Domain Magnate

Two top sales reported today on Dnforum

printer.com sells for $800,000

Today the Dutch webmag webwereld.nl published the sale of printer.com for $800,000.

(in Dutch) http://webwereld.nl/ref/rss/52452

Printer.com was purchased through Sedo by a Dutch startup that spent half of its funds on it. The company is not yet reveiling its exact plans with the domain name but the site will go live on September 2.

Bedandbath.com sold @ Sedo for $50,000!

“Bed and Bath” is a pretty common term, but really not worth nearly as much

Moniker also brokered the sale of Affiliate.com for $580k

In other exciting news .org registry crossed 7 million domains!

The summer break is over and sales are hitting up again?

iSearch.com was offered for sale several times before on ebay, but failed to reach near the reserve, the last ebay auction ended at $61000:

• iSearch.com Premium Domain
• iSearch.com

Now it finally sold for a nice $300K to Intelius [Nasdaq:INTL]

Arlo Gilbert, the previous owner, has the news on his blog read more »

Update: yxl.com was recovered with the help of godaddy

More stolen names might soon pop up for sale, so be warned!

Also a quick reminder: don’t use gmail, or other free email addresses as whois addresses for your domains. They can be hacked!

More details are from a namepros thread:

Some of them are:

yxl.com
zutan.com
filelime.com
relian.com
visitchina.net
visitjapan.net
youlun.com
studentflats.com
studentapartment.com
jiemeng.com
langzi.com
….. read more »

The most popular thread on dnforum currently is this one: Domainers are Losers

As usually the dumbest threads get the highest exposure, but naturally there are also a couple good points raised in the thread. The OP intended that most people joining the industry don’t succeed that well, and this is probably right, same way as in any other business. Many domainers mentioned their successes as well in the posts.

Some interesting posts worth mentioning: read more »

The silent auction which ended recently netted $99k, according to the domains reports:

The silent auction from the Paris Domainers show just concluded and a total of 64 domains were sold for $99K

sprints.com                                $35,300.00
asj.com                                    $15,300.00
jpv.com                                     $8,240.00
WorkFromHome.info                           $5,000.00
travelplus.com                              $3,530.00
MKF.NET                   $1,770.00 read more »

New Vawe of Fake ICANN Emails is out trying to get your logins and password to steal domains, so be warned. A few reports were posted on DNF.

Update: ICANNResolve.com site is down now.

To:    [email]xxxx@xxxxx.com[/email]
Subject:    ICANN - Domain Upgrade Notice
Date:    Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:22:08 +0200
From:    “ICANN” <icann@icannresolve.com>

Dear Domain Account Holder,

You are being sent this notice from ICANN due to the fact that you
currently own an active domain name. ICANN is currently upgrading all
domains from their registry database.

The upgrade will introduce new control options for your domain and
easier
access. The new upgrade is required by the registry. All domain users
are
expected to submit their domain information manually at
[url]http://www.icannresolve.com/email/link.php?M=821&N=5&L=1&F=T[/url] with the
required information for ICANN to apply the required updates. read more »

WHOIS: Protecting the Privacy of Domain Name Holders

CIRA is implementing changes to the dot-ca WHOIS search tool, effective June 10, 2008.

WHOIS is a common Internet search tool used to look up the contact information of domain name holders (Registrants). A search returns information such as name, address, phone and fax numbers, and email address. While WHOIS has been used since the inception of the Internet, recent concerns over privacy necessitated a re-evaluation of what information is publicly available in the dot-ca (.ca) WHOIS.

In January 2004, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) took effect in Canada. This Federal law provides guidelines for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information by private organizations. Under this act, the situations where an organization can disclose an individual’s personal information are strictly limited and require consent. read more »

New high record set for .ca domains by Jobs.ca. The domain was reported to have sold for $600K to Ogopogo Media:

Ogopogo Media, an Internet media company that acquires and develops geotargeted destination and category specific domain names, recently announced it has acquired the rights to Jobs.ca from Domed Technologies, Inc. of Montreal, Canada.

The acquisition of Jobs.ca is the largest published single domain purchase in .ca history. The new ownership plans to create a job network, which will also include JobSearch.ca and Resumes.ca. read more »

.me is about to be launched. Sounds pretty good for a personal site. I think many people would like it and it has many cool possibilities, like kill.me, love.me, hug.me, pay.me etc. A tld that is also a word!

.ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. .ME Registry officials today announced the roll-out plan for .ME, the new domain name extension. .ME is expected to be utilized as both a personalized Web address and as a catchy business marketing tool around the world.

The registry will begin accepting .ME applications in May, for the start of what is known as the General Sunrise Period, a time when only trademark owners can apply. However, registrars who sign up before that time can start accepting Sunrise and Landrush applications and pre-registration requests, as soon as they’d like. As was the case with .ASIA, multiple parties will be allowed to submit applications for the same domain name. Domain names that receive more than one application will go to an auction process. more

Check out this recent DNF thread

Who Really Knows?
I go against all the “rules” here for buying domain names. I get super long names (3-4 words my norm), often with hyphens and always a .org or .net. In the appraisal section, my names always get no response, 0 or “reg fee” values.

For instance, I offer up my watch-videos.net, a name everyone here said was a dog. And I agree. What’s to like? But somehow, someway…well, here are its last 6-month stats at parked.com:
Domain Name Clicks Revenue
watch-videos.net 2,751 $196.75

And I’ll share these few more examples of modest parking successes.
Domain Name Clicks Revenue (6-month parking stats)
stateboardofequalization.org 184 $209.58
equalemploymentopportunitycommission.org 61 $194.58 read more »