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Props to Berkens

Elliot Silver
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Although he probably won’t read this as he’s en route to Colombia for the ICANN conference, I want to give props to Mike Berkens and his blog on this third anniversary of its existence.

Mike really has no need to spend his time blogging. His company has one of the top private domain portfolios in existence. Dan Warner published a report that revealed the domains in Most Wanted Domains’ portfolio had the most (or top 5) Whois lookups of any privately held company. Mike’s company’s nameservers were also named one of the “cleanest” in terms of trademarks out of the nameservers with the most domain names.

In other words, not only does Mike own a lot of domain names that are coveted by others, but his portfolio is unarguably made up of generic/descriptive domain names. He also sells domain names from time to time, and when he does, he gets top dollar for them.

Clearly, Mike isn’t blogging to make money.

Mike writes one of the most thoughtful and insightful blogs (if not the most insightful) I read, and I really appreciate his thoughts and ideas. Not only does he have the domain experience, but he also has legal experience as well, which allows him to analyze issues and write them with clarity I wouldn’t get elsewhere. I can’t tell you how many times there was something I didn’t understand until reading about it on his blog.

In addition to this, Mike is one of the most approachable people in the domain space. If you’re at a domain conference, you’ll see him surrounded by friends and colleagues, and he’s always willing to give his time to chat. If Mike isn’t attending a domain conference, it probably isn’t worth going.

When Mike revealed that he had 2,400 posts in 3 years, my jaw dropped. I think I started my blog about 4 months before he did, and he has over 500 more posts than me. Knowing how much time it takes to blog, one really needs to give kudos to Mike’s wife, Judi. I am sure there have been plenty of dinners and events put on hold briefly while writing posts.

I want to say “thanks” to Mike in a blog post for all of his contributions. There aren’t a lot of people who would be willing to share as much as he does (time and insight), and it’s genuinely appreciated.

Sedo Gets Memory.com and Wood.com Exclusivity

Elliot Silver
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SedoI’ve noticed that quite a bit of the higher value sales reported in DNJournal of late have been made by Sedo. Earlier this week, I wrote about Sedo getting exclusivity on a great gambling domain name, Gambling.com. It seems like the company is on quite a roll.

Today, I’ve learned that Sedo has gotten the domain names Memory.com and Wood.com under exclusive contract to sell.

I think Memory.com is a great domain name because computer memory is very easy to sell online. I don’t know what the margins are like, but I know a company like Crucial.com makes it simple for people to order memory upgrades. The physical product is small, so inventory expenses are probably light compared to other products.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a company like Micron (owners of Crucial) make an offer to buy Memory.com. Not only would an acquisition like Memory.com make its brand more intuitive, but it would also prevent a startup or competitor from making a big impact on its offering.

Ryan Colby is the broker for both of these domain names and you can be in touch with him by emailing Ryan.Colby at Sedo. Another domain name of interest may be Karate.com, which I understand has seen a price drop since the DomainFest auction where the reserve was $500k-750k.

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.”

gTLD Applicants Should Keep Eye on .LA & Other ccTLD Marketing

Elliot Silver
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Did you know there is a .LA domain extension? Similar to .TV being for Tuvalu, .CO being for Colombia, and .ME being for  Montenegro, .LA is the country code for the southeast Asian country of Laos.

If you’ve heard of .LA or seen .LA domain names advertised, it’s most likely by a domain registrar marketing it as the Los Angeles extension (like the Register.com email that spurred my post). It is probably being marketed in a similar fashion to how the .NYC, .Paris, and other geographic areas intend to market their own gTLDs once ICANN approves them.

Anyone who intends to bid on and win a gTLD should look at the efforts ccTLD registries are making to sell their domain names. They should analyze what is working and what isn’t working. They can monitor the amount of domain registrations along with the ups and downs in registration cycle to see how marketing efforts are paying off.

gTLD registries are going to have to pay a lot of money to manage a registry. I’ve seen a number of extensions that I think will be successful with a strong marketing effort (such as the geos mentioned above), but I’ve also seen a number of head scratchers that just don’t seem to make sense, no matter what the marketing effort will be.

I do think there’s a place for gTLD domain names, and I also think anyone who is pining to manage a registry should pay close attention to what’s working and what isn’t working.

WikiLeaks.com Update: GoDaddy Does The Right Thing

Elliot Silver
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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.

Sedo Nabs Exclusivity on Gambling.com

Elliot Silver
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SedoI recently read that Gambling.com was going to be placed for sale by its owners, and a press release from Sedo confirms the news. The release announces that Sedo has been granted exclusive brokerage rights to the domain name.

It’s not clear what the reserve price is on the domain name, but I personally can’t imagine it selling for more than Slots.com, which was sold to Bodog for $5,500,000 earlier in 2010.

I think Gambling.com is a very good name, but I think people would be more apt to search for other keywords more – for instance, Slots, Blackjack, Poker, or Sports Bets. If an online gaming company is going to build its brand around a generic domain name, I think they would probably prefer to spend the money on one of those .com terms.

Among other large sales this year, Sedo recently found a buyer for Sex.com, which sold for $13,000,000, the highest publicly recorded all-cash deal.

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