Domain Magnate

BQB.com has recently started operating as a new auction site for short domains:

BQB.com is a no commission, next generation domain name auction platform dedicated to short domains. Founded in March 2008, BQB.com Inc seeks to reduce the pain sellers of domain names currently endure, paying exhorbitant commissions which are in our opinion often unjustified. BQB.com also seeks to create a marketplace for short domain names, which we believe will continue to be one of the strongest appreciating internet investments for many years to come. BQB is founded on Professionalism – each member is individually screened, successful applications are manually approved. Better Quality Business really is just a few keystrokes away! read more »

Dot MX – Mexican domain names registry reached 250K registrations.

DomainNews reports:

NIC Mexico (Network Information Center México), the registry and administrators of the .MX cctTLD, is announcing that on April 28th, 250,000 .MX domain name registrations have been reached.

This new threshhold turns out to be highly promising for the increasing use of .MX domain names, given the accelerated behavior of registration in the last years; and considering also its 24% annual growing rate. It took 15 years to get the first 100,000 .MX domain registrations, and only two and a half years to add another 100,000. Therefore, reaching the amount of 250,000 .MX domains in just a single year is very satisfying for NIC México and they expect a much shorter waiting period to register next 100,000 .MX domain names. read more »

Israel.com, Pay.com, Jackpot.com, Athlete.com and Hoodia.com are among the top names scheduled to be included in the Moniker Live Domain Auction to be held at the TRAFFIC East event on May 20-23 in Orlando.Other premium domain names that are likely to be included in the Live or Extended Online Auctions:

» Learn more about the Moniker auctions at TRAFFIC East

Not surprising with their recent rapid economical growth, China now has more internet users than US. And they also have over 10 million .cn domain names registered.

But what? At $0.13 per domain (yes, you read it right – you can register a .cn domain for just 13 cents, for example on todaynic)  Chinese domains are less valuable than .ca, even though they outnumber them by more than 10 to 1.

 Also many Chinese companies prefer phonetic .com names. I’m aware of a few private sales for such names in high 5 and 6 figures. Naturally these are.com names that refer to some of the top industries in Chinese.

  read more »

A new interesting cover story on dnjournal

There are certain names that everyone in this industry knows, names that newcomers normally encounter within hours of entering the domain business. Names like Rick Schwartz, Kevin Ham, Frank Schilling, the Castello Brothers and others from a small band of pioneers who have reached the top of a mountain that thousands of others continue to climb. Most in that group became wealthy because they were visionaries who foresaw how valuable domain names would become long before they appeared on anyone else’s radar. 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

A great post from Lord:

This is My True Story

There was a time when I was extremely frustrated with my domaining business. I was seeing people sell domains for hundreds of thousands of dollars and yet I had so many domains which no one was willing to pay even registration fee for, let aside thousands. What was worse was that I was not making much money in parking either.

Whenever I saw the domain-sales charts I would cringe. What was I doing wrong? Was there a fault in my investment strategy? I had to do something about it or simply get out of domaining business. It was a do-or-die situation for me.

There is another thing — I hate failing.

So, I sat-back to take a rational look at my investment strategy and find out what was wrong with it. And very soon I did. read 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 »

dnexpert reports:

CNNic, the Chinese .cn domain name registry have announced they have passed the 10 million domain registrations mark in January 2008.

While other countries take pride in reaching 7 figures, China is strongly striding towards being the leading nation in terms of ccTld registrations. Only Germany with their .de ccTld have reached 10 million registrations in the past.

China is also fast becoming the leading nation in terms of internet users with 210 million internet users in China today.

You can find more information about .cn domain names at the CNNic registry website.

FragerFactor reports:

“I’ve never understood the need for .mobi, my mobile site is doing fine with a .com domain.”

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the Web, is none too keen on dotMOBI.

Berners-Lee — who also is the director of the W3C consortium and a senior research scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — argued that adding domain names indiscriminately is not the best way to insure the Web can scale up and out. read more »