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Signals May Have Changed

Throughout the last several years, the size of my portfolio has ballooned. For many years, I kept somewhere in the ballpark of 400 – 500 domain names in my portfolio. It has now grown to more than 2,000 domain names and counting.

With a larger portfolio, I pay more attention to domain name renewals. When I seek out domain names, there are many things I observe to try and buy commercially viable assets. I look at things like the number of businesses with that could upgrade to this domain name, the size and growth of the industry related to the domain name, the generic nature of the domain name, how the domain name sounds to me, and quite a few other factors that have become second nature to me.

Betz.com Sold for $240k via Sedo (Dave Evanson)

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This morning on X, Sedo’s Senior Domain Broker Dave Evanson announced the sale of Betz.com for $240,000:

Bodis Announces Changes To Ad Styling

If you use Bodis for PPC parking, the styling on your landing pages will likely be changing in the coming months. Bodis reached out to customers yesterday to let them know of a change that could have an impact on revenue generation.

Bodis’ ad partner (which I believe is Google) will be introducing a new ad styling on 50% of network traffic. The change will take effect today. According to the email I received, Bodis had been testing the new styling on about 20% of network traffic, and it led to “a short-term revenue decline.” Bodis, the email said, believes the styling change will attract more advertisers. The change may be made for all traffic next month depending on the results.

Since this is an ad partner change, I suspect other parking services could also make similar ad styling changes as well.

I don’t park many of my domain names, but I have a handful parked at Bodis. I don’t typically visit my own landing pages, so I have not noticed any ad styling changes there or elsewhere. If you spot a new design or format on a PPC landing page, please feel free to share a screenshot.

Here’s the entire message that was shared by Bodis:

ICANN Hiring GDD Services Manager

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As ICANN continues its preparations for the next round of TLD applications, the organization is hiring to fill roles that will help with these new domain name extensions and applications.

Last week, ICANN posted a job opportunity on LinkedIn that might be of interest to someone who currently works in the domain name space. ICANN is looking to hire a GDD Services Manager. GDD is an acronym for ICANN’s for Global Domains Division. This role appears to be similar in nature to an account management role.

Here’s an excerpt about this position from the job post:

Bob Mountain Announces Retirement

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For the past 15 years, Bob Mountain has held senior roles at NameMedia (then parent company of Afternic) and GoDaddy. During his tenure, Bob’s area of expertise has been business development and partner management, serving in different C-suite and Vice President roles.

Bob shared some personal news with me that he is allowing me to share here. Bob will be retiring from GoDaddy at the end of this year.

How I Got Quick Delivery of GoDaddy (Private) Auction Wins

GoDaddy has been running a private auction featuring domain names from its NameFind portfolio. I have been following the auctions and bidding on a handful of domain names I like.

Yesterday, I won the auction for Molasses.com. As I shared on X, it was won, paid for, delivered, and a landing page was launched within a few hours. I want to share how I made that happen.