Domain Magnate

Answers.travel Sold for $3.3 million - it was first reported 2 months ago, but recently sprung a more heated discussion in sight of the depressing economy and the ridiculous amount for an unpopular extension.

Naturally this is the biggest (and possibly the only) .travel sale to date. Despite the shocker it appears to be true as was reported by credible sources: businesswire, reuters.

Different explanations were proposed, from a ‘fake sale’ to ‘money laundering’, tax evasion et. But I can add that I’ve seen enough stranger things happen in domaining over the last few years to know that anything is possible. However don’t get your hopes up, good domains are still good and bad is going to remain bad..

Update: March 5, 2009 - I have just use this codeto renew and bunch of domains and it still works. If .com is what you’re after you don’t need any other godaddy codes!

I was just renewing some domains at godaddy and as usually had to do a little research to find the best coupon codes. People like to post large lists of codes, where most are expired, or simply don’t work and you have to check each of them to see which saves you the most money. Especially now with the recession in full speed domainers try to save every penny on the costly renewals.

So to make it simple, I’ll just list one code I used:

yhkw105a  - dot com  renewals and new registrations at $6.99 (+ $0.20 ICANN fee) - the cheapest price currently available at godaddy.

In related news, Godaddy’s market share in domain registrations is 26.7%, compared to eNom’s 8.3%, Moniker 2.6% and Fabulous only 1.2%. A Godaddy monopoly, when it comes, will definitely not be a good thing for domainers here..

Happy holidays everyone, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Hag Hanukkah Sameah

May the next 2009 year be happier, more profitable and more adventurous for you!

I’m doing my “holiday shopping” and looking to purchase a few good generic domains by the end of the year. If you got some for sale that fit the criterion, let me know!

Lately posts on the blog have been rare and erratic, but I’m hoping to post more and better in the coming months. I’m also doing interviews with domainers of any caliber. Either if you consider yourself a professional, full time domainer, or
if you just started with domaining recently - other domainers would be very interested to hear your thoughts and experiences. To get your story told on this blog just email me to ‘contact at this domain’ expressing your desire to get interviewed and short details about yourself and I’ll reply back with a list of questions.

Follow DomainMagnate on Twitter to get constant updates.

There are quite a few webmaster forums around now, but none really good to provide the members with quality content, active marketplace and large and friendly userbase. With the recent degradation of DigitalPoint and several other big forums in the industry there is a demand for quality forum centered around webmaster issues.

Now there is a new kid in the block aiming to fill the void: www.netbuilders.org - less than 2 weeks old the forum already has over 100 members and 1000+ threads, growing quick. Some of the top threads: read more »

Affilicon, Affiliate Marketing Conference & Exhibition in Israel, is taking place next week on Nov, 24-25. Around 1000 people are expected to visit the conference.

I’ll be there as well, so if you are attending drop me a message and we can meet up and chat, or just say hi.

Another new phishing scheme is unveiling, you get the scope here!

I recently received this email: read more »

Bune.com is for sale at a low price of $2950

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bune

Bune is a Great Duke of Hell, mighty and strong, who has thirty legions of demons under his command. He changes the place of the dead and makes them demons that are under his power to gather together upon those sepulchres. Bune makes men eloquent and wise, and gives true answers to their demands and also richness. He speaks with a comely high voice.

Bune is depicted as a three-headed dragon, being his heads like those of a dog, a griffin, and a man (although according to some grimoires he has two heads like a dragon and the third like a man).

Read more here

While this is pretty cool stuff, frankly I don’t know many (any) people who would take it seriously (um.. no offense intended), but such names with powerful and mystical meaning make an excellent brand for a site, or company! read more »

$173,035.90 RPM - meaning $173K for 1000 visitors, how would you like that?

1 visitor and 173.04 USD , probably the highest “per click” you’ll see with any parking program. This interesting case was recently reported in dnforum by a fellow domainer.
Apperantly Domain Sponsor pay also for CPA - cost per action - which sometimes brings a healthy commission like that, usually with financial and insurance traffic. Sure beats the pennies sedo usually pays.

The highest I ever got per click was $13 in adsense. But it was only once.. also there were many $2-3 clicks.

What’s your highest per click?

And now you can do it on Sitepoint premium marketplace there is one for sale.

PR6 sites are seen for sale very rarely and PR7 even less than that. But here is a real PR9 site! With this SEO weight you can rank in google for pretty much anything with limited amount of content and work put into it.

The sales thread also reports some $4,5K monthly revenues, but you can probably get more by just selling a few links on it.

This little quote at the start of the sales thread reveals a bit about the buyer interest: read more »

BankRate Inc made a few surprising purchases lately, paying millions of dollars for small one man sites.

First was CreditCardGuide.com, a site that provides credit-card comparisons. According to compete.com it receives close to 200K monthly visitors from US. Still hard to imagine the site revenues being able to justify the $32 million pricetag the company paid a month ago. read more »