the Sponsored Links, Godaddy would earn some revenue (and possibly Wikia, too, if they were parking the domain name with Godaddy).

Apparently someone at Wikia, Inc. or Godaddy decided to change this landing page, and there are no more PPC links showing.

Bob Parsons is known to be a proud patriotic American. He is also a very, very wealthy man, and as the owner of one of the largest and most generous companies in the state of Arizona (maybe even the US), I don’t think the money that was being generated was substantial to Godaddy’s bottom line.

Kudos to Parsons, Godaddy, and/or Wikia for opting to not monetize traffic that was looking for the WikiLeaks.org website, which has certainly damaged the reputation of the US and others in the world.

Who Makes Money from WikiLeaks?

Elliot Silver
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14

WikiLeaks.org is a website that publishes leaked (usually confidential) documents and memos from governments and companies. These documents are often embarrassing  to those behind the documents, and the website receives a lot of interest shortly before and after it releases documents. It’s been in the news quite a bit lately, and is almost always referred to as “WikiLeaks” without the domain extension.

I don’t know much about the organization behind WikiLeaks.org, so I can’t say how (or if) they generate revenue, but it looks like at least one company makes some money as a result of WikiLeaks, and the company is based in the United States.

A company called Wikia,  Inc. from San Francisco owns the “typo” WikiLeaks.com, and the domain name is not developed. However, there are pay per click (PPC) links on the landing page, which appears to be monetized by its registrar, US-based Godaddy. You can see the “Sponsored Links” on the left hand side of the page.

At its peak, Compete.com reported that WikiLeaks.com received over 230,000 visits in July of 2010. It also appears to be close to the 100,000 visit mark last month, and will almost certainly increase as WikiLeaks.org release new confidential documents.

Of course, this traffic pales in comparison to the actual WikiLeaks.org website, but the traffic is still substantial. I wonder how much Godaddy is earning from this typo traffic.

Long Domain Transfer Process

Elliot Silver
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21

I almost feel like I participated in a miraculous situation last week when I was transferring a domain name. I bought a domain name that was registered at Godaddy, and it was pushed to my account  instantly. I then flipped the domain name the next day to another domain investor. The reps at Godaddy helped to unlock the name within a couple of hours (they lock it for security measures), and it was ready to transfer.

I sent the domain name’s authorization code to the buyer, and within 10 minutes of his requesting a transfer to his registrar, I received an email asking me to confirm. I confirmed that this was legit, and under an hour later I received an email from Godaddy asking me if the transfer was legitimate, which I immediately accepted within my Domain Manger at Godaddy account.

Under 30 minutes later, I  received  an email from Godaddy confirming that the domain name was successfully transferred.

I don’t understand why it takes so long (up to 5 days) from other domain registrars. Are their systems antiquated and they can’t quickly process transactions as fast as Godaddy? Or is it a stall tactic in the hopes that the transferrer changes his mind?

Whatever the case, I appreciate the quick transfer speed of Godaddy.

Could Intuit Buy GoDaddy?

Elliot Silver
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13

I read an article about possible GoDaddy buyers on Fool.com written by Anders Bylund, “Who’s Hot for GoDaddy?” In the article, Bylund mentions Google, Amazon, Cisco, HP, Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM as potential suitors for the domain registrar who, according to the Wall Street Journal, may be coming up for an auction with a starting bid of $1 Billion.

One company that I thought might make an interesting buyer of GoDaddy, purely based on synergy, is Intuit. Intuit is a publicly traded company with a market cap of nearly $14 Billion. The company offers small business financial management tools and services, such as Quick Books. Intuit primarily targets small and medium-sized businesses, which seems to be the same audience as Godaddy’s domain registrants.

In 2007, Intuit shelled out $170 Million for web development company, Homestead. The company offers web building services primarily for small or medium sized businesses. In a way, this actually competes with GoDaddy’s Website Tonight offering.

I don’t think I own stock in Intuit, and I am not a finance guy, so I have no idea if they could even make this work. It’s just one company I would think could possibly be a suitor for the largest domain registrar.

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