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Israel’s Globes Magazine has featured domainers Andrew Miller and Mike “Zappy” Zapolin in an interesting article – “Realtors of the Web” – that focuses on the duos transformation from being suit-and-tie Wall Street brokers to becoming a couple of cool and creative guys that juggle domain names for a living.
The article discusses how Miller and Zapolin created a “Super Bowl test” to determine the top selling products and most valuable domain names, how they struck a deal to purchase Beer.com for $80,000 before reselling it for $7 million, how they survived the dot-com bubble burst by following the Kabalistic principle of “less is more”, and what their views are for the future of domaining.
“Even though it sometimes seems as if the internet has reached saturation, Miller (43) and Zapolin (41), are convinced that these are still early days and that there are big opportunities of the Web with a lot virgin territory still left to conquer. Domain names, they assert, are likely to become a huge opportunity for anyone, even if they lack a financial background and have little cash in hand.”
Their company, Internet Real Estate, currently owns a long list of high-end domains including Software.com, Phone.com, Chocolate.com, Podcast.com, Patents.com, Jeans.com, Alerts.com, and many more. Although they are currently investing their time and energy in domain development, they have sold several multi-million dollar domains in the past including Beer.com, Computer.com, CreditCard.com, and Diamond.com.
For a long time Sedo has had the ability for one to sell their websites on their auction platform, but very rarely does a site of this notoriety go up for bid there. Depending on the success of the sale, Sedo may be able to garner additional attention as an auction house for websites along with its domain name offerings. This would pave the way for Sedo.com to capture yet another piece of the online real estate market that it currently lacks.
Courtesy: Sean Stafford
* Registrar with the Largest Net Gain – GoDaddy
* Best Registrar for Resellers – Enom
* Outstanding Drop Catcher – NameJet
* Outstanding Secondary Market – Sedo
* Best Registrar – Moniker
* Best Parking Company (tie): Sedo and Parked.com
* Best Aftermarket – Afternic
* Best Forum – DNForum.com
* Best Blog Community (3-way tie): SevenMile.com (Frank Schilling), Elliot’s Blog (Elliot Silver) and our very own Domain Name News (Adam Strong and FrankMichlick).
* Best Industry Coverage – DNJournal.com
Courtesy: Frank Michlick
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SEO by the Sea explains that as the cost of domains have become more affordable, spammers have been willing to spend extra money to purchase domains and build a network of links – allowing them to artificially increase their rankings with the major search engines.
Microsoft’s patent application clarifies the need for age as a factor by stating: “Less mature (i.e., newer) domains typically have a higher likelihood of being spam and/or being a part of a web farm that attempts to artificially inflate domain rankings for domains in the web farm.”
The method for ranking the domain age would involve domains being labeled as “mature” (established) or “immature” (new). A domain’s search engine positioning would be weighted most by links from mature domains rather than ones from immature domains.
For example, in an embodiment, domains that have been registered for more than ten years may contribute 100% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered from six to ten years may contribute 75% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered from three to six years may contribute 50% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; domains that have been registered for one to three years may contribute 25% of their accumulated ranks to a target domain’s rank; and domains that have been registered for less than one year may only contribute 10% of their accumulated ranks.
Being one step ahead of the game, Microsoft has also considered resetting expired domains from “mature” to “immature” so spammers don’t end up purchasing large quantities of expired domains and using the same system as they have in the past.
With the added factor of age, established domains with a credible web presence will consistently rank higher than new domains who haven’t received a large number of links from mature sources. This will undoubtedly improve search engine quality and allow people to find the most trustworthy websites more often.
It has been suspected that others, such as Google, have already been using domain age as a contributing factor, but nothing has been made official until now. (By Chad Kettner)
DomainTools.com announced today via the company blog the release of the newest tool in their suite of domain services. The “Who’s It Gonna Be” technology uses proprietary algorithms and millions of whois queries to come up with predictions on who will register any given domain name in the future. Company president Jay Westerdal believes they can predict what you’re going to register before you even know you are going to register it.
Intellectual property attorneys are applauding DomainTool’s technological prowess, which enables the attorneys to send cease and desist letters to “probable” registrants before the domain name is even registered. “This is keeping us one step ahead of the bad guys” said an IP attorney who wished to remain anonymous. The tool will likely cause a serious outcry in the domainer community.
In related news, ICANN has begun consideration of a new UDPRP (Uniform Domain Pre-Registration Policy) which will set up rules and regulations for settling disputes among potential registrants and claimants. Does merely thinking about a domain mean that you have pre-registered the domain ? What if you dream about a trademark typo that is not registered ? Would thinking about building a website as a fan site constitute good faith ? These are the tough decisions that ICANN will face in the coming months.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is attempting to push through legislation that will strip the .CA domain extension from Canada and allow the State of California exclusive rights to the domain. Schwarzenegger spokesperson, Arnold Smotcher said “Everyone knows that CA stands for California.” The State estimates billions of dollars in economic impact in internet users confusing Canada with California “This abuse of our namesake has got to stop. This is a clear violation of all international trade agreements.”
California legislators have issued a proposal to ICANN to immediately push through approval of the new domain extension .EH. Canadian officials have taken appeals before NAFTA arbitration boards to block the measures. The WTO is scheduled to convene special hearings in April to determine the appropriate measures needed to be taken to insure global trade stability.
Canadian domainer Dan Cera who has testified in recent hearings was quoted as saying “The Terminator thinks he can just waltz in here and crush everything we have built. Well I’m not going to sit back and take it ! ” Schwarzenegger staff cited recent search data which demonstrated that Internet users were looking for Yahoo.ca and Google.ca nearly 3 million times per month. “Everyone knows those are Californian companies. It’s quite obvious that is what people are looking for when they add .ca.” said reps from the Governor’s office.
mmmmmm Pizza is tastier now !!!!!
The top-tier one word domain name Pizza.com is up for sale on Sedo.com and attracting a lot of attention in early bidding. In just 2 days of bidding, the domain has already attracted bids in excess of $2 million . Twenty bidders have already placed bids on the auction which has 5 more days left. This is a stellar domain but at these price levels, Domain Name News would expect there to be “end user” (rather than speculator) bidding on this domain name.
How Oversee.net Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng Built a Company With $200 Million in Annual Revenue Before His 30th Birthday
Oversee also owns approximately 600,000 domains of their own and through DomainSponsor they monetize over 2 million more for other domain owners. They also operate leading websites in the mortgage and travel fields with Low.com and LowFares.com. The company’s annual revenues topped $200 million in 2007 (up from $125 million the year before).
Building that kind of empire would take a lifetime for most businessmen, so it is hard to get your head around the fact that Oversee’s energetic Co-Founder and CEO Lawrence Ng is just 29 years old. Ng and a pal from his college days, Fred Hsu, started Oversee from scratch in 2000, just after the original .com bubble had burst and everyone else thought the game was over. Ng and Hsu refused to believe that.
