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Testing Two Domain Sales Venues

Elliot Silver
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Although I prefer to sell domain names in private, I list domain names for sale on my blog and in a couple of other locations when my domain names don’t quickly sell. I have tested one paid venue for my domain sales, and I am going to test a second venue soon.

I recently tested three sponsored headlines at Domaining.com, which cost $80 for the day (each). Although none of the listings yielded a sale, they did bring additional traffic to my blog. I sold WanChai.com, although it was to a private client rather than as a result of the listing. A few people contacted me after the domain name was already sold, but I don’t know if it was a result of the Sponsored Listing exposure. I like the fact that a Sponsored Listing gets prominent placement for a day in the Domaining.com newsletter.

I am going to test another sponsored listing in another venue beginning later today or tomorrow. I am going to buy a “sticky” thread in DNForums Fixed Price sales section, which costs $200 per month. This thread stays at the top of that particular forum for 30 days, and it should give added exposure to domain buyers. I plan to list a wide variety of domain names for people of every budget to test the ROI.

As with just about everything I do, I will keep you posted on how the sale goes.

Sedo Nominated for Bridging the Gap Between Domain Owners & Trademark Interests

Elliot Silver
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SedoOftentimes, trademark holders and domain owners or investors have opposing viewpoints on domain ownership. Both parties frequently feel that they have the right to specific domain names, and the battles to get them can either be fought through a mediation-esque procedure like UDRP or through the legal system.

Recently, Sedo along with Google, Yahoo, Overstock.com and Research In Motion were nominated for a 2010 World Trademark Review (WTR) Industry Award for Internet & Online Services in the category of Legal Team of the Year. According to the press release I received, Sedo was nominated “for its ability to educate and counsel businesses on how to protect their own intellectual property (IP) rights and expand their brands online.”

Sedo has been in the middle of many high profile public domain sales, and they have also acted as the broker for a significant amount of private domain sales that will never be reported. Many of these sales are made between trademark interests and domain owners, and the company is able to work out a fair agreement between differing philosophical opinions on domain ownership rights.

There are many groups that work for and with trademark interests, and some seem to prefer to bully and battle domain owners rather than work together with them. Sedo seems to be bridging the gap between trademark holders and their interests, and domain owners and investors.

Saturday Afternoon (Hangover) Updates

Elliot Silver
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Good afternoon and happy Saturday! Here are some updates for this fine weekend.

  • I don’t own any .tv domain names, but if you do buy this type of domain name, you might want to check out Latonas.com. There is an auction of top .tv domain names right now, including England.tv, Breasts.tv, Government.tv, and more.
  • Ever notice when you go out and tell people what you do, there will be someone who mentions how they had the chance to buy great generic domain names back in the day but for some reason didn’t?
  • I was at a party last night and met an original domain investor. He was the original registrant of Today.com, Shop.com, Office.com,   Information.com, and a bunch of other names that he sold several years ago. I was a bit leery of his story as a few other people have mentioned similar things to me in the past that turned out to be false, but when he mentioned that he still owns VO.com, Insurance.net, Hospital.net and Broker.net, the info matched up. He doesn’t consider himself a domain investor.
  • You know it’s a late night when you get home well past midnight and you start receiving your typical morning email notices like drop lists, domain transfer status updates, and Asia-based emails before you go to bed.
  • Some of my new domain acquisitions this month include GolfPros.com, HorseSupply.com, HorseStable.com, and NewYorkCityDogRuns.com (hand registered and developed).
  • As I previously mentioned, I have been working with WhyPark to help increase the revenue on TropicalBirds.com. My biggest regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. The site went from making around $1-2/day with Adsense to a projection of over $160 in May (over $5/day). It’s only been up for a 2.5 months or so, but as the site continues to optimize, revenue has been increasing.

The $200,000 Sale of MonaLisa.com That Almost Never Happened

Elliot Silver
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Sedo just announced (via DNW) the successful brokerage sale of the domain name MonaLisa.com for $200,000. The domain name is currently registered to its Domain Transfer email, so I am fairly certain the deal is nearly completed.

If you have a look at the archives in DNForum, there’s a thread started by the “mysterious” Kuwaiti domain investor, elequa (also known as Thunayan Khalid Al-Ghanim of Future Media Architects). In the thread, Thunayan mentioned that he was bidding on the domain name at “NW,” a Dotster subsidiary, although he did not win. At that time, the domain name sold for around $15,000. Had Thunayan prevailed in the auction, the domain name would never have been resold, as his company does not sell any of its domain names.

Funny enough, someone who goes by the nickname “DomainGoon” (sarcastically) asked, “the real question is, how many years would take to make $15,000 back using that domain?” I guess the answer is 7 years, for more than 1,000% return on that $15,000 investment.

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PS: Thunayan – call me… I will be in your neck of the woods in 10 days. 🙂

ClosingAuctions.com – New Service to Follow Domain Auctions

Elliot Silver
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5

Francois Carrillo, founder of Domaining.com, recently launched ClosingAuctions.com, a website that allows visitors to track domain auctions from several top aftermarket websites, as the auctions are set to close. Visitors to Domaining.com and to the ClosingAuctions.com website can currently follow along with auctions from Sedo, GoDaddy, BargainDomains.com, Afternic, Auctionpus.com, and Latonas.com.

Once Francois is able to integrate Namejet and Snapnames auctions into his platform, I think the service will be even more beneficial to domain investors. According to Francois, he is in the process of working with both companies to onboard them, although it seems like Snapnames will happen more quickly. With thousands of daily pageviews to Domaining.com, it’s a good opportunity for these companies to get added exposure to their closing auctions.

Aside from its top placement on Domaining.com where domain investors can have a glance at upcoming ending auctions, another advantage of ClosingAuctions.com is that it offers information about the keyword(s) and search terms at a glance, including CPC, Estibot valuation, monthly searches, and # of Google results.

One of the most impressive things to me is that Francois has been able to create a large network of inter-related websites in the domain investment space. In addition to the aforementioned websites, Francois’ company also owns Valuate.com, Catchy.com, a popular Domaining.com newsletter.com, and a host of other projects that are in their infancy. When you think about it, I think it’s pretty neat to see what Francois has done in just a couple of years.

Advertise on One of the Largest Networks of Generic Domain Names

Elliot Silver
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11

Every Internet marketer and advertiser knows about advertising on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You can buy text and display advertisements to run on those search engines and on the websites of their content network partners. I bet there’s another advertising network that operates on one of the best portfolios of generic domain names that many savvy marketers have no idea about.

The World News Network was founded in 1995, and it operates on some of the most valuable generic domain names. In fact, I have seen the Whois information on countless lookups – especially those involving geodomain names. If you’ve ever seen this information in a Whois look up, you’ve come across a domain name in the WN network: “Domain Finance Inc. Minakumari Periasamy.”

The company offers advertising opportunities, including text links, on some of its websites. Conveniently enough, information about advertising with the company can be found on the domain name, Displays.com.

Here is a very short list of domain names in the World News Network:

  • WorldNews.com & WN.com
  • Feed.com
  • WorldPhotos.com
  • Telecommunication.com
  • Students.com
  • Phones.com
  • Gas.com
  • Oil.com
  • Cartoons.com
  • Broadcasting.com
  • SolarPower.com
  • HealthFoods.com
  • Astronomer.com
  • Pollution.com

In my opinion, one of the most impressive aspects of the company’s generic domain portfolio is its geographic domain names. Some of the geodomain names in the WN portfolio include:

  • AbuDhabi.com
  • Baghdad.com
  • Tehran.com
  • Islamabad.com
  • Dubai.com
  • Majorca.com
  • Quito.com
  • RioDeJaneiro.com
  • Prague.com
  • Nairobi.com
  • Malaga.com

If your company is looking to advertise online to an international audience, you might consider looking into the World News Network. If you are a domain investor and want to see one of the best portfolios of generic domain names ever assembled, you might want to check this company out. Chances are good that you’ve come across them many times before.

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