DomainTools Blog

The value of a good name is everything. When I first met Galen Ward he told me he had started a small web 2.0 startup called Shack Prices.com. My first thought was, “What an Odd name, Does his company give prices for run down houses?”. I think I was rather blunt when I suggested he think up a better domain. His complaint was that there were no good names still available. I responded, “Over course not, if they were good why would they be available.” The trouble with starting a Web 2.0 startup is that the technology should come first but when it comes to a name or brand they should not settle for whatever is left unregistered.

I reviewed ShackPrices and I saw that the interface and functionality was very impressive. Clearly this will be a good company but it is suffering from what us domainers call “Web 2.0 Naming Disease”. A Web 2.0 company just finds any $7 domain name and makes a brand on top of it. Domainers that own generic domains end up making millions on the Web 2.0 guy. Look at the case of Flickr.com. They choose a name that had a missing “E” and the owner of Flicker.com is now reporting that they receive 150K visitors a month now and they just turning down an offer for $700,000. Had Flickr been smart they could have bought the generic Flicker.com domain name for $15,000 to $25,000 a few years ago and now there is a auction that is exceeding $700,000.

Anyway, back to Shack Prices. I think Galen had defended his name to so many people that he became entrenched in the name. It is hard to give up an existing brand and switch over, but after talking with enough people he determined it would be in the best interest of his company and so he started looking around at names. He wanted something really powerful, he contact the owner of a dream name and was told by the owner the domain would cost him $200K. For a two man team with no funding he quickly passed and kept looking. After four or five more attempts he found a name that was reasonably priced. He asked me for some advice on the purchase, he said, “Does it always feel like you are negotiating in a Mexican outdoor flee market when talking to a domain owner.” I explained, “Yes, generally that back and forth negotiation is normal. Just remember the owner can only sell it once.” The negotiation process is generally pretty easy. But the owner always wants the seller to name the first price. If the buyer says, $200, then the owner may not respond because they hear that line all the time on their generic domain name. The better the domain the more fair an offer should be. $200 will insult generic domain owners. I have a friend that will not even respond if the initial offer is lower then $10,000. If a domain is worth $500,000 without even thinking. Don’t even start an offer below $50,000. It is not worth the owners time to halt his life and educate the person making the offer.

To replace ShackPrices, one of Galen’s choices was Estately.com. The owner of the name only wanted a few thousand for the domain and I told Galen that he was actually getting a steal. A one word domain name that is short and sweet are a total steal if you can get them for under $10,000. Upon announcing the name change this two man company has gotten calls from three VC firms. The brand is everything, as ShackPrices they had great technology but their name held them back. Galen pointed out, real estate professionals are hyper focused on reputation and he was getting mixed reviews with the old name. The offline feedback that he was getting suggested people were either negatively polarized with the ShackPrices name or thought the name was fine. Now the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Great Brand plus Great Technology and I predict this will be a  good thing.

Galen is lucky, Aussie.com, recently completed the acquisition of the domain name Hot Property.com for $120,000. I think the the Estately.com domain is a great brand.

Domain registration patterns can tell a lot about the world and what news is breaking. The number of IPhone domains skyrocketed on January 11th 2007 when the official announcement came out from Apple. 453 domains with the word “Iphone” were registered that first day and the explosion of Iphone domain names have been steady since that day. The initial spike was a lot of people going after domains so they could have the best domain for marketing purposes.

After the earth shattering announcement and the huge spike in registrations the amount of people registering IPHone type of domains names each day cooled off to a simmering registration rate that was steadily averaging a health 25 domains a day. A lot of people still feel they are clever because they have registered a good IPhone website domain prior to the launch of the product and the demand will only get better after the launch of the device.

A month before the official launch of the Apple IPhone, Apple began TV commercials which show how cool the phone is. This is definitely increasing the demand for the Phone because we see the registration volume is increasing again. In this last month prior to the launch the registration volume has been getting stronger and more pronounced.

The quality of IPhone names has been dropping, a lot of the good ones were taken on the day of the announcement by the first people that heard the name. They rushed out and got great names like IPhone Jewelery.com, but the really great names like IPhone Games.com were taken by almost psychic people over a year ago. They had the ability to guess Apple would come out with an Iphone and also that people would want games for that phone.

There are still some good names left, IPhone Web.com for example was registered in May. We expect more domains to get registered in the coming months but for those that register now they have a better chance of getting a good name then the people that wait until after Launch. There is going to be a healthy aftermarket in IPhone domain names. There are more then four thousand new IPhone domain names floating around now and we expect another four thousand by the end of the year.

Apple might have a different take on all this. They may say people are registering their trademark and they don’t deserve these domain names but we have seen that Apple has not been on the ball and even failed to secure the rights to IPhone.com so they are doing a poor job in the Domain game. When Microsoft announced the Surface Computer we saw that they had already beat the market and registered a lot of generic domains. Apple needs a good domain registration team that can rush the market and pickup good domain names prior to world wide announcements.

ICANN just announced to Registrars in San Juan about 5 minutes ago that they will be lowering their fees to $0.20 cents per domain starting July 1st. The preliminary budget will be posted later this week, but here’s the scoop. The current rate is $0.22 cents and the previous year it was $0.25. The delay from when a registrant actually sees this fee being lowered can lag a lot. Once the budget is officially approved, the Registrars can bank on the lower fees and start charging it to their customers accordingly. The Finance committee has approved the fee reduction so it is more official than not. Kurt Pritz, Senior Vice President of ICANN, has said that once the finance committee makes its recommendation it does not need board approval for the fee, however the overall budget still must be officially voted on and pass. But at this time we are expecting the budget to be voted on and also to pass. Earlier this year we saw GoDaddy refund $0.03 on all domains that were registered during the previous cycle because they were invoiced a few months after the change.

Verisign will be raising its fees on October 15th so the lowest cost for a domain registration will be at a two year low starting July 1st and will last until the domain costs raise by the registries on October 15th. Frank Schilling and other domainers have been saying that people should renew their domains early and lock in a few extra years of registration. I think this window is a perfect time to take that advice.

There was an panel of speakers talking about Domain Tasting yesterday. The ICANN ALAC is debating whether to ask for a PDP (Policy Development Process) paper. The first step in the ICANN process to solve a problem is defining the issue. The ALAC is trying to figure out all the issues that surround domain tasting before it calls for the PDP process. Everyone on the stage showed us their power point slides and talked about how domain tasting affected them. David Maher of PIR talked about how they solved the problem already. PIR raised the keep ratio in .ORG to higher than 90% and made it cost 5 cents to throw a domain back if the ratio was lower then that. I congratulate PIR for figuring out how to solve the problem, but is it a problem? According to Verisign it is not an operational problem for them and they make money doing it. So from Verisign’s perspective Domain Tasting is fine.

It is clear that the losers in Domain Tasting are the trademark owners that have their domain names typo-ed against. John Kane of eNom pointed out that it is fine to take something like boating and register 100 domain names with boating in the title and look for boating domains that would bring traffic but that registering 100 domain names that look like VerizonWireless.com would be illegal.

From a registrar perspective, it is a huge liability to not have a refund period. Perhaps a hacker registers garbage at your registrar with a stolen credit card and you only catch it the next day. The 5 day period can be used to delete the domain names and get a full refund for the hack.

Personally I think Domain Tasting should be stopped. I see collateral damage and lawsuits everywhere. I like PIR’s solution rather then just closing the grace period. The systematic harvesting of typos is the worse offense. I have no problem with tasting of generic stings but typos that are not in the dictionary are a loaded gun of problems. I would advise domain tasters to use a dictionary when hunting for traffic.

Marilyn Cade did the most injustice to the whole debate. Her presentation was about Unethical Domain Parking and not Domain Tasting. She was basically saying that parking pages are the sickness of the Internet. Here is a quote from Marilyn:

“This, in fact, is the first meeting at which we have discussed a key aspect of Monetization, and that is the harmful aspect, The Dark Side, when it is not just a monetization scheme, but it is a scheme of monetization that is involving the abusive registration and exploitation of the rights of others.

I by no means mean to imply that the secondary market is all bad. But what I’m here today to do is show you some examples of experiences that people are doing.

Put pans under the Drips, eventually I’m going to see a significant increased cost in maintenance and repairs, but more that that, ugly molds are going to grow in the attic and in the walls. They won’t be discernible initially, but eventually there will be major structural problems.“

She then showed slides of unethical parking pages. While some of what she showed was unethical, she was confusing the issues and taking people off the debate over Domain Tasting. To the non technical people in the room she made a good argument. I think that is exactly why what she did was so dangerous, she was giving examples of bad things that happen and then tried to tie that in to Domain Tasting. She needs to confine her attacks to be more targeted or she will accomplish nothing.

I am not supporting unethical Domain Tasting or Abusive Registrations. In fact I am very against them. I do however support the rights of people to Park their domain names. So Marilyn, please don’t confuse the audience. Parking is a legitimate and ethical business and you should figure that out really quick. An entire industry hates you when you try to pull us into something else which is unrelated. There are always people that use tools in the wrong way but please don’t attack everyone that uses those tools. There are people parking domain names ethically. When some of them do it in an unethical way, that does not make domain parking unethical in general. That only makes those people unethical.

Marilyn, Please give clear examples of Domain Tasting abuse. Let’s solve that problem. But don’t sling mud about other issues and expect us to rally behind you on a completely different issue. This is not capital hill and you can’t confuse the audience into doing something. We are too smart for that.

I just got my hands on a MINT first edition Issue #1 copy of “The adventures of Team ARIN” which is a 36 page comic book written by the ARIN staff. In the opening scene the ghost of Jon Postel appoints four graduate students with two special abilities each. He explains, “You’ll get two somewhat unusual powers each. Your superpowers are limited, but that’s the Internet way – a lot of people cooperate to make it work.”

The blue guy, Ace, gets the ability to walk through walls and the ability to touch any device and it’s instantly connected to the Internet. The yellow woman, Roxy, gets the ability to stop bad behavior when it comes to IP addresses and the ability to mind-meld. The red woman, Izzy, has the ability to answer any question that is asked and the ability to know if information is true or false. The green guy, Nash, gets the ability to detect when neutrality is threatened and the ability to ping to increase his powers.

I think Ace has the cool abilities, clearly the leader of the team.

The comic book is supposed to be educational and entertaining. I found it both. It must have taken a lot of work to draw all those scenes. And I hear there is also a movie coming out too. Wow, ICANN is going Hollywood.

I was not able to find a copy online, hopefully they make a PDF of the comic book and post it later. If you want to read it you will need to come to ARIN or ICANN meetings to get the comic book. I might put mine on eBay if there is enough demand. I am sure it is worth a future.

The 16 huge names that sold for over $100,000 at the auction this week represent $8,030,000. The other 99 domains represent about $2 million dollars in sales. We see the 80/20 rule come out in full force here. 20% of the domains were huge and made up 80% revenue. Then the remaining 80% of the domains made up the remaining 20% of the revenue. This 80/20 rule generally happens in all businesses. If you don’t know what your 80/20 is then take a look around. On other news I was shocked that Seniors.com sold but I want to congratulate Page Howe. I think he got an Excellent price for this domain! I also think Charters.com for $140,000 was the best buy of the whole auction. It was cheap in comparison to everything else and I think is the best domain per dollar spent.

Free Credit Check.com & Credit Check.com	$3,000,000	Reports say the two domains net $37,000 per month. So this sale was for just under 7 years revenues.
Seniors.com	$1,800,000	No revenue numbers were shared. I am surprised about this sale.
Cardiology.com	$550,000	High Ticket item. Super category type domain.
Car Sales.com	$400,000	Generic domain, two words. High Ticket Item.
Bald.com	$400,000	One word generic. Expensive industry.
Text.com	$300,000	Text messages are huge. This generic keyword domain is well worth it.
Locals.com	$250,000	I think Local.com would sell for several million, so in comparison this is good. It was all about tense on this one.
Spices.com	$220,000	Multiple things can apply to this word. I like this buy because there are a lot of niche spices and this can be a full blown commerce site selling all those spices.
Clock.com	$175,000	Clocks would be better. It is all about Tense. Good domain though.
Psychologists.com	$160,000	Very expensive doctors. I could see a very good directory of psychologists here. I like this domain for this price.
Mega Yachts.com	$150,000	High Ticket item. I love it.
Charters.com	$140,000	The best buy of the auction. Super cheap price. Wow. Killer name.
Lips.com	$135,000	Plastic Surgery type of website. Big Ticket again.
Blogging.com	$135,000	Blogging.com is a natural big site if it has just a little bit of development. The name is memorable and will be a brand people will choose given other bad names. Blogs attract a lot of traffic so it will be a double fold win for the developer.
Note.com	$115,000	Money Term. I was tempted to buy this one. Short and sweet.
Bulk.com	$100,000	Generic Size Thing. This was bought for Brand and not for PPC for sure..

A new lawsuit has been filed in the Northern District Court of Illinois by Vulcan Golf against the following companies: Google, Inc. Oversee.net, Sedo LLC, Dotster, Internet REIT, and John Does 1 through 10. The Civil Docket for the case is number 1:07-cv-03371. The demand is for $1,000,000 and it cites Trademark Infringement (15:1051). The case was filed on the 15th of this month and the nature of the suit was “470 Racketeer/Corrupt Organization”. The documents for the case were not available because they are said to be not legible however one could obtain those documents directly from the clerk’s office by calling 312-435-5699 during normal business hours.

I assume this is a domain parking lawsuit because they name parking companies. Thanks to George Kirikos for giving us a heads up.

We have seen some companies complain about their name triggering ads on the actual Google search engine but my gut feeling tells me this lawsuit has to do with companies that have domain typos of Vulcan Golf.com.

The 23rd of June is a special night in Puerto Rico; it is San Jaun Bautista night. According to tradition, at the stroke of midnight on St. John’s Day, the waters are blessed and possess special powers, including curing sickness, giving beauty, improving future, increasing agricultural production, and warding off evil. The rituals associated with the water date back to the ancient civilizations.

The “Noche de San Jaun” is widely celebrated throughout the world, with each country and region having its own traditions and rituals. In Puerto Rico, tradition holds that walking backward toward the beach and doing 12 back flips in the water at exactly midnight brings good luck and keeps evil away throughout the year. It has also become a joyful celebrations where family and friends meet and celebrate.

All around Puerto Rico tonight people came down to the water to jump around and enjoy themselves. When I got off the plane from New York today it was a balmy 95 degrees here but by midnight it was 80 degrees. In Seattle this would never be a tradition unless it involved a hot tub. I was at the Puerto Rico.com auction this week in New York. The domain didn’t hit its reserve price so it did not sell. I ended up talked with the head of the Puerto Rico tourism board tonight at a cocktail party and they were unaware that PuertoRico.com was even at auction. I am conducting my due diligences by flying down here and seeing if the domain is worth buying. The tourist board advertises Go To Puerto Rico.com all over the airport and uses that domain to promote Puerto Rico. I think geo-location Domains are some of the best, I am jealous I don’t own one. I would love to buy Hawaii.com and be forced to build it out. I would be forced to visit everything in the islands and write reviews about what I found.

On a more serious note, I actually came down to Puerto Rico to attend the ICANN meeting. That debate over new gTLDs, OPOC, and Domain Tasting Continues.

A lot of people have been emailing me or telling me directly that they had a very deep fear that there was shill bidding going on at the Moniker New York Domain Auction. I asked them to explain why they thought this was the case. It is an extremely serious claim because not only would it be unethical it would be very illegal. I caution anyone from making that claim and would tell them to be careful. Why would someone want to shill bid all the big ticket domains in the auction? There really is not a good reason that I can think of to do that. Perhaps a joker that knew the reserves and thought it would be cute to bid below the reserve. However Monte Cahn is a smart man and I am sure he would spot that so it would be dangerous for a joker to do something illegal like that and be permanently banned from the conferences and auctions. That person would be treated extremely bad by domainers in this close knit industry. I know moniker video taped the entire thing, perhaps they can run the tapes and see who the high bidders were that never got domains. I know that if my reserve was $5 Million and someone bid $4.5 Million I might be convinced to meet them in the middle or lower my reserve on the spot. Everyone knows each other and people talk, something like this would not be a good idea to do infront of a room full of extremely smart people. So therefor I have to dismiss the theory as highly unlikely. But the data is very compelling just on its own. We can see that every $5 million dollar reserve domain got a $4.5MM bid. There was an astonishing $54,222,500 amount bid on domains that did not sell because the reserve price was too high.

	Domains	Last Bid	Average Bid	Median Bid
Sold:	115	$10,858,200	$94,419.13	$25,000
Not Sold:	81	$54,222,500	$669,413.58	$120,000

Monte, if you can look into all this data and respond in the comments that would be great.

Seniors.com
Paul Sloan of Business 2.0 read my earlier post about the high priced domains which I thought would not sell in the upcoming auction and chose one domain out of the list, Seniors.com. His post Seniors.com for $1 million? C’mon was about how that one domain looked over priced. Paul was shocked when it sold for $1.8MM and so was I. It is rare to see a retail buyer join the wholesale auctions and bid on a domain. The $1.8 Million dollar bid must have been from a retail bidder. I asked who bid on the domain because I wanted to interview the new owner and see what his plans were for it. I was told the bid was by a “left bid” or a phone order bidder and that it was not someone in the room. I guess I can wait until the whois updates and see the owner show up or I can check out the new website when it launches. It would make sense if it was Senior Exchange Inc. who is the owner of Senior.com. I will update you if I can interview the company that bought the domain.

Domains that did not sell:

Domain	Highest Bid Received	Reserve
Auction.com	$4,500,000	$5,000,000 and up
Slots.com	$4,500,000	$5,000,000 and up
Horse Racing.com	$4,500,000	$5,000,000 and up
Dermatology.com	$4,500,000	$5,000,000 and up
Puerto Rico.com	$3,500,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Scotland.com	$3,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Press Releases.com	$3,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Student.com	$3,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Cats.com	$2,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Commodities.com	$1,750,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Menopause.com	$1,500,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Stuff.com	$1,500,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Draw.com	$1,500,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
DSL.com	$1,500,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
OBGYN.com	$1,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Six.com	$1,000,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Tourist.com	$750,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Artist.com	$750,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Elections.com	$700,000	$500,001 – $1mm
Dollars.com	$700,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
How.com	$600,000	$500,001 – $1mm
Ethanol.com	$600,000	$500,001 – $1mm
Martial Arts.com	$600,000	$500,001 – $1mm
Whiskey.com	$400,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Planet.com	$350,000	$500,001 – $1mm
401k Plans.com	$350,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Bourbon.com	$300,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Comic Books.com	$300,000	$500,001 – $1mm
Gin.com	$250,000	$250,001 – $500,000
TGP.com	$250,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Internet Radio.com	$225,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Supplies.com	$200,000	$250,001 – $500,000
EC.com	$200,000	$250,001 – $500,000
Union.com	$185,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Naked.com	$150,000	$1,000,000 – $5,000,000
Auto Classifieds.com	$135,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Fitness Center.com	$125,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Insurance Rates.com	$125,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Scores.mobi	$120,000	$100,001 – $250,000
New York Realty.com	$120,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Computer Equipment.com	$110,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Roller Coaster.com	$100,000	$100,001 – $250,000
HY.com	$100,000	$100,001 – $250,000
QR.com	$85,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Flights.net	$85,000	$50,001 – $100,000
62.com	$80,000	$50,001 – $100,000
82.com	$75,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Manufacture.com	$75,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Breathalyzer.com	$70,000	$50,001 – $100,000
46.com	$70,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Polling.com	$70,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Bhutan.com	$70,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Sale.mobi	$65,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Passover.com	$60,000	$50,001 – $100,000
High Definition.com	$60,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Masters Degree.com	$60,000	$50,001 – $100,000
06.com	$60,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Custom Motorcycles.com	$55,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Invest.net	$50,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Pay.mobi	$45,000	$100,001 – $250,000
Talent Agent.com	$45,000	$50,001 – $100,000
Prescription Medication.com	$35,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Phones.mobi	$30,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Vacations.mobi	$30,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Tattoo Parlor.com	$28,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Chocolate Candy.com	$27,500	$25,001 – $50,000
PDA.net	$25,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Forbidden City.com	$25,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Security Equipment.com	$25,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Carburetors.com	$25,000	$25,001 – $50,000
CD.net	$22,500	$25,001 – $50,000
Text.mobi	$21,000	$10,001 – $25,000
Property Management.net	$20,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Individual Retirement Accounts.com	$20,000	$25,001 – $50,000
Catering Service.com	$17,500	$10,001 – $25,000
Europe.mobi	$14,500	$10,001 – $25,000
555.mobi	$10,000	$10,001 – $25,000
Pesos.com	$7,500	$50,001 – $100,000
300.mobi	$4,000	$1,000 – $5,000

Changes on the Management page of Internet REIT have appeared since Google last crawled them. We compared the old cached page with the current one and it showed there was a lot of change. We are not sure what this means for Internet REIT but it sure is interesting. The talk over at DomainState is that that, “Maybe they’re trying to get a better lineup on that page for IPO purposes?” said, safesys. Then DomainStar said, “I have been an underwritter in over 300 IPO’s and my instincts tell me that your instincts have hit the nail right on the head!” I wonder if it is true?

Bob Martin PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER (DELETED)
Craig Snyder CEO (No Change)
Sid Parfait EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
Adam Dicker EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
Eddie Hebert VP FINANCE (ADDED)
Lisa Box VP DOMAIN SALES (No Change)
Tim Chen VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (No Change)
Jacob Hammond DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS (DELETED)
Drake Harvey VP TECHNOLOGY (ADDED)
John Brock GENERAL COUNSEL (No Change)

Full Changes below:

---

Bob Martin PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER (DELETED)
Bob Martin is the President and a co-founder of iREIT. Prior to co-founding Internet REIT, Martin served as CEO of JumpStart Partners, Inc., a merchant banking firm specializing in mergers, acquisitions, and corporate development. From its inception in 2000, JumpStart worked with over 60 clients, focusing in the technology and energy industries.Bob has also had a varied career in the technology and investment industries. He served as Vice President of a mid-market e-logistics and e-customer care firm, the Director of E-Commerce at Trilogy Software, and also held roles with Advent International Global Private Equity and Procter and Gamble.

Bob is a founding Board member and the 2007 President of the Internet Commerce Association, the largest trade association in the direct navigation industry. Bob graduated with honors from Harvard University with a BA in Economics. He also completed graduate work at Sloan Business School at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Craig Snyder CEO (No Change)
…

Sid Parfait EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
An well-known figure in the industry, Parfait joined the Internet REIT team after the company purchased his portfolio in 2005. Parfait brings strong industry depth and relationships to Internet REIT, as well as substantial expertise monetizing Internet domain names.

Parfait created and developed DropWatch.com, a subscription-based online suite of comprehensive, fast-track research and management tools for domain professionals, in addition to the popular online Google pagerank utility, PRLookup.com. Parfait is also the former SVP Marketing for Newton & Associates, a commercial debt recovery and credit consultation firm.

Adam Dicker EXECUTIVE VP (DELETED)
As executive vice president of iREIT, Dicker is focused on iREIT’s acquisitions, marketing, analytics, content development, and domain optimization and monetization functions.

Dicker brings extensive experience and domaining expertise to iREIT. A well-known figure in the industry, Dicker founded High Impact Sites, Inc., a company that owns thousands of high-profile domains and operates a number of active websites, including Penpals.com, Planets.com, Witchcraft.com, FirePrevention.com, Avatars.com and Download.net. Prior to his work in the domain industry, Dicker was the Network Services Manager for Quantitude, a Cendant-owned company.

Dicker is also owner of DNForum.com, the largest professional domain community discussion forum on the Internet.

Eddie Hebert VP FINANCE (ADDED)
As VP Finance, Eddie oversees iREIT’s financial planning, treasury, tax, compliance and asset management functions. Prior to joining iREIT, Eddie was VP Controller for a service technology company, Particle Drilling Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: PDRT). While at Particle Drilling Technologies, he facilitated the company’s entry into the public markets.

He began his career as an auditor at Arthur Andersen. He is a C.P.A and holds a degree from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

Lisa Box VP DOMAIN SALES (No Change)
…
Tim Chen VP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (No Change)
…
Jacob Hammond DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTS (DELETED)
As Director of Products at Internet REIT, Hammond is responsible for heading the development of the products and systems that manage Internet REIT’s domain assets. He also works in conjunction with the monetization team to ensure that content is developed on Internet REIT’s domains.

Hammond comes from a background in web development, primarily working within the domain industry.

Drake Harvey VP TECHNOLOGY (ADDED)
As VP of Technology at Internet REIT, Harvey is accountable for the technical infrastructure and is responsible for the engineering, implementation and operation of new technologies. Harvey brings extensive experience in both telecommunications operations and engineering. Most recently, Harvey spent 10 years with Level3 Communucations (Formerly Broadwing) with responsibility for a nationwide network supporting voice, data and internet services for Fortune 500 companies.

Prior experiences include deployment and operational responsibilities for large, leading edge data centers and industry leading technology roll-outs. Harvey brings a proven track record of organizational turn around and stabilization.

Harvey has a B.S. in Business Administration, Finance from University of Delaware.

John Brock GENERAL COUNSEL (No Change)
John Brock has spent the past decade serving as both in-house and outside counsel to private high-growth and public companies. His practice has focused primarily on the areas of corporate governance, finance, securities and mergers and acquisitions. John previously served as the General Counsel and Vice President of Finance to Netster.com before its acquisition by iREIT.

Prior to joining Netster.com, John practiced with the law firm of Hunton & Williams LLP.